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Friday, June 06, 2003

By John Hayes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

What's it like to be one song away from superstardom?

	Joan Armatrading opens the Three Rivers Arts Festival with her worldly folk-pop at 7:30 p.m. tonight on the main stage in Point State Park. The show is free.

When you've had the right producer, the right guest musicians and the right tour at the right time but didn't break through to the highest level? What do you say when other artists who shared your climb up the charts kept accelerating when your career slipped into neutral?

"It's fine," says Joan Armatrading with a laugh. "I've had exactly the career that I've wanted."

Rock radio knows Armatrading by only two songs, "Love and Affection" and "Drop the Pilot." Critics, however, praised the hits and the albums that spawned them. Born on the island of St. Kitts, Armatrading was the first black British singer-songwriter to share the charts with white guys. She was touring in a production of "Hair" when she teamed with a fellow West Indies musician and released her first album, a 1972 treasure that critics loved and American radio ignored. Within a few years, Armatrading was a solo act on the A&M roster, recording with pre-Police Andy Summers.

Her next four albums were produced by Glyn Johns, a studio celebrity who had worked the mixing board with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Joe Cocker, Traffic and The Who. Johns got Armatrading into the U.S. Top 40 and the U.K. Top 10. Armatrading straddled musical genres, letting the songs dictate the arrangements. Her subsequent album, 1981's "Walk Under Ladders," got the highly polished Steve Lillywhite touch, and radio was all over her next disc, "The Key," with its single "Drop the Pilot."

	Joan Armatrading: "I can't spend my time being frustrated ... I have to spend my time writing and recording and touring."

Radio changed in the '80s, however, and while the careers of other artists from her era exploded -- think Springsteen and Petty -- Armatrading settled in as an under-the-radar critics' pick. After a quarter-century in the business, her 1996 greatest hits collection seemed to be her last.

"But you know, I didn't get caught up in the business while all this was happening," says Armatrading, in a phone conversation from her home in Britain. "As the years go by and everybody becomes more conscious of the possibilities of everything, it's easy to look back and say 'What if?' But I was just doing what I do: writing songs, recording them, performing them on tour and enjoying the whole process. I was never frustrated at not becoming huge."

In the new millennium, Armatrading is back in business with a quick succession of albums and back-to-back tours of Europe and the States. In 2001, she reissued her 1972 classic "Whatever's For Us" with two new songs. In March, a British indie issued "Lovers Speak," her first collection of new songs in eight years. In April, Interscope invested in a 43-song must-have collection, "Love and Affection: Classics 1975-1983." Neither of this year's discs have charted. Armatrading says she couldn't care less.

"I can't spend my time being frustrated," she says. "I have to spend my time writing and recording and touring. I've had a great career that has been about enjoying what I do. I've always been able to make a record whenever I want, write whatever I want to write and record it in the way that I want. I've got really good friends, love to travel and meet interesting people and do creative things. This level of success, it's been very comfortable for me."

John Hayes can be reached at jhayes@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1991.