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Video: Cat Power's 'Furious' Vision for New Disc

'I was inspired by being disappointed in myself,' Chan Marshall tells 'Rolling Stone,' explaining why she chose to play all the instruments on her new album herself

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October 3, 2010 4:30 PM ET

 

Cat Power, aka Chan Marshall, has spent her entire 17-year recording career with Matador Records, where she felt safe to grow as an artist. “They had my back,” she told Rolling Stone at an after-party following the first night of performances at the Matador 21 “Lost Weekend” in Las Vegas. “They loved me unconditionally.” Marshall said the scene at Matador 21 made her nostalgic for her early days as a fan and performer. “It reminds me of being in New York and going to see shows,” she said. “That's what everyone I know here would do. It's cool because everyone's lives have gone on, and people have done different things, and they're all here.” Currently at work on a new album (with plans to play all the instruments herself), Marshall was making only her second live appearance ever in Vegas, where she previously tried her luck at the tables. “I put $10 on 13 black, and I got $400,” she said of her first time in a casino. “We gamble with life everyday. Then I went back and I didn't win. It was so weird.”

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“1999”

Prince | 1982

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.

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