Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery

Check, one, two. Check.

Does anyone else get a little bit sad that they never got to go to Lilith Fair?

Featuring only women artists, so it was really, really cool.

It was an all-female music festival from 1997 to 1999, and I am shook to my core.

I remember someone bringing it up a few years ago.

And doing research on it and finding out

that all of my favorite artists had... had played, um, at this event.

Somebody like Sarah McLachlan and Sheryl Crow, Pat Benatar, Fiona Apple,

Jewel, and all these people that I had spent my whole life just adoring.

I was in disbelief that I'd never heard of it before.

And also just thinking that the name sounded really cool.

"Lilith Fair." Wow, that's really interesting.

It's quite curious because almost everybody I know

didn't know who Lilith was,

and she's such a strong and wonderful feminist figure.

In religious mythology,

-Lilith was Adam's first wife, before Eve. -

She was created out of the same stuff he was,

yet he refused to treat her as an equal, so she said, "I'm out of here."

Lilith left the Garden of Eden and built her own garden,

dancing and singing among women who, like her,

refused to surrender their strength.

Singer Sarah McLachlan has launched an all-female tour.

Whoo! Whoo!

One of the beautiful things about Lilith was we could be ourselves.

There was such power in that.

Wow.

Welcome to Lilith Fair!

I just love hearing music that comes from the heart.

It shows that the women have power in the music industry.

I feel like this is the first time we've had a forum

of contemporary women artists, and people just, they were ready.

This is a celebration of women in music and the fact that we have a voice.

So, that question of the possibility that

it further marginalizes "women's music," quote, unquote.

I think the point is good music that happens to be women.

Of course, there are undertones of feminism.

- - Right. You got that right.

And that can't hurt, 'cause the world needs some of that, I think.

It was a massive success.

And it changed people's lives. It changed my life.

And yet, people don't like change.

There's a reason that Lilith still remains mostly unheard of or misunderstood.

Because if you stand up for something,

there is gonna be an equal and opposite reaction.

- -

One of the things I thought was so unique about the Lilith Tour was

everybody was always around everybody.

-Hello. -Two, three.

Are we gonna go to the… Mmm... Uh.

I mean, the Lilith Tour was full of rock stars,

but that feminine energy, I think, usurped the ego.

There was no separation between artists.

Nobody was more important than anybody else.

With women, there's more of a communal thing, and it was so important in a moment

where there wasn't a lot of support for women, particularly in the music industry.

-Hi, Sarah. How ya doing? -Pretty good. How are you?

I remember, every time I'd go to a radio station, they'd play a song.

They're like, "Yeah, yeah, it's a really great song,

but, you know, we added Tracy Chapman this week"

or "We added Jewel this week," and I was like, "And?"

"What's that got to do with me?"

Those are all very different artists than me,

but we all kind of got lumped into the same category.

There's room for one of us?

They said women were not supposed to be played back-to-back on the radio.

"Oh, it's too much. People will change the channel."

It just never made any sense to me.

In the early '90s, all the radio programmers were men.

All the promoters were men.

It was inane that we weren't able to do what it was we knew we could do.

There was a great rush of female singer-songwriters.

You had rock and roll women, you had hip-hop women,

you had folky women, you had folk-rock women making all kinds of music.

They keep talking about female singers, and suddenly,

you're all lumped together when you don't sound alike.

Exactly. Well, because it's supposedly a "fad" or whatever.

There's still this media perception of it being cute or novel or a fluke.

Women aren't flukes.

When you're in a male-dominated industry,

you don't run into other female artists,

and worse, you're being pitted against each other.

So we all knew, although we'd never talk about it.

I don't wanna talk about it.

Shut up.

This area right here, you can see how Jewel dominated her competition.

And I think we felt, in one sense,

the competitors in us would be like, "All right."

And then, in another sense, this great sadness. Like, "Why, why?"

That was a very '90s ethos, because it wasn't an easy time either.

