The actor, director and now singer on her essential aural companions: “When you’re lonely, music becomes your friend”
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BOB MARLEY
Exodus
ISLAND, 1977
My father, my real Dad, was into music in a big way. We had a huge wooden sideboard in the front room with a few records in, that we were not allowed to touch! I remember him playing Bob Marley over and over again, and this particular album was one of his favourites, so by default it was the soundtrack to playing out on the streets where I lived. Nottingham was a very multicultural place, so it was common to hear reggae on stereos. As a child, I didn’t really understand the lyrics, so I wouldn’t have realised that these were political songs – songs of freedom, if you like. But if anything, the lyrics are even more relevant today. And it’s just incredible music, so thanks Dad!
THE BEATLES
Abbey Road
APPLE, 1969
The next one, again, I have to thank my father for. He’d had the Beatles records since he was a kid and they were his everything. I just have these memories of being really little and peering over the record player and seeing the little apple cut in half in the middle of the vinyl. If Dad played a record it was an event, because we weren’t allowed to touch them. And we would sit in the same way as he would read books to us, Lord Of the Rings and The Hobbit. It was almost like, ‘This is your education, guys!’ I can’t go for too long without listening to The Beatles – it’s like oxygen, isn’t it? It’s in our DNA.
BOOGIE DOWN PRODUCTIONS
By All Means Necessary
JIVE, 1988
My brother was in the military. When he went away to the first Iraq war, he left behind a couple of tapes, one of which was By All Means Necessary. So I started listening to Boogie Down Productions and became an enormous hip-hop fan, especially of KRS-One’s lyrics. I suppose some of the hip-hop I’d heard on the radio felt quite misogynistic, but this blew my mind with the level of intelligence. I didn’t really go to school, which was quite sad. So music was an education – listening to people talk about their feelings and how they’re handling situations or just telling incredible stories through music. The message of American movies like Big or The Goonies was that everything’s rosy, but rappers were talking about their lives.
EMMYLOU HARRIS
Wrecking Ball
ELEKTRA, 1995
Growing up, my Mum – my real Mum – really loved country and western music. I used to have to get up and do Patsy Cline in the pub! There was an album by Emmylou Harris called Wrecking Ball that Daniel Lanois produced. I knew I recognised the sound, and it was only years later when I started really listening to U2 that I realised, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s the same person!’ The songs make me cry just thinking about them, they’re incredibly poignant. I think that album will stay with me for the rest of my life. It’s very important in my development as a musician, but also just as a creative. I would listen to it over and over again – it’s very healing.
RY COODER
Paris, Texas OST
WARNER BROS, 1985
I was about 19, and I’d been in this movie called Under The Skin. It had a really bad review that was so scathing of me as an actor and I thought, ‘Well, I’m obviously not going to work again – I’m fucked.’ I was not happy with how acting was going, so I decided to get rid of my agent and move to Bali. I only took a few CDs, and this was one of them. Weirdly, I hadn’t seen the film at that point, I just knew I liked Ry Cooder. I listened to it over and over again, and it’s so evocative of that time. Obviously I wasn’t in a desert, but I was travelling and I was alone and I was searching for something. So it was just perfect.
GLENN GOULD
Bach: The Goldberg Variations
COLUMBIA, 1956
I didn’t know very much about classical music growing up, so the first time I heard that piece of music was in Silence Of The Lambs. Then I saw a documentary about him [Glenn Gould] and that was my first introduction to seeking out classical music and who’s playing it and why. I don’t have words eloquent enough to describe how that music makes me feel. My understanding is that when classical music is recorded, it’s the music that’s important. Often, they don’t want to bring in the person. But his energy and his interpretation of that piece of music is incredible, it had never been played like that before. I feel like I’ve got a connection with the person, as opposed to listening to perfectly performed music.
SQUAREPUSHER
Ultravisitor
WARP, 2004
I’d moved back from New York to the UK and bought a house in North London. I didn’t have any London friends, I was really lonely. And when you’re lonely, music becomes your friend – it makes you feel safe or not alone. There’s a song called “Iambic 9 Poetry” which is epic in its scale, but yet it retains this level of personal intimacy. It seems so big and so wide and so beautiful, like looking at city skylines. It has that feeling of something’s gonna happen, like the future is coming and it’s really fucking good! It’s not exactly Ballard, but there’s certainly a connection between the architecture of a city and dance or electronic music.
COCTEAU TWINS
Garlands
4AD, 1982
I got out of London around 2007 or 8. I was trying to create this haven for my new baby, so we moved to this farm in the Peak District. It was a really special time living in this amazing Bronte-esque landscape, quite isolated but feeling really powerful. I’d heard the Cocteau Twins a lot growing up but hadn’t really had their records. So I bought the CD and I totally immersed myself, walking on the moors for hours with my baby, being taken to these other worlds. The music and the landscape seemed to fit so perfectly. Her [Elizabeth Fraser’s] voice is very spiritual to me. It’s almost as if you’re listening to choral music in a church, it’s on that level.
Sam Morton’s debut album Daffodils & Dirt is out on June 14 via XL Recordings