Terri Nunn of Berlin

By Alex Teitz

    Berlin is not a band whose music is for the weak. In the 1980’s they led a revolution of synthesizer-driven music with such songs as “Take Your Breath Away” and “No More Words.” Before the days of Garbage and Hole, Berlin was setting the stage with the wildly talented, seductive, and sexual Terri Nunn. Although the band has changed over time, Nunn remains as alive and awake to new ideas as she ever was.

This year Berlin will release Voyeur, produced by Mitchell Sigman and Peter Rafelson. Berlin’s music is electric and forceful. It weaves with cords of steel-strong music. Voyeur is more of a first step than a return to favored ground. Voyeur also includes Billy Corgan who co-wrote “Sacred and Profane.” The new album is being done on a new label, iMusic.

Nunn speaks in bursts of energy. She is not naïve about what the music industry is, but in hearing her describe the making of Voyeur, one hears that childlike excitement. This is not a new toy, but a new life filled with the depths of the imagination. For more information visit berlinpage.com

FEMMUSIC: Can you describe your songwriting technique?

TN: I can go two ways and with the writers I’m working with right now it’s usually one way. They like writing the music and then I take the music and write the lyric to it. My general way of working is I spend a lot of time just writing lyrics by myself with no music. I use rhythm and the subject, the story, something relevant to me and then I just compile those things and when one, or another one of the writers gives me a piece of music, it almost always happens, just like that movie, “If you build it they will come.”, that something that I have will be perfect for it. It’ll take a bit of re-writing to fit it to the melody and the rhythm of the song, but I apply it and it’s a matter of a day or two before we can record it. Get together, listen to it, they tell me it sucks or it’s good (laughs). That’s usually the way it goes.
I also can give lyrics to somebody and they write music to that. It really depends on whom I working with. I like both ways.

FEMMUSIC: What was the biggest challenge making Voyeur?

TN: The biggest challenge was finding the right combination of writers. That’s huge and it has been huge in my life, and over the years I’ve grown to be more grateful for the time that I’ve found a good combination of people to work with than ever. Because when I was young I thought, “Oh yeah!”, this will happen all the time. I worked with John Crawford in the beginning and it took off relatively early in my life. And when he and I fell out I thought, “Oh Well. I’ll just find another one. It’ll be easy.” And it took years of trying out different combinations and working with different people before magic, on a consistent basis, happened again for me. It happened sporadically here and there but that…Once that’s put in place it gets so much easier. (laughs)
The partnership is everything. It’s not only the joy of doing it with somebody but having results that get us off and get the world off consistently. That’s really hard. It has been very hard for me. Maybe it’s easier for other people. Finding mainly Mitchell, Mitchell Sigman my keyboard player and producer. He came into the band a year and a half ago and that’s really when Voyeur started. That’s when most of these songs were done with him and then Peter Rafelson, another writer, producer came in at the end of last year. That was magical. That was very lucky.

FEMMUSIC: How did you find Mitchell and Peter?

TN: Mitchell I found through audition. The keyboard player we working with at that time, he got an offer to do a straight tour and he couldn’t do a few shows coming up, and it was enough shows that I had to find somebody else, and initially I was only looking for somebody to back him up but Mitchell came in and he was, he is such a genius. He can play everything except drums. If he could sing he wouldn’t need me because he can write, he’s a great producer, he plays guitar better than he plays keyboards. We have a guitar player so he’s playing keys in this band. And we started writing right away, and it was so good, that I had to tell the other keyboard player, “I’m sorry I’m going to have to keep Mitchell.” He’s essential to the band and getting the new material out there. So that’s how I met him.
And Peter I met at a party! Last November I was at a party and I was introduced to him. He’s produced and written with Madonna and Stevie Nicks and The Corrs and so a friend of mine introduced us and he was all over me and the record was pretty much done at that point but he said, “Do you have room for me? Can we write something? Try something else?” And I said, “I don’t know if I’m as mainstream as the kind of stuff your doing.” And he said, “Well, what kind of thing would you like to write?” I said, “Well we really need a ballad, and I’d really need something like ‘Massive Attack.’ Like ‘Teardrop’ if you know that?” And he said, “Oh yeah! I’d love it!” And within a day he sent me the music that was awesome! That turned out to be a song called, “The World is Waiting” on the record. I loved it and said, “When and where?” We wrote that song in a day and fell in love with each other and wrote four more.
It’s really like dating because it’s so intense and so intimate it’s everything but sex, but actually fucking. It’s getting into each other’s heads and into each other’s hearts and creating. And who knows if it’s going to work. Most of the time it doesn’t. It’s a crapshoot, really.

FEMMUSIC: I was extremely curious to see that you worked with Billy Corgan on this as well. How did that come about?

