Yes, definitely. I was a different sort of child, as half the children are. They are or they aren’t. I was in that category of being free-spirited [laughs].
I go back now to visit my grandma and grandpa, but it’s not really somewhere I’ve spent a lot of time, not since I was 14. It’s beautiful. It’s a vacation destination. Olympics. It’s small, 2,800 people [laughs] it’s very different from here.
It was boring. That town is crazy, too. I was a bad girl, but I’m good now. I guess I have some bad tendencies. I don’t like to do hurtful things, but I am drawn to the wild side. I love riding motorcycles; I love rollercoasters; I do like adrenaline. But I’ve also found true happiness when I was living in New York and working with other people in that way that we’ve talked about. So, I don’t know. But I don’t feel at odds with it.
They didn’t have too much music around, but they actually both had really nice voices. My dad wrote country songs for fun, and my mom sang for fun. My dad liked the Beach Boys, my mom liked Carly Simon, but we didn’t really listen to them; we just put the radio on – whatever would be on the radio.
I would write fiction on my own time, and I liked writing in school. I thought that was one of the less offensive school subjects, so that was fun for me. I transitioned to singing when I picked up the guitar. I’ve never been good at the guitar – always been bad – but it did help me write for the first four years.
I wondered if you wrote – your lyrics are so narrative.
They sound like stories. I’ve been in New York now seven years, and it’s been a really long road, so the parts of my life that I draw from lyrically are maybe the more dramatic segments of the time that I’ve been here. But they are all true.
Do you feel like you struggled when you moved to New York?
Yeah, it was difficult, as it is for everyone. Maybe myself a little bit more, but that was my own fault.
I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.
Lana Del Rey: I was social, just in a different way. I loved my teachers. I feel like kids can be hard to get along with sometimes and I don’t know anyone from my school I’ve been to. I’m sure they were nice.
Lana Del Rey: No, I didn’t feel ostracized. I just had different priorities. I was reading and writing. I was pursuing my own education [laughs] which paid off, I’ve learned so many different things.
What does metaphysics entail?
It’s not as complicated as it sounds. There’s different branches so it depends on which branch you’re studying. If you’re studying something like cosmogony, you’re studying about the origins of the universe, and how reality came to be reality. Like this space that we’re sitting in now – how did we come to inhabit this place? And why this reality strikes us as it is. I studied that up in the Bronx.
I did move into a trailer park when I made my first record. I got ten grand from Five Points Records and moved into Manhattan Mobile Home in New Jersey. And I was happy, because I was doing it for myself.
Well, I lived in the Bronx for four years. I lived in Brooklyn for like four years after that. I always consider myself to have a serious street side, even when I was in high school. I mean, I was pretty crazy. Everyone I knew was really crazy.
I define myself eccentric psychologically but in the interviews that it’s often misunderstood. Maybe because my life had a lot of transformations, more transitions.
My life has gone through various incarnations, mostly transitions. But I don’t consider myself to be someone very provocative or radical – I embrace a lot of traditional things. But I believe in alternative lifestyles and in alternative relationships.
Yes, exactly like Twin Peaks. I was hoping to get out and get to New York because that felt like heaven. I like going to the corner store and tell you that a man [in Spanish], “Hello beautiful, how are you? ‘.
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I remember for the short time we lived together in NYC, I used to come home from work and see the entire wall of our studio apartment covered in weird tropical backdrops from the Party City store. There would be tinsel everywhere and streamers taped to the walls and I was furious because it looked like the most bizarre amateur movie set, plus I was worried for your sanity because I couldn’t see where you were going with all of it. Looking back though, your obsession with strange nick knacks and Hawaiian embellishments were like little hints of colors to come for future sounds and videos.
Yeah, of course I remember those days. You hated my electric fishtank which gave me endless amusement. (She winks!)
