[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Susanna Hoffs is going to have a very busy week. Tomorrow is Pub Day for her very first novel, a romantic comedy about a one-hit wonder who may find love and her voice again if she can get out of her own way. It's called This Bird Has Flown. Susanna is having a sold-out event to celebrate its release tonight at The Strand. Then on April 7th, the latest solo album from the co-founder of The Bengals drops. It is called The Deep End and is produced by the legendary producer Peter Asher. We'll talk about both with Susanna. She's sitting across from me. Let's start off with the music, an album of covers that kicks off with Hoff's spin on this classic Stone song.

[music]

Under my thumb

The boy who once had me down

Under my thumb

The boy who once pushed me around

He's down on me

Hmm

The difference in the clothes he wears

Down to me, the change has come

He's under my thumb.

That's right.

Listen

Under my thumb

Alison Stewart: The Deep End Features tracks originally performed by Legends like The Stones and Lesley Gore but the album also includes songs from artists who are at the start of their careers like this take on popular YouTuber Dodie Clark's song Would You Be So Kind?

[music]

I have a question

It might seem strange

How are your lungs?

Are they in pain?

'Cause mine are aching

Think I know why

I kinda like it though

You wanna try?

Oh, would you be so kind

As to fall in love with me?

You see, I'm trying

I know you know that I like you

That's not enough

So if you will Please fall in love

I think it's only fair

There's gotta be some butterflies somewhere

wanna share?

Alison Stewart: The album The Deep End drops on Friday. Joining me now in studio is Susanna Hoffs. Welcome to the studio.

Susanna: Hi. It's so good to be here.

Alison Stewart: What is your philosophy about approaching covers?

Susanna: Oh, that's a good question. I think for me, I love music so much that I fall in love with songs and it's falling head over heels in love with them. Then I get this fire, from the inside out, that I just want to try singing that song. I think for me, every song has a story embedded within it and this story is just full of emotion. If I'm going to challenge myself to sing somebody else's amazing song, I know that I need to inhabit that story completely and I need to feel the feelings that are embedded in that story and it's about that level of connection. It's almost like being an actor or something, where you just really want to be feeling it when you're singing it. That's how I approach it. I really want to do cover songs justice and even if I'm doing a different spin on it, a little different arrangement, a different feel I want to inhabit the story inside the song.

Alison Stewart: If you listen to Under My Thumb when you think about it, it takes on a whole new energy from a straight woman's point of view when you sing it, when you really look at those lyrics. What was something you noticed about the song when you flipped the script?

Susanna: Well, it was incredibly fun, empowering. It delighted me. I was giggling all the way through it. One day I was just listening on one of my walks to the Stones. I love the Rolling Stones. I love that song. I went, "Wait a minute. This could use a revamp, take two. What would it be like if a woman was singing about a man?" It was just on the fly actually. Peter and I were giggling all the way through it because we didn't sit down and look at how exactly to reinvent the lyrics. It was just I was in the control room already standing before the microphone and it was like, "Ah, here's this line," and so we sort of just workshopped it right in the moment of recording.

Alison Stewart: Wow. Because there's that great line. I pulled that clip specifically because instead of saying, "Ain't it the truth, babe," you say, "Listen."

Susanna: Yes, like, "Listen." I love that moment too.

Alison Stewart: It's just so funny because it can mean listen to what I'm going to say or listen let's just talk for real.

Susanna: Yes, exactly. It's all of those things.

Alison Stewart: There's also a dance remix with Grammy-winning producer Oak Felder who works with folks like Ariana Grande and Usher and Nicki Minaj. How did that come about?

Susanna: Well, I just felt like this song gave me such a feeling of sassiness and empowerment and connecting with other women. Ideally that was what I was hoping for. I just had this instinct. I said to Peter, "I think we should do a remix," and he said, "How about Oak Felder?" and I said, "How about that? That, yes. That's a yes." It was just so fun to be collaborating with all these masters at their craft. I was pinching myself through the entire process.

Alison Stewart: Well, let's listen to the Oak Felder remix of Under My Thumb.

Susanna: Thank you.

