Through The Looking Glass

"Beyond Breaking Glass establishes Hazel O'Connor as much more than an
80s icon. If you ever get a chance to see her, don't think twice... just go."

Such raves reviews for her show at the Edinburgh Festival may have helped Hazel O' Connor to secure a slot in this year's Dublin Fringe Festival and even help sell her album titled after the theatrical/music show, but they don't actually pay the bills. That is "the one great lesson" Hazel O'Connor has learned from her new-found fame as a theatre-based artist touring Beyond Breaking Glass, which also is the subject of a movie which will probably end up at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival later this year. But will she herself be attending the festival? Well that depends on how far she can push her Visa card and how receptive her bank manager is to requests for an overdraft.
"This whole show, as well as the album, are very much the product of my own cottage industry" she admits."The whole thing started off as Irish harp and voice only doing a selection of songs from my career. Herbie Flowers who played that great bass line on things like Walk On The Wild Side and wrote 'Grandad' for Clive Dunne, did a similar show at Edinburgh and said I should do one with words and music and that idea evolved into my telling my own story. But it costs money to do your own show at Edinburgh: to get there, then pay for lodgings, and get food. Even of you get 50% of the take on a theatre door you don't get that for a month after the gig so you really are depending on a friendly bank manager. And the same applies to the new album we've done. Each time you're talking about laying out something in the region of #2,000."
That said, Hazel soon realised that she can sell copies of her album, Beyond Breaking Glass, after gigs by "standing there and selling them myself." This process alone will in time she hopes, pay back her debts. And though this may seem like a long way down from the days when Hazel O'Connor was "an icon of the 80s" she claims to be "much happier" controlling her own career in this sense, far from the "sharks in the music business" who ripped her off with "shady deals" and who she gleefully satirises in her show as "Mr Pelvis" and "Mr. Damage" from, eh, Shaft Records!
In Beyond Breaking Glass Hazel also tells a more personal tale. About her "difficult" childhood, leaving home at 15, living in Amsterdam, being raped at 16, then suddenly finding herself famous as a result of the movie Breaking Glass.
But just how much of the tale has Hazel decided is inappropriate for what is, after all, an evening's entertainment? Does talk of rape really fit in this context?
"No," she says emphatically. What I talk about more so is the effect the rape had, how I didn't tell anyone and after that, just ran away. And the show is very much about the effect certain experiences had on my life that led directly to certain songs, for example.
'Run Away' is about that very experience. And re-interpreting some of my old songs in this new setting really is exciting for me. Like "Pelvis" and "Damage" telling me, at one point, to sign a deal because no one else will want me that kind of shit they deal out to keep a person down! and I say "I signed it and cried, thinking maybe no one else does want me" then I sing 'Big Brother' from Breaking Glass. Giving that kind of background to the songs gives them a totally new meaning, even for people who've known the songs for years."
Happily, Beyond Breaking Glass both the show and album deliver what the title suggests, in the sense that they feature not just re-interpretations of old Hazel O'Connor songs but also newly composed tracks. Best of all, claims Hazel, is the fact that the new songs were written as a result of the state of "Panic" known only by those artists who are still struggling. To either simply pay back their Visa or reclaims their souls, artistically.
"That's what these past two years have been all about for me" she confides. "Reclaiming my soul. I was so young and it all happened so fast when I first became famous that I did get lost amid it all. So this album and show really is about getting back in touch with the part of me that always does and does still love to write, record and perform music. And songs on this album that are real crackers, as far as I'm concerned, because they were written in a state of desperation, are things like 'Thinking About You.' In fact, maybe writing during some kind of panic is the only way to make art. Great or otherwise!"