In the months before I spoke to Björk’s first band, the Sugarcubes, in 1988, major record labels had flown to Reykjavik to meet them. At the time Björk – known for walking on to the stage while munching nonchalantly on an apple – told me that her main dislike was "moguls who want to sign me for millions, get rid of the ugly guys and make me into a little solo thing".
Björk was then married to Thor, the band’s guitarist, and said she was enjoying "playing housewife sometimes and making meals" (for him and their son) and liked the idea of music being something they flew to England to make. "Then we leave it there, come home and it isn’t a part of us."
They spoke about the traditional food of Iceland – meat hung and smoked, sheep’s heads, blood, pickled ram’s testicles – but how modernity had been imported by the country’s largely American Nato bases. "Now we have pizza," said Björk.
One day – through their company Bad Taste Ltd – the band hoped to open a cafe near the harbour of fishing boats. "I was making my own food – and shopping for it – at six years old," said Björk.
She explained that Icelanders swung back and forth between drinking alcohol excessively and not at all. During times of personal excess she favoured "Drambuie, cognac, Pernod and absinthe". Character-wise, she explained : "I am either very happy or very angry all of the time. I can’t control myself."
I asked what she was really enjoying at the moment.
"Toblerones – and Dolly Parton records."
