Rachel Whiteread

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and six, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is an artist. Her most recent work can currently be seen on exhibition at the Tate Modern, but not for much longer. When the exhibition finishes, the fourteen thousand white boxes that make up her creation will be demolished, granulated, and turned into traffic bollards and grit boxes. Much of her work disappears in similar fashion, including the famous Inside Out House that she created in East London, but other pieces remain. Her water tower is still in place on top of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and her Holocaust Memorial stands controversially in the Eudenplatz in Vienna. She is perhaps Britain's most respected modern artist, admired for the way in which she explores places in our lives so familiar that we hardly see them any more. She's been described as tough and rigorous, but she thinks of her work as quiet, spiritual, and precise. It always has an emotional beginning, she says. She is Rachel Whitread. Um what then, Rachel, is the emotional beginning for fourteen thousand white boxes?

Presenter1:33

I'd gone back into the studio very sort of quietly and without assistance and just wanted to

Presenter1:40

Try and make work in the way that I had fifteen years ago when I first started, which was just me and a bag of plaster, really. But why a box? Well, I'd been I'd moved house, I'd moved studio, life had been in complete chaos. And my mother had died and we had to clear her house and I was just surrounded, completely surrounded by boxes. And full of junk sometimes and full of very precious things and other issues. Exactly, and trying to work out what was junk and what wasn't was quite a difficult thing to do as well. So I, you know, I literally, as I always do really, is start from what's really happening in my own life.

Rachel Whiteread2:06

Exactly.

Presenter2:20

There was one box that was a sort of family box that was in my mother's house and it had at one point it had the Christmas decorations in it and then that was crossed out and it had my toys in it and that was crossed out and it had something else in it. They always battered these boxes and yet we never throw them out do we have it? Exactly. So it's it was must have been pretty robust and I still have it. I I never actually cast it um and it stands now on my um in my studio.

Rachel Whiteread2:36

Exactly.

Presenter2:45

And it it just when I opened it opened this box it had the smell of my

Presenter2:50

history of my childhood and, you know, my parents and my sisters. And I was incredibly kind of moved by it and wanted to somehow make that an experience for everybody. But the result is the turbine hall at uh Tate Modern is has got fourteen thousand piled up

Presenter3:10

as you wanted to have them piled, and it's left to the imagination really, isn't it? I mean, some people see the Empire State building and other people see lots of sugar cubes. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think it was I you know, I think um

Rachel Whiteread3:18

Yeah, exactly.

Presenter3:23

when you're asked to make something in the turbine hall, it's the most ridiculous space, you know, the most ridiculous art space there is really. It's it's classified as a street. It's it's enormous, absolutely enormous and completely daunting.

Presenter3:36

And I wanted to make an experience that was a a sort of family experience as well, and and when you go there.

Presenter3:42

It's amazing how kids just absolutely love it and play hide and seek in it.

Rachel Whiteread3:46

Play hide and seek.

Presenter3:48

Tell me about your first record. Off you go to your desert island. What's this one? This is We Float by PJ Harvey and you know I think I'm extremely lucky and have the sort of best job in the world but if I didn't have my job I'd quite like hers because I think she's kind of amazing. And it's music that I listen to in the studio all the time and she kind of keeps me company.

Presenter4:09

You carry it on my hope.

Presenter4:14

Uh

Speaker 34:14

Until something broke in.

Speaker 34:16

Uh

Presenter4:17

But Now

Speaker 34:18

Uh

Speaker 34:29

Take what's it gone?

Presenter4:37

That was PJ Harvey and We Float, which Rachel Whitread plays in her studio. House, Rachel, was the sculpture really that uh made you well known beyond artistic circles, didn't it? It was a piece that um

Presenter4:50

in many ways electrified the debate about contemporary art, modern art in Europe.

Rachel Whiteread4:54

Yeah, I sort of

Presenter5:02

You know what contemporary art is. But let's describe it for those who can't call it to mind. I mean, this was in 1993. It was in Tower Hamlets, and you took a house, a Victorian house, and you kind of sprayed concrete inside it and then stripped away the outside. Yeah, it sounds simple. It wasn't quite as simple as that. I worked with an engineer, and we essentially built a building within a building and then took away the bricks. And what you get, obviously, are sort of inside-out indentation. I mean, light switches go in instead of coming out, and skirting boards go in, and that kind of thing.

