Vicki Gabereau

THE VICKI GABEREAU SHOW

MONDAY, DECEMBER 10 2001

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA

VICKI:...then she recorded Tuesday's Child, it included 3 top 40 hits, and now she's got the new one, Everybody's Got A Story, and it's looking really good too, so Amanda Marshall is here

VICKI: What was that face? You were grimacing

AMANDA: That was my 'hmm-she's talking about me' face

VICKI: Yes, but you're right here. Atleast you're not, you know, gone somewhere else and I'm talking about you

AMANDA: That's true. Atleast I'm not a hapless passenger on an airline somewhere

VICKI: But you will be later

AMANDA: Yes I was, I was yesterday. And now often

VICKI: Yeah, you mind it?

AMANDA: No, although it's been a little, I've only flown domestically since recent events, so, I'm getting ready to fly again, uh actually to New York in the coming week so I'm starting to get a little freaked out about it, I have to admit.

VICKI: Well you'll just have to--

AMANDA: Grit my teeth

VICKI: Or not. Relax I think is the only way to handle this

VICKI: So, you're thrilled with your new cd?

AMANDA: I am! I'm very thrilled

VICKI: Yes, it's quite different

AMANDA: It is. We meant it that way (laughs) That was on purpose

VICKI: Yeah, well that's good. Why did you want to make it so different on purpose? Was it just because you don't want to repeat yourself, or?

AMANDA: Yeah, I mean I think you get tired of doing the same thing all the time, and, admittedly this is only my third record, so it's not a huge long history, but I had toured and worked- it's funny cause last time I was on the show--

AMANDA: (laughs) you had said to me 'are you working too much?! I think you might be working too much!' and I remember saying-my mom actually had watched the interview and she's like, 'Wow. She's totally got you pegged'. Because I was like 'No, no, it's all good, and everythings fine' and it was, but what I didn't realize until I really took a substantial break between the end of the last record and the beginning of this one, what that time off did for me, and how I really got to decompress and slip back into being me, and kind of reconnect with me and my family and my friends and it really was very helpful, so I went in with a very clear idea of what I wanted to say and how I wanted it to sound like.

VICKI: Well the touring thing is the single most-uh, well it's a pleasure and a pain isn't it

AMANDA: Yeah, well I mean

VICKI: It can't be both if it's single most, you know what I mean

AMANDA: I'm someone who's lucky, I enjoy it. I'm not constantly wishing I was somewhere else. It's funny, cause on the last record, I spent a little bit of time working with Carole King, and she's, you know, a huge idol of any up and coming artists, epescially young female singer songwriters, and I didn't realize, the longest tour she's ever been on was like 3 and a half weeks. And I was like, are you kidding me? I've been on the road for like five years! And she just said 'I just hated it. I hated it! I hated everything about it. There was nothing about it I liked.' and I totally didn't relate to that um-

VICKI: Cause you don't mind it

AMANDA: I don't mind it!

VICKI: You don't mind it once you get there

AMANDA: I don't even mind the going! I sleep great on the bus, um flying I'm okay with, you know, I don't sleep great on planes, but I like it. I like this! and the going there and the getting dressed up, and the "hi". I don't mind that. I don't mind that.

VICKI: What do you like about this?!

AMANDA: Well its fun! I mean how many people get to do this? I mean how many people get to spend a substantial amount of time--

VICKI: Talking about themselves

AMANDA: Yeah, well, that's a little freaky. But how many people really get a chance to you know, follow their dream? And do what they really love. I mean I'm lucky 'cause I always knew that this is what I wanted to do, so I'm blessed!

VICKI: Okay, so what happens then, cause you have a lot of people that are friends in the business, there's one day where it's a million laughs and we love going out on the road and it's a scream to play, and then all of the sudden, something happens

AMANDA: I think you just get tired. I mean, you get really- and tired, I've worked briefly at like a regular job--

VICKI: What was that?

