Joan Armatrading was the first British female singer-songwriter enjoy success in the US (Image: Joel Anderson)
Joan Armatrading’s new album, the catchily titled How Did This Happen And What Does It Now Mean, includes the powerful I’m Not Moving, which she wrote after seeing a young man behaving aggressively in public. Alongside the tender I Gave You My Keys, about moving on after a break-up, it’s one of several songs on the record she penned based on direct inspiration, or through friends’ stories.
Not that this is necessarily the norm, smiles the British singer-songwriter, who is famously guarded about her own private life. “I’m not going around forever thinking, ‘That’s a great line for a song,’” she explains. “You have to live your life still. I have had people tell me their story and say, ‘Please put that in a song!’ But I’ve never done that. My songwriting doesn’t work like that.”
In a stellar career lasting more than half a century, Armatrading’s musical output has been so varied and prolific that she’s won Grammys in both the Blues and Rock categories, as well as a lifetime achievement prize at Radio 2’s Folk Awards.
The first British female singer-songwriter to enjoy success in the States, where she took off in the 1970s, Armatrading has been awarded an MBE and CBE for her services to music, charity and equal rights.
Yet her pioneering start began as a simple act of teenage rebellion.
Joan Armatrading is made a CBE by the Princess Royal in October 2021 (Image: PA)
Born in St Kitts, Armatrading moved to Birmingham at age seven. The third of six children, her carpenter father Amos was a skilled amateur guitarist.
But, when Joan began writing songs aged 14, Amos refused to help teach her how to play guitar. Laughing as she recalls her troubled start in music, Armatrading says: “My father wouldn’t let me touch his guitar. He’d hide it from me – and that’s why I wanted to play guitar.
“I saw a guitar in a pawn shop and asked my mum about it. She swapped two of her prams for that guitar. I started to play then, and I still have that first guitar.”
Armatrading left school at 15 to help support her family, only to lose her job as a typist in a furniture factory because she kept practising her guitar during lunch breaks.
By then, Amos had reluctantly helped his daughter – with some limits. “Dad taught me how to tune my guitar,” Armatrading recalls. “Tuning is probably the most important aspect in playing guitar, but dad wouldn’t show me anything else: no chords, just tuning.”
Armatrading Sr’s style helped his daughter stand out, as she explains: “Dad tuned guitar in the weirdest way. It was so strange, I’ve never seen anyone else tune a guitar like it since. My parents saw me get success and they were proud of me, but they were proud of all their children.”
The fledgling star was just 21 when she released her debut album Whatever’s For Us in 1972, and her first Top 10 single Love And Affection followed in 1976. A year later, she got a huge break in the States – thanks to Monty Python.
Eric Idle, a member of the megastar comedy troupe, loved Joan’s music and recommended her to bosses at hit US TV show Saturday Night Live. Once Armatrading sang Love And Affection and Down To Zero on the show, Grammys soon followed.
“I haven’t met Eric since then,” admits Armatrading, before bursting out laughing.: “If he reads this: thank you, Eric!”
Over the phone from her home in Surrey, Armatrading is friendly and laughs a lot, but deflects any questions about her personal life.
The singer entered a civil relationship with her partner, artist Maggie Butler, in 2011. She has said she wants as many people as possible to hear her music, without having any preconceptions about who’s singing it.
It’s a steely approach, very much in keeping with how Armatrading approached being the first British female singer to write her own songs to have major success in the States. Asked if she felt like a pioneer, Armatrading chuckles again.
“No. I was just doing my stuff, being me. Maybe some people set out to be a pioneer, but I don’t know how you’d do that. I didn’t know how to be anything else. Nobody could persuade me to be anything other than who I am.”
Armatrading is equally forthright about receiving the CBE.
She was awarded the honour in 2020, the same year she became a trustee of The Prince’s Trust. “I had no hesitation in accepting it,” considers Armatrading. “Every country in the world has their equivalent honours. In Britain, the only part people get confused about is the word ‘Empire’. We all know the Empire doesn’t exist anymore.
