Jewel’s New Memoir Is Equal Parts Tell-All and Self-HelpI spent 14 of my first 18 years cloistered in a small, progressive private school in my leafy inner-city neighborhood in Chicago. Three days a week the entire student body, squirming 4-year-olds alongside rowdy 18-year-olds, would gather in the auditorium for an assembly. Sometimes the stage would go to an alumnus, returning to offer us a glimpse into our futures; sometimes it belonged to seventh-graders lip-synching and writhing à la Britney Spears for a talent show. There was the time that Cornel West spoke, and another time when a local woman with AIDs told us about life with her disease. One day, I’m guessing I was in the fifth grade, a pretty young blonde woman appeared, guitar in hand, and played us a few songs from an album that hadn’t yet made its way to our tape decks. Most memorably, she yodeled.
“No way!” exclaims the singer Jewel Kilcher when I tell her this story by phone. “I think I remember that school! There were young kids. I remember singing “Pieces of You,” and some kid said, ‘Did you say “Jew?”’ I was like, ‘Well . . .’ ”
That appearance, as Jewel’s new memoir, Never Broken, reveals, was likely part of a series of school concerts she did to promote her first album, Pieces of You, in the year that lapsed between its quiet release and when it began selling like hotcakes (it went platinum 12 times over). Soon enough Jewel would shoot to fame on the strength of lo-fi, talky singles like “Who Will Save Your Soul” and “You Were Meant for Me.” Her appeal lay equally in her husky, acrobatic voice; her earnest, folkie Lilith Fair sound—the antidote to cynical grunge—and her exotic backstory. If you spent any time watching MTV in the mid-to-late ’90s, you knew that Jewel hailed from the wilds of Alaska and that she had for a time been so down and out that she had to live in her car.
You probably didn’t know that she once fondled Bob Dylan’s nose in hopes of sculpting it, or that she ran a mule train out of the Grand Canyon as barter for a place to crash. In Never Broken, the singer drifts between a linear telling of her own story and interludes in which she breaks down the principles she’s drawn from her hardscrabble existence into reader-friendly takeaways. It’s not for the self-help adverse: If statements like “Being a witness to your behavior is the first step in meaningful change” make your skin crawl, seek out another of the plethora of lady-rocker memoirs out this fall (perhaps Chrissie Hynde’s or Carrie Brownstein’s).
But for those who don’t mind—or who enjoy—the occasional detour into armchair psychology, Jewel is a clear-eyed analytical chronicler of her rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches story. She writes about her itinerant, impoverished childhood, living on a homestead in Alaska and playing music with her alcoholic, abusive father in biker bars and dives across the state; of emancipating herself at 15 and scoring a spot at the prestigious arts boarding school Interlochen; of graduating and reuniting with her long-lost mother in San Diego, only to end up homeless, living in her car, suffering from chronic kidney infections. Too sick to hold down an office job, Jewel sought to make money the way she knew how: with her voice and her guitar. She eventually landed a regular gig playing a San Diego coffee shop. Word began to spread. An A&R person from Atlantic Records showed up and signed her. Pretty soon, Jewel was recording her songs at Neil Young’s ranch, opening for Dylan, dating Sean Penn, and acting in Ang Lee’s Ride With the Devil.
But while Jewel’s star was rising, her mother, who also became her manager, was spending her daughter’s money as fast as it came in. In 2003, with multiple multiplatinum albums under her belt, having spent the past decade touring nonstop, Jewel discovered that she was broke and in debt. It was a revelation that also opened her eyes to other ugly realities: that her mother had systematically undermined her confidence to keep her dependent and under the sway of cultlike spiritual leaders.
Jewel deprogrammed herself, cut ties with her mother, and worked her way back to the top. Musically, she’s refused to stay put. She controversially reinvented herself as a pop star with 2003’s dance-y 0304, then went country with 2008’s Perfectly Clear. She released a best-selling collection of poetry, 1998’s A Night Without Armor, recorded multiple Christmas albums, another of lullabies, and appeared on Dancing With the Stars. In 2008 she married her longtime boyfriend, rodeo star Ty Murray. The couple had a son, Kase, in 2011. Last year they announced that they were divorcing.
