Karen O: "Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs dedicated their song "Maps" to one of her idols PJ Harvey"
Karen O: "On this last tour we did in Europe, I got to meet and play alongside Bjork and PJ Harvey, and I couldn't talk to either one of them, I was so itimidated. I become such a dork when it comes to women I admire. After seeing the power of their shows. I'm left kind of speechless and feeling shitty about what I do. I'm humbled."
Karen O: "O cites Harvey, the gothic blues queen of '90s alt-rock, as an influence: ``I always felt like there was this very dark underbelly and perversity to her lyrics and her music that was working on a lot of different levels that I didn't see in anyone else's music. I really connected with that.''
Karen O: "Would you like to write with PJ Harvey" "I would but her words would overflow over the top of mine"
Nick Zinner: "PJ Harvey is at the top of my list, Mick Harvey too" (on people he would like to collaborate with)
Bloc Party: "Choose PJ Harvey's "Down By The Water" when they host the show"
Jamie Stewart(Xiu Xiu): "Bernard Sumner, Steven Cropper, Toni Iommi, Rob Fisk, Daniel Ash, Nick Drake, PJ Harvey, Blixa Bargeld, Derek Bailey, Sarah Lipstate, Tom Petty. (on the guitarists who have had the greatest impact on his sound)
Jamie Stewart(Xiu Siu): "2. PJ Harvey Her playing is mean and dirty. It does not mess around at all ever. She wastes no notes like a spear of bees!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Every time I have seen her shows, the songs where it is just the band playing are OK but as soon as she picks up her guitar it becomes solid, grey lead."(his list of his 10 favourite guitarists)
Jamie Stewart(Xiu Xiu): "Art Garfunkle, Devendra Banhart, Satomi from Deerhoof, Michael Stipe, Ian Curtis, Ozzy Osborne, David Bowie, Blixa Bargeld, Michael Gira, David Sylvian, Screaming Jay Hawkins, Paul Weller, numerous Kabuki singers, David Byrne, Sam Cooke, Polly Harvey, Anonymous 4, Yabbazuki Eye, Elvis, Nick Cave, Kelly Fisk, all the singers on Indestructible Beat of Soweto, Kim Deal, Tracy Chapman, Thom Yorke, Martin Gore, Diamanda Galas, Sam and Dave, Gordon Gano, Bernard Sumner, Horance Andy, Willie Nelson, numerous Islamic liturgical singers, John Darnielle, John Lennon, 1000 1950's torch song singers, Madonna, Roy Orbison, Andy Bell, Johnny Cash, Nick Drake, Billie Holiday, Bjork, Peter Murphy, Howlin' Wolf, 1000 Chinese funeral music singers, Muddy Waters, Antony and the Johnsons and Nico. (on who he considers the most influential singers)
Danielle Dax: "Well, perhaps I'm too obscure to have that much of an influence, people would look to Bjork or PJ Harvey. But at least I hope my influence could be utilised in a good way, I mean that if men are going to make it difficult then fuck 'em do it on their own."
Exene Cervenka(X): " Any dream collaborations for you--artists that you'd like to work with?" "I'd like to work with so many people--you have no idea. You know who I'd really like to work with on a record? Moby. I would love to have him produce a record of mine. I like PJ Harvey a lot. I like Bjork a lot."
Exene Cervenka(X): " Exene doesn't understand why PJ Harvey performs in ballgowns"
John Doe(X): "I interviewed John Doe and told him about Giant Sand and PJ Harvey doing “Johny Hit And Run Paulene” in concert and he was floored, saying, “Get out of here!” He was incredulous and honored, just got a big kick out of it."
John Doe(X): "Get out of here! P.J. Harvey doing Johny'?!? I am just fucking floored! Doe laughs with delight then chuckles conspiratorially and adds, Now why doesn't she call me up and have me open her shows?"
DJ Bonebrake(X): "Later we stayed and chatted for a while and I told him that an album would come out with that song in which Polly did the part of Exene Cervenka. To which he told me that some days earlier, at one of his concerts in Canada, some kids had approached him to give him compliments and to tell him that they had much appreciated his decision to play a PJ Harvey cover song. Something that he hadn't done, though. Strange, isn't it? They liked Polly's songs, but he simply didn't play them with his band. What does this prove? That there exists a triangle in the evolution of music, a figure with three angles, to which everything returns, even if who is in it doesn't notice it. The fact that PJ captured Exene's way of singing, practically without ever having heard her, proves that the music exists prior to the persons who interpret it. That kind of mysterious energy is what we now celebrate with the cover song Johny Hit And Run Paulene done by Giant Sand with PJ Harvey."
