FEATURE:
Inside Tom’s Diner…
Suzanne Vega’s Solitude Standing at Thirty-Five
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AN album that is thirty-five on 1st April…
Suzanne Vega’s second album, Solitude Standing, is a magnificent release. The most commercially successful and critically acclaimed album of Vega's career, being certified Platinum in the U.S. It reached eleven on the Billboard 200. An album that does not get ranked alongside the best of the 1980s, I think that is definitely should be. With two huge hits in the form of Tom’s Diner and Luka, Vega created some of her best work for Solitude Standing. It is an album where the deeper cuts are fascinating. Night Vision, Calypso and Tom's Diner (Reprise) are incredible songs. I love Vega’s singing and writing throughout. What appears to be unassuming and almost gentle performances are so full of depth and nuance. Originality and feeling. It is a stunning album. I want to draw a couple of features together that highlight a mesmeric album from the wonderful Suzanne Vega. Hi-Fi News revisited Solitude Standing in 2019:
“The runaway success of her 1987 single 'Luka' propelled this singer into the limelight leaving the album from which it was taken somewhat in the shade. Yet this delicate mix of sharply observed stories told with unassuming vocals is as iconic as they come
The unexpected success of Suzanne Vega's 1985 debut album put her under considerable pressure from her manager, Ron Fierstein, to record a follow-up. Despite that pressure, the album she delivered in 1987, Solitude Standing, pole-vaulted her to international multi-platinum status, establishing Vega as the pre-eminent female singer-songwriter of the era.
Although born in California, and having studied dance at The New York School of Performing Arts (aka the 'Fame' school), that debut album had made her the darling of the Big Apple's Greenwich Village left-of-centre folkie set and she found herself being described as a 'frail, wan, waif-like poetess of enormous sensitivity'. She was determined that Solitude Standing would present her in a different light.
Pop The Question
'With the proceeds from my first album I had bought a house out on Cape Cod,' she has revealed, 'and we decided to do what was called woodshedding. We lived in this house all together, with my band, and we would practice in the basement, and some of the songs came together that way.'
Having been writing songs from an early age, Vega had a considerable backlog of unrecorded material to draw on, which included 'Gypsy' from the late 1970s, 'Tom's Diner' from 1981 and 'Luka' from 1984. It was these latter two which would rocket her to a level of stardom that she found somewhat uncomfortable. 'I was confused 'cause "Luka" was a hit and I was never expecting it to be one. So I became popular, which made it pop. So this made me confused. Am I pop, am I folk?'
Harrowing Tale
The album opens with 'Tom's Diner', an immediately arresting a cappella rumination about a day in 1981 when she visited a local restaurant. 'It's a real diner. It's called Tom's Restaurant. It's a pretty average place. Even now, when I go in there I have to wait 20 minutes for them just to get a coffee. And they have misspelled my name in the menu.'
The lyric, with a few imaginary additions, vividly describes what Vega saw in the diner that day, but she did not originally conceive of it as a solo vocal piece. 'In my mind, when I heard the song, it had a piano playing in my brain. I don't actually play piano so that was awkward. Then I realised that since I can't actually write music, I couldn't write out the part, but I wanted to try it out and I didn't want to have to wait for a piano player and all that stuff, so I decided just to try it a cappella and it worked better than I could have imagined.'
Next up is 'Luka', the harrowing tale of an abused boy which, understandably, she had never imagined as a potential hit single. Indeed, it provoked an argument between Vega and Fierstein. 'Ron said, "Is this a song about child abuse?". And I said, "Yes, it is actually". And he said, "I really think that song could be a big hit". I just thought he was out of his mind.' Nevertheless, Fierstein initiated some extra production which transformed the simple folk song into a radio-friendly track that peaked at No 3 in the US.
Vega has always been careful to stress that, although there was a real boy called Luka living in her apartment block, he was not to the best of her knowledge an abused child. 'I sort of appropriated his character for the song. It took me a while to figure out the angle of how to write it – the idea of it being a child singing to a neighbour – then the whole thing seemed to write itself in two hours one Sunday”.
Actually, there are a couple of other features worth sourcing. Vega’s 1987 masterpiece was discussed by Udiscovermusic.com last year in an illuminating piece:
“1985 was a key year in the career of California-born singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega, with her first national and international success. Then 1987 brought her breakthrough to platinum-selling status. We’re remembering the creative, critical and commercial success of her sophomore LP Solitude Standing, released on April 1 that year.
After crossing the country to emerge via New York’s Greenwich Village folk scene, Vega had done well with her self-titled A&M debut album. Its signature song “Marlene On The Wall” became an MTV and VH1 video favourite of the day and peaked just outside the UK Top 20. The long player itself peaked at No.91 in America, but found significant audiences in the UK as well as Holland and New Zealand.
Far from solitude
In 1986, her profile remained high with the single “Left Of Centre,” featured on the soundtrack of the hit movie directed by John Hughes, Pretty In Pink. Then, in April 1987, Vega unveiled her second album, little knowing that it would become the most popular of her career.
Solitude Standing was produced by Steve Addabbo and Patti Smith’s former guitarist Lenny Kaye, who with Steven Miller had overseen the debut set. And although the majority of the new record was written after Vega’s 1985 emergence, its best-known songs predated her major label debut.
