It’s all peace and serenity around Sheryl Crow’s 50-acre spread outside Nashville. Things have changed for the 52-year-old singer and songwriter over the past decade, to the point where she now has a far less hectic lifestyle and public profile.
Self-contained (part of the 50 acres is taken up with a sizable home, stables, offices, recording studio and a chapel) and self-possessed (she is the mother of two adopted boys, seven-year-old Wyatt and four-year-old Levi), Crow feels she has earned the right to live her life the way she wants to, not the way some people would prefer.
The singer moved to Nashville more than six years ago, eager to get away from the clatter of paparazzi and television cameras following not only the sundering of her three-year relationship with cyclist Lance Armstrong but also the news of her breast cancer.
The topic of Armstrong isn’t necessarily off the agenda, but there’s a weariness to her voice, as if answering questions about him and their relationship is something she is inevitably but unwillingly tethered to, and which drags her down. She answers with a sigh that she’d rather not engage with “that stuff”.
She has said elsewhere that she and Armstrong had “very big, fundamental differences . . . His story is, succinctly, his story.”
And that’s the end of that. Next question, if you don’t mind.
Simmering anger
Crow is polite and very approachable, but there’s a simmering anger. She changed habitat from Los Angeles to Nashville in order to remove herself from the conversation. “I no longer have the desire to add my voice to the noise that’s out there. Everybody has an opinion, which is fine, but the climate is vitriolic.”
It’s unnatural, isn’t it, Crow says of the incessant scrutiny that generates and drives entertainment news. “People are interested in your private life as much as they are in your work; in fact, more so, I reckon.
“I’m a private person. The few experiences I’ve had where my private life is up for public consumption have been very uncomfortable for me. Breast cancer and a very public relationship break-up? Suddenly, the focus was on my personal life, and that was just for a moment in the overall arc of my career. I can’t imagine what it would be like if such interest were a daily event.”
Is there a coping mechanism for intrusion such as that? Distance seems to be the key. “That’s true, but I also found that it created a real distrust in me, not for my community but, I suppose, the world at large. I really started to feel that, as far as a basic level of humanity goes, we were losing our sense of what is important and who we are.
“I got such a bad taste in my mouth that I knew I had to leave that environment. Nashville is closer to my home, anyway, and so that level of focus became the impetus for putting down roots far away from where that kind of scrutiny exists.”
Experiencing breast cancer, in particular, she says, was also something of a wake-up call. “Your health informs every aspect of your personal life, which in turn informs whatever levels of creativity you have. So the cancer experience was a game-changer for me, and it also rebooted the way I looked at my life. It redefined who I was, how I thought, how I wanted to live, what I wanted my life to be. I wouldn’t want to go through it again, but if I’m being honest it made a huge difference in my life, for the better.”
Crow rebooted
The process of rebooting – what did she want to subtract and what did she want to add? “I think I mastered the art of being a people pleaser,” she says. “I found that I rarely said no to anyone, and I always made sure that everyone’s needs were taken care of before my own. I would wind up doing a lot of things that I shouldn’t have been doing, but did because I thought I needed to. I knew I had to stop that.”
Crow is very much a people pleaser: in a solo career of almost 25 years, she has sold more than 35 million records.
She started out as a backing singer for the likes of Michael Jackson, but quickly discovered that songwriting royalties paid the bills.
Her rise in the ranks was swift, as she channelled a songwriting style that deftly crossed Rolling Stones riffs with country rock tunes. Grammy-winning success arrived quickly, as did the famous boyfriends (Eric Clapton, Owen Wilson, Armstrong), yet she refuses to view those giddy days through rose-tinted glasses. Here speaks the voice of experience.
“Somewhere along the way, you wind up having to compete with yourself and other people. You start to figure out how to write songs that are going to get played on the radio and you begin to measure yourself against the success of your previous album. I feel much further removed from that these days.”
She also experienced something that happens, she says, as you get older: “You feel less ambitious but more motivated.” And thank goodness, she continues, that she achieved such levels of success “when the notion of celebrity wasn’t as heightened or as focused on as it is now. When I first started I really wanted to be great, to write music that was important and respected, but somewhere along the way the celebrity thing became a factor, and if I had had to make a name for myself with that pressure, I doubt that I’d be doing what I’m doing.”
Channelling George Harrison
Crow's latest album, Feels Like Home, was written and recorded in Nashville, and reflects her more withdrawn lifestyle and quieter frame of mind. She was, however, viewed as quite the sassy rock'n'roller in the early part of her career. Is that gone or is it waiting in the wings?
“Oh, look,” she laughs, “I’m older, I have two kids, and so my energies are going into different areas. I’m just meditating and channelling George Harrison – he said that, in order to manifest peace without, you have to manifest peace within. That’s what I’m propagating at this point in my life. I’m trying to stay awake and conscious and to be an example of that.”
It’s taken her some time to get to this point. “I’ve been meditating for about 17 years, but it has ebbed and flowed and didn’t become something in the forefront until the past few years.”
She is a person, she reveals, that requires a degree of tranquillity, if not solitude. There is, therefore, an underlying sense that Sheryl Crow ruminates too much, too often, and analyses situations into the ground. She doesn’t necessarily disagree.
“My brain can go wild to the point where my head seems like it’s some other organism not attached to anything else. Having had cancer, and the subsequent shifts in my life, has definitely made my priorities change.”
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NOT TO BE MISSED: SLIGO LIVE HIGHLIGHTS
- BellX1 It's been a solid year for one of Ireland's most popular bands, and you can rest assured they will bang out the hits they're best known for as well as treating avid fans to choice album tracks. Friday, October 24th
- O'Hooley & Tidow Take two women from Yorkshire (Belinda O'Hooley and Heidi Tidow), throw in Irish backgrounds, a civil partnership and some truly gorgeous folk music, and you might just have the hidden gem of Sligo Live. Friday, October 24th
- Horslips There are some reconvened Irish bands you wouldn't cross the road to see, let alone the country. Horslips, however, isn't one of them. Dearg Doom, how are ya? Saturday, October 25th
- Simone Felice Formerly of Felice Brothers and Duke and the King. This Catskill Mountains singer and songwriter is a lean, rangy figure with a beautifully worn-down voice and a convincing knack for creating a tangible sense of intimacy. Sunday, October 26th
- The Barr Brothers From Boston via Montreal, this folk and roots band arrives in Ireland just after the release of their very fine second album, Sleeping Operator. Expect a sound much tougher on stage than on record, which should suit Sligo Live gig-goers very well indeed. Sunday, October 26th