[music]

Under my thumb

A Siamese cat of a toy

Under my thumb

He's the sweetest

Hmmm

Pet he's my boy

It's down on me

Oh yeah

The way he talks when he's spoken to

Down on me the change has come

He's under my thumb

He's all right

He's under my thumb

Alison Stewart: We are having a dance party in here. Are you working on a TikTok dance for this?

Susanna: Oh, I need to come up with some specific moves for it.

Alison Stewart: For real.

Susanna: Suggestions are welcome.

Alison Stewart: It feels like a TikTok challenge in the making that could be parents and kids.

Susanna: I agree. I know. Dancing is one of the things that just brings joy and it's my go-to when I'm feeling anxious or down. Just put on music and dance in the living room or in the closet or in the bathroom, anywhere you can get it. The opportunity.

Alison Stewart: Susanna, you are an avid social media person. I wasn't joking because you've embraced it.

Susanna: I have.

Alison Stewart: You're really down to earth on it. You are trying out outfits in your closet about what you should take on book tour. You're showing your mother's art. Your mother was an amazing artist. When did you decide, you know what, I'm going to engage in social media?

Susanna: Well, I was a little slow at first. At first, I started with Twitter, and then I just found a community on there. I love it when social media is social, actually feels social. You're meeting friends. You're bouncing ideas around. You're starting a joke and letting everyone-- It's festive. It can be festive and fun, a party atmosphere sometimes. Then little by little I was slowed to getting on Instagram, but then I started to find that same community there and now on TikTok, which is really fun. Each one has its own style.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Susanna Hoffs. The album The Deep End Drops on April 7th. Her book The Bird Has Flown comes out tomorrow. We've talked about you working with people. There's Peter Asher We'll talk a little more about that, about covering a Stone song. But on the other end of the spectrum, you have songs in here from artists like very at the beginning of their careers, like Holly Humberstone. When did you first hear the song The Deep End?

Susanna: Peter actually discovered that gem and it moved me so deeply when I heard that song, the story within it, the emotion, the sisterhood. It wasn't till the 11th hour when we were looking for a name for the album that I realized not only in deciding in my '50s and now '60s to take the plunge and write a novel because I'd always wanted to my whole life. The same thing with diving into these covers and inhabiting them. I admire Holly Humberstone so much. Such a wonderful young artist. Anyway, it just all resonated to call the album that because that's what this moment in my life feels like.

Alison Stewart: Just trying things. Just jumping--

Susanna: Jumping the deep end and seeing if I can swim, [chuckles] hoping that I can.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear Deep End.

[music]

Throw me in the deep end

I'm ready now to swim

The air in my lungs may not last very long but I'm in

I see you on the weekend

Dancing like a star

You've practiced your lines

To convince us you're fine

But I know that's not where you are

Once in a blue moon

You may come undone

We're made up of the same blood

I'll be your medicine if you let me

Give you reason to get out of bed

Alison Stewart: That's Deep End from Susanna Hoffs' new album. You have a Billie Eilish song in here, one Finneas wrote for her. Having been through the music business, and your book is a lot about the music business, what advice would you give to someone like Holly who's just starting out and then a piece of advice you'd give to someone like Billie who is really riding a huge fame wave?

Susanna: Well, I would like to get some advice from them. That's my first thought. Well, I loved writing about a musician in my book. I think it's a very wonderful but complicated job to have. [chuckles] I do. I think the making of the art part of it is in some ways less difficult because you're writing on passion for what you do and creativity. I think sometimes when you release your babies, the songs are like your children into the world and you confront just the response you get from far and wide, it can be a challenge, I guess, to stay grounded and to stay calm. [chuckles] That's really hard because you're bearing so much of your soul and sharing that with the world and it can be trying, I think. I think about those women and I know that there's a lot of joy in the making of the music, but it's a complicated job I would say.

Alison Stewart: Legendary Peter Asher, of course, he worked with Linda Ronstadt, a longtime producer. He'd worked with James Taylor and Bonnie Raitt. There was this New York Times profile from him from last November and there was this graph. Asher's current assignment and as yet untitled solo record for The Bengals singer Susanna Hoffs is a sophisticated song collection in the mold of his '70s albums for Ronstadt. Nearly 60 years after he first set foot in the studio, Asher's enthusiasm remains palpable. "On a daylight today when I know I'm going into the studio," he said, "I wake up excited." Where on this record can you hear his excitement?

