PJ Harvey
Polly Jean Harvey
9 October 1969
Bridport, Dorset, England
- Singer
- musician
- songwriter
- Vocals
- guitar
- saxophone
- keyboards
- autoharp
1988–present
- Automatic Dlamini
- The PJ Harvey band
Harvey began her career in 1988 when she joined local band Automatic Dlamini as a vocalist, guitarist and saxophonist. The band's frontman, John Parish, became her long-term collaborator.[2] In 1991, she formed an eponymous trio called PJ Harvey and subsequently began her career as PJ Harvey. The trio released two acclaimed studio albums called Dry (1992) and Rid of Me (1993) before disbanding, after which Harvey continued as a solo artist. Since 1995, she has released a further ten studio albums with collaborations from various musicians including Parish, former bandmate Rob Ellis, Mick Harvey, and Eric Drew Feldman, and has also worked extensively with record producer Flood.
Among the accolades Harvey has received are both the 2001 and 2011 Mercury Prize for Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000) and Let England Shake (2011), respectively, making her the only artist to have been awarded the prize twice.[3][4] She has also garnered eight Brit Award nominations, eight Grammy Award nominations and two further Mercury Prize nominations. Rolling Stone awarded her three accolades: 1992's Best New Artist and Best Singer Songwriter, and 1995's Artist of the Year. Rolling Stone also listed Rid of Me, To Bring You My Love, and Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea on its list of their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[5][6][7] In 2011, she was awarded for Outstanding Contribution to Music at the NME Awards.[8] In the 2013 Birthday Honours, she was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to music.[9]
Early life[edit]
Polly Jean Harvey was born on 9 October 1969 in Bridport, Dorset, the second child of Ray and Eva Harvey.[10] Her parents owned a quarrying business on Ham Hill, the site of a large Iron Age hillfort, and she grew up on the family farm in Corscombe.[11] During her childhood, she attended Beaminster School in nearby Beaminster,[12] where she received guitar lessons from folk singer-songwriter Steve Knightley. Her parents introduced her to music that would later influence her work, including blues, Captain Beefheart and Bob Dylan.[11] Her parents were avid music fans and regularly arranged get-togethers and small gigs, counting Ian Stewart among their oldest friends.[13]
As a teenager, Harvey began learning saxophone and joined an eight-piece instrumental group, Bologne, run by composer Andrew Dickson.[14] She was also a guitarist with folk duo the Polekats, with whom she wrote some of her earliest material.[11] After finishing school, she joined Yeovil College and attended a visual arts foundation course.[11][15]
Career[edit]
Automatic Dlamini: 1988–1991[edit]
In July 1988, Harvey became a member of Automatic Dlamini, a band based in Bristol with whom she gained extensive ensemble-playing experience. Formed by John Parish in 1983, the band consisted of a rotating line-up that at various times included Rob Ellis and Ian Oliver.[16] Harvey had met Parish in 1987 through mutual friend Jeremy Hogg, the band's slide guitarist.[17] Providing saxophone, guitars and backing vocals, she travelled extensively during the band's early days, including performances in East and West Germany, Spain and Poland[18] to support the band's debut studio album, The D is for Drum.[17] A second European tour took place throughout June and July 1989. Following the tour, the band recorded Here Catch, Shouted His Father, their second studio album, between late 1989 and early 1990. This is the only Automatic Dlamini material to feature Harvey, but remains unreleased,[11] although bootleg versions of the album are in circulation.[17]
In January 1991, Harvey left to form her own band with former bandmates Ellis and Oliver, though she had also formed lasting personal and professional relationships with other members, especially Parish, to whom she has referred as her "musical soulmate".[19] Parish would subsequently contribute to, and sometimes co-produce, Harvey's solo studio albums and has toured with her a number of times. As a duo, Parish and Harvey have recorded two collaborative albums where Parish composed the music and Harvey wrote the lyrics.[20] Additionally, Parish's girlfriend in the late 1980s was photographer Maria Mochnacz. She and Harvey became close friends and Mochnacz went on to shoot and design most of Harvey's album artwork and music videos, contributing significantly to her public image.
