SHE'S
CRACKED IT!
Dido Florian Cloud de
Bounevialle Armstrong left home at 15, reckons she's "worth 15
billion pounds", guzzles painkillers and measures hotel swimming
pools before she checks in. "I'm just a normal North London
girl," she insists to Adrian Deevoy.
"Fucking shit,
bollocks, fuck, bugger and wank." It was with these carefully
chosen words that Dido Armstrong first greeted her American Public.
Concluding a three song acoustic showcase in New York's Supper Club, she
had strategically elected to play Thank You, the song Eminem so
smartly sampled on his stalker opus Stan. Everyone, she
figured, would know this one. Everyone, that was, apart from Dido.
"I just went totally
blank," she says, fresh perspiration prickling her pale skin as the
full horror of the memory returns. "I could not for the life of
me remember the opening lines. So I'm just standing there like an
idiot, when all of a sudden this torrent of foul language starts coming
out of my mouth. Like The Exorcist. I thought, That's
it, I'm finished. The Americans are forever going to see me as
English Swearing Girl. My career is officially over."
She couldn't have been
more wrong. Unusually, America ignored the thought-provoking
outburst and responded instead by buying Dido's record by the KFC
bucketload. The rest of the planet, including - albeit hesitantly -
her fellow Britons, steadily followed suit. Now worldwide sales have
topped the eight million mark thus making it the biggest selling debut
album by any semi-bohemian, Islington-based female solo artist ever.
Come Christmas, more than two million people in Britain alone will own a
copy of No Angel.
Fuck, as Dido would say.
The sole indication that
Dido might be an international recording phenomenon and not, say, a
stylishly dressed temp, is to be found in the top corner of her
sunglasses. The reversed Cs - what PJ O'Rourke calls "the
golden ass-crack" - of Chanel suggest that the serious money might
have started to roll in.
"Actually, it
hasn't," frowns Dido as she collects Q at the tube station in
her own modest motor, a functional BMW in fashionable black. "I
thought I might have got a massive cheque this month but it hasn't
arrived. I'm not worried though, it's coming. I hope it is
anyway, I want to buy somewhere to live."
To this end, Dido is
going house-hunting this afternoon, but prior to that there's the small
matter of an interview with her favourite magazine ("Without wishing
to sound like an arse-licker, it's true") but, more pressing, she has
to buy some CDs for her mum's birthday which they'll be celebrating
tonight.
Hence a visit to the
local HMV is the first item on today's pleasantly hectic agenda.
Scanning the new releases, Dido dives in and grabs the latest Bob Dylan
compilation but deliberates over the new Daft Punk. "I'm not
sure my mum will like this," she frets. "Everyone reckons
it's great but I was bored with it after a couple of listens."
She opts instead for the Everything But The Girl remix album.
"Mum loves all this stuff," she says. "She's very
hip."
Frustrated at not being
able to bag a copy of Air's new one - not out until next Monday - she
picks out Kate Bush's Whole Story collection ("The first album
I ever bought"), The Beatles' 1 and Joni Mitchell's Blue.
Dido is unable to
remember if her mum owns a copy of the Spooks album ("She's
definitely got David Gray and Coldplay"). Similarly, she's
uncertain if she needs any more Stevie Wonder. Rooting through the
reggae racks she decides that some vintage Lee Perry dub might be too
strange even for her age-gap-busting mum. How old is she going to
be, by the way? "65," breezes Dido, seeming blissfully
unaware that her mother is rather more musically adventurous than the
average pensioner.
She pauses briefly to
note that the last Faithless album has been relegated to the 2-For-£22
division. Led by her brother Rollo, Faithless was the band with whom
Dido cut her techno teeth. Despite her own manic solo schedule,
she's managed to contribute vocals to their new Outrospective
LP. "But if there's on thing my mum doesn't need it's another
Faithless album," smiles Dido, "although she totally loves the
music. She completely loves Eminem, too," she adds as we
approach the rap section. "But then she would, wouldn't
she?"
Were we in America right
now, Dido would have been comprehensively mobbed. This is because
Dido is a bona fide superstar there. She'll gladly admit that this -
along with the downfall of Western civilisation - is Eminem's fault.