The original, a cappella “Tom’s Diner,” which opened the album, was composed in 1981. It went on to give Suzanne’s career the most unexpected helping hand when a 1990 remix by the British group DNA became a pop and dance smash. It hit No.2 there that year and No.5 in the US, where it went gold. The unlikely mix added more publicity both to her then-current third album Days Of Open Hand and to the LP that contained the original.
The first single from Solitude Standing had been the typically delicate, folk-inflected “Gypsy,” written as far back as 1978. It wasn’t a hit, but served as a flavorsome appetiser for the album. It was followed by the 1984 composition “Luka,” her affecting story of child violence, which became Vega’s first US chart single. It climbed all the way to No.3, and hit the UK Top 30.
The album also included another song dating from 1984, “Calypso,” and “Ironbound”/“Fancy Poultry,” the latter with music written by film composer Anton Sanko. Other collaborators included Marc Schulman on “In The Eye” and Michael Visceglia, on several tracks including the title song.
‘An absorbing second album’
Critics lined up to praise the new album’s artistry and song craft, with the Philadelphia Enquirer calling it “Suzanne Vega’s coming of age.” Thom Duffy of the Orlando Sentinel described the “dreamy sound that serves well her unique musings.” Chris Willman in the Los Angeles Times heard an “absorbing second album…full of characters whose sharp self-awareness is shaped by their isolation.”
Solitude Standing has remained close to Vega’s heart, and to her audience’s. In 2012, she marked its 25th anniversary by playing the record in its entirety at four shows, three in the US and one in London. In September 2017, she played three dates at New York’s City Winery where she again performed the whole album as well as all of 1992’s 99.9F”.
To finish off, I want to source a review from The Young Folks. As I said, maybe Solitude Standing is underrated when it comes to the albums deemed the best of the 1980s. It is a brilliant and beautiful album that warrants a lot of new study and love ahead of its thirty-fifth anniversary on 1st April:
“What makes Solitude Standing such an impressive entry into the rock canon is Vega’s ability to tell a story. Whether fictional or not, many of the songs on this project can be relatable, comedic, or mature. Vega has an acute sense of detail that has developed in the indie-rock genre for quite some time. It feels almost poetic at certain points. Her descriptive language used on the first single, “Tom’s Diner” is funny, light, and engaging. Vega goes a cappella on this track, and many consider this to be her most well-known song of her career (or at least a version of it is: A dance remix by the DNA Disciples was a Top 5 hit around the world in 1990). The rhythm that she uses with just her voice has lead to artists creating different remixes with instruments and electronic sounds for this track. She sets the mood nicely here as well by starting the song with lyrics like, “I am sitting in the morning at the diner on the corner.” It’s easy to sing along to, and there is some light and enjoyable comedy mixed in as well.
Because Vega likes to use storytelling as a device in her lyrics, she does an excellent job setting up not only the plot, but the characters as well. For example, in one of her most mature songs, the hit single “Luka,” she addresses the topic of child abuse. Vega got the inspiration from an actual boy playing in the park who seemed different to her, because he was separate from the other kids. The contrast between the catchy instruments behind the mature lyrics creates something that people will really have to listen to a few times to understand.
Vega creates this world on the album where her characters in each song want to break away from the depression or angst that they may be feeling. Whether she does this through a certain point of view, or through a first person account, each track uniquely represents something different. On “Iron Bound/Fancy Poultry, Vega sets this dark and depressing background showing the inner conflict that her main character possesses. With a slow-tempo guitar riff behind the lyrics, this is considered another gem on the EP. She uses a first person point of view on “In the Eye” where she has more catchy instrumentals to go along with her almost menacing voice. Lyrics like, “If you were to kill me now I would still look you in the eye,” shows Vega’s insistence on making herself known through love. She goes into more of a folk-style production on “Night Vision.” This song almost reminds me of a Lord Huron song from their second album. While the story in this track is fictional, it is still inspired by poetry and has a more belonging theme to it.
The title track, “Solitude Standing” is more alternative-based and pop influenced. Vega incorporates solitude as a character here trying to set things straight with her personality. Vega seems to be trying to find herself here on this song, leaving the impression that she has been fighting with solitude for awhile now. “Calypso” is taken straight form the story of Odyssey, where Vega uses instances from that play to tell a heartbreaking love tale. Much like in “Luka,” she has a lyric like “My name is Calypso” to set up the story from the beginning. Very moving track. On the song, “Gypsy”, Vega takes a storyline out of a book to put her own style in music form. Over a slow-tempo guitar, she talks of belonging once again much like “Night Vision.” Vega seems to be fighting with solitude as the album progresses on.
What ties this album together nicely is, the “Tom’s Diner” instrumentation at the end. Vega just has a violin playing to the rhythm of her first song on the project, without lyrics. It’s like the listener has to put the two together and envision it his/herself. While Vega has not come out with anything as impactful preceding Solitude Standing, this album has still shown people that storytelling mixed in with a folk-like production can create something that is socially relevant. Vega creates this world that people can relate to, and have their own perspective on. Bands like Lord Huron will try to emulate her style, but the challenge will be difficult”.
I shall end there. One of the, in my view, greatest albums of the 1980s, Suzanne Vega’s sublime Solitude Standing still sounds entrancing and amazing. An album that every music fan needs to add to their collection, it has lost none of its power and potency…
AFTER thirty-five years.