Susanna: Everywhere. [chuckles[ All over it. Peter is unlike any other producer I've ever worked with, and I've worked with incredibly brilliant producers, but Peter, he's a true craftsman. He loves every detail. Is something that he pores over and throws his heart into. We ended up using a string quartet on things. I think we ended up with a string quartet on practically every song. He knows how to build the house and put all the furniture in there and save room for the voice. The voice, he always wants to, and again, honor the story inside the song, the emotion. He's just a master craftsman.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear one more track from the album The Deep End before we discuss Susanna's book The Bird Has Flown. '80s babies, you'll recognize this one, Black Coffee in Bed.

[music]

There's a stain on my notebook

Where your coffee cup was

And there's ash in the pages

Now I've got myself lost

I was writing to tell you

That my feelings tonight

[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. My guest this hour is Susanna Hoffs. Susanna Hoffs has been a band leader, a solo artist, a mom, a wife, and now officially a novelist. Her new book is out tomorrow. It is called This Bird Has Flown. There have been some great advanced reviews for her story of a musician getting her groove back. The New York Times described it as 'he smart ferocious rock chick redemption romance you didn't know you needed', and that, "The pages are packed with wit and sly illusion and dialogue that strikes the ear just so.

We meet Jane Start, a one-hit wonder, really doing not-great gigs for cash she desperately needs, enter an airplane encounter with a professor, a fling with a much younger rockstar, an ex running off to marry a 20-something, and the possibility to jumpstart her career, but with strings attached. Jane has a lot going on. Let's get into it with Susanna. Susanna, you are a well-known musician, a performer, a songwriter. What was it like to be a novice at something again?

Susanna: It was fun. It was joyful. My husband, who's a filmmaker, couldn't believe how much fun I was having, but it was permission to escape from my head and my thoughts and be in this fictional world with my fictional characters who I love. They would just start talking to me. Music would trigger conversations and scenes in the book all the time. There's a lot of chapters that are named after songs. I made a playlist, which you can find on my Spotify, by the way. [crosstalk]

Alison Stewart: It's long. 66 songs in that playlist. [laughs]

Susanna: Oh, is it? I didn't even realize. That's how much I love music and that's how much the music informed the writing. Somehow it would just trigger-- It was almost like a movie screen would come down and I would start watching my characters as if they were in a movie and I'd hear what they were saying and I would just type into my phone if I was outside or on my computer and grab what they were saying. It was-- I don't know. I never thought I would write a novel. I always wanted to. My kids pushed me to do this lifelong dream. Thank you to them and my husband Jay for all supporting me, but it was just an unexpectedly delicious experience.

Alison Stewart: You went through this experience of having to get an agent, having to have the manuscript read. It wasn't like it was just handed to you, which I thought was really interesting.

Susanna: No. I had the whole book finished for years. I just kept tinkering with it. My best friend Margaret Stohl who's a wonderful novelist herself finally pried my manuscript from my hands. She read it overnight and she's like, "You've got to get this to an agent right away." I was always tinkering with it and wanting to make it better and better and better.

Then that led to Sarah Burns, my literary agent, and then eventually Little Brown read the manuscript and they bought it. Then I had an actual book editor. Growing up in LA, the world of editors in New York City, that always seemed like something from a movie, but then I walked into that movie and I was living that experience. The whole thing has just been so fun and delightful really.

Alison Stewart: How did you name your character Jane Start?

Susanna: It just came to me one day. There's a lot of themes from the book about ghosts of our past that haunt us. Jane Eyre was a big reference for me. I read and reread that book and also the book Rebecca where the character is the unnamed protagonist. I just took Jane from Jane Eyre and I didn't know. I just came up with Start. I like that it almost made a sentence, Jane Start. Start your journey. I don't know. It just had a ring to it. Then once I had the name, I didn't look back. I just thought, "That's the name."