It felt like the right time, she tells me, to reflect. Last Friday the singer, now in her early 40s, released her 12th studio album, the acoustic-heavy, emotional Picking Up the Pieces, which, as the title suggests, draws from recent experience, particularly the pain of her failed marriage. It’s also, as her label is framing it, a return to form, to her folk roots, artistically a sort of companion piece to Pieces of You.
“I’ve never really known what to call myself,” Jewel says in a bemused tone. “I guess other people don’t either. Which is fine with me.” Read on for more from the singer about writing Never Broken, collaborating with Dolly Parton, and that time she accidentally lost Bob Dylan’s digits.
So first off: Why write a memoir now?It’s funny, when I was 20-something, I was approached to do a movie about my life and I just flat-out refused, which is hilarious. I’m sure it would have been a good thing for me. It seemed like I was too young, too much of my story was unknown. I think now is the right time for a couple reasons: One is what I’m going through; it’s a good time for me to stop and look back. I’m 40 years old, I have my son, and I have a life that I’ve chosen. It’s a safe time to reflect. It’s also because I keep getting this question: How did you go from being abused, to moving out at 15, to being homeless, to turning things around? There were a lot of things I did. Music wasn’t really my main goal in life; my main goal was figuring out how in the heck to be happy. And it’s been a hell of a journey.
The memoir has a self-help bent. Do you think of it that way?It’s probably a bit of a hybrid. Not that I consider myself a self-help expert, but if what I’ve learned in 40 years, with a lot of pain, can help somebody else in less time and less pain, that would definitely make the book worthwhile. I’m acutely aware of how people suffer, and that very few people talk in a transparent way about their suffering. It isolates us. I think it’s good when anybody can share their story with authenticity. I’ve learned a lot by listening to other people, about how they handle things, how they perceive things. I guess I feel a little bit of an obligation to share those things.
Was it painful to revisit some of these memories? Was it an emotional process to put it all down?It’s been an emotional year: going through a divorce, finally being still for the first time in my life, reflecting back on everything, not just the failure of my marriage, but really allowing myself to sit and feel what my life has been. Yeah, it was sad. It definitely brought up a lot of feelings. I’ve just been so focused on surviving, picking up the pieces, and moving on that I’ve never had time to process all of it. At the same time, I hope I didn’t write a book where people feel sorry for me. Because I don’t feel sorry for myself at all.
You write about being very conscious of writing about your real feelings from an early age as a way of cutting through the chaos around you. Were you really that self-aware as a child, or is that more of an adult projection?That’s a nuanced question. The language I used to describe it is adult language. I wouldn’t have described it to you that way back then. I did have an overwhelming feeling that I was losing track of myself, and that I was lying when I was scared. And I was conscious that writing was a breadcrumb trail back to myself. I was aware of it.
How do you reconcile that lifelong practice of being objective about your own feelings with this painful period in your 20s in which you were being programmed by your mother and the people your mother surrounded herself with? Those things seem at odds.It was a really difficult thing to write about, and it’s a hard thing to describe. I definitely feel like I put myself to sleep, if that makes sense. I really wanted love, and I really had a core, very deep, very old wound that made me feel like, I don’t know what I’m doing. I was doing things that, looking back, were good; it was hard for me at the time to see that they were good. When someone comes along and says they know better, they see you, and they love you, it’s sort of a relief, because I don’t know what-the-f I’m doing. I guess that’s the best way I can describe this process.
I wrote a line in “Goodbye Alice in Wonderland”: Your love can be used against you. I feel like it’s something I used against myself. I didn’t mean to, but that desperate need for love made me very willing to not see the truth about things.
Do you hope your mom will read this book?I don’t really feel one way or the other about it. I’m not bitter and I’m not vindictive. For me, it’s about illustrating what a person could go through, and how you rise, and how you heal. I don’t perceive either of my parents to be bad people. I don’t think there’s really a black and white. People make decisions from whatever brought them in their lives to where they’re at. I try to just talk about what happened to me in my life, what brought me to where I’m at. I have to talk about other people in the process, but I really tried to keep it in my lane.