TN: I called him and said I wanted to work with him. Write with him. I called three people. I had my dream list of people to work with on this record: Billy Corgan, Trent Reznor and Moby. Moby said, “Well, I’m not going to work with you, and I just turned down Madonna. So I’m too busy. I’m working on my own stuff.” Trent Reznor didn’t even call me back. Fucker! And Billy Corgan said, “Yeah! What are you doing? I’m coming out to LA in five days.” So he came over and there was a song that I’d written with Mitchell called, “Sacred and Profane.” He said, “I really like that but I’d like to do something different with that. Would that be okay?” And I said, “Yeah.” So he re-wrote it. Re-wrote the music underneath the melody and words that I had and it was amazing. He slowed it down. That was originally a mid-tempo, fast rocking song. He slowed it down and changed the chord progression underneath and it was so much more emotional than I’d ever expected. I’d wrote it for Michael Hutchins and he sympathized with my feelings about him because he’d written a song on his last record, Adore, called “Shame” for Michael Hutchins. So we had a lot of similar feelings about him. He made the song amazing. And again it took him like a day, sitting there, trying out things and it was wonderful.

FEMMUSIC: As a woman in the music industry, have you been discriminated against?

TN: (Long pause) My first answer is no but I’m looking into every avenue of my past: business, or in the press…The only place I can say that it’s been noticeable is in the press because I see a double standard in how men talk about sex and their sexuality in their music and it’s a lot more acceptable than when women talk about it. I’ve been put down a lot more than I’ve noticed, the men, my colleagues in other bands who do the same, have been put down. That’s the only place that I’ve felt it and it’s really stung.
I’m not going to stop doing it because of it. But that’s the only place, really. In fact in most areas I’ve found it to be an asset because it’s a largely male dominated business. Being a woman has given me more visibility. “Oh! What can she do? Oh she’s a girl, what can she do?” In the beginning especially, I think we were listened to a little more because of that. It helped.

FEMMUSIC: What one thing would you like to change about the music industry?

TN: It is changing, thank god, and I am happy for it. Not as fast as I’d like. The record company that I’ve hooked up with right now is the beginning of that change, and it’s so exciting for me to be part of what they’re doing because they’re not just talking about it, they’re doing it which is to make artists a partner in the record as opposed to making the artist a hired gun and taking everything that we create and owning it, and giving us a small pittance for the privilege. That’s the way it’s always been, and now it’s changing. This company we’re equal partners. In fact I actually own everything and am licensing my music to iMusic and we’re equally winning and losing together in the venture. Record companies are very important in marketing and distribution. That is so important, and promotion. I don’t know how to do any of that. I’ve never felt that I was more important in the business but I’m not less either. And finally, I’ve found a company that is honoring that and doing it. There are others. Beyond Music is doing it to with a few of their deals with artists.
And that’s what Don Henley, Courtney Love and all these artists are coming out against. We’ve been taken. We really have, for a long time and it needs to change. And it is changing.
It’s like being at the beginning again. It’s like being at the beginning of a whole new wave. It’s a wave because it’s going to happen. Now all the artists are going to want to sign with iMusic and all the companies that are doing it so that’s what’s going to happen.
That’s wonderful! I’m glad to see it in my lifetime.

FEMMUSIC: What advice would you give to an artist just starting out?

TN: (pause) Be great and be unique both are equally important. Being unique creates longevity in the music world. Being great will get business going if you want to make music a business but being unique creates an endless career if you want it because when you can’t be replaced, there’s always a market for your work. If you can be replaced, or there is already a bunch of other “you’s” out there those are one hit wonders. Those are people who haven’t chosen to create something different that people can’t get anywhere else.
That has been the best advice given to me and I’ve made a point of following that in the beginning. Luckily Berlin answered my ad because I asked for original music that hadn’t been heard before. And they were so far in that direction that nobody else wanted to join their band because Berlin, in the beginning, was something called Synthesizer Music, and that was something that hadn’t even happened in America yet in 1979. There were a couple of bands overseas, one called Ultravox and one called Craftwork who were starting to do that in Germany and England but we really hadn’t attempted that here. And when I heard their music it was, “What the fuck is fuck is this?!” And it was GREAT! I’d never heard anything like it in my life and this could be that great, unique sound that will make a difference to music. “I could make a difference with this.” If we can have the guts to keep going, this could really do something. Because this hadn’t even been done with a girl voice yet. So we were unique in the world if we could pull it off.
So that’s my advice because it did work. And we had the love and the perseverance to follow it through and be laughed at and all those things that most people don’t want to deal with. Being unique, people laugh. (Laughing) They discount you. It takes a lot more to go that route but it is worth it if people want to be in it a long time. So that would be my advice to a young musician.