Alison Stewart: The book starts when she's at a really low professional moment. All musicians play private gigs. This one could have been a birthday party, could have been bar mitzvah, could have been a corporate gig, but she's at a bachelor party in Vegas where they want her to play the one song in the outfit. Why did you pick that as the place where we meet Jane?

Susanna: Having played Vegas over the course of my career in music, I just had this memory of going down in the elevator in with my rolly bag and tarted up for the show. It's just seeing myself reflected in, "Yes, you're her now. You're not the girl who was just scrambling to dry your hair in the bathroom [unintelligible 00:20:35]. Oh, god, did you bring all the right stuff for the gig?" You're this other person and I thought that that was something having lived it that I could write about. That flipped the switch from ordinary girl trying to get through the day to going onto a stage and being this thing you think people expect or want. You want to give them what they're expecting.

Alison Stewart: Jane's big hit, and her only hit, is not a song she wrote which I think that's really interesting. It was written by one-named artist.

Susanna: Yes, Jonesy.

Alison Stewart: Yes, like a Bono. Is Jonesy from David Jones, David Bowie?

Susanna: Jonesy is an amalgam of all of the most iconic rock stars that I could envision. David Bowie was in that soup of ideas that were swirling in my head, for sure. Someone who could change personas with every album and always surprised you and was mythic, but also iconoclatsic in a way.

Alison Stewart: How does it weigh on her self worth that it's not her song?

Susanna: Well, eventually, especially because she had put out music after that and it got dropped from her record label, and it was just a series of hard knocks, post that one moment that really cemented her as a one hit wonder, and she's combating that idea that that's how she's thought of. She really needs to do it for herself more than anything. The whole book is about can you find love in this world, can you really find those connections, because at the end of the day that's what matters. For her, it's love of other human beings and love of music. That's why I dedicated the book to music lovers and lovers everywhere because it's about love and connection at the end of the day.

Alison Stewart: Reading it, I recognized from MTV days, I recognized so many of these moments. There's little Easter eggs for people who have been in the music business. Were you always storing away these anecdotes about life on the road one day or did they resurface for you?

Susanna: They resurfaced. I have somewhere in my storage unit my day calendars from back in the day, and they probably have a lot of really interesting little things that would trigger memories. Memories surfaced without me even knowing there were memories. When I immersed myself in writing fiction, I went through that portal and was in this other universe inside my head. Oftentimes, I would notice it later, "Yes, that happened to me and that's why it's surfaced," but I wasn't aware of it right off the bat.

Alison Stewart: Jane is always worried that she can't perform again, that she can't really do it. Did that ever happen to you?

Susanna: It happens every time I'm standing in the wings. I had to drill down on what that feeling was and even my book editor was like, "Tell us more." It was in the original manuscript but the more I got reads, I guess you could say, people wanted to know the blow by blow moments of what it actually feels like. The way I describe it in the book is that she always hears her heart pounding in her ears so loud. There's so much anxiety right before you step out in front of an audience, an expectant audience staring at you because to sing, you have to relax your throat. You can't be completely frozen with panic even if your heart is thundering. It was like I tried to describe how she processes through that. You're taking deep breaths for Jane, I can feel it, to go okay, because you can't really sing if you're that stressed. You have to turn into this other-- You have to let this other person come out.

Alison Stewart: Jane meets a professor on a plane and one of the songs in the playlist is the Theme From Shaft which we're going to out on. Tell us, why the Theme of Shaft?

Susanna: Okay, so I've always been afraid of flying and I decided early on that I needed a song to empower me. I love the Theme From Shaft, Isaac Hayes, the Theme From Shaft. I started to realize that when I would time it exactly when the wheels rolled as you start to roll down the runway, it times so perfectly. It made me feel both brave, strong like Shaft, listen to the lyrics sometimes. Also, even the arrangement of the song, there's flutes that come in right when the wheels lift off, it just times perfectly.

Alison Stewart: The name of the album is This Bird has Flown, it's out tomorrow. The album The Deep End is out on Friday. My guest has been Susanna Hoffs. Susanna, thanks for coming to the studio.

Susanna: Thank you for having me.

[music: Theme From Shaft]

Alison Stewart: That is All Of It for today. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here next time.

[music: Theme From Shaft]

 

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.