Joan Armatrading

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 1989

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

This week's castaway on the mythical desert island is someone who welcomes the isolation her exile can offer - she is singer and songwriter Joan Armatrading. An intensely shy and private person, renowned for her powerfully emotional songs, she'll be talking to Sue Lawley about her first impressions of England when she arrived here as a small girl 31 years ago from the Caribbean. She'll also be discussing her music, and the fame which it has brought - something she still finds surprising, and often quite overwhelming.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Madame George by Van Morrison Book: Why Didn't They Ask Evans? by Agatha Christie Luxury: Guitar

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 1989, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a singer and a songwriter. She arrived in this country 31 years ago, a small girl from the
0:35.2	Caribbean sent to join her parents and a new life in the industrial Midlands.
0:40.0	When she returned to her Native Island a few years ago, she was fated as a national heroine.
0:45.0	Her songs are both powerful and vulnerable in equal measure.
0:49.0	They talk of love, fear, loneliness and desire.
0:52.0	Their author, conversely, is an intensely private person.
0:56.5	She is Joan, armatrading. A private person, Joan, who has, I think, little fear of being
1:02.1	alone. Oh, no, I think, fear of being alone.
1:02.8	Oh no I think I think the desert island would actually suit me.
1:06.4	Took me um
1:08.0	quite a while to get used to people.
1:10.0	When I was sort of younger growing up I did a lot of things on my own going to the pictures,
1:17.0	riding my bike, or anything I wanted to do I tended to do on my own, didn't have a bunch of friends and you know I was an
1:25.7	observer you know I'd always be the one standing in the playground looking at
1:29.2	everybody else playing didn't bother me I was very happy. you speak in the past tense are you not
1:34.9	still like that not as bad I think I could still be better yeah I try and mix a little bit more and I'm still told that I don't mix as much as I ought to but
1:47.4	it's sometimes very difficult not to be disappointed with people.
1:52.2	But solitary confinement would not be purgatory. to be
1:53.7	disappointed with people.
1:55.5	Oh I love it. You know when I go on tour my favorite time is after the show
	...

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