Paul Lester - Split Personality: Pink

Copyright 2009 Omnibus Press
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EISBN: 978-0-85712-998-7

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P ink has never been very, well, pink theres nothing particularly sugary or girly about this singer, songwriter and performer who has been part of our pop lives this century-so-far.

As a name, Pink is a red herring and as a result it has been easy to misjudge her, to dismiss her as just another fluffy candy pop starlet when really she has more in common with her all-time heroine, Janis Joplin, than any number of here-today-gone-tomorrow girls in pretty dresses. A motorbike-riding, rifle-toting, tattooed, big-voiced belter and exponent of rocky pop and poppy punk who almost overdosed after experimenting with every Class A compound known to chemists, aged 16? I was going to say that, in terms of rocknroll credentials, Pink makes Janis look like Britney, but Ms Spears is hardly the epitome of the clean-living popstrel herself these days. She makes Janis look like Beyonc? Yes, that works, for now, anyway see: Houston, Whitney

In a way, Pink raised the bar or lowered it, depending on your view for badly behaved ex-teen-pop queens this decade. Listening closely to all her albums for this book, it occurred to me that Pink has been Pink that is to say, not-pink since the word go. Most accounts have it that she started off as the R&B puppet of powerfully manipulative dance-pop svengalis before taking control of her career and becoming the all-snarling punky brat we know and love today, but even a cursory glance at the song titles on her 2000 debut album, Cant Take Me Home, suggest the change of direction on second release M!ssundaztood (2001) wasnt quite as dramatic as it seemed: Split Personality, Hell Wit Ya, Save My Life, You Make Me Sick, Let Me Let You Know standard pop lyric tropes if you like, or alternatively, early signs of the troubled but hugely successful recording artist who has in a way built an audience around the fact that she has never quite recovered from her messed-up childhood and wild-living adolescence.

If troubled and successful are Pink watchwords, theres a third: honest. She has never been less than forthright about her past and her problems, expressing exposing herself with gynaecological candour, and that has both shed light on her work and helped make her an unusually interesting character to observe these past 10 years. Pop may be sewn up these days by PRs who rarely let their charges reveal much about themselves to journalists in the hour or so that the latter are usually granted in a sterile hotel suite, but Pink is one of the few pop stars who cannot be contained, who shouts her mouth off and says the unsayable, often when her record company minions are least expecting it.

She talks in superlatives and extremes, as though every step she takes is emotionally draining and painful. Loyal, as she puts it, to a fucking T, leaving the girl-group that kickstarted her career to go solo was not just really tough and the hardest decision of my career but in fact the worst position Ive ever been put in, in my life.

You get a sense of the mixed-up girl, who began writing songs when she was 14, even in the early days of her career. The self-styled chameleon who would dye her hair green and walk out of rooms backwards to get attention seemed to be singing gospel in the church choir one minute, then being the token white girl in an R&B troupe the next. Either that or shed be variously dancing in Philadelphia clubs, doing backing vocals for a hip-hop outfit called School Of Thought or yelling and thrashing about in local punk bands.

Sex is rarely off the agenda when youre talking to Pink. Then again, if you write a song like Fingers, about masturbation, youre probably going to be probed, if youll forgive the disgusting imagery, a little about your private habits. On the record conversations about everything from her lesbian tendencies to the size of her husbands schlong are typical with Pink.

As for drugs, shes not exactly reticent about discussing her antics there, either. Holy shit! she once groaned, recalling her first visit to Amsterdam to a journalist. I was 19 years old, I went straight from the airport to the Bulldog caf, bought a thousand bags of weed and smoked them all by myself and then went on stage. It was a TV show and I was borderline collapsing on camera. The producer came on stage and said, Would you like to do that again, because thats the most awful performance Ive ever seen in my entire career. I looked at her and said, Do what? It was halfway through dinner after the show when I came out of my coma.

Shes no slouch in the self-examination department, either: no one does exorcisms-of-anguish like Pink, both in interviews and in songs. If she has built a career around her childhood pain, she is quick to acknowledge that she is not the only one who has suffered. Ive seen my dad cry four times in my life and one of them was when I played him [my song] Family Portrait. My mom cried for days and then it became this big thing: I didnt know you were so affected lets talk. Im like, It was just a song. Im fine!

Mostly, Pink does brash. Whether its declaring, Im not Madonnas bitch after refusing to kiss the queen of pop at the MTV awards, issuing feminist proclamations in gay bible Attitude or parrying accusations of hypocrisy after affirming the empowering nature of stripping off in public (in videos or photo sessions) for the sake of her art, Pink is never less than entertaining and as the great woman herself has said, Entertainment sometimes for entertainments sake is ok. Hopefully in this book you will be entertained by Pink, and get some sense of her value not just as an entertainer, but as a complex, multifaceted, often confused human being whose real-life issues often spill over into her music, and whose music holds up a mirror to the wondrous mess that is her life.

Paul Lester, June 2009

Its funny to me. People are documenting what Im doing now and they think Im some rabid, crazy, lunatic whatever, and Im so tame compared to how I used to be.

P ink wasnt always Pink, or for that matter P!nk, the precocious, electrifying R&B diva turned provocative, sexually aggressive, globally famous shock-pop-rocker with attitude, sing-shouting with infectious indignation about stupid girls, George Bushs inglorious war efforts and masturbation, whose mouth is caught in the worlds media in a permanent semi-smile or scream, snarl or scowl.