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Paula Cole: Where Have All The Puzzles Gone?

Ask Me Another host Ophira Eisenberg chats with Paula Cole at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York. Mike Katzif/NPR hide caption

Ask Me Another host Ophira Eisenberg chats with Paula Cole at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York.

As a Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter and boundary-pushing feminist trailblazer, Paula Cole has long incorporated powerful social statements into her emotional hit songs. Cole's latest album, 2019's Revolution , is no exception. Described as a social protest album, Revolution 's songs tackle subjects like climate change and politics, which Cole hopes will inspire thought and conversation from listeners. "I felt the need to come out with some of my stories and my truths," Cole told NPR's Ask Me Another host Ophira Eisenberg at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York. "I was raised by silent generation parents. It's very difficult, but I really feel that we [Gen] X'ers, we Boomers, we do need to talk. We do need to have this conversation. And I'm trying: That's at the heart of the album."

Cole is perhaps best known for her 1996 pop hits "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" and "I Don't Want To Wait" — the latter famously served as the theme song to the TV show Dawson's Creek . But she didn't always have a firm understanding on where her sound would take her. While a student at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Cole moonlighted at airports, hotel lounges, and weddings singing jazz standards. She said she wanted to sound like her idols, like Ella Fitzgerald and Chet Baker. However, Cole said she realized the lyrics of that earlier era often contained sexist and fraught messages, which inspired her to begin writing her own music that was more personal to her, and empowering to others.

Paula Cole appears on Ask Me Another at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York. Mike Katzif/NPR hide caption

Paula Cole appears on Ask Me Another at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York.

That decision to go down her own path resulted in a long and successful music career. In 1998, Cole won a Grammy Award for Best New Artist and was nominated in the Producer of the Year category for her 1996 album This Fire . And Cole joined artists like Sarah McClaughlin, Lisa Loeb, Natalie Merchant, and the Indigo Girls as co-headliners at the first iteration of women-only music festival, Lilith Fair in 1997. "I was there for the first two years," Cole recalled. "And I'll tell you: It was the best audience I've ever experienced. We were there in a movement of peace and love. It felt like the original intention of Woodstock probably felt like."

For her Ask Me Another challenge, Cole requested a game about human anatomy. In her game, every answer was two rhyming words: a body part, and a music term.

Interview Highlights

On her realization that singing jazz wasn't for her:

"I had an Ah-ha! moment. I realized that I didn't want to sing these lyrics that were often very depressing. Like Billie Holiday's songs about being beaten — or worse. Like, [singing] 'I enjoy being a girl.' Or, you know, the bridge to 'Black Coffee' is like, [ singing ] 'Now a man is born to go on loving / a woman is born to weep and fret. / To stay at home and tend her oven and drown her past regrets in coffee and cigarettes./

A lot of these kinds of depressing lyrics... That was not my reality and I didn't want to perpetuate these realities being written by men in the '50s. I wanted my realities and I needed them like therapy. So I went into therapy. And I started writing songs, and the songs were really autobiographically, they're not jazz. I don't know, they're just me.

On going on her first tour with Peter Gabriel:

In 1993, Peter Gabriel left a message on Cole's answering machine, asking her to join his Secret World Tour as a backup singer. Despite having little time to prepare, Cole jumped at the opportunity.

"I had one rehearsal. I'm there standing in Mannheim, Germany at the rehearsal with my idol. And we sing 'Don't Give Up.' But I was such a fan. I was studied. I love him. I love his music. As we say in jazz '50s lingo — see, the Chet Baker in me is not dead — I shed his music."

On her controversial Grammy acceptance speech:

"I got a lot of backlash. I think I was just a lot for people to take. I was the first solo woman being nominated in the producer category. And that took a lot of fights just to get to that point, to be producing my own albums. And then I flipped the bird at the Grammys and they edited that out, and then there was the hairy armpit thing. I was just a lot... I think I just take time. Like a full-bodied red."

Heard on Paula Cole: Where Have All The Puzzles Gone?

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Secret world live.

Secret World Live contains 16 tracks (15 on the CD version) from the Secret World tour of 1993. Recorded at the Palasport, Modena in northern Italy on 16 and 17 November 1993. Peter has always loved playing live in Italy and the choice of venue was deliberate; “The band runs on fuel provided by the audience, and in Italy it flows freely.”

The collection spans Peter’s solo career until that point; from debut single Solsbury Hill right up to Digging In The Dirt , Steam and Blood Of Eden from US , which was – at the time – his most recent studio album.

“The Secret World tour was focused on communication and relationships – the ‘phone was a perfect symbol. Robert Lepage had the idea of expanding on the telephone image using the iconic red telephone box, with a cable that extended from the square proscenium stage full length to the centre of the circular stage in the audience, for the song Come Talk to Me.”

