Be Careful What You Dream
Racing across London in the heat of a midsummer afternoon, the car windows down, the wind in our hair, causing waves, making waves, waving to passersby, while over the airwaves Solitaire plays. “She prayed for salvation. She wept for their pride. She cried for San Sebastián. And every single arrow in his side.” We’re duetting with our driver. The anticipation crescendos as we arrive at our secret destination. Diana Mitford’s granddaughter and Desmond Guinness’s niece doesn’t disappoint.
Daphne Guinness is even more exquisite, more elegant and more eloquent in real life. And just a little shy although by the end of the afternoon we have her laughing. She has her grandmother’s sharp cheekbones and her uncle’s piercing blue eyes. A model figure is accentuated by a trademark monochromatic outfit. She knows how to pull off a silhouette. Her white blonde pompadour (‘hair’ is for non human art installations) with just a dash of pink is splayed up with the help of kanzashi. Alexander McQueen sculptures to stride on (again, not mere ‘shoes’) and silver clad fingers complete the look.
Sleep is Daphne’s fifth album and is getting justifiably rave reviews. Traces of Beethoven and Pet Shop Boys are discernible but her music style is unsurprisingly unique. “The album has taken from conception till now three and a half years. I’ve released five videos from it so far. I want to be the crossover between sound and vision, the two different disciplines. And because I’ve been working with many photographers over the years, especially David LaChappelle. To me, when I’m writing the songs they’re all quite visual. Some of the tracks are condensed classical form: first act, second act, third act, fourth act, resolve. Others are just pop tracks with none of that narrative. But several are actually building out worlds in verse.”
“My first album was made with visionary photographer and director Nick Knight. And then Paul Fryer for the second one. Two with David. And then this one with Malcolm Doherty and David and so on. The good times always have to start!” We tell Daphne that every track on her album could be a single. “That’s what you try and do as an artist. In writing lyrics I try to cut out every piece of slack, chop every word that isn’t useful. A song can come kind of fully formed but then you need to sculpt it.” We venture how she has taught a generation to pronounce ‘chimera’. Daphne bursts out laughing. Surprisingly loudly, considering how softly she speaks. “Sometimes you just use a word because it’s really fantastic to use and add some nuance round it.”
“I didn’t go to university. I’m an autodidact. I read books all the time. My song Love and Destruction is a condensed reading of Nietzsche. It’s a philosophical text.” But she needed encouragement to take the first steps in her artistic musical career – that shyness. “I was in the studio for my first album, crouched under the desk in a corner and David Bowie came in and dragged me out by the ankles and said, ‘Come on – out! You’ve got to stand up! Stop hiding!’ Anyway, he really was instrumental in that album and was the shadow producer or godfather producer. I was his project – how wonderful to be his project. He was very funny and great.”
Daphne reminisces about her childhood. “I spent my early life in the country nine miles from Nuneaton, on the border of Leicestershire and Warwickshire. When I was growing up there all the mines were being shut down. It’s very grey, it’s very bleak. But it’s brilliant! It’s actually quite nice growing up in a bleak place. You develop an imagination around that. People ignore the Midlands at their peril. I have moved around a lot – Spain, Switzerland, Ireland, France, the US.”
“I went to school in London to begin with and then I was sent away to a really really bad boarding school and I kind of fell apart. I got into Guildhall where I trained as an opera singer, did all the exams. I then went off and got married at 19 and had three children. And again, the autodidact came out and I continued to train in opera.” We just have to bring up Solitaire. That infectious laugh once more. “You know it’s almost worth going through all the terrible things in my life to get a song like Solitaire. It almost sounds like you need to be nearly killed or put into the most terrifying positions to end up with a song like that! I expelled ghosts. I collapsed after I recorded the song – it was like everything was gone.”
“Mishima is the second track on Sleep and is about the Japanese writer. I had a Japanese nanny from I was three to five so I was fluent in Japanese. When Mishima died she was in tears. She taught me how to do reciprocal behaviour – my father found me in tears on the staircase at home and he said, ‘What are you doing?’ I mean, you can see from my hairstyle …” Ah, the origin of the kanzashi. “What’s really interesting is the San Sebastián connection in Solitaire. Mishima famously did these pictures of San Sebastián with the arrows. Our home in Cadaqués was named after San Sebastián. There are so many weird threads that go in and out. You couldn’t make it up!”
“I was going to give up recording after my third album. I thought it was pretty good. It was a monster to mix this album with all the strings and the drums. Normally at this stage of an album I’m ready for hospital … That’s why I started doing videos because I wasn’t sure if I would survive this process. I thought well if I do videos and something happens … Actually I feel alright. I hope people like the album and the words and the atmosphere get through. You have no idea if it’s going to resonate with anybody else but I’d prefer to live and die on a perfect pitch, stanza, iambic pentameter, to get a real message across.”
“We’re living in urgent times. But Sleep has got a very upbeat sound and yet the message is serious but actually there’s optimism in it. All the tracks are my favourites in so many ways. The only person I’m trying to beat is myself really. I don’t even go for a walk without a goal.” We don’t want to leave but our driver has arrived and it’s time to go. He blasts No Joke full volume on the return journey. “You’re flesh and blood. You won’t be here for long. Don’t push your luck … Before your eyes, an enigma lies.” Debo Devonshire’s great niece and Clementine Lady Beit’s cousin twice removed doesn’t disappoint. In Daphne Guinness’s departing words: “It’s a mysterious journey.”
