Biography
It's
a heatwave in Los Angeles and Jewel is trying to find somewhere
cool to sit. She refuses to get air-conditioning in her home and
now she's paying the consequences. Then there's that old beat-up
station wagon she's still driving. That doesn't have
air-conditioning either. While her career has heated to boiling
point in the past two years, Jewel refuses to give in to the
trappings of fame. After all, it was only four years ago she was
subsisting on carrots and peanut butter, living in a Volkswagen
van and washing in the basin of her local Kmart toilet. That was
before her debut album, Pieces of You, went on to sell 10 million
copies around the world. Her introspective lovelorn vocal
evocations struck the right emotive chord, and, while Jewel
seemed to be riding the feminine bandwagon at the time, her
storybook life and picture-postcard looks gave her the media edge
many other female singers lacked. "I went from being
homeless to being rich in four years, but just because someone
has a nice voice or is attractive to look at, I don't think makes
that okay. To me, it's too preferential," Jewel said.
"This business can be quite difficult and hard work. I guess
you do it so you get famous. But that never really interested me,
I'd rather be home in Alaska. "I love what I do and I get to
fulfil my creative desire, but I'm more interested in the fact
that fame gives me a public platform to help people." With
her humanistic outlook, Jewel is hoping her new album, Spirit,
will save a few more souls. "I wanted this album to have a
certain theme. For me, the past two years have been about trying
to stay balanced," she said. "When you're on the road,
you see so much pain and beauty, but I think what you discover is
that we are all basically the same - we all yearn for love.
"The more I travelled the world, the more I've seen how
lonely everybody feels. I guess I'm hoping this album is like an
antidote to say, 'keep the faith'." Jewel is also hoping her
new album will be more applauded for her writing abilities. Her
first album, with its simple sentiments expressed on such songs
as You Were Meant For Me, was often dismissed by critics for its
trite lyrics, but Jewel said it was unfair to judge an album that
was a time capsule of when she was 19. "Those songs seem
very old to me now," the 24-year-old singer said. "I
wrote a second album, but because Pieces of You took so long to
take off, it was shelved, so Spirit, in effect, is like a third
album to me." In that time, she also earned kudos as a
writer when her book of poetry, A Night Without Armor, became a
mainstay on the New York best-sellers list. "I was going to
put a book out that was more airtight critically, but I decided
to put poems in that I wrote when I was 16, and I was pleased
because most kids got it and they felt encouraged to write,
instead of being put off by some boring rhyme scheme." Jewel
gives a large percentage of her earnings to a non-profit
organisation she founded called Higher Ground for Humanity, which
acts as an umbrella group that supports other struggling
non-profit organisations. "Money gives you a false sense of
independence, but I don't really feel I have success unless
everyone else does," she said. She managed to shock the
paparazzi when she turned up to the Grammys in a dress that
looked like it was made from Glad Wrap. Here, she is wearing an
exquisitely embroided Donna Karan top and a large topaz ring on
her finger. "Sure, I like nice things, who doesn't? But
decadence does make me feel uncomfortable. I'm a pretty practical
person. I was raised on the land of Alaska, so there are a lot of
things I don't see any need for, really." And, while she
wasn't particularly looking for an acting career, it was her
pioneer spirit that gave her an unexpected break. Acclaimed
director Ang Lee (Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm) cast
Jewel as the lead in his Civil War epic Ride With The Devil,
which will be released next year. And no one was more surprised
than Jewel. "I gave a terrible reading, so I was shocked he
even wanted to see me again. But he was pretty bent on using me,
even though I had a long way to go to hit the mark." Jewel
plays an 18-year-old widow, and many of the scenes saw her
working the land much as she did in Alaska, except for one big
difference - this time she had to wear corsets. I was raised
leading teams of cattle and pulling logs on horses, but in a
corset it's a whole different matter - you can hardly breathe and
you can hardly move. "I was in corsets for four months, and
it made me realise what those women really went through.
"This movie certainly wasn't glamorous. It's not Gone With
The Wind with pretty costumes." Jewel dismisses the details
of her childhood, saying they make her sound like a "cartoon
character". "I think the media makes me look like I was
a girl raised in an igloo by some wolves," she said. In
reality, she was brought up on a 350h homestead established by
her Swiss immigrant grandfather. There was no running water and
no TV, and her family ate what they raised. Both her parents
added to their income by singing in local bars, and at the age of
six, Jewel would join them onstage. When her parents divorced,
she continued to perform with her father, before deciding to join
her mother in California, where the two of them lived in vans
parked next to each other. They still live together, but in more
luxurious surroundings these days. - Taken from "Pop's mild
wild child" - The Sunday Mail, 6 December 1998. Written by
Katherine Tulich