Are you a scorned woman?

The larger culture was straight-up toxic.

Then you're the president, and you're humping the fat chick.

Be a little more sexy. With a body like that.

-Yeah, yeah! Whoa. -Whoa.

- -

What are you doing?

The predominant movement at the time was shock jocks.

- Goes off… - Shock radio.

Getting the boner.

I like the big, fat bitch.

I'm 19, and they would go,

"Jewel, how do you give a blow job with those teeth?"

Or, "You may have heard me describe my next guest

as a large-breasted woman from Alaska.

Jewel, how are you?"

And I was like, "You must be that small penis man

I've heard so much about from South Carolina."

And I was escorted out.

Howard Stern Interview Show with Suzanne Vega.

Come here. Come here.

Suzanne, what's the big deal? Suzanne is a…

Guys are not responding to you in the proper way.

They're not seeing you as a little bit of a, uh, sex image.

Yeah, well, we've discussed this already, about the makeover thing.

I like to cover myself. That's why I dress the way I dress.

I wanted people to see my face and my hands,

and to think about my lyrics.

But the pressure was on to be sort of larger than life,

-to be more like Madonna. -

In the '80s, she used sex to sell records.

That was her empowerment message,

which was great for her,

but it was not something that I was going to do.

I was sent to a magazine shoot, and they asked me to wear

trousers and suspenders that just went over my nipples,

so I had no shirt on.

Everyone says, "You have this big record."

"You're in the top whatever list."

And I'm like, "I'm devalued."

Everything that I was good at, that I was skilled at,

that I had worked my entire life for,

boiled down to, "Do her tits look good?"

She looks great in the interview. She needs a more flattering picture,

don't you think?

Well, she's got her mouth wide open on this shot.

But she's a great singer. Mark my words.

You're gonna hear from Liz Phair for a long time.

So, yeah. I was ready to quit that first year.

Her debut album in 1988

established her as a new force in Canadian music.

Sarah McLachlan joins us now from her hometown of Halifax.

-Hi, Sarah. How are you? -Hi.

What was it like growing up in Halifax for you, then?

Uh, how long do we have?

For me, as a good Canadian girl,

I had to sort of find my way through to who I was.

You see, I was raised not to have an opinion,

not to open my mouth and say anything.

My mom was incredibly strict.

I wasn't really allowed to go out and do anything.

I didn't really have any friends.

Like, I could not be myself at home.

I was grounded most of my adolescence for the tiniest of infractions.

But, really, it was just 'cause my mom wanted to keep me home to "protect" me.

I remember begging to be in a band.

And she was like, "Don't go thinking you're anything special.

Don't go thinking that you can really advance

or get anywhere because that doesn't happen.

You're gonna fail."

Well, that sucks. I don't believe that.

So, you know, my mom was really the first one

to help push me towards having my own belief system in myself

by doing the opposite, by telling me I wasn't good enough.

I was like, "Oh, I'm gonna be good enough."

I need people around me who support me and have my back

and actually like me for who I am.

For me, that was Terry McBride, my manager,

Dan Fraser, my road manager,

and Marty Diamond, my agent.

There was a mutual respect there,

and that was really, really important to me.

Everyone around Sarah and her crew and her band,

they were very open, and you could see the magic.

There was so much happening, so fast.

Sarah McLachlan is one of the busiest women in the music industry.

A force that just keeps on growing.

She's on the verge of pop superstardom.

They're interviewing Sarah right now.

Working with Sarah,

Terry was the brains of the operation.

And I was… I was on the touring side.

We were all a big family,

and we all kind of found solace in ourselves

and in what we were trying to achieve every day.

My band and crew, we'd go out on the road.

Mostly men, yes.

-I got it. -Oh, yeah.

But I wasn't even thinking about it.

They were all great people.

And off we went.

I thought that was normal.

But I didn't know the position I was in.

Coming from Canada, I was sheltered to a certain degree,