Lang time no see

Published on Saturday 19 January 2008 13:23

I DON'T know how to say this to KD Lang. Every time I read about the strange period in her life when she was Hollywood's favourite – make that only – lesbian, I think of The Elephant Man. Specifically, the scene in David Lynch's film where John Merrick is fawned over by Victorian society ladies congratulating themselves on allowing a freak into their lives.

But I needn't have worried. "That's exactly what it was like," says Lang, possessor of one of the great pop voices, winner of three Grammys and headlining star of Celtic Connections this year. "Everyone was like: 'You're great! Wear these clothes! Come to this party! Go out with me!'

"Don't get me wrong, I had a good time. But I realised that fame, being like the skin of the Elephant Man, wasn't a true picture of events or of the person within or of what people really thought of you. Fame was a cloak and it was superficial and it was impermanent."

These days, life is a little quieter for the most famous gay, vegetarian, motorbiking Tibetan Buddhist to come out of Consort, Alberta (population: 650), deep in the wide, blue Canadian nowhere. As low key as it can be in Los Angeles, anyway, in a house once occupied by Rock Hudson.

Previously, she would have described the place as Hudson and his lover Tab Hunter's "sex cabin", but Lang, now 46, has now made it her own. This is where you'll find her most of the time; the invites to hang out with Linda (Evangelista), Helena (Christensen) and Christy (Turlington) having long since dried up. Here she cooks and paints (abstract expressionism) and plays with the dogs and is happy just being around "the wife". And it's also where she writes songs.

For a while, Lang wasn't doing this anywhere. Fans who were constantly craving another album like Ingenue wondered if she had lost the knack. "I wondered that myself," she says. "I think that when I start out on any new record."

But Watershed is finished, ready and good. The faithful can buy it one day and, the next, see their heroine step on to a Scottish stage again. Lang is relishing that, for even the first time she visited, she quickly realised she was no ingenue.

"I looked at the people in the street, did double-takes and just thought: 'Oh my goodness'. They all looked like me! By that I mean they were gorgeous, ha ha. That was maybe 1985 when I played the Edinburgh Folk Festival with the Reclines (her Patsy Cline tribute band]. We performed in a tent and afterwards I ate vegetarian haggis. Never had it since. But we Langs are of Scottish descent, I know that for sure."

Watershed is her first album of original compositions for eight years, so why the lengthy wait? "I got writer's block. There were a number of contributory factors. One was 9/11, which turned the atmosphere in America – politically, emotionally and artistically - on its ear. Afterwards I couldn't write love songs. They just seemed so frivolous."

Lang has never just sung love songs; they've always been big ones. Check out those titles: 'Big, Big Love', 'Love's Great Ocean', 'World Of Love', 'So In Love', 'Still Thrives This Love', 'Only Love', 'Lock, Stock And Teardrops'. And all of them have been belted out in that VistaVision voice as big as the sky over Consort, Alberta.

"Another factor was Buddhism," she continues. "I became a practitioner around the same time. When you start to study a faith deeply, it requires you to re-organise your priorities and the way you look at the world. I had to ask myself whether I should still be writing songs about the human desire realm." Did she consider writing political songs? "No. I mean, I'm interested in politics, but to me music transcends it. I guess I've always been more into humanity."

She compares the process of Buddhism reshaping her life to being "like water moving around obstruction". To borrow her metaphor, the "human desire realm" for Lang has never been a babbling brook; rather a raging sea. And, after due consideration, she decided to continue writing about it. She had, after all, just fallen in love again.

Lang grew up the youngest of four and it's always written that she was extremely close to her drugstore-owning father Fred, who bought her a guitar aged six, a motorcycle at nine and took her shooting before running off with the next-door neighbour when she was 12. What of her mother Audrey?

"It's funny you should say that. British journalists always ask about my dad, as if he was the major influence on my sexuality, while in America they only ask about my mum, who still lives in Consort and is my greatest friend." Her father died last summer without her knowing, causing her to miss the funeral, but she says she did her grieving over their relationship years before and that her faith has helped her form a new one with his spirit.

Lang was a cheeky cowgirl when she first played "Edinburro". Back in Nashville, the country and western establishment were suspicious, but they loved the voice. Does it take much looking after? "I've always treated it well. No smoking, and drinking only when I'm not singing." What's her poison? "Vodka, beer and wine."

For Ingenue and its breakthrough single 'Constant Craving' she lost some of the country twang, but gained a big, new, intrigued pop audience. "I'm a l-l-l ... " she would tease crowds such as the one at Glasgow's King's Theatre, "... Liberace fan!"

Madonna swooned: "Elvis is alive – and she's beautiful!" Cindy Crawford was snapped for the cover of Vanity Fair shaving Lang with a cut-throat razor – in a swimsuit. Suddenly she was lesbian chic's poster girl.

In hindsight, was coming out good or bad for the career? "It helped more than hindered, but it did hinder. For instance, the follow-up to 'Constant Craving' was to be 'Mind Of Love', but radio stations were ordered by advertisers not to play it because in the refrain ('Where's your head, Kathryn?'] they didn't want a girl singing about a girl.

"Also, for 17 years now, the focus has been on my sexuality rather than my music, and I'm still answering questions about it now. But I still think that's a positive result. For me personally, coming out was a great thing. It stripped the pretence away, it was liberating. And for a sector of society that's often misunderstood, well, I hope it's opened some doors."

These days, Lang looks back on Hollywood's exploitation of her lesbianism and laughs. "Me and a girlfriend were always threatening to 'in' all the women who were pretending to be gay – I wish we'd done it!" And she admits that at times in the past she exploited relationships for her career. 'Flame Of The Uninspired' on the new album recalls how she would cheat on lovers simply to provide her with juicy material for songs.

But the girl who sang on a previous CD that love was "never-ending", only to see that romance bite the dust shortly after its release, extols the current relationship on Watershed in a more subtle way that's in keeping with the rest of her life now.

"We're helping build a Buddhist monastery in Los Angeles," she says. And the volunteer work can often be even less glamorous than that. "Oh, you know, we take turns cleaning toilets."

Watershed (Nonesuch) is released on January 28. KD Lang plays Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall as part of Celtic Connections January 29 www.kdlang.com