Chances are Dido may have been relatively popular in the US as her song Here
With Me was chosen as the theme tune to top teen soap Roswell High.
But it was Eminem using Thank You that made Dido massive.
In Britain, however, she
can still go about her daily business unbothered. And that's the way
she prefers it. "Selling shitloads of records but not getting
hassled in a record shop seems just about perfect to me," she says.
But hold on, Dido is
about to be recognised. The undervalued genius behind the HMV
counter studies her credit card, dramatically double takes then loudly
declares, "You're Dido!" Before she can confirm or deny
this potentially rash assertion he has got all High Fidelity on her
ass. "Wicked," he sniffs. "Yeah. Love
your brother's stuff."
"What about my
fucking stuff," mutters Dido good-naturedly as she crosses the street
to buy a birthday card. The recognition factor is low in the Hall of
Cards and a swift Gary Larson purchase is made (two apes in a ballroom
dancing clinch: caption - "I said I wanted a mango")
without further ego shrinkage.
Marks & Spencer
proves to be another safe house. Dido has decided that this would be
a fine day for a picnic in Hyde Park and is calmly gathering salady
supplies and fruit-based drinks in the Food Hall of the Hammersmith
branch. Salmon sandwiches, baby tomatoes and pre-cubed melon head a
cast of summer classics for which she insists on paying. Amusingly,
she also gets £50 cashback because "I'm a bit short at the
moment." The check-out girl, who could so easily star in one of
Dido's love-lorn vignettes, doesn't bat a blue-hued eyelid.
En route to the park, and
perhaps this is a tactic deployed to deflect from her "jazz"
driving, Dido describes her upstairs neighbour's recent wedding. The
bride was near-virginal and beautiful, the service suitably moving and the
food predictably dull. Nothing remarkable there. Nothing,
until Dido reveals that the groom "has got to be 75 years old."
Of course,
"normal" is relative, as any child endowed with the name Dido
Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong - and there aren't many - will
testify. Dido, named after the tragic Queen of Carthage in Virgil's Aeneid,
spent an unusual childhood growing up in the bohemian Barnsbury quarter of
progressive '70s Islington.
For reasons that still
aren't entirely clear, her publisher father and poet mother allowed no
visitors and no television, so Dido turned to music. By the age of
nine, the precocious talent was touring Yugoslavia with a recorder
orchestra. By her mid-teens she was studying at the Guildhall of
Music playing piano and violin and singing with the choir at Westminster
Abbey. She left home at 15 and spent her days working at a literary
agency, her evenings studying law and her nights at the Mud Club and The
Wag listening to bowel-bursting, head-swivelling hip hop.
She also found the time
to pester brother Rollo for a part-time singing job with Faithless.
When he finally relented, jaws hit the floor. The little sister had
a great voice and her place in the Faithless family was assured.
Resting on her elbow in
the shade of a young oak, Dido chats in the concentrated, clipped bursts
of a particularly busy bus conductress. It is interesting to report
that her nasal, classless voice bears precious little relation to the
milk-seeping-through-white-silk thing she sings with.
Nibbling a stuffed vine
leaf, she tries to dissuade a small army of ants from invading her fruit
salad while attempting to explain how a former waitress from North London
came to take the music business from behind...
Is selling eight
million records a blessing or a curse?
A blessing. A curse
is when you get to that Alanis point where you've sold 28 million. I
was thinking the other day, Am I scared of selling more albums? And
I'm not. It was Alanis's choice to sell all those records and then
go and make a follow up that was completely out there. I'm not
saying that's shit but it's a strange thing to do. I would never do
an 18-track-with-two-good-tracks album next. Maybe by the sixth
album I'd have lost the plot but not yet. I write songs that I'd
want to hear.
What do you make of
the theory that No Angel is just some bird moaning about her bloke?
Well, I can dismiss that
theory easily because I wrote all the really sweet songs and Rollo wrote
all the "just some bird moaning" ones. He's the Bridget
Jones of the family.
Can you see how your
album appeals to the Bridget Jones post-millennium woman?
I'm not sure.
