Shania Twain, musician

0:00Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

0:45My cast away this week is the singer and songwriter Shania Twain. Her achievements as an artist are extraordinary. Her nickname may be the Queen of Country Pop, but her success transcends genre. She's one of only two artists in history to have three consecutive Diamond albums, including 1997's Come On Over, the biggest-selling studio album by a female solo artist in music history. She dominated the charts in the 90s and early noughties with anthemic and empowering hits like That Don't Impress Me Much and Man, I Feel Like a Woman. Back then, few people knew how much steel there was beneath the leopard print.

1:22She'd already survived poverty and abuse in her early years in Canada, as well as the premature death of her parents in a car crash. There were more challenges to come, a painful divorce from her music collaborator husband and a battle with Lyme disease that stopped her singing for the best part of a decade. But triumphs too, a comeback album, Las Vegas residencies and the Glastonbury legend slot. She says, my whole life has been like a series of country songs, but with a nice happy ending, I hope. Shania Twain, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you. You've said that your songwriting often starts from quite a melancholy place.

1:59Even, you know, breezy, upbeat tracks can have a kind of sadder story behind them. I think people might be really surprised by that. Something like, you know, Man, I Feel Like a Woman actually comes from a sort of deeper, sadder, more reflective place. My songwriting always starts as me time, alone time. I'm just playing around on the guitar, playing around with, I'm just being creative. and I'm not considering where the song would end up or even if I will finish it as a song. You know, we'll talk today, I'm sure, about how often you've rejected the stereotypes of what women are supposed to be or were supposed to be in country music.

2:39How determined were you in the early days to just break out of that mould? I was 30 when I had my first top 10 record. I'm already quite mature at this point now, But I'm still leery of the man that sees me as an object. Because I start singing in bars so young. I'm a girl. As I start developing, I'm starting to notice that it's an object. In my teens, I loved to play football and sport. And I would wear two bras just so that I didn't bounce. And I didn't want to get the attention of the boys. So by the time I'm in Nashville and I'm writing songs like Any Man of Mine and Man I Feel Like a Woman and that don't impress me much, I'm feeling confident, more confident and liberated to push back through the music.

3:35And those are my songs of I'm happy to be a woman and I love men, just don't try to dominate me. It's really that. Shania, you're going to be sharing your eight discs with us today. Tell us about your first choice. My first choice is a Carpenters song and record, because it was written and produced and recorded by the Carpenters. We've only just begun. I would need a piece of music like this, because it takes me back to when I first discovered harmonising, vocal harmonising. because the carpenters with their beautiful blend, brother-sister blend, and the arrangements, the chord progressions, the complexity of the layers, I was mesmerized.

4:29I still, I would have to listen to it every day for the rest of my life to really figure it out. And then maybe I would try it myself in different keys. And I would, it's a song that, and an arrangement that I could experiment with forever. And this is what I did when I was a kid. I learned how to harmonize. I would try to find parts that weren't in the record. I would never pick the melody because I was more intrigued by what harmonies were missing. I wanted to be part of the arrangement. And yet we've just begun

5:06Sharing horizons that are new to us Watching the signs along the way Talking it over just the two of us Working together day to day The Carpenters, and we've only just begun. So, Shania Twain, let's go back to the beginning. You were born Eileen Edwards in Windsor, Ontario, August 1965, but you moved to Timmins, which is a remote mining town after your parents divorced when you were very small. What was life in Timmins like? It's fairly remote because the nearest main city is, you know, 13 hours drive away, depending on your speed limit. And there's a lot of wildlife. No one lives far from the woods.

6:03Everybody's on the outskirts of the forest. So when you say wildlife, are we talking bears? Bear, moose, beaver, you know, all kinds of bird life. So it was all about nature. This is a town that was founded on gold mining. Tough people, you know, whether you're a woman or a man, you need to know how to jumpstart a car. There's a lot of practical things that make life challenging in Timmins. So when you were four, your mother Sharon met Jerry Twain. They married. He adopted you and your two sisters and gave you his surname. Tell me about your dad first. And what was he like? How would you describe him?

