Joined: Apr 01, 2006 Age: 38 Posts: 445 Location: Israel
Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2008 7:45 am Post subject: Asperger's, allergies and aubergines
"Adored by Courtney and loved by Kylie, Ladyhawke is no ordinary pop star. The 80s throwback tells Paul Lester how music got her through a troublesome childhood: ... "I have this thing called Asperger's syndrome," she says. - a disorder on the autism spectrum characterised by difficulties with social interaction and idiosyncratic behaviour. "When I found out, it explained my whole childhood. I told my mum and she said, 'That's why you used to sit on the floor doing puzzles for hours!' It was the reason I was so solitary. I'd say completely inappropriate things. The other kids thought I was a weirdo."".
The full article is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/sep/11/popandrock _________________ Autscape 2009:
http://www.autscape.org/
Walking gawkily into the room, Pip Brown is a mess of crumpled urban-wear and ruffled blonde hair. Held together by a Patti Smith T-shirt, black leather jacket, hooded blue shirt, skinny black jeans and unlaced Doc Martens, Brown - aka Ladyhawke - doesn't exactly look like someone you'd go to for fashion tips. But she's fast becoming a name to drop in the music world, revered as much for her dress sense as for her 80s-referencing, melodic synth-heavy rock.
"It's really funny, that style icon thing," says the 27-year-old New Zealander, now relocated to London. For a start, she says, she doesn't wear women's clothes, like, ever. "I have this thing where I refuse to wear anything made for a female because I don't like conforming to gender stereotypes. It's so predictable to get girly-cut jeans and blouses. I wear men's clothes: jackets, shirts and shoes. It doesn't take away from my femininity."
And it certainly hasn't stopped Courtney Love and Kylie Minogue from becoming huge fans. Love recently put Brown in a list of her top artists, while Kylie contacted her management to say how much she loved Paris Is Burning, Ladyhawke's summer single, which evoked the expensive, polished sound of Fleetwood Mac in their late-80s pomp. So is a Kylie collaboration in the pipeline? "Kylie's awesome," she says. "I'd love to." How about Love? "Hell, no. I'd be really intimidated."
Brown is now making the transition from little-known indie-rocker on the fringes of the Australian alt.rock scene to pop star, having been a member of a little-known garage band called Two Lane Blacktop and, more recently, one half of experimental duo Teenager. All those years of bashing around on guitar, bass and drums have paid off, as press and public are finally starting to notice her talents. Yet it's her abilities with music technology (she's a gadget addict, forging her sound in the studio and only using a band to tour) that have let her realise her dream of being a one-woman hit machine. She calls herself Ladyhawke, after a 1985 fantasy movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer, because she sees herself as a sort of pop superwoman creating radio-friendly songs with a single bound.
At school back home in New Zealand, she was "a quiet, wallflower student" who "excelled at design and woodwork and arty subjects". Her stepfather was a music teacher, so she had free rein of the music room, but in regular lessons she was lost in thought: "Every one of my reports said, 'Philippa is a lovely child but she stares out the window a bit much.'" It wasn't until later - a couple of years ago, in fact - that Brown, by then performing with Two Lane Blacktop, sought an explanation from a doctor for her almost pathological shyness and discomfort in crowds. She wanted to know why, every so often, she was gripped with fear at the prospect of leaving the house.
"I have this thing called Asperger's syndrome," she says. - a disorder on the autism spectrum characterised by difficulties with social interaction and idiosyncratic behaviour. "When I found out, it explained my whole childhood. I told my mum and she said, 'That's why you used to sit on the floor doing puzzles for hours!' It was the reason I was so solitary. I'd say completely inappropriate things. The other kids thought I was a weirdo."
She mentions two traits associated with Asperger's: a thirst for knowledge and a love of music. At home, she would sit with her ear glued to the radio, or listen to her parents' Beatles and Pretenders albums. That's when she wasn't being sick: she suffered from a panoply of illnesses and allergies that kept her in and out of hospital. Then, at the age of 10, she developed "this weird random disease that no one had seen in New Zealand for 20 years. It's common in seagulls, but is rarely transmitted to humans. Somewhere in New Zealand there's a photo of my face in a medical journal. It crept up to my brain. They caught it hours before I was about to slip into a coma." She laughs. "So they put me on penicillin and I had an allergic reaction to that! I nearly died."
She was always difficult to treat: antibiotics, penicillin, antihistamines - she's allergic to them all. And don't even mention dairy products. "I was lactose intolerant from the minute I was born," she says. "I couldn't be breast-fed. I really miss cheese." Her various dietary problems make travelling tough, bad news for a musician. "On planes, if I order a non-dairy meal, they always give you a vegan eggplant thing - and I'm allergic to aubergine."
Not surprisingly, she stayed away from narcotics growing up; ditto nicotine. "I never smoked a cigarette in my life," she says. "I don't know what they taste like." Coffee unnerves her. She prefers herbal tea - and alcohol. "I started drinking when I was 16," she says. "I'd do that teenage thing: raiding your parents' alcohol cupboard." Alcohol, especially beer, gave her the confidence to face the world. "When I was younger, I could really sink them. It brought me out of my shell. A dozen beers would have me hammered."
Brown doesn't channel her anxieties, her history of illnesses, into her lyrics. But she does concede that her music betrays a fastidious attention to detail. Her debut album, Ladyhawke, is full of percussive flourishes and synth curlicues - decorations on a musical cake that tastes of all those 1980s hits by Brown's heroines: Kim Wilde, Pat Benatar, Chrissie Hynde, Debbie Harry, Joan Jett and Stevie Nicks. The irresistible hooks and choruses seem likely to make Brown a star. All she has to do now is overcome her stage fright.