AMANDA: I was a telephone operator. (vicki laughs) " Just a moment, I'll connect you. Good afternoon how may I help you? One moment I'll connect you" And I mean, it was cool, but I was like, 16 or 17, I was still in school. But I imagine that being tired you know working in a bank or retail, a store, I think it's a different kind of tired almost, then being tired when you're on the road. 'Cause being tired in your own bed is different than being tired in Frankfurt. And it's different when you're, you know that you have to kind of get up the next day and be on and get through it, because in my position it's not only that, it's your leading a whole troop of people around the world. You know? And they're counting on you to be there, cause that's why we're all here! Let's not forget! So, it's a different kind of tired.

AMANDA: Yeah (both laugh)

VICKI: The name of this album, and the title track is Everybody's Got A Story, um is about the idea of celebrity.

VICKI: And you is one

AMANDA: Well I is, but I is in a- yeah, I is I guess, she said reluctantly. (laughs) Billy Mann and Peter Asher co-produced the record

VICKI: Now Peter Asher as in Peter Asher Peter Asher?

AMANDA: Peter Asher as in my mom came into the studio and was like: (both say in unison) "Peter Asher!" (laughing) Oh My God! Yeah, Peter and Gordon and Linda Rondstaat and James Taylor, and he's the coolest guy. He has more energy than anyone I've ever met in my life, doesn't sleep and is so like into it, which really freed Billy and I up to just be idiots. To just be kids and like turn knobs "hey what does this do- cool!" you know?

VICKI: Was this is in the studio?

AMANDA: Yeah, we wrote and conceived the whole thing in the studio. It was cool, cause we had never met. I knew Peter, and Peter introduced me to Billy, and so the first day we were hanging out, we didn't set out to make a record, we set out to collaborate, so we were getting to know each other. And we were talking about the Grammy's, and we were dishing, the Grammy's of the previous March, and--

VICKI: Saying they were no good

AMANDA: Well no, just talking, different people that we knew in the industry, you know "oh, did you see what she was wearing, and did you--hey oh"

VICKI: Shallow shallow shallow (laughing)

AMANDA: Oh come on like you've never done it

VICKI: No no no no! Yeah well wait'll you leave

AMANDA:(laughing) Yeah, exactly

AMANDA: So we were talking and we hit on one celebrity in particular and-

VICKI: (laughs) Oh, come on

AMANDA: It was a singer. She was a country singer. And we were chatting about- she had a particularly tragic story, and she had won a Grammy, and that's all the papers had really reported was, that she kind of looked, you know, tarty and that her dress was inappropriate and she seemed very ungrateful, but, in reality, the story that was the genesis of the record that won her the Grammy was this incredibly tragic and beautiful story. Um, and I said, very sort of off-handidly while we were talking about it, jeez you know, everybody's got a story that could break your heart, which is something I had said before, and he looked at me, and I looked at him, and we both went "oh! that's deeeep". And we both just sort of sat there for a minute and, the first song took shape, and I said, you know what, that's such a compelling idea, I wish that- and I love records that tell stories, records that are really conversational, and I said let's find a way to take that, and make that the conceptual thread that runs through the rest of the record, and lets make each song sort of a vignette, that kind of hangs under that umbrella, and we did!

VICKI: Okay, you stay, wait under that umbrella

VICKI: When we come back we're going to take a look at her video, Amanda Marshall

VICKI: So the new video, title track from Amanda Marshall's new album, Everybody's Got A Story, and...the prosthetic queen, huh?

AMANDA: I know! Well I wanted to do something I'd never done, cause all of the videos I had done up to this point were very story based,and, um Noble Jones who directed that, and I, sat down, and he had listened to the song, obviously, and we were chatting, and I said, I wanna, sort of show a different string of humanity in each frame, how do we do that? And how do we tell this without being, preachy, or you know, silly, and he was like, well what about if we do something really techno heavy, and like, we'll do a lot of stuff with green screen and we'll make you into all these different people and different races and I was like, 'cool, I'm in', but it was like 40 hours of body make up and prosthetics, and there's a shot of me as, as everybody. The black girl with the braids, they had to like spray, they braided my hair, and they sprayed each individual hair, my scalp, it was unbelievable. I had to shower inbetween each character.

VICKI: I would think so!

VICKI: Yeah, interesting to see yourself as another, as what you were not born.