Peter Gabriel, Secret World Live by Laurence Le Blanc

During this tour Peter’s band consisted of Manu Katché (drums), Tony Levin (bass, vocals), David Rhodes (guitars, vocals), Jean Claude Naimro – replacing Joy Askew who started the tour – (keyboards, vocals), Shankar (violin, vocals), Levon Minassian (doudouk) and Paula Cole (vocals). Peter on vocals and keyboards and special guests Papa Wemba and Molokai.

Peter worked with Robert Lepage to conceive and stage the show, which consisted of a traditional proscenium arch stage connected to a circular stage (in the centre of the audience) by a moving walkway. The traditional stage represented an urban, industrial and male world, whilst the circular stage was more rural, open and nourishing. The movement between the two was a key subtext to the overall show.

It was, however, a technical challenge, as Peter Walsh the front of house sound engineer (and co-producer of the live album) remembers in his interview  for this website, “It was a very large and complex setup as you can imagine. Two stages meant we needed two of almost everything. Two drum kits, two mirrored sets of vocal mics and a complicated cable run from one stage to the other connecting all the other instruments.”

The show features many memorable set pieces, including Peter’s emergence within the red telephone box for ‘Come Talk to Me’ to open the show, the use of the moving walkway for ‘Across the River’, the literal ‘Steam’ effects and the tree that appears for ‘Shaking The Tree.’

As Peter told UNCUT magazine in 2020, “There was a moment, entirely Robert’s idea, where it looked as if we climbed into these suitcases on the moving  walkway – we were actually disappearing into a trapdoor – and that was the end of the show. A lovely way to finish – the suitcase fitted with this sense of a journey that we’d designed the show around.”

At the centre of it all though, is a thoroughly committed and total performance by Peter himself – further consolidating his reputation as a ringmaster of dynamism and daring – as captured by the concert film , directed by François Girard, which is also available.

Originally released as a 15 track CD on 28 August 1994, the album was recently released on digital platforms with the addition of the track San Jacinto and was released for the fist time on vinyl in November 2020.

“More than the studio originals, these versions elaborate on the dramatic potential inherent in them – the heat and magnitude of rhythm, the human/animal ambiguity of an otherworldly cry” – Rolling Stone

Photo: Armando Gallo

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Revisiting His Weird and Wonderful Performance: ‘Peter Gabriel: Secret World Live’

Reaching the pinnacle of his popularity in the ’80s and early ’90s, Peter Gabriel was in the beginning, in the middle, and ever shall be, an odd fellow. He has also, all along, been a consummate entertainer whose early theatrics with Genesis groomed him perfectly to become one of the grand and shining stars of the video age. Through videos for pieces such as the sexually charged “Sledgehammer” and the ballad of the working man and, indeed, mankind itself, “Don’t Give Up”, Gabriel tore up the envelope, ate it, and demanded that, in the future, he be served one of better quality.

Both “Sledgehammer” and “Don’t Give Up” were culled from his 1986 album So (which receives the deluxe reissue treatment this autumn), but it was his 1992 outing Us that cemented his place in the video kingdom with “Digging In the Dirt” and “Steam”. It was in the aftermath of that latter album that the former public school student concentrated on making an unforgettable stage show that would touch on many of the––Jungian––themes found across his work but especially on Us .

Released in September 1994 this film––and accompanying album––were welcome arrivals from a man who probably did visuals––and live performances––better than most of his contemporaries––including U2, a band known for its highly stylized promo films and stadium tours. This wasn’t Gabriel’s only live video from those peak years––1988’s POV titillates the memory cells and brings to mind many a happy evening spent warming the ocular vessels ‘round the television––but it’s a damned fine one that retains its own musical and visual character and, as they say, holds up rather well.

Shot over two November evenings in 1993 during a Modena, Italy stopover, the footage looks remarkably fresh and vibrant on the current Blu-ray edition, radiating aliveness from the stage––and from Gabriel’s facial hair. True to our expectations, the stage set doesn’t disappoint––it, too, is rife with props and such that would make Dr. Jung proud. There’s an awful lot of dancing––more than you’d probably expect from most prog rock icons––but none of it ever strays so far from the core that Gabriel loses his sense of popzeit .

This isn’t a comprehensive best-of package. There’s no “Biko”, “Shock the Monkey”, or “Intruder”. This is Gabriel the hit maker making hits for one and all in a performance that is as delightfully off-kilter (read: filled with PG being his awesomely weird self) as his best work with Genesis. Curiously, the accompanying album has not yet been reissued, which is a shame because it’s as good a snapshot of the man during the era as the albums–– So and Us ––which it leans so heavily upon.