6:45My dad adopted us when he was 22 years old. So he was a very young dad. And my parents then had a child of their own together. He's an Indian, Canadian, native, was not always easy at that time to get jobs. with his little education. He had a high school education. And because of his background, did that influence what he could be hired for, or the way people treated him? Sure. In the North, there's definite issues with racism, my parents being a mixed couple. We sort of lived a double life in that sense. I went to school with primarily town kids, and then on the weekends I would play with my cousins on the reserve.

7:28My parents were always juggling and running away from bills, we were always on the run, it felt. High pressure situation. Always high pressure. Yeah. And never mind, feeding us and putting clothes on our back. And when you live in a really cold climate like Timmins, Ontario, you need seasonal clothing. For real, it's critical. Or you get frostbite. So an incredibly high stress environment for your parents. And as you say, your dad very young as well. and I know that your home life back then was very volatile. In your memoir, you've described some horrifying scenes, the violence between your parents, including watching your dad beat your mum unconscious.

8:14How, as a little girl, did you make sense of what you were seeing, what you were witnessing? As a little girl, living in a violent home is very confusing. It's scary. I remember being four, and my little sister was two, and my older sister was six. Us girls ran out onto the porch in the snow, but we were in our pajamas in our bare feet. So it was really cold. I mean, we were freezing out there. And we're watching this fight. The fight's going on inside the house. We're watching from the doorway on the porch. And I just remember the feeling of my feet in that snow and then the loud footsteps of the police officers coming up the wooden stairs, squeaking in the snow to save us.

9:02You said that it wasn't drinking or drugs or anything. It was always about money. It was always about the struggle to get by and the pressure they felt as young parents with all these kids. We talked about it as a family too, and my parents would obviously never say anything because we're going to get the, you know, children's aid is going to come in and take you all away and you're all going to get separated. They weren't threatening us from time to time if the fight was loud enough, then it would be the police showing up at our door. I never remember once them ever taking my mother to the hospital to get a medical check.

9:42And she was obviously, you know, had been beaten. And what about school for you? Because, you know, you were moving a lot, as you said. I think you went to 17 schools over the course of your school career. Was there anywhere there where you could find a foothold, where you had a place that you felt like you belonged to, you felt happier? There was no place that we ever stayed long enough to ever feel that it was permanent, that, oh, we're good now. Shania, it's time for your second disc. What's it going to be? Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road. Me and my two sisters in the winter, which it is many months a year in Timmins, Ontario, Canada, we would go skating on Saturday nights.

10:27This is where we could hear pop music. Because when we were little, my parents only played country music around the house. My favorite floating in the clouds song to skate to was Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John. for that three hours in that evening on Saturdays. We were normal with everyone else, doing what everybody else did.

11:26Elton John and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. So Shania Twain, your mother Sharon, tell me more about her as a person. We've heard a lot of the struggles that she faced, but who was she underneath that? Well, first, I want to explain what she looked like. she was very very thin thin lady she was tall and was extremely flexible she would sit at the table and sometimes just to make us laugh she would pull her leg up around the back of her head I mean she had a sense of humor and loved to dance around the kitchen. She loved to dance. She loved music. She had a terrible singing voice. She was a chain smoker and lived on coffee and cigarettes is sort of the way I would describe her, but was very fragile.

12:24And I always saw her as my little bird. So you felt you had to protect her? And I did have to protect her because, you know, when her and my dad would get into fights, I would have to do dramatic things. It's like when two dogs are fighting, I mean, How do you get in the middle of that? And I would have to maybe hit a chair over his back to get his attention and then run away. It was bad. Like, he would choke her a lot and do things that often don't end well. Such an interesting contradiction, your mum, though, because, yes, all that's going on. But from an early age, she is also absolutely convinced that you're going to be a singer and you're going to be a massive success.