AMANDA: Yeah. Really interesting. And interesting to watch- well not to watch other people react, but there was one point when I came out as the asian girl, they were waiting, and I was- we were running behind, and the crew was like "where is she?!! where is she?!!" And I was like, right there. You know. And they were like "Well where is she?! What's going on! And who are you??!!" I was like," I'm me, I'm here, hello." My prosthetic eyelids and the whole deal, it was amazing (laughing)

VICKI: How was it to see yourself as fully black.

AMANDA: It was really cool! It's funny because we made a concious decision to leave my eye colour the same, which was kind of- cause I'm wearing coloured contacts with some of the characters, the east indian girl I had dark hazel contacts, the asian girl I had brown contacts, and Noble and I were talking, and Noble's black, um, and about that shade, and we kind of used him as a gauge (vicki laughs). Cause he would come in and we'd be like "Yeah! It's almost there!" I said well maybe I should wear brown contacts and he was like, "Nah! I think it's hot!" It's very, you know, it's kind of Naomi Campbell, and I kind of dig it, it's a little off-center, that's why we made the asian girl punky, we wanted to do, we didn't want to do, really traditional characters. We wanted them to be people you would see on the street. Um, but, yeah! The black girl was cool, cause my mom was like, "Wow! That's really.." She was a little weird about it at first-

VICKI: Your parents are from Trinidad

AMANDA: My mom is, yeah. So she was like, wow, she wasn't sure what it was going to look like

VICKI: Did she say, oh, you look like my mother, or my grandmother

AMANDA: Yeah, she was like, you look a lot more like, you know, my side of the family, now. You look like your cousins, and

AMANDA: Yeah, it was cool

VICKI: I wondered about that

AMANDA: Yeah, it was cool

AMANDA: I loved it! I thought it was awesome!

VICKI: No kidding! I want to do that now!

AMANDA: (laughing) We'll hook you up after the show!

VICKI: Well it just must of taken lots of dough, and forever

AMANDA: Yeah, actually, we had a great prosthetic make up artist though, Louise, if you're watching, you were amazing. Um, and they've done a lot of movies and stuff. The weirdest thing was they had to cast my face for the prosthetics

VICKI: Like sort of the Napoleon mask?

AMANDA: Yeah, like you go in two days before, and they cast your face in plaster. And I walked in, and they had like this wall of, a collection of plaster masks of all these celebrities that they've done. And it's lit, so it's a like this wall of sleeping celebrity faces. So they have like Brad Pitt next to Julia Roberts next to George Clooney and I was like picking them out, it was very cool.

VICKI: In the reverse too? Like in the negative, the concave, with the little holes?

AMANDA: No, no these are actually filled in, there actually plastered. They gave me mine, I haven't even unpacked it yet, I haven't seen it.

VICKI: I want that reverse one with the holes (Amanda laughs). So what about the ubiquitous mandatory belly shots

VICKI: It's like, there's a lot of belly shots in this video, and why is it that all females seem to go to this Britney-esque thing of having to see their hip swiveling belly, I mean not that you're all not perfect, its true, but it always goes to that shot

AMANDA: I think it's the part of the body that girls probably feel safest exposing, you know, rather than your breasts or your bum

VICKI: Yeah, well uhh. You're talking to the wrong person here. (laughter) I'm being racy exposing my elbow

AMANDA: But it's cause I was like, I never used to wear tank tops in public, because, well, in private either, because I was really self-concious about my arms. And then I started working out a little bit more, and now I'm more comfortable with it, and the cover of the record was the same thing. To me, with me, it was just um that I just felt more comfortable and I thought that I looked good. I can't speak for Britney and Christina, I don't know what their deal is, but with me, it was yeah, I like it, looks cool

VICKI: Okay, we'll just get a look at that (laughs) And you, are uh, off to the next thing. And she also---what have you got on your eyebrows child, you've got gold (leans forward, Amanda scrunches her face up)

AMANDA: I don't know

VICKI: Very, very fancy

VICKI: You can't see it, no matter what you do, you can't look up (laughs). Thank you so much my dear

