From the heart

Sarah Valentine's pure passion

by John O'Neill

Although Sarah Valentine (born Vickie Aspinall) has seen it all and done most of it during her 20-plus-year career as a performer, it becomes obvious when talking to her that not only is she blasé about past achievements but her career means nothing to her in terms of commercial success. It's also obvious that this is a woman with a deep love and respect for music; for the first 20 minutes of our conversation she gives an overview of the importance of Dusty Springfield in relation to the success of Motown. She also touches upon Mary Wells, Leslie Gore, Martha Reeves, and Dinah Washington before finally mentioning herself in any context.

"As a child, I'd shut my eyes and listen [to R&B] and be a changed person. I'd be coveting the next album I was saving my money for, and I'd see the album in my mind. I still get affected by it."

Although Valentine's early passion was soul and R&B, at 16 she began a phase that eventually took her across the spectrum of popular music. "I lived with an uncle [in England] who had music-industry friends. He arranged for me to meet Laura Nyro. She was very soulful and she didn't mince words. She really encouraged me more than anyone else at the time. We talked about `vision' and about music in terms of colors. She also introduced me to a lot of people and put me into performing -- not so much making money but having a chance to play music as a living. I started writing a body of work [that eventually resulted in] 400 songs."

At 19, Valentine cofounded the seminal English punk (or post-punk, depending on where you draw the line) group the Raincoats. Simultaneously revered and dismissed in music circles, the much neglected band finally received a bit of fame after Kurt Cobain repeatedly cited them as one of his influences. The band, broken up since 1984, reformed in 1994 to open for Nirvana, but Valentine didn't join in. "It was experimental, and we all really didn't get along," she says. "At the time it seemed right. I was very interested in nihilism, but punk was really distorted by the entertainment industry as it was disseminated. In England it was rooted in violence, and a few made lots of money making a fashion statement and encouraging hooligans to perpetuate violence. It drew no attention to poverty or other class issues. You can use art as a means of revolution but that movement became stuck. I became very disillusioned."

Her disillusionment didn't end there. During the mid-'80s she recorded for Rough Trade Records. "I had two records in the [UK] Top 50 chart, and I had twenty bucks in my pocket. I was living the lifestyle already though, so there was really no impetus for me to run around to record companies. I was never willing to do what they wanted. The whole point of my never being `successful' is that it's allowed me to drop out when I needed to." She continued to write and record (for Jem and Monkey Wrench Records) in spurts as well as write for other artists as diverse as Rita Coolidge, Roseanne Cash, and Stereolab and work with songwriters like Marshall Crenshaw and Chris Issacs.

After years of alternating between England and New York, Valentine finally settled on Cape Cod. "All I wanted to do was live in my house and be by myself. The record companies came down on me, saying I wasn't willing to work for them. Their idea of where they wanted me to go wasn't where I wanted to go. I had everything I wanted living on the ocean." Eventually, to escape her past, she changed her name and retired to write poetry and other non-fictional prose.

And though her career in music had brought on disappointment, debt and disillusionment, she couldn't permanently escape her one true love. "I missed the people," Valentine explains, "and I missed that moment when people come together for the same thing." Having come full-circle to embrace again the R&B/jazz tradition she started as a child, she no longer caters to popular music. "I want to explore sound. What I want is beauty and things that are beautiful. Art, poetry, music. As I grow older, this is the person I want to leave the world."

On her last visit to Worcester (she returns this Saturday to perform at the Green Rooster Coffeehouse), she blew the audience away with a set full of honest, soul-baring compositions. "It's important to present yourself as vulnerable as you can, so the audience will know that's who you are," she explains with conviction. "It's a repressed behavior. We see each other in exaggerated form or not at all. Me, I'll always be looking for love 'cause I can't get enough of it. Love will never be passé."