For the record, I loved that fish tank, you gave it to me for my 19th birthday. I believe the inadvertant theme was ‘Chinatown.’ Now, I know you don’t love to talk about this because journalists have sort of mythologized your past but let’s talk about the trailer park you lived in for a few years- I shot you there when you were 22 and continued to shoot you there for a couple years while you were writing and entertaining and wrapping up your album with David Kahne. You were so sweet and happy that you had your very own place to write and reside in, and extra money from that $10,000 indie contract. It was also a sad time for you because you separated from Steven Mertens who had originally produced that record and who was your boyfriend at the time. I don’t really have to ask you this because as your sister, I think I already know, but would you say this was your most enriching time as an artist and happiest time in New York (despite the split from Steven.)
[Smile] Yes.
Do you remember decorating David Kahne’s studio? I remember sitting next to a decorative Urn during one of your recording sessions. Even now, you’ll bring ribbons or bows or specific iconography to recording sessions. How important is it that your space reflects your personal style or headspace?
I honestly haven’t thought about that in so long. I used to have to have some sort of talisman with me if I was writing. Something connected to the lyrics like a sparkle jumprope or a golden compact mirror- at the time it was really important. Now I have internalized so much of what I’ve come to love that I don’t think about it as much any more.
I loved New York. When I was there it was almost my sole source of inspiration, more than any other man, writer or rapper, but it’s harder for me to get around now. I used to take late night walks over the Williamsburg Bridge, go to all the 24 hour diners with $5 and beg the waiters to let me stay all night in exchange for the purchase of one giant slice of chocolate cake. I would sit for hours and read about interesting people like Karl Lagerfeld and listen to books on tape by Tony Robins to keep me company. I would take the D train to Coney Island, take the D train back to the Bronx where I lived on Hughes Avenue.
I did move into a trailer park when I made my first record. I got ten grand from Five Points Records and moved into Manhattan Mobile Home in New Jersey. And I was happy, because I was doing it for myself. There was a white trash element in the way there was a time that I didn’t want to be a part of mainstream society because I thought it was gross. I was trying to carve my own piece of the pie in a creative way that I kind of knew how. And I thought it was cool to be living by myself and working with a famous producer. I was excited about the future at the time.
Like when I was working with my first producer David Kahne and I was in that mobile home for two years. I was between there and Williamsburg and I had a boyfriend then. It was a very happy time.
I was doing open mic nights in the city with my guitar at Layla Lounge, Galapagos, where those places are open. Same place every girl singer was playing. One of many tragic Lower East side songstresses, oh dear! What must they think? And I met really nice people. Everyone in Brooklyn was doing a folk thing, and I was in that camp, singing sort of jazz. I entered a songwriting competition, I didn’t win, and one of the judges on the panel was an A&R man at a record label that had no other acts and I signed to them. We sent my demo out to five people and David Kahne got back to me that day, and said I think you’re amazing I want to start with you tomorrow. He was like my Harvard reach school, I couldn’t believe it. I was really excited. It was the first time anyone of any importance said I was good and I ran with that validation for a long time.
“I was always writing little songs, but nothing I liked then. When I left school I wanted to do music because I thought I was good at it and I wanted to do something that I loved. So my uncle taught me to play guitar and I did these little shows, just me and my guitar, singing and playing the five chords that I knew.”
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In her years in New York, working “odd jobs” and “helping out in the community, in alcohol and drug awareness programs” and playing the singer-songwriter open-mic circuit.
Just going to open-mic nights and things like that. It was mostly in Brooklyn. It was a folk scene. When I was 19, I signed to an independent record label. I was the only act on their roster, and then that record was shelved. After that, I still wanted to sing, but I started focusing on being an active member of my community.
In fact, she seems to be retracting more and more from public view, after buying a house in Los Angeles with her brother and sister.
There was an older song that you’ve never heard called “Pawn Shop Blues”. [sings] “In the name of higher consciousness / I let the best man I met go / Because it’s nice to love and be loved but it’s better to know all you can know.” Because I remember I’d met someone so special and famous but I knew he wasn’t enlightened about how to be a good person. I knew it would get in the way of me becoming a nice person. That’s a difficult choice to make.
How did you meet this famous person?
Um, it was in a self-help group. [laughs]. He wasn’t that famous. I justthought he was famous…
TV famous or movie star famous?
Rock star famous. Just middle of the road ish. To me he was famous because I didn’t know anyone who was wildly recognisable. I remember thinking it was exciting at the time.
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