Harvey has said of her time with Automatic Dlamini: "I ended up not singing very much but I was just happy to learn how to play the guitar. I wrote a lot during the time I was with them but my first songs were crap. I was listening to a lot of Irish folk music at the time, so the songs were folky and full of penny whistles and stuff. It was ages before I felt ready to perform my own songs in front of other people."[21] She also credits Parish for teaching her how to perform in front of audiences, saying "after the experience with John's band and seeing him perform I found it was enormously helpful to me as a performer to engage with people in the audience, and I probably did learn that from him, amongst other things."
PJ Harvey Trio; Dry and Rid of Me: 1991–1994[edit]
Harvey decided to name her new band the PJ Harvey Trio, rejecting other names as "nothing felt right at all or just suggested the wrong type of sound",[22] and also to allow her to continue music as a solo artist. The trio consisted of Harvey on vocals and guitar, Ellis on drums and backing vocals, and Oliver on bass. Oliver later departed to rejoin the still-active Automatic Dlamini. He was subsequently replaced with Steve Vaughan. The trio's "disastrous" debut performance was held at a skittle alley in Charmouth Village Hall in April 1991. Harvey later recounted the event saying: "we started playing and I suppose there was about fifty people there, and during the first song we cleared the hall. There was only about two people left. And a woman came up to us, came up to my drummer, it was only a three piece, while we were playing and shouted at him 'Don't you realise nobody likes you! We'll pay you, you can stop playing, we'll still pay you!'"[23]
The group relocated to London in June 1991 when Harvey applied to study sculpture, still undecided as to her future career.[11] During this time, the group recorded a set of demo songs and distributed them to record labels. Independent label Too Pure agreed to release the band's debut single "Dress" in October 1991, and later signed PJ Harvey. "Dress" received mass critical acclaim upon its release and was voted Single of the Week in Melody Maker by guest reviewer John Peel, who admired "the way Polly Jean seems crushed by the weight of her own songs and arrangements, as if the air is literally being sucked out of them ... admirable if not always enjoyable."[24] However, Too Pure provided little promotion for the single and critics claim that "Melody Maker had more to do with the success of the "Dress" single than Too Pure Records."[25] A week after its release, the band recorded a live radio session for Peel on BBC Radio 1 on 29 October featuring "Oh, My Lover", "Victory", "Sheela-Na-Gig" and "Water".[26]
The following February, the trio released "Sheela-Na-Gig" as their equally-acclaimed second single and their debut studio album, Dry (1992), followed in March. Like the singles preceding it, Dry received an overwhelming international critical response. The album was cited by Kurt Cobain of Nirvana as his sixteenth-favourite album ever in his posthumously published Journals (2002).[27] Rolling Stone also named Harvey as Songwriter of the Year[28][29] and Best New Female Singer.[28] A limited edition double LP version of Dry was released alongside the regular version of the album, containing both the original and demo versions of each track, called Dry Demonstration, and the band also received significant coverage at the Reading Festival in 1992.[30]
Island (PolyGram) signed the trio amid a major label bidding war in mid-1992, and in December 1992 the trio travelled to Cannon Falls, Minnesota in the United States to record the follow-up to Dry with producer Steve Albini. Prior to recording with Albini, the band recorded a second session with John Peel on 22 September and recorded a version of Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited", and two new songs "Me Jane" and "Ecstasy".[32] The recording sessions with Albini took place at Pachyderm Recording Studio and resulted in the band's major label debut Rid of Me in May 1993. Rolling Stone wrote that it "is charged with aggressive eroticism and rock fury. It careens from blues to goth to grunge, often in the space of a single song."[5] The album was promoted by two singles, "50ft Queenie" and "Man-Size", as well as tours of the United Kingdom in May and of the United States in June, continuing there during the summer.