AMANDA: Thank you very much

VICKI: Lovely to see you, Amanda

VICKI: I'm sorry you couldn't perform for us today

AMANDA: Me too, next time, next time

VICKI: Yes. Her latest cd, Everybody's Got A Story, ain't that true


	THE VICKI GABEREAU SHOW MONDAY, DECEMBER 10 2001 VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA VICKI:...then she recorded Tuesday's Child, it included 3 top 40 hits, and now she's got the new one, Everybody's Got A Story, and it's looking really good too, so Amanda Marshall is here (applause) VICKI: What? AMANDA: Hello VICKI: What was that face? You were grimacing AMANDA: That was my 'hmm-she's talking about me' face VICKI: Yes, but you're right here. Atleast you're not, you know, gone somewhere else and I'm talking about you AMANDA: That's true. Atleast I'm not a hapless passenger on an airline somewhere VICKI: But you will be later AMANDA: Yes I was, I was yesterday. And now often VICKI: Yeah, you mind it? AMANDA: No, although it's been a little, I've only flown domestically since recent events, so, I'm getting ready to fly again, uh actually to New York in the coming week so I'm starting to get a little freaked out about it, I have to admit. VICKI: Well you'll just have to-- AMANDA: Grit my teeth VICKI: Or not. Relax I think is the only way to handle this AMANDA: Yeah VICKI: So, you're thrilled with your new cd? AMANDA: I am! I'm very thrilled VICKI: Yes, it's quite different AMANDA: It is. We meant it that way (laughs) That was on purpose VICKI: Yeah, well that's good. Why did you want to make it so different on purpose? Was it just because you don't want to repeat yourself, or? AMANDA: Yeah, I mean I think you get tired of doing the same thing all the time, and, admittedly this is only my third record, so it's not a huge long history, but I had toured and worked- it's funny cause last time I was on the show-- VICKI: Uh oh AMANDA: (laughs) you had said to me 'are you working too much?! I think you might be working too much!' and I remember saying-my mom actually had watched the interview and she's like, 'Wow. She's totally got you pegged'. Because I was like 'No, no, it's all good, and everythings fine' and it was, but what I didn't realize until I really took a substantial break between the end of the last record and the beginning of this one, what that time off did for me, and how I really got to decompress and slip back into being me, and kind of reconnect with me and my family and my friends and it really was very helpful, so I went in with a very clear idea of what I wanted to say and how I wanted it to sound like. VICKI: Well the touring thing is the single most-uh, well it's a pleasure and a pain isn't it AMANDA: Yeah, well I mean VICKI: It can't be both if it's single most, you know what I mean AMANDA: I'm someone who's lucky, I enjoy it. I'm not constantly wishing I was somewhere else. It's funny, cause on the last record, I spent a little bit of time working with Carole King, and she's, you know, a huge idol of any up and coming artists, epescially young female singer songwriters, and I didn't realize, the longest tour she's ever been on was like 3 and a half weeks. And I was like, are you kidding me? I've been on the road for like five years! And she just said 'I just hated it. I hated it! I hated everything about it. There was nothing about it I liked.' and I totally didn't relate to that um- VICKI: Cause you don't mind it AMANDA: I don't mind it! VICKI: You don't mind it once you get there AMANDA: I don't even mind the going! I sleep great on the bus, um flying I'm okay with, you know, I don't sleep great on planes, but I like it. I like this! and the going there and the getting dressed up, and the "hi". I don't mind that. I don't mind that. VICKI: What do you like about this?! AMANDA: Well its fun! I mean how many people get to do this? I mean how many people get to spend a substantial amount of time-- VICKI: Talking about themselves AMANDA: Yeah, well, that's a little freaky. But how many people really get a chance to you know, follow their dream? And do what they really love. I mean I'm lucky 'cause I always knew that this is what I wanted to do, so I'm blessed! VICKI: Okay, so what happens then, cause you have a lot of people that are friends in the business, there's one day where it's a million laughs and we love going out on the road and it's a scream to play, and then all of the sudden, something happens AMANDA: I think you just get tired. I mean, you get really- and tired, I've worked briefly at like a regular job-- VICKI: What was that? AMANDA: I was a telephone operator. (vicki laughs) " Just a moment, I'll connect you. Good afternoon how may I help you? One moment I'll connect you" And I mean, it was cool, but I was like, 16 or 17, I was still in school. But I imagine that being tired you know working in a bank or retail, a store, I think it's a different kind of tired almost, then being tired when you're on the road. 