"I find live performances hard," she says. "I can't look anyone in the eye. I'm so conscious of everyone staring at me. I start to think I'm terrible or I'm singing out of tune. I get sickly-nervous before I play. I throw up and start shaking and sweating. The second I get on stage it disappears and the adrenaline kicks in. I try not to look at anyone in the audience or it will freak me out. Especially when they're smiling."
Off stage, life is no joyride either. "Walking into a room and thinking everyone's looking at you: I feel like that, only it's a million times worse. That's why my head is always down." In the Paris Is Burning video, Brown is shown walking down a street, shoulders hunched, looking as if she'd rather be anywhere else on earth. "That's the best I could do," she says. "You don't know how many takes I had to do or how many times they yelled, 'Less awkward! Shoulders back!' I'm the most awkward person ever. I find it hard enough walking down the street, just putting one foot in front of the other, but doing it over and over on camera - it was painful."
She doesn't, however, want to give the impression she's still that quiet, wallflower schoolgirl, too afraid to go out. "I was in this club in Barcelona and some guy was hitting on me," she recalls. "He was really old and disgusting - in his late 40s, and everyone else in the club was in their 20s. It was just seedy. I don't care what age you are, just don't touch me. So my video diary-maker, who films me for my website, clopped him in the face and threw beer over him. I was like, 'Yessss!'"
Did she land one on him herself? "I didn't punch him, no," she says, suddenly serious. "Never. I think I'd break my hand."
Joined: Nov 27, 2007 Posts: 2589 Location: The murky waters of my mind...
Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2008 2:52 pm Post subject:
Interview with NME, about Great Escape Festival (Brighton, UK)
(Really good because now I can point it out to friends who go 'you make eye contact'... uhm, yeah, but it's pretty awkward, much prefer looking anywhere but at you!!) _________________ We are a fever, we are a fever, we ain't born typical...
Joined: Dec 19, 2007 Posts: 2282 Location: The Castle of Shock and Awe-tism
Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2008 1:48 pm Post subject: Asperger's, allergies and aubergines
Hawkish lady topic
The only allergy that was incapacitating for me is to sheep's wool, and it was probably the lanolin that was the culprit. I can live with hayfever and other airborne irritants. I love my animals.
The Hawke Lady is lucky that people will accommodate her aversions. In the non-dramatic community many of us have to tolerate unwanted but not lewd human contact.
Life in the public eye sucks. If I was a music performer, I would rather stay in the studio, and refuse nightclub encounters. But these people are in it for the money, after all. _________________ Radical Aspergian
Awe-Tistic Whirlwind
Joined: Nov 27, 2007 Posts: 2589 Location: The murky waters of my mind...
Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2008 2:10 pm Post subject:
I dunno, I can kinda relate... I did a lot of theatre and some presenting in my teens, and found the same sorts of things. I'd get so nervous before I went on stage, but once you're performing you just become a different person. The lights tend to be so bright you can't see past the first row or two anyway. I always found it strangely comfortable performing, because I feel like I perform constantly every day just to appear ok and hide my social deficits behind a facade of normality. So it was just an extension of that, only with a different name and character to play.
My partner's in a band, and he doesn't do it for the money, he does it because it's his favourite thing to do and he just loves it. He doesn't ever stop talking music or playing instruments - he may not be aspie but his obsession rivals mine!! _________________ We are a fever, we are a fever, we ain't born typical...
Joined: Dec 19, 2007 Posts: 2282 Location: The Castle of Shock and Awe-tism
Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 1:35 pm Post subject: Asperger's...
Chickens, eggs, and Asper-genes topic
Again, it is a reality that public figures who have challenges are accepted /tolerated to a far greater extent than private individuals, especially if they come out after they have been media fixtures for some time. This usually happens when we discover the public figure has some monetary worth/value. I find this patently unfair that there is one rule for some and another for others.
Perhaps one day we will understand that acceptance of others who are different should not depend on some arbitrary talent that sets them apart from others. _________________ Radical Aspergian
Awe-Tistic Whirlwind
Joined: Apr 01, 2006 Age: 38 Posts: 445 Location: Israel
Posted: Sun Nov 16, 2008 8:01 am Post subject:
Ladyhawke: 'You have no idea what I have been through'
By Luiza Sauma - Sunday, 16 November 2008
She hated physical contact, shunned company and once locked herself in her house for three months. Then, two years ago, Pip Brown was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. So how is she coping with life as Ladyhawke, the next big thing in pop?:
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt82927.html _________________ Autscape 2009:
http://www.autscape.org/
Joined: Nov 27, 2007 Posts: 2589 Location: The murky waters of my mind...
Posted: Sun Nov 16, 2008 3:35 pm Post subject:
Ha, since she 'came out' and we went to see her live (she was so awkward but sooo endearing and sweet - and an amazing performer) suddenly all my friends know I have AS too because my partner is so proud of me being a kiwi with AS too, he can't keep quiet about it. She's made it cool in my rock-n-roll little crowd, so I have to thank her for that. _________________ We are a fever, we are a fever, we ain't born typical...
Again, it is a reality that public figures who have challenges are accepted /tolerated to a far greater extent than private individuals, especially if they come out after they have been media fixtures for some time. This usually happens when we discover the public figure has some monetary worth/value. I find this patently unfair that there is one rule for some and another for others.
On the other hand, such public figures can make for more awareness and acceptance in the general population for non-public-figures who face the same challenges. (Parkinson's, breast cancer, dyslexia, whatever.)
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