However, during the American leg of the tour, internal friction started to form between the members of the trio. Deborah Frost, writing for Rolling Stone, noticed "an ever widening personal gulf" between the band members, and quoted Harvey as saying "It makes me sad. I wouldn't have got here without them. I needed them back then – badly. But I don't need them anymore. We all changed as people."[33] Despite the tour's personal downsides, footage from live performances was compiled and released on the long-form video Reeling with PJ Harvey (1993).[34] The band's final tour was to support the Irish rock band U2 in August 1993, after which the trio officially disbanded. In her final appearance on American television in September 1993 on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Harvey performed a solo version of "Rid of Me". As Rid of Me sold substantially more copies than Dry, 4-Track Demos, a compilation album of demos for the album was released in October and inaugurated her career as a solo artist. In early 1994, it was announced that U2's manager, Paul McGuinness, had become her manager.[35]
To Bring You My Love and Is This Desire?: 1995–1999[edit]
As Harvey embarked on her solo career, she explored collaborations with other musicians. In 1995 she released her third studio album, To Bring You My Love, featuring former bandmate John Parish, Bad Seeds multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey and French drummer Jean-Marc Butty, all of whom would continue to perform and record with Harvey throughout her career. The album was also her first material to be produced by Flood.[36] Simultaneously a more blues-influenced and more futuristic record than its predecessors, To Bring You My Love showcased Harvey broadening her musical style to include strings, organs and synthesisers.[37] Rolling Stone said in its review that "Harvey sings the blues like Nick Cave sings gospel: with more distortion, sex and murder than you remember. To Bring You My Love was a towering goth version of grunge."[6] During the successive tours for the album, Harvey also experimented with her image and stage persona.
Musical style and influences[edit]
Harvey possesses an expansive contralto vocal range.[122] Harvey aims to not repeat herself in her music, which results in every album sounding different to her previous works. In an October 2004 interview with Rolling Stone, she said: "when I'm working on a new record, the most important thing is to not repeat myself ... that's always my aim: to try and cover new ground and really to challenge myself. Because I'm in this for learning."[123] While her musical style has been described as alternative rock,[124] punk blues,[125] art rock,[126] and avant-rock,[127] she has experimented with various other genres including electronica, indie rock and folk music.[128]
She changes her physical appearance for each album by altering her mode of dress or hairstyle, creating a unique aesthetic that extends to all aspects of the album, from the album art to the live performances.[129] She works closely with friend and photographer Maria Mochnacz to develop the visual style of each album. Around the time of To Bring You My Love, for example, Harvey began experimenting with her image and adopting a theatrical aspect to her live performances. Her former fashion style, which consisted of simple black leggings, turtleneck sweaters and Dr. Martens boots, was replaced by ballgowns, catsuits, wigs and excessive make-up.[38][130] She also began using stage props like a Ziggy Stardust-style flashlight microphone.[131] She denied the influence of drag, Kabuki or performance art on her new image, a look she affectionately dubbed "Joan Crawford on acid" in an interview with Spin in 1996, but admitted that "it's that combination of being quite elegant and funny and revolting, all at the same time, that appeals to me. I actually find wearing make-up like that, sort of smeared around, as extremely beautiful. Maybe that's just my twisted sense of beauty."[38] However, she later told Dazed & Confused magazine, "that was kind of a mask. It was much more of a mask than I've ever had. I was very lost as a person, at that point. I had no sense of self left at all",[131] and has never repeated the overt theatricality of the To Bring You My Love tour.