Maybe. I quite enjoyed the film in a sort of "I've forgotten it
already" way. I liked Colin Firth but I was completely taken in
by all the things I was meant to be taken in by. I hated the book
though. It irritated me after a while - nine stone three, 12 units
of alcohol, all that - but I was curious to see the film just because it
had done so well. It wasn't a patch on Four Weddings And A
Funeral in terms of leaving the cinema with that feel-good feeling.
Why have people
connected so strongly with the sentiments on the album?
I haven't the foggiest
idea. I mean, I like it but what does that mean? I know that
people have read a lot of their own meaning into it but that's just the
way I write. I'm not Nietzsche, do you know what I mean? But
you can interpret the words to mean a lot of different things so maybe
that's why it has this broad appeal. God, when I was doing it I
didn't think anyone apart from my friends would hear it. I didn't
even have a record deal.
Could the album's
success have anything to do with the fact that virtually all of the songs
mention lying down?
I know. Funny,
isn't it? I'm in bed in six songs. But when I was writing that
album I was living in one room so I was in bed with my keyboard most of
the time. I've taken out all references to me being in bed on the
next record.
Is it easy to assume
the role of the wounded lover?
Oh yeah, especially
live. It's really good fun doing something like Don't Think Of Me
because it's so...gay. Really bitchy. You can ham it up
totally and make it all, "I'm so great and you fucked up."
Do men fancy you?
I get that vibe onstage
sometimes but they never get near enough to tell me. A fan in
Springfield, Missouri came up to me when I was signing autographs and
said, Me and my friends are in a pizza place round the corner, if you want
to come after the show. Gave me the address and everything. I
almost felt like going but he was only 17. But good on him, you have
to admire that kind of spunk.
Are you a looker?
I make the best of what
I've got, put it that way. I'm not Madonna. She's beautiful -
stunning and womanly. But I'm happy and very confident with myself
and I look in the mirror and think, Yeah, cool. Although I've worked
at it.
Have you secretly
harboured a desire to be famous?
I've harboured a desire
to be successful for a long time but I'm still not fussed about people
knowing my face. Everything about fame is pretty shitty,
actually. The only good bit is getting early appointments and having
places open especially for you. Other than that what else has fame
got to offer? People pestering you and your family and knowing about
your life. I can't see anything good about fame whereas I can see
loads of good things about being successful.
Now you've achieved
success have you noticed people reacting to you differently?
Not my close mates
because they've lived through every minute of this with me so there's been
no sudden change. The thing I've noticed with people I don't know so
well is that they get a bit jumpy around you. I always think, Stop
because you're making me jumpy now. People always fuck up when
they're scared. They're so eager to get it right, they get it
wrong. I'm always like, Just chill out.
Were you an E queen
during the Faithless years?
No, smoking was their
thing. No one had much interest in Class A drugs.
Did you never
experiment with E?
I did and I hated
it. It really didn't agree with me. I couldn't bear the loss
of control. Also, I think a lot of dance music suffered because of
drugs. I'd go out and think, "This music is terrible, how could
people possibly be enjoying it?" Then you'd be like, "Oh,
I see..." The music got so hard and so fast it was just a
reaction to the drugs. It put me off clubs really. I'm pretty
anti-drugs now. I've written this song for my next album called Don't
Leave Home which sounds like a really obsessive love song but it's all
about drug addiction. But it's the drug talking to the person
saying, "I'm your best friend, just stay in here with me", and
the chorus is just like this massive love song saying, "If you're
cold I'll keep you warm, if you're low I'll be your safety, just hold
on." It sounds like Mariah Carey but it is actually incredibly
evil. If people take that at face value then they'll see it as just
another soppy ballad but it's very creepy.
At Narcotics Anonymous
they suggest you write a farewell letter to the drug you are addicted
to. Is that where you got the idea?
No, really? I
didn't even know that. I've seen a lot of my friends destroyed by
addiction. Severely messed up. Depression, losing their jobs,
world falling apart. I was so glad I never went down that
road. If I'd really liked E, it could have been a disaster but
luckily I loathed it.
When were you last
uncontrollably drunk?
Not since I was
young. I drink occasionally now but I don't enjoy getting
drunk. It doesn't take me much now because I gave up for quite a
while and lost all my tolerance. One glass now and I really feel it.