I loved your story about when Bob Dylan gave you his personal phone number and invited you to write songs together, and then you accidentally lost the number. Have you ever crossed paths with him again since then? And did you ever sculpt his nose?I have seen him. I never explained it. Maybe he’ll read the book and be like: That girl is mean! She never called!
No, I never did sculpt his nose. But it was a pretty hilarious moment. I love that he didn’t flinch. He was like, Okay, feel it! It was funny.
So the new album is being called your big return to folk music. Was that your intention?I do feel like it’s similar in spirit to my first album: There are country influences in both records; there are a lot of folk influences. You’ll hear both of those things in there.
You got a lot of flack when you went pop in 0304. Is there anything you’d do differently in retrospect?I don’t see one point as more valuable than another. For me, I was really lucky to have the mentors I had, like Neil Young and Bob Dylan. They made it abundantly clear that the only thing that matters is following your instincts. So even when I was 18, getting signed, I [realized] my favorite authors write their best work in their 50s and 60s, and my favorite songwriters usually wrote their best work in their 20s. I really attributed that to lifestyle. That’s why I’ve worked really hard at keeping myself alive as a writer, and taking the risks I need to keep myself interested and alive and vibrant and curious. So for me, it’s really been about exploration, not wanting to be limited. To me, being a sellout would have been doing “You Were Meant for Me” point two, point three, point four. I’d just as soon have an office job. It would never work for me.
I’ve never reinvented myself in how I hear that word used. I wanted, with 0304, to write a dance album that was smart, that was my tribute to Cole Porter, that had great melodies. It’s the same writer; it’s the same heart that informs all those records. I sort of describe it like my closet. If you go in my closet, you’ll see sweatpants and jeans, and you’ll see couture dresses. I like all those things. It doesn’t make me a different person because one day I like dressing in a fancy dress versus my jeans. I find the perception of music that way a bit odd. I don’t think fans use music that way. I don’t think fans feel like a different person because they have a Johnny Cash record and a Britney Spears record. I think a lot of fans have a lot of different types of albums on their phones, on their playlists. And I think artists are capable of the same thing. I feel like I am, certainly.
I underlined that line in the book, about how most singer-songwriters write their best work in their 20s versus novelists in their 50s. When you say that’s about lifestyle, do you mean that’s when musicians are struggling the most?I think novelists have a more reclusive lifestyle. Fame doesn’t affect them the same way. Celebrity doesn’t affect them the same way as it does a rock star. Whenever you stop thinking you have something to learn, when you get people around you to say you’re awesome, you’re great, you know everything. When you start believing that, you get a little out of touch with reality, because you’re living a really unreal life. You’re out of touch with people because you’re only seeing them from a stage. You’re living in private planes, you have groupies, you have managers. What are you going to be writing about? And if you’re not continuing your education, continuing to read voraciously, have a huge appetite . . . it’s like a river: You have to have headwaters that feed it or else it dries up. I think novelists typically have a lifestyle that lends itself to continued learning, to continued focus on the craft, and to the quiet that’s necessary to grow and develop. And musicians don’t often have that. It’s too busy. There’s not enough time between records. And God forbid you start believing your own press. It’s a death knell to creativity.
The new album includes “My Father’s Daughter,” a collaboration with Dolly Parton. Was that your first time meeting her?Yeah, I didn’t know her previously. As a child growing up on a homestead in Alaska, your heroes are few and far between, as far as role models who lived your lifestyle. Dolly Parton definitely did, and Loretta Lynn. I got to meet them both this year. Having Dolly play on the record was a dream come true. I never thought I would get to cross paths with her. She was tremendously funny and sharp and witty. She’s an amazing businesswoman. Not a lot of people realize what amazing things she’s done in the business for herself.
Did either one give you any good advice?Advice? Not really. Dolly just said my song reminded her of “Coat of Many Colors,” which was really flattering. Loretta, what she wrote for the back of my book was very touching. I’m so moved by her. I’ve always been so moved by both of their courage. When they came out, as women in the business, they were unapologetic about who the hell they were. It was so revolutionary. It was such a punk-rock thing, and they did it in the country sphere, which is so amazing to me.
