It's Always the Uiet Ones
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His novels are epic, explicit — and shapedIT’S by his peculiar ALWAYS THE childhood. John Irving talks to Ariel Leve about his lost father, being seduced UIET ONES at 11, and getting a second stab By the age of 23, Norah Jones was the world’s biggest-selling jazz singer — at life. Portraits: Jonathan but struggled to drop her guard and accept her fame. Has she recovered enough Torgovnik now to let people in? By Ariel Leve. Photographs by Todd Selby he hotel lobby on Manhattan’s Jones is relieved to be ignored. She has urban landscape. She’s lived in the eforeLower the East journey Side is begins, buzzing the with never been an attention-seeker. She is neighbourhood for many years, but is T detailsactivity. arrive. There There are effeminate is a stunning in an understated way; even considering a move out of Manhattan, B notemen from in his sunglasses assistant: and “John ski sayshats, it bored, is with professionally-applied make-up, her across the East River to Brooklyn. There’s an open boatlong-legged ride, so you models should in bring knee-high rain gear, boots big brown eyes, dark wavy hair and a sense that she too is evolving after her just in case.”punching And advice: BlackBerrys request a and,specific outside driver the lustrous skin allows her the freedom to breakthrough success eight years ago. who knows theglass way doors, from a Toronto posse of airport paparazzi. to the They ghost past the cameras. Several times during our time together boat basin inare Pointe waiting Au Baril,for someone Ontario. recognisable From to We head downtown to lunch and she she says “now that I’m older” — although there I’ll get emerge.the boat We to the slip remote past. The cottage petite where woman is noticeably at ease once we’ve left the she’s only 30. The statement is leaden the Irvings —in John, a red his flannel wife, Janet,shirt and atheir black son, leather sterile hotel lounge and the glare of the with the consequences of having Everett — arejacket staying. and I are invisible. photoshoot she just completed. “It was achieved spectacular success at 22. The cottage “It’sis a 10-minutefashion week,” ride fromsays Norahthe boat Jones, cool,” she says, placid and even-handed, It’s an age when most people are just basin and asthe we world’s pull up, top-selling a dripping-wet female labrador jazz singer, a tone she maintains throughout. beginning to figure out who they are and is waiting onwith the dock,more thanwagging 36m his albums tail and sold. “And I Voluble, she’s not. As we walk, her eyes what they want, but Jones was too busy barking. “Dickens!”guess there a cheerful are some shout important comes frompeople fix on the giant, shiny new buildings working, thrust into a whirlwind journey Everett, Irving’shere.” 17-year-old It’s hard to son, tell who if she greets is being me around her; she marvels at the with high-stakes recognition — and with two of hiscynical, friends. but A her tall, modesty elegant isn’twoman feigned. construction transforming the gritty feeling, at times, like an imposter. a with long legs appears and warmly introduces herself as Janet, John’s wife. We enter the house through a screen door that leads into the kitchen, CREDITS TO BE PLACED HERE and she introduces me to her husband. 50 John Irving is as formidable in person as he is a Interview Norah Jones 51 Interview Playing the game, left: ‘I know what I have to do to get the record out’ Right: with five of her eight Grammy awards, February 2003 Below: Jones’s father, Ravi Shankar, with her half-sister, Anoushka How did she handle the inevitable aftermath? career mortgaged to management companies. “maturity beyond her years” and with this, the She’s grown up a lot. Being off the road, making And yet, the success made her uncomfortable. notion she is boring: “snore-ah Jones”. choices on her own, in charge of her own time. When asked what it was that surprised her most “I like to have fun and be silly and be a dork,” It has been another kind of journey: an interior about it she says: “That it happened at all.” She she says in meek protest. “But sure, sometimes one. She has been searching for how to feel had always been musically confident, but the rest it’s hard,” she adds, revealing such verdicts can valued beyond the public adoration. There are of it threw her. “I felt like I was in an alien world.” hurt. But probing deeper into