Good Grief Charlotte
... what’s a nice indie rock pin-up doing playing private parties for millionaires in Russia? Self-confessed pop-tart Charlotte Hatherley talks about strutting her musical stuff for Moscow oligarchs, jetting around Central Asia with Bryan Ferry and thunking a bass with rock pixie Bat For Lashes.
Stuart Clark, 09 Dec 2009
“I’ve turned into a complete tart!”
No, Charlotte Hatherley isn’t confessing to a sharp decline in her moral standards, but reflecting on how over the past couple of years she’s become a highly sought-after – and generously reimbursed – guitar-for-hire.
“The bottom line is that without taking those jobs I couldn’t have afforded to make New Dreams or gig in support of it,” Hatherley says referring to her ace new album, which Ed Power afforded a generous four out of five in the last issue of Hot Press. “I suppose the strangest one was getting a phone call in the middle of the night asking if I’d be interested in going to Kazakhstan and Marrakech with Bryan Ferry who – surprise, surprise – wanted a band of girls like in the Robert Palmer ‘Addicted To Love’ video. Having answered ‘yes’ and passed the audition, I went off and did a year’s worth of corporate-y shows in exotic places like Sardinia and Mexico. There were lots of private jets and 5-star hotels, which was a complete contrast to my own career as a struggling indie musician!”
Was there one particularly ridiculous moment when Charlotte thought, “How the fucking Bejaysus did this happen?”
“Yeah, the time we played at a millionaire’s birthday party in Moscow,” she recalls. “It was a total money-no-object affair in a converted loft, which looked more like an art gallery than somebody’s home. I don’t know who or what this guy was, but by the end of the night everyone had fucked off leaving just one friend and Bryan Ferry to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him while he blew the candles out on his cake. It was totally bizarre.”
As well as receiving a decidedly non-struggling indie musician pay cheque, Hatherley also got to fulfill a lifelong ambition by playing the likes of ‘Virginia Plain’ and ‘Do The Strand’ with the man who authored them.
“I’m almost as obsessed with Roxy Music as I am with David Bowie, so getting to hang out with Bryan and play his songs was amazing. I’m still horrified that he saw me have a complete panic attack one day going through turbulence in this tiny, tiny plane which I was convinced was going to break up. I was sat there with my legs wide open, sweating, red-faced and unable to breathe. It looked like I was giving birth! He must have thought I was a complete mad woman.”
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