'Cause being tired in your own bed is different than being tired in Frankfurt. And it's different when you're, you know that you have to kind of get up the next day and be on and get through it, because in my position it's not only that, it's your leading a whole troop of people around the world. You know? And they're counting on you to be there, cause that's why we're all here! Let's not forget! So, it's a different kind of tired. VICKI: Fine then AMANDA: Yeah (both laugh) VICKI: The name of this album, and the title track is Everybody's Got A Story, um is about the idea of celebrity. AMANDA: It is, yeah VICKI: And you is one AMANDA: Well I is, but I is in a- yeah, I is I guess, she said reluctantly. (laughs) Billy Mann and Peter Asher co-produced the record VICKI: Now Peter Asher as in Peter Asher Peter Asher? AMANDA: Peter Asher as in my mom came into the studio and was like: (both say in unison) "Peter Asher!" (laughing) Oh My God! Yeah, Peter and Gordon and Linda Rondstaat and James Taylor, and he's the coolest guy. He has more energy than anyone I've ever met in my life, doesn't sleep and is so like into it, which really freed Billy and I up to just be idiots. To just be kids and like turn knobs "hey what does this do- cool!" you know? VICKI: Was this is in the studio? AMANDA: Yeah, we wrote and conceived the whole thing in the studio. It was cool, cause we had never met. I knew Peter, and Peter introduced me to Billy, and so the first day we were hanging out, we didn't set out to make a record, we set out to collaborate, so we were getting to know each other. And we were talking about the Grammy's, and we were dishing, the Grammy's of the previous March, and-- VICKI: Saying they were no good AMANDA: Well no, just talking, different people that we knew in the industry, you know "oh, did you see what she was wearing, and did you--hey oh" VICKI: Shallow shallow shallow (laughing) AMANDA: Oh come on like you've never done it VICKI: No no no no! Yeah well wait'll you leave AMANDA:(laughing) Yeah, exactly VICKI: Yeah, and? AMANDA: So we were talking and we hit on one celebrity in particular and- VICKI: Who AMANDA: I won't say VICKI: (laughs) Oh, come on AMANDA: It was a singer. She was a country singer. And we were chatting about- she had a particularly tragic story, and she had won a Grammy, and that's all the papers had really reported was, that she kind of looked, you know, tarty and that her dress was inappropriate and she seemed very ungrateful, but, in reality, the story that was the genesis of the record that won her the Grammy was this incredibly tragic and beautiful story. Um, and I said, very sort of off-handidly while we were talking about it, jeez you know, everybody's got a story that could break your heart, which is something I had said before, and he looked at me, and I looked at him, and we both went "oh! that's deeeep". And we both just sort of sat there for a minute and, the first song took shape, and I said, you know what, that's such a compelling idea, I wish that- and I love records that tell stories, records that are really conversational, and I said let's find a way to take that, and make that the conceptual thread that runs through the rest of the record, and lets make each song sort of a vignette, that kind of hangs under that umbrella, and we did! VICKI: Okay, you stay, wait under that umbrella AMANDA: Okay VICKI: When we come back we're going to take a look at her video, Amanda Marshall AMANDA: oooo --commercials-- VICKI: So the new video, title track from Amanda Marshall's new album, Everybody's Got A Story, and...the prosthetic queen, huh? AMANDA: I know! Well I wanted to do something I'd never done, cause all of the videos I had done up to this point were very story based,and, um Noble Jones who directed that, and I, sat down, and he had listened to the song, obviously, and we were chatting, and I said, I wanna, sort of show a different string of humanity in each frame, how do we do that? And how do we tell this without being, preachy, or you know, silly, and he was like, well what about if we do something really techno heavy, and like, we'll do a lot of stuff with green screen and we'll make you into all these different people and different races and I was like, 'cool, I'm in', but it was like 40 hours of body make up and prosthetics, and there's a shot of me as, as everybody. The black girl with the braids, they had to like spray, they braided my hair, and they sprayed each individual hair, my scalp, it was unbelievable. I had to shower inbetween each character. VICKI: I would think so! AMANDA: Uhh VICKI: Yeah, interesting to see yourself as