13:03So where did that conviction come from? Oh, boy. She would wake me up around 11.30 to take me to the bar to sing because, you know, kids are not allowed in liquor premises that doesn't like a bar. So they kind of wait for last orders. Wait for last order. That could be your set. Load up the table with drinks and then I can go in and sing. But before we would go out, my mother would make me do her hair and makeup because, I mean, her skin was often bruised. She was very unhealthy looking and she put on some lipstick and then we would go. My mother was so determined that I was going to get my big break and get discovered on a bar stage by some record executive.

13:47How old are you at this point? What kind of age? Oh, this starts at eight years old. But we made it to those bars. What were the shows like? What was that experience like for you? I took it very seriously. I learned a hundred songs. People would yell out songs and I was very proud to be able to sing that song. And so we're talking, is it all country and Western at this point? At the age of eight, it's all country Western. And, you know, at the age of 10 and 11, it's still country Western. But then it starts getting a little more progressive and modern with a rhinestone cowboy. You know, Glen Campbell is now bringing to the country Western music a more modern sound.

14:28Then you've got Olivia Newton-John that makes country records. The gigs must have been rowdy. I mean, you've got people in there who've been drinking all night. They're piling up their drinks to continue going while you're performing. How was that for you? Were you scared? Was it an intimidating environment? How did you feel about that? The environment was very, very smoky. I'm just up there with my guitar. I was usually up there a lot of the time by myself because the band was now done. Sometimes they would stay and play some songs with me, which would be really great. sometimes there would be strippers and there were two sides of the bars, two stages.

15:07There would be a stripper side and a music side, like music side. They would alternate when who was on. And I remember thinking that the strippers were so beautiful and their costumes glittered and the way they carried themselves and they were wearing. They looked beautiful to me. I didn't understand the context. Chania, it's time to go to the music. Tell us about your third choice today. What are we going to hear next and why are you taking it to the island? We're going to hear Kansas, Dust in the Wind. At this age, I'm 12. The music teacher at the time understood that I had a talent. And I asked him, I said, you know, do you mind if I play guitar between classes and just practice?

15:54or when I get off the bus, if I could come straight in, sit down and play guitar, because there's this new song I really want to learn. It's called Dust in the Wind. And it was quite complicated at my age to play this song on guitar. And he was kind and read through the lines, but did understand that I had a legitimate interest in learning this song on the acoustic guitar, and I was able to skip recess. I close my eyes Only for a moment and the moment's gone All my dreams Pass before my eyes of curiosity Dust in the wind All they are is dust in the wind Kansas and dust in the wind. So Shania Twain, you were learning that at 12 and that was the time that your older sister Jill left home.

16:57And then the following year, 1979, when you were 13, you decided that you just had enough. So you packed the car, you got your mother out of bed and you told her to drive you and your remaining siblings to Toronto. What was the plan? I knew my dad was going to be gone to work and not back till late. this gave me time for the kids to get back from school while they were gone. I skipped school that day. While they were gone, and my mother was sleeping all day anyway, so that she was not aware, packed up the clothes I thought the kids needed. It's so interesting that you call them the kids as if you're not one of the kids.

17:37True. Back up the kids in the back seat, put my mother's grandfather clock straddled over their laps. And my mother, that was going to make a difference. If that clock was there, she was going to be, it eased it a little bit. It was precious to her. It was coming to us, with us. Yes. And the crucifix as well, that my grandmother had always hung up above her door. So, car's packed. Go to my mom, give her a cigarette in bed. Mom, your coffee's ready. She gets up, comes to the table, drinks her coffee. And I explained to her, you're going to get dressed and we're going to Toronto and the kids are already in the car everything's ready to go she didn't even argue she got dressed and got behind the wheel I wanted us to start a new life I said let's go let's drive so we drive and we get to the city once we get inside the city limits we don't know where we're going we don't we don't have a clue I say well you know let's stop at a phone booth or we'll stop a police officer or something did you have friends connections anybody that you were going to stay with or anything like that no there was nobody so phone booth open up the yellow pages and there's you know like shelter so I call the shelter and they don't really take me seriously because I've got this child's voice I say mom you're going to have to come and you're going to have to do this yourself.