Niagara (Destroy All Monsters): "I was like get the fuck outta here" (on hearing PJ Harvey's Rid of Me)
Kaiser Chiefs: "Play PJ Harvey's "Good Fortune" for their appearance on rage"
Chrissie Amphlett(The Divinyls): "There's some bands I like , but on the balance I get more from going back. I go back to the old type singers, who sing from that place. But I love Elastica, and PJ Harvey. She sings form the place I sing from. "
Bernard Fanning(Powderfinger): "PJ Harvey was absolutely incredible at the BDO"
Grant McLennan(Go-Betweens): "Its a good line-up. PJ Harvey, Placebo, Rammstein, some Australian bands, You Am I, Powderfinger. It should be good.
Robert Forster(Go-Betweens): "I really like a song called 'Hit the City' with PJ Harvey on it."
Mr Jim(Misfits): "Enjoying PJ Harvey & Gordon Gano's "Hitting the Ground"
Pinky Beecroft(Machine Gun Felatio): "Beecroft's internet diary is an open window through his ostensibly piss-taking facade. His unhealthy obsession with Polly Harvey, first from an impossible distance and, much later, quaking in an adjacent aeroplane seat on the 2003 Big Day Out, poignantly exposes the rock-star wannabe in all of us."
Pinky Beecroft(Machine Gun Felatio): "I get to see PJ Harvey. Live. Three-piece. And she plays for hours. And she plays a whole lot of stuff from Rid Of Me, including a smokin' version of the title track, and she plays an absolutely honkin' version of To Bring You My Love, and she plays all the songs that make you believe there is a deity."
Pinky Beecroft(Machine Gun Felatio): " And all the way home I've been thinking. I'm thinking that a few years ago - maybe some time around when PJ Harvey played the Enmore Theatre, or maybe around the time when I turned a certain age, I dunno, but I remember I got depressed… really truly depressed and yes maybe it was some kindof existential crisis because I realised this: I will never get to sleep with Polly Jean Harvey. That realisation - believe it or not - hit me kindof hard. I mean… it's not like I spent time truly believing that somebody like Polly Jean was hanging out to lie down with Beecroft. I'm full of shit, definitely, but not that full. HOWEVER………… I am allowed to dream, and dreaming is what I have done. I have dreamt of PJ Harvey. There have been times in my life when I considered PJ Harvey to be the single sexiest force of nature on earth. She is well up there. But one day… the thought arrived in my head: the thought, in its purest, simplest form: it will never happen. At that moment I realised that life is not endless in its possibilities, and that dreams are hard to hold onto unless they have some vague whiff of possibility (probability?) to them. But now life in fact had dragged me to this point, had held me down, squirming, and said tiger, it said, beecroft, a whole host of crazy and wonderful things may well happen in your life but you can bet the house, YOU CAN BET THE FUCKING HOUSE THAT PJ HARVEY IS NEVER GOING TO SHAG YOU. .................And all the way home I've been thinking. I'm thinking that a few years ago - maybe some time around when PJ Harvey played the Enmore Theatre, or maybe around the time when I turned a certain age, I dunno, but I remember I got depressed… really truly depressed and yes maybe it was some kindof existential crisis because I realised this: I will never get to sleep with Polly Jean Harvey. That realisation - believe it or not - hit me kindof hard. I mean… it's not like I spent time truly believing that somebody like Polly Jean was hanging out to lie down with Beecroft. I'm full of shit, definitely, but not that full. HOWEVER………… I am allowed to dream, and dreaming is what I have done. I have dreamt of PJ Harvey. There have been times in my life when I considered PJ Harvey to be the single sexiest force of nature on earth. She is well up there. But one day… the thought arrived in my head: the thought, in its purest, simplest form: it will never happen. At that moment I realised that life is not endless in its possibilities, and that dreams are hard to hold onto unless they have some vague whiff of possibility (probability?) to them. But now life in fact had dragged me to this point, had held me down, squirming, and said tiger, it said, beecroft, a whole host of crazy and wonderful things may well happen in your life but you can bet the house, YOU CAN BET THE FUCKING HOUSE THAT PJ HARVEY IS NEVER GOING TO SHAG YOU.............And that's sad. BUT…… tonight I stood seven feet away from Ms Harvey as she sang and played her enormous heart out, and I suddenly realised something altogether more important. I think it's maybe not PJ Harvey I wanted to sleep with. (I mean, yes I did and … yes to all that that entails, and she's lain with the devil to bring me her love, etc etc…… but there's something bigger, on the other side of that, and it's this... It's rock'n'roll for which I lust. It's rock'n'roll I want to shag. I WANT TO FUCK MUSIC. I want to go to bed with it, I want to be under it, next to it, on top of it, I want to roll around half-clothed, half-mad and totally starkers with a melody, I want to doze off and wake up again before it's light and I want to go down on the groove, I want to go down on the GROOVE for hours and hours and hours and I want to have a torrid weekend with ROCK, where we're sore but we just can't seem to stop and I want to put on old clothes and walk down the street in search of late evening breakfast and I want