Is there a particular
drink you can never bear to look at again?
Oh God, yeah, Jack
Daniel's. I drank a whole bottle one night and I was ill beyond
ill. If someone even shows me the label I want to throw up.
There goes the Jack
Daniel's sponsorship and co-promotion then.
Seriously. I can't
even talk about it. I was so fucking sick.
If we went to the
cashpoint now would your current account have a running total?
Probably, yeah, just
clocking up millions a day. I don't know exactly how much is in
there. As if I'd tell you. I think it's about 15 billion
pounds.
How posh are
you? Prince William posh or Victoria Beckham posh?
I'm not sure how posh
Victoria Beckham is but I'm certainly not as posh as Prince William.
I come from a fairly middle class, bit bohemian background. I've
always seen myself as a normal North London girl.
Have you ever altered
your accent to fit in?
We never really had posh
friends so not really. I've always thought me and Rollo had North
London accents - that generic way of speaking. I changed my accent
to Australian once when I was a waitress and got bored. One customer
asked me if I was from Tasmania so it mustn't have been very good.
You played recorder in
a recorder orchestra as a child, could you give us a recorder rendition of
Bohemian Rhapsody now?
Maybe. But I only
play it if I'm drunk and I want to impress my mates. It's like, Look
what else I can do! I'm not so good now but I used to be able to
play anything on the recorder. I mean, anything. It was very
strange, I was absolutely devoted to the recorder. Someone sent me
one the other day and I was playing it in the car and realised how shit
I'd become at it.
What does Eminem smell
like?
[Laughs]
Very clean. He's a lovely, clean boy.
Do you think he's gay?
[Laughs loudly]
No! That's fantastic! He's just not gay. He's absolutely
not gay. That's truly ridiculous. [Thinks for a moment]
Well, maybe he is gay...but I can't see it. He's fully heterosexual.
You say that with a
little too much conviction, madam.
We had a sweet thing
going on but it wasn't like that. We got on very well from the
moment we met. It was like a brother and sister feeling from the
moment we met. I think he should do a sort of modern musical, a rap
version of My Fair Lady. He could call it My Fair
Motherfucka.
Did you think he was
black when you first heard him?
No, but I think I'd seen
a picture of him. I remember when I first heard him I immediately
rang Rollo and started going, You've got to hear this guy Eminem, he's
just amazing! Rollo's like, Who's M&Ms? It came at a time
when the radio had got so bland and rap had become so smug and
unpleasantly violent.
When you were with
Eminem did you ever see him writing?
I saw him free-styling a
lot which is just amazing. What shocked me about him is just how
seriously he takes it and how devoted he is. He is mortified if he
fucks a line up. When we did Saturday Night Live he got one
word wrong and he was completely gutted and I thought, Wow, this is his
mission. He's not just having a laugh and travelling around with
chainsaws. His editing and sense of economy is fucking
brilliant. If you think about something like Stan, he's got
someone's whole life into that in six minutes.
Did you introduce him
to your mum and dad?
No, but it would have
been priceless because my Mum's such a massive fan. "Halloooo,
Eminem!" Imagine it. But he met all my mates and he was
so sweet to them all.
Howard Stern is a big
fan of yours and was instrumental in breaking you in the States.
What is he like in person?
Strangely enough, he's
really shy. He's brought his daughters to meet me and was incredibly
kind and gentle. Even on his radio show I thought he was going to
suddenly turn around and savage me but he was worryingly pleasant.
Before I went on they had this woman vomit on a man who got turned on by
women vomiting on him. So he'd had this bloke doing his thing while
she threw up on him and then it was me. And Howard was just
unbelievably nice.
Your mum's a poet, can
you recite any of her work?
I can but I'm not going
to. How badly would I get told off? Very.
As a schoolgirl did
you fancy Sting?
Oh yeah, he was
absolutely gorgeous when he was in The Police. Not so much
now. I appreciate that he's good looking now and anyway he's married
to Trudie and I go off people when they get married. And that
tantric sex thing puts me off a bit. I'd be like, Hello? Ever
heard of sleep? I'd love to have a life where I could just have sex
for seven hours a day and wouldn't start getting stressed about doing the
washing up but I'm just not made like that.