19:07Like it was in the dynamic was such that it was natural for you to make that phone call because people might not get that. You know, you had been filing the tax returns for your family. You'd been getting the kids ready for school. So that that's not something that your mum would have done to pick up that phone. And normally I was basically running the household. My mum just never for sometimes months did not leave the house unless I did her hair and makeup when she was taking me to the bar. so she came to the phone the phone booth spoke to the lady and we went to our first shelter so this goes on and then then school starts the kids get registered so that by finding you a job now they can move you out of the shelter and they place you in a home with one other mother and now you're two families then we're finally down to one how was that how did it feel and and And how did the change affect you and your mum too?

20:03My mother did well, I thought. She played by the rules and she was enjoying the camaraderie with the other mothers and the understanding that it happens to all kinds of women. They were from all walks of life. Your mum did eventually go back to your dad in 1981. Do you understand why she did that, why she made that decision? my father came looking for us a lot after a certain time away once the kids had understood what they were and were not to say and you could speak to your dad because it's still your father right oh so one day i tell my dad i got a job at mcdonald's on kipling and i was so mad at myself But he narrowed it down slowly as to where we were.

21:02And I don't know how it happened, but maybe in a conversation with my mother, he said, I know you're in this area. And I really, you know, whatever he was saying after a year and a half or whatever it was that she made it through not going back. But she broke down and they went, they did go back. And I stayed that second summer by myself. Shania Twain, I want to find out what happened next but I also want to hear your next disc it's your fourth choice today what's it going to be? One of my grandmother's favourite songs my grandmother Eileen and I'm named, my birth name is Eileen was El Paso and Marty Robbins played in our house a lot to country music it brought the western to the country it was country and western And I loved all the minor chords and the jangles on the nylon strings and his voice and the harmonies.

22:06Out in the West Texas town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican girl. Nighttime would find me in Rose's cantina. Music would play and Ferdinand would whirl.

22:25Blacker than night were the eyes of Felina Wicked and evil while casting a spell Marty Robbins and El Paso So Shania Twain, alongside everything that we've been talking about you were songwriting from the age of ten you were writing your own material you've described writing as thinking out loud feeling out loud, a way of downloading yourself what were you writing about as a young person? As a young person, I was writing about places I didn't know about yet. I was creating worlds. I was creating characters. I would sing with made-up accents of how I imagine other people might speak in different places of the world.

23:11I was transporting myself. Songwriting transported me through my imagination to anything. It was my way of coloring with words and sound. So music, a real passion for you from such an early age, so much so that when you graduated from high school in 1983, you actually skipped the ceremony and the prom. What were you doing instead? It was before I even could write my exams to graduate in high school, I was offered to be the lead singer in a band that was traveling. And it was traveling to a different part of the country. It was going to the East Coast, which I had never been before. and I go to my principal and I ask him if I can write them early and I do I pass because if you pass you can go so I leave a few weeks before my graduation before even the exams and I break it to my parents that I'm going to travel with a band that I do not know and we are going to jam into a little cube van and go to the East Coast to play synthesized rock music.

24:30And how did they react? They weren't happy about this. They really thought it wasn't going to go anywhere. So Shania, you were making your way. You went to Toronto to try and get a record deal. You were working hard, But then on the 1st of November 1987, you got a phone call that completely changed your life. Your parents had been killed in a head-on collision with a lorry. You were just 22. What do you remember about that night? I collapsed hearing that news over the phone. My sister called me and I could hear my little brother howling in the background. we were all just wailing together the kids could not be separated after that accident they needed to stay together and and so then at 22 you become responsible for for them for the whole family also for dealing with the personal and business affairs of your parents and and their you know their working life how did you get through the time that followed it must have been so difficult I leave Toronto, of course.

25:39I'm back in the family, the last family home that we had, and that the kids were still living in when my parents died, and moved back in. My older sister was still gone. You know, now she's got two children. She's married and has her own life in another town. I have to do a lot of things I know nothing about, like take out a second mortgage for the house to sustain what's going to happen next until the business equipment can be sold from the tree planting and I'm selling vehicles off and I'm in lawyer's office regularly dealing with the insurance because the passengers in the vehicle were suing and the truck driver was suing and everybody was, there was so many complexities to the accident itself.