“We have to find a different word for that ‘E’, which will happen. That word shouldn’t mean we say: ‘Don’t allow your country to honour you.’ That’s very unfair.”
Joan Armatrading performs on Saturday Night Live in 1977 (Image: NBCUniversal via Getty Images)
Having previously been awarded the MBE in 2001, Armatrading believes the honours system’s egalitarianism should be applauded, stating: “When you go to the ceremonies, they’re full of ordinary people, if I can call people that: nurses, caretakers, road sweepers. They’re not the recipients getting publicity.
“Why take getting an honour away from the ordinary guy? Getting a CBE was a privilege that I really appreciate.”
Throughout her 52-year career, Armatrading’s songs have excelled in telling stories of “the ordinary guy,” with vivid depictions of everyday struggles set to music that encompasses funk, pop and soul, as well as rock, blues and folk.
Yet she is charmingly self-effacing about her talent, insisting it comes so naturally to her that she’s hesitant to accept praise. She explained: “I can’t take any credit for what I do. What I’ve got is absolutely a gift. It’s my job to use it to the best of my ability, but I don’t know how I do it.”
Armatrading empathises with Paul McCartney, who she heard talk about his gift for melody.
She explains: “I have no idea how my songwriting works. Out of thin air, I can just do this…thing. I don’t even have to think about melody. I don’t get angst when I write songs, because I just know I can do it.
“There’s no wringing of hands or pacing up and down.”
Eric Idle helped give Joan her big break on Saturday Night Live (Image: Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
In 2001, Armatrading completed a five-year Open University degree in History.
As well as Art and Literature, her degree’s additional foundation course subjects included Music. But she chuckles: “I didn’t particularly connect with studying music.
“That’s only because I want to write in the way that I write. I don’t want to think about music in a restrictive way.”
Of course, a five-year degree is an unusual achievement for a successful singer, but Armatrading is typically modest as she recalls: “Back then, when I was on tour, TV would close down for the night.
“The Open University would be the only programme I’d be able to watch when I’d get back to my hotel.
“So I’d see it all the time, and it’d always end with the presenter saying: ‘Send off for a pack…’ One day, I thought: ‘I’m sending off for that pack.’ It was hard, because I’d have to post off essays from wherever I was touring around the world, earlier than other students because I’d be posting from Australia, Europe, the States to meet the deadlines.
“My tour manager had to lug all my study books around from city to city. He says he worked as hard as me. As tough as it was, I really enjoyed it.”
Having also run the New York Marathon when she was 57, there seems little in life the determined Armatrading can’t achieve. She writes, produces and plays every instrument herself on her new album – her 21st – which is typically adventurous and infectious.
Very few stars apart from Prince have been so multi-talented.
But Armatrading admits to one failing: “I wish I could play saxophone. I can play a tiny bit, but I can’t really say I can play saxophone to any degree at all.
“I keep thinking I’ll knuckle down and have a proper go at it one day. But the things I need to play, I can play well enough.”
Her new album, with its intriguing title, is concerned with global affairs. Armatrading is worried about how polarised society has become, pondering: “It’s a question on a lot of people’s minds. We’re at a weird place where nobody knows how to fix it.
“We lack proper communication, because nobody wants to say the wrong thing. It’s a mess. But I think it must get better.
“Otherwise, we’re talking about the end of the world, and I don’t think we’ve got that memo yet.”
After Armatrading’s previous album Consequences returned her to the Top 10 in 2021 after a 38-year gap, she’s delighted to be commercially successful again.
Did she ever fall out of love with music in the interim?
Armatrading can barely believe the question. “No! No, no, no, no.” Therein follows a pause – and her biggest laugh yet. “You can put that as a ‘no’.”
After 52 years, Joan Armatrading is still having the last laugh and still doing things her way.
Joan Armatrading’s new album How Did This Happen And What Does It Now Mean is out now via BMG