to end up fucking in an alley, against a wall, just the two of us…It's rock'n'roll I want to shag. And PJ Harvey made me realise this. And she played in spite of the fact that the power kept blowing out, she waited while they fixed it and then started the song again, and then the power went down and she waited, and her ferocity did not dim, and she played some more, and when the power went down a third time there was rage and frustration in the air until suddenly a small part of the crowd began to sing, they sang her a Maori song which was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful, and then everybody in the room was singing along - myself included, and I don't know any Maori songs - as an offering to PJ and her band…… and the power came back, and the band finished the set with no further mishaps and it was like nothing could mess with this particular little train and that, I think, made us all realise that we've been having sex with rock'n'roll for years, we've been loving it and loving TO it for as long as any of us can remember AND it made me think this: Rock'n'roll is the best fuck in the world.[And now I'm going to try to write all this as a song. IT'S ROCKIN' WOT I WANNA FUCK. Somehow I've got to make it into a song. It's not yet daylight, I'm staring out at Auckland, tomorrow I'm playing the Big Day Out here, and in some ways that seems entirely insignificant because I know that whatever I do tomorrow it will never be anything anywhere near the quality of PJ Harvey and her ilk…… but on the other hand, it feels like I'm going to be part of a day where nothing matters except music. And THAT feels like the best idea in the world.]" (Big Day Out Diary 2003)
Richard Einhorn(classical composer): "What music do you listen to?" "PJ Harvey. Kate Bush"
Tom Larkin(Shihad): "Apart from that, just resting and I love going to see bands live, even though I just saw the most average PJ Harvey show I've seen in my life. It bummed me out because two of her shows I've regarded as emotionally life-changing. She's gone and got a rock band and she's lost all the subtlety and the intimacy."
Tom Larkin(Shihad): ""The Flight over had one redeeming feature in that I was seated beside Rob Ellis who played Drums for PJ Harvey not only on the BDO but on 'Dry' and 'Rid of me' as well - really cool - We just banged on about music and how he did stuff with polly and recording with Steve Albini etc. He has been one of my hero's ever since I heard 'rid of me' in 94 and it was an absolute thrill to spend time with the guy. I got all groupied out."
Alice Bag(The Bags): "We went to see PJ Harvey last night at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood. PJ rocked hard but her guitarist was way too Moons Over My Hammy. Less ham, more jam please."
Alice Bag"(The Bags): " How much awareness do you have of later generations of punk women?" "I guess the answer to your question is that I don’t think of women playing what sounds like punk (or punk inspired) to me as “later generations” because it is all one continuum and I either like what a musician is doing or I don’t. The only thing I’ve noted before is that female musicians seem to be much more comfortable onstage and are more willing to challenge audience expectations than the females I grew up seeing twenty or thirty years ago. Take, for example PJ Harvey and Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls. They have fun with their sexuality but it’s not central to what they do as artists."
Adalita Srsen(Magic Dirt): "Adalita thanks PJ Harvey on her record"
Adalita Srsen(Magic Dirt): "Adalita from Magic Dirt has been working on her vocals and is sounding mighty impressive. In her fave 10 albums she lists PJ's TBYML and suggests "you don't die without owning this record, if my house was burning down this would be one of the things that I would grab first".
Adalita Srsen(Magic Dirt): "Lists PJ Harvey as one of her favourite artists"
Natalie Imbruglia: "I don't get star-struck very often. PJ Harvey made me go a bit stupid in the lobby of a hotel in Los Angeles - I made a bit of an idiot of myself. I stupidly said, 'my husband really likes you', and put him in it instead of me. He was angry with me for saying that. I even said, 'Would you like to go for a drink?' And gave her my room number!"
Natalie Imbruglia: "she had writers block when writing her second album cos she was listening to too much PJ Harvey. She had to stop listening to pj harvey to be able to write her second album."
Natalie Imbruglia: "Last time around you got lumped in with the whole Alanis angst rock scene. Did that mis-represent you? "I don't think so. A lot of that was authentic with where I was in my life. I was definitely a lot more angry then. That was an influence around that time. I tried to take that a step further when I started the second album and the songs just sounded awful. I was listening to far too much PJ Harvey and I was trying to be angry and I wasn't angry so it was contrived. I tried to figure out where I was." (I've just got to say that this woman is an idiot and she's definitely contributed to giving Australian pop a bad name!)
Natalie Imbruglia: "When I was writing my second album I was trying too hard to be like P J Harvey and became quite demoralised because she could never be as good"
Amy Gore(Gore Gore Girls): "Likes PJ Harvey"
Last edited by Polly_Jean_Cave on Fri Apr 19, 2013 10:37 am, edited 18 times in total.
|