26:39I had to understand the accident reports, things I, nobody would ever want to have to ever, you know, have to go through step by step. You know, the body positions, the everything, just terrible. And I wasn't allowed to grieve because I'm thrown into this state of guardianship. You're the one who's holding everything together. and I'm the executress plus I don't have a job first thing I do is I rent the upstairs apartment of the home the home it was just a little apartment and then I'm I say to the kids I'm not too long after find a singing job in a town south I want to come to that Janaya but first I want to hear your next disc this is your fifth choice today tell us about this next piece of music and what it means to you?

27:29Oh boy. Aniel Morricone, besides being a music genius, stopped me in my tracks. I had to pull over on the side of the road because I could no longer see through my tears to be able to continue listening through this piece. I'd already seen the movie The Mission, but I'd never absorbed the soundtrack until I didn't have the visual, and I was just in my car driving. My parents have not long passed, and I'm overwhelmed with so much responsibility. And Gabriel's oboe comes on in the soundtrack, and I'm just paralyzed, and I just cry my face off for, I don't even remember how long, I was just numb.

28:24And it was like a dam had broke. I've always realized how powerful music is, but Gabriel's oboe is still, I really have a hard time getting through that whole soundtrack without crying. And I think everybody needs a good cry. So if I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life on a deserted island And there's one piece of music I need when I need a good cry. It's Gabriel Zobo.

29:25Gabriel Zobo from the film's soundtrack to The Mission by Ennio Morricone. Shania Twain, after your parents died, you had to give up on music, really. You were just overwhelmed by dealing with what had happened and looking after your family. But then your mother's friend, the woman who would become your first manager, Mary Bailey, found you a job. It was at the Deerhurst Golf Resort in Ontario. What did it involve? I was singing in a cast of four other singers. The band had a horn section. I was very thrilled with that because I played the trumpet in high school. So I'm in this variety show at this golf resort, six hours from our hometown of Timmon.

30:12So we're quite far south now. and I had to move the kids to Huntsville to this town because I had an income that was steady and I could still sing I couldn't travel around and leave the family so I was very lucky to have this find this job now Mary Bailey who is a country music singer from my youth is a woman that my mother reached out to when I was about 11 it was a backstage thing you know my mom said no oh, I could always use your help, and would you mind exchanging numbers? And Mary was always very kind and sweet and generous. And when my parents died, I called Mary and said, I'm quitting music.

30:56There's just no way I'm going to ever be able to earn anything in the bars in Timmins. They'll never hire a constant. They always have live music moving in and out of town, and I can't move anywhere. The kids are still in school. So she said, just a minute. I've heard of this place. Would you just come with me and see what it's about? Well, I'd never heard of Huntsville. I go with her just over a two-night thing. And I'm right in that moment. She says, why don't you audition? They've got big feather boas and they're wearing fishnets and like makeup. I mean, I know all the music, but this is just not what I do.

31:37And then there was a lounge she took me and then there was a rock bar. So there were three stages in this resort. So three different genres, different gigs. Exactly. And she said, yes, but you would be doing the piano lounge, which you could play your guitar and do all the folk stuff you like. And then you can go in the rock bar and do all the rock stuff you like. You know, then you do the variety show and you could live in one place. And I went home, told the kids that this was the only way I could make a living still singing with the, you know, let's do this. I move the kids and we end up further south.

32:20I'm no further from getting a contract yet, as far as I'm concerned, at least in a permanent, steady job, and all us kids can stay together. But at one point, Mary arranged for someone to come from Nashville to watch you perform. Tell me about that. How did it go? So for the three years that I'm singing at the resort, I continue to write music, of course. Songwriting is at my core. That's my joy. And, you know, the stage paid the bills and the songwriting was my love and the dream. I kept sharing my demo tapes with Mary. You know, she became like a second mother, honestly. And she would give me feedback.