Dream Catchers Hair Extensions

Rickie Lee Jones: 'I do think we've gone a bunch of steps backwards as a culture'

You became famous very fast with your first single, " Chuck E's in Love ", in 1979. Is there anything you know now that you wish you'd known then?

I wish I would have known that what I have couldn't be taken away. I've watched the concept of me change in people's eyes and that's been strange – you're totally in one year and totally out the next. So I wish that when I was a kid I'd known and understood that the stage is mine and it can't be taken away from me, that what I do is what I do and it's always there for me. Maybe then I wouldn't have been so afraid. The fear drove me to isolate myself and anaesthetise myself. I always felt like my future was at stake every time I stepped on stage and that was kind of hair-raising. At some point I just went, don't be frightened, you can't do anything wrong, it's your show.

It's exactly 30 years since the release of Pirates , your acclaimed second album, which you're currently touring and will be performing in Manchester next week. How does it feel to be revisiting it?

The funny thing is, the first time I did it with the big band on stage my personality changed to one that was more like how I used to be. It was like my younger self was waiting for me to come back. This thing of managing a large band and prancing about on the stage requires a whole other tempo of being. They're extensions of your ego – performances, for sure, so it's kind of liberating: I feel like putting on big shoes and see-through clothes and dancing and stuff!

Why don't you?

Well I'm working on it! I bought some high heels but it's not that easy to dance in them…

What do you remember about making Pirates ?

It was hard. Ha! It was the second record, so it was terrifying after so much success. I kind of knew right away that there was no way to recapture the debut and that I just needed to go in the direction that my life was taking.

And your personal life was pretty…

… tumultuous. It was. And so I think the music had colours of despair and darkness, but ultimately there's an inherent courage about it. I know I felt like a big star when I was making Pirates . It was a time when people recognised me wherever I went; that made me really uncomfortable and I began to realise that the beret signified me. When I went out in my beret everybody saw me, and when I didn't go in my beret nobody saw me. I guess they call that… what do they call that now, a brand. I was already branded.