another, as what you were not born. AMANDA: Yeah. Really interesting. And interesting to watch- well not to watch other people react, but there was one point when I came out as the asian girl, they were waiting, and I was- we were running behind, and the crew was like "where is she?!! where is she?!!" And I was like, right there. You know. And they were like "Well where is she?! What's going on! And who are you??!!" I was like," I'm me, I'm here, hello." My prosthetic eyelids and the whole deal, it was amazing (laughing) VICKI: How was it to see yourself as fully black. AMANDA: It was really cool! It's funny because we made a concious decision to leave my eye colour the same, which was kind of- cause I'm wearing coloured contacts with some of the characters, the east indian girl I had dark hazel contacts, the asian girl I had brown contacts, and Noble and I were talking, and Noble's black, um, and about that shade, and we kind of used him as a gauge (vicki laughs). Cause he would come in and we'd be like "Yeah! It's almost there!" I said well maybe I should wear brown contacts and he was like, "Nah! I think it's hot!" It's very, you know, it's kind of Naomi Campbell, and I kind of dig it, it's a little off-center, that's why we made the asian girl punky, we wanted to do, we didn't want to do, really traditional characters. We wanted them to be people you would see on the street. Um, but, yeah! The black girl was cool, cause my mom was like, "Wow! That's really.." She was a little weird about it at first- VICKI: Your parents are from Trinidad AMANDA: My mom is, yeah. So she was like, wow, she wasn't sure what it was going to look like VICKI: Did she say, oh, you look like my mother, or my grandmother AMANDA: Yeah, she was like, you look a lot more like, you know, my side of the family, now. You look like your cousins, and VICKI: Uh huh AMANDA: Yeah, it was cool VICKI: I wondered about that AMANDA: Yeah, it was cool VICKI: Uh huh AMANDA: I loved it! I thought it was awesome! VICKI: No kidding! I want to do that now! AMANDA: (laughing) We'll hook you up after the show! VICKI: Well it just must of taken lots of dough, and forever AMANDA: Yeah, actually, we had a great prosthetic make up artist though, Louise, if you're watching, you were amazing. Um, and they've done a lot of movies and stuff. The weirdest thing was they had to cast my face for the prosthetics VICKI: Like sort of the Napoleon mask? AMANDA: Yeah, like you go in two days before, and they cast your face in plaster. And I walked in, and they had like this wall of, a collection of plaster masks of all these celebrities that they've done. And it's lit, so it's a like this wall of sleeping celebrity faces. So they have like Brad Pitt next to Julia Roberts next to George Clooney and I was like picking them out, it was very cool. VICKI: In the reverse too? Like in the negative, the concave, with the little holes? AMANDA: No, no these are actually filled in, there actually plastered. They gave me mine, I haven't even unpacked it yet, I haven't seen it. VICKI: I want that reverse one with the holes (Amanda laughs). So what about the ubiquitous mandatory belly shots AMANDA: Right VICKI: It's like, there's a lot of belly shots in this video, and why is it that all females seem to go to this Britney-esque thing of having to see their hip swiveling belly, I mean not that you're all not perfect, its true, but it always goes to that shot AMANDA: I think it's the part of the body that girls probably feel safest exposing, you know, rather than your breasts or your bum VICKI: Yeah, well uhh. You're talking to the wrong person here. (laughter) I'm being racy exposing my elbow AMANDA: But it's cause I was like, I never used to wear tank tops in public, because, well, in private either, because I was really self-concious about my arms. And then I started working out a little bit more, and now I'm more comfortable with it, and the cover of the record was the same thing. To me, with me, it was just um that I just felt more comfortable and I thought that I looked good. I can't speak for Britney and Christina, I don't know what their deal is, but with me, it was yeah, I like it, looks cool VICKI: Okay, we'll just get a look at that (laughs) And you, are uh, off to the next thing. And she also---what have you got on your eyebrows child, you've got gold (leans forward, Amanda scrunches her face up) AMANDA: I don't know VICKI: Very, very fancy AMANDA: Fancy face VICKI: You can't see it, no matter what you do, you can't look up (laughs). Thank you so much my dear AMANDA: Thank you very much VICKI: Lovely to see you, Amanda AMANDA: Thanks! VICKI: I'm sorry you couldn't perform for us today AMANDA: Me too, next time, next time VICKI: Yes. Her latest cd, Everybody's Got A Story, ain't that true