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Fiona Apple's Long-Delayed LP Slotted For October 4 Release
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Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Songs Leaked On The Radio
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Whatever Happened To Fiona Apple? Online Campaign Tries To Find Out
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Months before the fall-out began, Apple had gone over a big list of producers Sony had given her to choose from, none of which thrilled her. Then she heard that Mike Elizondo (Dr. Dre, Eminem) — who played upright bass on Pawn — wanted to work with her. "I remember having this conversation with my dad after I first met [Elizondo], before I knew I was going to work with him, going, like, 'I think I just met the warmest person I've ever met.' "
Warm fuzzies aside, the pair got to work on the album in April 2004, and Apple said getting out of the comfort zone she had developed with Brion helped her get motivated again.
"I didn't spend much time with the original," Elizondo said, "specifically so I could come with a fresh game plan." Elizondo — who called his friend Brion to make sure there would be no hurt feelings — said he and Apple never specifically discussed what they were after, only that they wanted it to feel right.
"My biggest concern was that I heard rumors that Fiona was not that motivated to make the album, so I took it on myself to make her excited about it again on each song." The pair got six or seven songs going before what everyone involved refers to as the "miscommunication."
Having reportedly spent close to $800,000 on the album by that point, Apple said she was told that in order to proceed she would have to record one track at a time, gaining approval for each song before being given funds for the next one (which the Sony spokesperson also denied).
"All of a sudden," Apple said, "I was like, 'Wait a second, this is a ridiculous argument and it's totally unacceptable to me,' because this implies that if I go and I redo something and I hand it in, and let's just assume that I'm happy with it, because I'm not going to hand it in if I'm not ... now they either love it and give me the money for the next one or they don't love it and now they own a recording of something that I do love?"
Apple decided she couldn't work that way and it had to be all or nothing at all. She called her manager and told him to tell Sony she was not going to record anymore. Doing it that way, she said, would have been "the death of me on so many levels." Elizondo said the miscommunication between label and artist put the album on ice for most of 2004.
In February 2005, a DJ at Seattle alternative rock station KNDD-FM received a bootleg of the unreleased album and the unfinished songs quickly splashed all over the Internet. Like Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot — which became a model for artist cred when it was rejected by a major label for being uncommercial, turned into an Internet sensation and then was a hit album for a smaller imprint (albeit a subsidiary of the original major label) — Extraordinary Machine had become a cause célèbre.
Fans posted breathlessly about the ornate, almost gothic songs, and in an unprecedented move for an unreleased album, such major outlets as the New York Times, Newsweek, Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly reviewed it.
Then, in June of this year, Apple started working with Elizondo again without telling anyone. Within five weeks, the album was done and ready to mix. Played side by side with the Brion sessions, a cursory listen won't reveal all the changes Elizondo made, but a closer look reveals the exact thing the producer was after: Fiona. "I didn't want to overshadow anything," he said. "I wanted it to be primarily about her and her piano."
While two typically ornate Brion tracks ("Extraordinary Machine" and "Waltz (Better Than Fine)" remain, the rest of the songs crackle with the mix of programmed beats and live drumming from Abe Laboriel Jr. (Shakira) and ?uestlove of the Roots. But, at the center of it all is Apple, whose lyrical bite remains as strong as ever ("I opened my eyes while you were kissing me once/ More than once/ And you looked as sincere as a dog," she sings on "Parting Gift"), as does her unique take on pop music.
Tracks like the percussive "Get Him Back" bounce like the theme from "Peter Gunn" mixed with piano jazz, while "Better Version of Me" is a rushing pileup of thoughts and promises about Fiona 2.0 ("Oh, mister, wait until you see/ What I'm gonna be"). The free swinging "Tymps (The Sick in the Head Song)," with the biting lines "And that signature thing/ That used to bring a following/ I have trouble now/ Even remembering," is one of the only tracks that truly tips Elizondo's hand as a Dre protégé, with its slow, fat groove and spine-tingling mix of marimba, vibes and clavinet.
Either way, Apple has the last say on the irresistible pop tune "Please Please Please," in which she confidently spits, "Give us something familiar, something similar/ To what we know already/ That will keep us steady, steady, steady going nowhere."
"The whole thing was not about me and this album," Apple said of the drama and her fans' protestations. "It did end up working way to my advantage ... and I think I got that call [from the label to continue work] because of the hoopla" that FreeFiona.com caused.
So she has her fans to thank, for sticking by her, inspiring her and, most of all, for getting her off her ass to deliver another dramatic peek into her still turbulent mind.
And, for now, she's not done fighting ... but she's done being a quitter. "My secret hope is that someplace not too far down the road, all those original recordings, that Jon and I can go in and mix them the way we want and maybe have it be released," she said of her former collaborator and friend, who has performed several times with her to promote the album.
"I just want Jon to be happy with it. I want me to be happy with it. I think that I actually got really lucky to have two versions of these songs. Nobody really gets to do that — not on purpose, anyway."
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Photo: Autumn de Wilde
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