Savages singer Jehnny Beth on how her solo album was inspired by David Bowie’s death

IT was the night that David Bowie died in January 2016 that Jehnny Beth decided to make a solo album.

It was the loss of the iconic singer that inspired the Savages singer to go ahead with the idea she had thought about but hadn’t felt confident enough to go with.

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Speaking from her parents’ home in France on a Zoom chat, she says: “That night was a moment for any music lover.

“Suddenly being faced with a massive music icon and hero like Bowie gone but he’s left his legacy of all his work.

“I realised it was one of those moments where you have to face up to mortality.

“Life is short and maybe I need to be brave and not afraid of doing something that scares me.”

So four years since Savages’ Mercury Prize-nominated album Adore Life comes To Love Is To Live. It’s a record that as soon as Jehnny Beth’s mind was made up, there was no turning back.

“It’s definitely NOT a Savages record,” she laughs. “Let’s get that straight. “But I didn’t know what type of record I was going to make. I liked the feeling of having a clean slate again.

“I like to start new things and be unsure of what it is going to be. I was in a space where everything was possible and I felt the fear again.”

To Love Is To Live is her debut solo record but she’s not a fan of that label.

Jehnny Beth says: “I don’t like the phrase ‘solo record’. It’s a collaborative effort.”

The record, which she made with partner Johnny Hostile, features Idles’ singer Joe Talbot, actor Cillian Murphy, Nine Inch Nails’ Atticus Ross and The xx’s Romy Madley-Croft who co-writes three tracks (We Will Sin Together, French Countryside and Heroine) and provides guest vocals too.

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“Romy was a great part of making the record,” explains Jehnny Beth. “Very early on after we became friends she said there were things about my personality that were not present or could be expressed in Savages.

“She said that if I made a personal record it would be great to be able to see that side of me.”

It was the song Innocence — a song about isolation, distance and being alone — that started the album.

“I needed to start where things didn’t feel right and work my way out of that,” Jehnny Beth explains. “The journey is going to be a way out of that.

“The core of the record is the pain. For me, it was a lack of sensibility, the lack of a connection with the rest of the human race. I’d moved to Paris and I felt disconnected and isolated.”

Jehnny Beth is full of positivity when we speak. She has been isolating at the Parisian home she shares with Hostile.
Lockdown there was lifted a few days ago and she has been able to get a train down to her parents’ home in Poitiers where her dad is recovering from an illness.

She says: “My father is doing well. He’s getting better so I wanted to see him.

“Lockdown has been hard but I’m appreciating people adapting to this new reality.

“All my touring and all festivals like Glastonbury, All Points East and Primavera have been moved to 2021. So I’m going to be on the road for a long time with this record and it’s exciting.”

Jehnny Beth wanted to make her record diverse.

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She says: “I wanted to create a record that had a narrative and contrasted — every song was different and would be a surprise. My biggest fear was to be boring.”

Influenced by Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly, she says: “It was a major record that came out that was really diverse yet had a sense of unity, even though there were so many voices.

“I was connected to mainstream music as well, which hadn’t happened to me since I was age ten.

“I also wanted the mix of genres and freedom in the way the songs were structured. I worked with Atticus Ross on the opening track I Am and also the closing track Human, so it came full circle.

“Everything works together even though it’s been made by different people.”

Jehnny Beth became friends with Ross, who is an Oscar-winning songwriter and producer, after they met at a Savages show in LA.

When she started work on her solo music, she sent him a long email and they met up at a studio.

‘I knew Cillian liked my music’

“He was very inquisitive and listened. We shared ideas and he started work only when we were in each other’s heads.

“He wanted to be really in tune with what I wanted to achieve. So when we started, we nailed it because we had all this background.”

Getting Peaky Blinders actor Cillian Murphy involved with the track A Place Above came about after Jehnny Beth heard him play a Savages record on his BBC Radio 6 Music show.

She says: “I knew he liked my music so when I was thinking about working with different voices on the record I said someone needs to read the part on A Place Above, and Johnny suggested Cillian.

“I just wrote him an email and he said yes and we met in London a few months later.

“Then backstage at an Idles show I met Anthony Byrne, a director on Peaky Blinders. He was working on the new series and he chose I’m The Man to play on an episode and we got Cillian to star in the video for that song.”

As for Joe Talbot, who appears on the song How Could You, Jehnny Beth says the Idles singer has been a good friend during the making of the album.

“I don’t know anyone who has met Joe who doesn’t love him,” she says.

“He’s very generous. Every time I speak to him I feel better. He’s gone through so much but he’s not afraid to share what he’s learnt. I admire him a lot.”

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Similarly, Jehnny Beth was inspired working with Depeche Mode and U2 producer Flood. “If you work with him he gives you a gift. The journey you’ve gone on making the record with him makes you so strong. There is no doubt that this record is yours. I think that’s his best quality.”

There’s been a lot of reflecting making To Love Is To Live. Jehnny Beth says she learned a lot about herself on new single Heroine.

She says: “It is a very positive song and the one that caused me the most struggle to accept and sing about that.

“I was taking detours and it was about somebody else. Then Johnny said, ‘You’re the heroine. You need to embody that character.’

“I struggled accepting the positive character but then I’m just learning to take compliments.

“So when I sing this song live, it feels so good. It gives me that power and energy. It’s great.” It’s a been a busy time for Jehnny Beth.

As well as making her album she was presenting a radio show, Start Making Sense, on Apple’s Beats 1.

She also launched her new music TV show in September called Echoes, and next month sees the publication of a book of short stories and photos by her partner Hostile called C.A.L.M Crimes Against Love Memories.

‘You cannot kill mosh pits’

Jehnny Beth also appears in the offbeat comedy movie Kaamelott, which also features Sting.

“Kaamelott was a cult TV series in France so I was really up for it. It is my first time in a comedy film.

“Sting was really, really funny on set. I had a great time and the film is out in November.”

So what does she have planned next?

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