How do you feel about
becoming 30?
I always said that I'd
have to make my first million before I was 30. So...done that.
Actually I haven't made it yet but I reckon I'll get my hands on it before
my birthday.
Your birthday is on
Christmas Day: what else do you have in common with Jesus?
Nice hair.
What question would
you ask God?
Why he invented religion
when it leads to so many wars.
How many styles of
dancing do you have at your disposal?
I have a very distinctive
style of dancing. It's awful. I can't dance unless I'm at a
club and then I'm just all over the place. I have absolutely no
rhythm which is funny because my music is very precise rhythmically, but I
cannot dance. I've actually been thinking about having lessons so I
can just dance in time. I'd love to be a cool dancer. What I'd
love to do is to be dancing really badly and then just for two minutes get
down and break dance brilliantly and then go back to dancing like an idiot
again.
What song is in your
head at the moment?
Oh fucking hell, it's
that dreadful S Club 7 one. "Dont stop..."
Even [sic] seen a
ghost?
I'm not sure but my mum
used to always say, if you see one by nice to them. But then she
said the same thing about burglars - make them a cup of tea and keep them
there until I get home - so I'm not sure she was giving expert advice
there.
The press have made a
big deal out of your growing up without a television in the house.
I know. It was only
a TV. I still don't watch it that much now. It didn't change
my life at all - when my friends started talking about TV I'd keep quiet
and listen. And I used to cycle around to my friend's house and
watch Dallas every Wednesday so I kept up with the important
stuff. I don't know why my Mum didn't want a TV in the house because
she was fine if we watched TV at our mate's places.
Which books rocked
your childhood world?
All the Evelyn Waugh
books. The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe. The Hobbit.
Some fantastic books.
What have been the
most imaginative variations on your name?
They've never been that
imaginative: Fido, Dildo. All the obvious ones.
If you weren't engaged
- Robbie Williams: would you?
He's really cute and that
but he's too famous for my liking. I don't think I'd shag someone
famous. He's very good looking though and he totally appeals to me
but he's a celebrity. Perhaps I'd have shagged him in the earlier
days before he was famous, although he was probably at school then.
Have you lied at any
point during this interview?
No, I've been remarkably
honest. Almost regrettably so.
"I've had a yoga
accident," Dido moans the following lunchtime. "I can't
move my neck at all and I'm in agony. I've taken a lot of
painkillers so I keep giggling in all the wrong places."
Between misplaced giggles
and chiropractic groans, she happily relates that her mum's birthday
dinner went extremely well: the Everything But The Girl album was a major
success although she already had The Beatles one.
It may be the drugs, but
at one point she wonders aloud if she should be seeing lists of amateur
porn sites every time she hits the "history" button on her
computer. "It's Bob, isn't it?" she asks, thereby
incriminating her legally-qualified fiancé. "I say to him, Bob
why do you want to look at that shit? But he insists it's his mates
who look at them when they come round. Yeah, right."
While fully sharing her
pain, I naturally take advantage of the appalling situation and ask
English Swearing Girl, amongst other things, what she regards as the
greatest profanity of them all?
"I think it's got to
be the 'c' one, hasn't it?" she says, shocked at her own inability to
say the word. "I don't object to people using it but if someone
called me that I have to assume they really hate me. I remember
being really angry with Rollo when I was about eight, and there was no
point in trying to fight him because he could beat me up easily, but my
only way of expressing my anger was to stand at the end of his bed
swearing. So I'd be going, Fuck, shit, bugger...then one day I
shouted CUNT! He just killed himself laughing but I was like, Oh my
God, I've said it now."
"And she's been
calling me a cunt every day since then," chuckles brother Rollo when
reminded of the incident later that afternoon. "Actually that's
not true: for a brother and sister we get on sickeningly well."
As older sibling,
producer and songwriting partner, Rollo has a unique take on Dido.
Holed up in a North London recording studio, he is preparing the
groundwork and laying the songwriting foundations for the follow-up to No
Angel.