Jones’s personality hints of a mini existential crisis: working out The furniture of fame, the interviews, the smiling proves frustrating. Is it a brick wall she’s thrown where she fits in and how she matters. for the cameras, the marketing of the brand, the up or have the critics diagnosed correctly? When There have also been endings — or as she puts machinery of what to wear and how to respond. asked if she gets depressed she offers a chirpy it, “transitions”. Break-ups with her band and her “I just wasn’t savvy with how to handle it.” “Not really. I’m a pretty cheery person.” longtime boyfriend prompted her to take stock Shrewdness is not a quality one associates She doesn’t go to the music-video awards, has and led her, of all places, to church, which she with Jones but it’s clear she’s learnt not just never been to a fashion show and avoids the red regularly attends. It was not divine intervention where her limits are, but how to enforce them. carpet — except once in 2007, when she attended she was looking for, but perspective. “I know what I have to do to get the record out the Cannes film festival. It terrified her. When there [and] what I can’t do, what I won’t do.” she went to the Grammys the year she swept hat’s most distinctive about Norah When she says this her tone and manner is soft, them, she used the back door because she was Jones is she seems so normal. Normal but there is a steely determination and firmness. nervous. But why? “When I get a pedicure I’ll W enough to slip by paparazzi unnoticed, or to walk down the street without sunglasses or ‘I’D GAINED WEIGHT WAITING TABLES. I FELT FAT, security. Normal enough to remain modest, I FELT GROSS. I CALLED MY MOM, CRYING, considering her father is Ravi Shankar, the AND SAID I WANTED TO COME BACK HOME’ “greatest Indian musician on the planet”, who has performed with Yehudi Menuhin and the Beatles. What made Jones so popular? She was the read People magazine. I see all the Dos and Considering that at the age of 20, she dropped antithesis of the manufactured pop star — Don’ts. I don’t want to be a Don’t.” out of university in Texas with no real agenda perhaps that was the point — a serious musician So she isn’t as comfortable as she appears. other than to move to New York and become a with serious talent. Her popularity paved the way The subject of her family has been designated jazz singer — and in little more than two years, in for the re-emergence of jazz-focused female off-limits — she doesn’t like talking about them. 2003, saw her debut album, Come Away with Me, vocalists such as Amy Winehouse, though the Is that another clue? win her eight Grammy awards; and considering singers couldn’t be more different. “I’ve heard Jones was born in 1979 in Brooklyn, New York, her next release is likely to push her total album her, of course. I bought her record and I thought but her parents never married and when she was sales above 40m, one wonders why it didn’t swell it was great.” She pauses. “It’s sad her life has four her American mother, Sue Jones, moved her head, why it didn’t degenerate into the sex, overshadowed the music. She has a great voice.” them to Grapevine, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. drugs and notoriety of the Amy Winehouse And therein is the clue to Jones’s success and The only child of a single mum, she knew who sisterhood. She became a household name, her ability to cope with it. Nothing is allowed to her dad was, but saw him infrequently until turning a respected fringe-genre of music overshadow the music: no antisocial behaviour, she was nine. And after that, she didn’t see him mainstream; you couldn’t go into Starbucks or sit no plunge into the gutter, no desperate search again or speak to him until she was 18. in a dentist chair without hearing her sultry for anonymous approval. You won’t see her in the Being the only child of a single mother is a vocals. It was the kind of success X Factor tabloids spilling out of a nightclub or rushed into defining existence. “You don’t really know until PREVIOUS PAGES AND THIS PAGE, TOP LEFT: TODD SELBY MAGAZINE.FOR THE SUNDAYTOP RIGHT:TIMES REUTERS. BOTTOM RIGHT: GETTY/TIME LIFE PICTURES winners would kill for — stardom without the rehab. What’s frequently attributed to her is you’re an adult that you were in a bubble. a 31 Interview Right: With Jude Law Do you go to therapy? She gasps — answering in the 2007 film the question without saying anything.