Backed by drummer Manu Katché, bassist Tony Levin, and Paula Cole, Gabriel surprises us with new but still comprehensible arrangements of favorites and a surprise or two––the (relative) rarity “Across The River” and a nod to the Birdy soundtrack via the excellent “Slow Marimbas”. Naturally, it’s the hits that come to the fore––he opens with “Come Talk To Me” (replete with a sentient—and possessive––callbox), then travels through “Steam”, eventually landing in the “Blood of Eden”, climbing “Solsbury Hill” and “Digging in the Dirt” while suggesting that, when faced with adversity, the best mantra is “Don’t Give Up”. One of the real stars here is Paula Cole who proves herself an able replacement for Kate Bush during the also aforementioned “Don’t Give Up” and maybe a superior vocalist to Sinead O’ Connor whose memorable turn on the studio version of “Blood Of Eden” may truly be bested here.

The rest of the band––guitarist David Rhodes, violinist Shankar, and keyboardist Jean Claude Naimro––delivers the musical goods with new arrangements and indefatigable musical acumen. Enough, any way, that one wonders how Gabriel could fail to bring a similar energy to his 2011 live release New Blood: Live In London . We digress. With footage such as this still lurking in the wings it seems that Gabriel’s legacy is secure and that the music that sounded positively of the future when it first emerged continues to sound that way two decades on.

Bonus materials include a time-lapse film of the stage set up at Gabriel’s Berlin performance, a making-of film with interviews and behind the scenes footage as well as two tracks that serve as the bed for a photo montage from the tour. The classic “Red Rain”, previously absent from the film, appears as a bonus track while a 2011 performance of “The Rhythm of the Heat” (a track about Carl Jung’s travels in Africa) with the New Blood Orchestra gives us future shock.

The remixed and remastered soundtrack sounds vibrant and neu , the master’s voice as clear and clairvoyant as ever. The ultimate Peter Gabriel experience? Nah. You really have to bathe yourself in the whole oeuvre for that, but this is one great spoke in the greater wheel that is Peter Gabriel’s not-so-secret world.

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Paula Cole is the voice behind Peter Gabriel’s “Secret World Live”, hits “Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?”, “I Don’t Want To Wait”, and the brave, brazen double platinum album, “This Fire”. Cole has infused wit and poetry in seven albums of original work over a twenty-plus-year-career. In performance, Cole gives of herself to such a degree that she elicits tears and gasps and goose bumps from audiences. In her lyrics, she writes of inner life, of redemption, a woman’s perspective; of social justice.

As the first woman in history to solely produce and receive the Best Producer Grammy nomination for her work, “This Fire”, Cole broke boundaries with a searcher’s spirit. Recently Paula is celebrating the 20th anniversary of “This Fire”, and will be performing “This Fire” in its entirety at select concerts. She has released a new video of “Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?”, and a 20th anniversary-memento-live album entitled, “This Bright Red Feeling”.

From a small town Rockport, Massachusetts, Paula was raised in a musical family, learning standards that would eventually become “Ballads”. She attended Berklee College of Music as a jazz singer, graduated in 1990, fervently writing and recording her original work. In 1993, Peter Gabriel heard her then-unreleased debut album “Harbinger” and invited Cole to join his “Secret World Live” tour. While touring internationally with Gabriel, Cole’s “Harbinger” debuted in 1994 to critical acclaim. She toured non-stop and released her second album, 1997’s “This Fire” for which she won the Grammy for Best New Artist along with seven nominations. Cole led the pack at Lilith Fair’s opening years, and in 1999, followed her muse to release “Amen”, a genre-crossing, social-spiritual album to diverse audiences.

After a seven-year hiatus to raise her daughter Sky, who battled childhood asthma, Cole returned to her “second, more authentic career” releasing five more albums, “Courage” (2007), “Ithaca” (2010), “Raven” (2013), “7” (2015), and “This Bright Red Feeling” (2016), touring consistently over the last decade.

Cole walks her path with her fans, writing out her life, sharing her connection at concerts and over social media. Cole’s compositions have been covered by a diverse range of artists (jazz legend Herbie Hancock, Annie Lennox, Katherine McPhee, JoJo, hip-hop duo THEY), she has sold approximately three million albums, performed with icons such as Peter Gabriel, Dolly Parton, Herbie Hancock, Emmylou Harris; Amy Lee of Evanescence, Burt Bacharach, Counting Crows, Matchbox 20, and currently has over four hundred thousand monthly listeners on Spotify. With a loyal fan base who appreciate the depth of her catalog, the loving artist-fan relationship, and the wisdom earned through pain, tears and joy, Cole is proud to go independently on her own label, 675 Records.

Cole is now Professor at her alma mater Berklee College of Music, between tours and albums.

She continues to write, produce, record and perform heartfelt, meaningful, lasting music that defies categorization.

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