"The writing is
actually more organic than Dido makes out," he says, comfortably
surrounded by the baffling paraphernalia of modern music making.
"She likes to say that I write all the nasty lyrics and she writes
all the sweet ones but there's actually a lot more cross-over than
that. We edit and change each other's words throughout the
writing. Like there's a line in Honestly OK - 'I'm so lonely
I don't even want to be with myself anymore' - that you would assume I
wrote if you follow my sister's logic, but that was actually one of
hers."
"I did write all the
really sweet songs," Dido says in direct contradiction.
"It was Rollo that wrote the lyrics to Hunter, Don't Think Of Me,
My Life, the nasty end bit of All You Want - I'd written the
first nice part. He'd just split up with his girlfriend so he had
all that bile in him that he wanted to get out. It was him. It
wasn't me, sir."
"The beauty of the
lyrics is that they're real," Rollo concludes diplomatically.
"And if there are any clichés then at least they're heartfelt.
That's what people identify with. They're real feelings."
Where do the siblings
stand on the issue of No Angel being a chick's album?
"Rollo always passes
it off as a chick's album," laughs Dido. "But when I do
shows there's actually more guys there than women which I find strange in
an encouraging way. I think men like the sound, the production, so
it's not like going to one of those female singer-songwriter concerts
where the audience is 90 per cent women. I think the lyrics that
Rollo wrote have struck a chord with a lot of guys. I don't think
guys are as shallow as marketing men assume they are. Men split up
with people too."
"It's categorically
not a chick's album," Rollo concurs in something of a volte-face.
"In fact, the majority of my friends who like the album are
men. I can't think why my sister would say that I think that."
There is an industry
story, possibly apocryphal, that casts Dido is a less than flattering
light. After being presented with her British sales figures and
confidently informed that, percentage-wise, they promised to outstrip the
album's astonishing American performance, instead of smugly reclining on
her quadruple platinum laurels, Dido promptly got on the phone to her US
record company and told them, in typically unperfumed style, to get their
act together. Which begs the question: can Dido be a bitch?
"Not necessarily a
bitch," she responds coolly. "But I say what I
think. I remember the first time I sacked someone it was pretty
horrible but I'd prefer to sack them myself than have a manger do
it. If someone isn't doing a good enough job I don't want them
around. It's a business not a charity organisation."
Asked if Dido can be
diva-ish, Rollo manfully leaps to her defence. "Only in that
she is so busy that she has to be able to make decisions quickly," he
says. "I think she's dealing with her success with a great deal
of dignity. Selling that many albums can give you the right to start
behaving like a real diva, but thankfully Dido hasn't gone down the
arsehole route."
"I shouldn't tell
you this," Dido blurts blushingly. "But I get them to
measure the length of the pool in every single hotel I'm arriving
in. I have to be able to relax so I get the measurements sent before
I get there. I've even got Rollo doing it now because we're going on
holiday together. He's like, OK OK, I'll get the pool
measurements!"
Loyally, Rollo attempts
to justify Dido's Lopez-like demands.
"If Dido can't
unwind then there's no point in her going on holiday," he
reasons. "So if the pool is so small she can't swim properly in
it then we'll try and find a place with a bigger pool. If they've
only got a kiddies' pool then she's going to get pissed off and that is
just counter-productive for everyone concerned."
Rollo talks about Dido
with a touching flush of big brotherly affection and the confident glow of
a professional partnership on a roll. The second album, he says, is
right on course. There may be subtle changes to the sound but the
fundamental principals of strong songs and resonant sentiments will
remain.
"Dido's always had
great taste," he enthuses. "Especially in producers.
As far back as I can remember she was a very cool and self-possessed
person. She was the one digging out my Clash albums when she was a
kid. She was the one that got straight onto the Eminem album the
second it came out. She'll be the first one to say, Can we make it
sound a bit like that old Gregory Isaacs tune? Or, Can we try and
get that sound U2 got on their album?"
Before returning to his
curious universe of knobs and wires, Rollo reflects on his little sister's
success and can't resist a moment of unbridled pride.
"This level of
achievement really becomes her," he grins. "In a funny
way, Dido was born to do this."
"Fuck off,"
laughs Dido.
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