At an early age, she was introduced by her parents to blues music, jazz and art rock, which would later influence her: "I was brought up listening to John Lee Hooker, to Howlin' Wolf, to Robert Johnson, and a lot of Jimi Hendrix and Captain Beefheart. So I was exposed to all these very compassionate musicians at a very young age, and that's always remained in me and seems to surface more as I get older. I think the way we are as we get older is a result of what we knew when we were children."[132] Other influential artists were "Nina Simone, the Rolling Stones, people like that I grew up listening to but find I returned to".[133] During her teenage years, she began listening to new wave and synth-pop bands such as Soft Cell, Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet, although later stated that it was a phase when she was "having a bit of a rebellion against my parents' record collection."[134] In her later teenage years, she became a fan of Pixies,[135] and she then listened to Slint.[136] She has named Bob Dylan,[137] and Neil Young,[138] when talking about her influences. Many critics have compared Harvey to Patti Smith, which Harvey dismisses as "lazy journalism".[139] However, recently Harvey has said that Smith is "so energising to see and so passionate with what she's doing".[137] Harvey has also cited Siouxsie Sioux in terms of live performance, stating : "She is so exciting to watch, so full of energy and human raw quality".[140] She has also drawn inspiration from Russian folk music,[141] Italian soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone,[142] classical composers like Arvo Pärt, Erik Satie, Samuel Barber,[143] and Henryk Górecki.[144] As a lyricist, Harvey has cited numerous poets, authors and lyricists as influences on her work including Harold Pinter, T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, Ted Hughes and contemporaries such as Shane MacGowan and Jez Butterworth.[138] Elvis Presley was also mentioned in her 2022 book Orlam and the 2023 single A Child's Question, August.[145][146]
Other ventures[edit]
Outside her better-known music career, Harvey is also an occasional artist and actress. In 1998, she appeared in Hal Hartley's film The Book of Life[147] as Magdalena—a modern-day character based on the Biblical Mary Magdalene—and had a cameo role as a Playboy Bunny in A Bunny Girl's Tale, a short film directed by Sarah Miles, in which she also performs "Nina in Ecstasy",[148] an outtake from Is This Desire? (1998). Harvey also collaborated with Miles on another film, Amaeru Fallout 1972, which includes Harvey performing a cover of "When Will I See You Again".
Harvey is also an accomplished sculptor who has had several pieces exhibited at the Lamont Gallery and the Bridport Arts Centre. In 2010, she was invited to be the guest designer for the summer issue of Francis Ford Coppola's literary magazine Zoetrope: All-Story.[149] The issue featured Harvey's paintings and drawings alongside short stories by Woody Allen. Her most recent artwork features in her second book of poetry Orlam.[150]
In December 2013, Harvey gave her debut public poetry reading at the British Library.[151] On 2 January 2014, she guest-edited BBC Radio 4's the Today programme.[152]
In October 2015, Harvey published her first collection of poetry, a collaboration with photographer Seamus Murphy, entitled The Hollow of The Hand.[153] To create the book, Harvey and Murphy made several journeys to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington, D.C.[154] Their experiences were documented in Murphy's film A Dog Called Money, which was released in UK cinemas and online on 8 November 2019.[155] The pair had previously worked together to create 12 short films for Let England Shake.
In April 2022, she published a book-length narrative poem titled Orlam.[156][157][158]
Personal life[edit]
Harvey rejects the notion that her song lyrics are autobiographical, telling The Times in 1998: "the tortured artist myth is rampant. People paint me as some kind of black witchcraft-practising devil from hell, that I have to be twisted and dark to do what I am doing. It's a load of rubbish". What is more, she later told Spin: "some critics have taken my writing so literally to the point that they'll listen to 'Down by the Water' and believe I have actually given birth to a child and drowned her."[159]
In the early 1990s, Harvey was romantically involved with drummer and photographer Joe Dilworth of Stereolab.[160] From 1996 to 1997, following their musical collaborations, Harvey had a relationship with Nick Cave, and their subsequent break-up influenced Cave's follow-up studio album The Boatman's Call (1997),[161][162] with songs such as "Into My Arms", "West Country Girl" and "Black Hair" being written specifically about her.
Harvey has one older brother, Saul, and four nephews through him. She expressed a fondness for children in 1995 and stated that she would love to have them, saying: "I wouldn't consider it unless I was married. I would have to meet someone that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. That's the only person who I would want to be the father of my children. Maybe that will never happen. I obviously see it in a very rational way but I'd love to have children."[163]
Harvey was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to music.[164]