Presenter5:35

But what what is it? Wh it looks so important from the front. Look, we're looking at a picture of it here and it's so big and important. It's a Victorian house and it's got a a a cellar and everything. Well, I think the thing about it was that it it was incredibly sort of monolithic and f from the front it looked like this almost this thing that had landed and then people realized that

Rachel Whiteread5:43

Will it

Presenter5:53

Actually, that was this kind of house that they lived in or their parents lived in. And I thought there was a there was a real sort of humbleness about it. I mean, it's difficult for me to talk about because I worked so hard on it, and then there was this incredible sort of media sort of fluoride about it. And then I had to go there in disguise to look at it. And I was just a mess at the end of it, actually. Well, you are. Why? It really upset you. It was. It was a very emotional thing to make. And then I think it it was because it almost got sort of taken away from me and everyone else sort of took ownership of it. Well, the locals did I mean they used to leave milk on the doorstep, newspapers. There were sales signs, there was post left, there was, you know, milk, yeah, newspapers. Eventually, towards the end of its life, um

Rachel Whiteread6:30

Newspapers have been a little bit more.

Presenter6:40

People just, you know, used it as a kind of notice board.

Presenter6:44

I think in the end it was about six months, because I think the day that it was finished was the day it was supposed to be torn down, so we then had to rent the site. Because you'd only got temporary planning, but it was always going to come down in the end. But this the Fuhrer was amazing, wasn't it? Local councillors saying it was a monstrosity and an excrescence, and all the local people saying we want it. It was visited by 100,000 people. Why do you think it appealed to the public imagination in that way?

Rachel Whiteread6:53

Yeah.

Speaker 26:53

Because you

Rachel Whiteread6:53

Then

Rachel Whiteread6:54

It was always gonna come down

Presenter7:12

I think mainly because it was it's about sort of all our lives. From builders who were sort of quite intrigued by how it was made to granny who lived in a house like that, who now lives in a tower block. So you made a political piece in spite of yourself really, didn't you? I knew it was political, but it wasn't something that I was going to sort of stand on a soapbox and shout about. But in the end, everybody else did, so that was fine.

Rachel Whiteread7:27

Joey

Presenter7:36

Echo number two.

Presenter7:38

This is by um Pentangle and it's called Light Flight, which is actually the music from a television series called Take Three Girls, which was completely my sort of parents' generation. And I have two sisters and we were the sort of three girls.

Presenter7:53

Let's get away, you say, find a better place Miles and miles away from the city's race Look around for someone flying in the sunshine Marking time

Presenter8:18

Uh

Rachel Whiteread8:18

Devin from cloud to cloud, passing years of love

Presenter8:22

Bendangle and the Light Flight and the sig tune to Take Three Girls, which takes us all back to it was it kind of sixties really, wasn't it? Yeah, I I just remember my mum in her sort of

Speaker 38:28

Yeah.

Presenter8:32

you know, purple hot pants dancing around to this and being sort of quite boho and yeah, thinking it was. The interesting thing is that we think of conceptual art as being well, I do anyway, fiercely modern, something of the last twenty five years, but your mother was doing it then, wasn't she?

Rachel Whiteread8:38

The

Presenter8:48

She was, yeah, maybe not quite as early as that, but certainly in the sort of seventies, yeah. She was an artist that was working away, you know, with little sort of recognition and worked on an exhibition that was very sort of well known called Women's Images of Men with four other feminists and they were all in the basement of our house in Muswell Hill selecting this exhibition. And that was my first sort of real experience of really kind of looking at art. And I'd go into this sort of smoky room and sit at the back and watch them all arguing. And did she earn money at it then? No, she didn't. She taught

Presenter9:29

and did sort of other bits and pieces. But no, she never I don't think she ever really made any money for that. She was an art teacher. Uh she was an art teacher, yeah, in a polytechnic. Before that she was a s and a school teacher. And what about your father?

Rachel Whiteread9:33

Do not

Rachel Whiteread9:40

Goodbye, you

Presenter9:41

He started out as a geography teacher, then he became um a humanities lecturer, became head of the humanities department at North East London Polytechnic.

Presenter9:50

and then eventually became head of the art school there through his sort of uh love for art and also, you know, he was a very good administrator and it was at the time when polytechnics were changing. Did you think that art was just something you dabbled in and you were going to have to do something, you know, find a proper job as it were in life? Or did you always contemplate being an artist? No, I think wh when I was at school it was the last thing on my mind actually. I tried sort of everything else and it wasn't until the sixth form that I

Presenter10:18

actually went into the art rooms and I did my sort of O and A level art in a year, I think, and then went on f to foundation and, you know, realized that that's what I did. Absolutely hit the spot. Number three.

Presenter10:33

This is uh the Jackson Five and the Records A B C and this was uh well Michael Jackson was actually my first love when I was I think probably about eight years old and my entire bedroom was plastered in pictures of him and uh he was a kind of cute thing in those days.

Presenter11:05

Still make for nine night night now I'm gonna treat you

Presenter11:09

I'm a fuckery.

Speaker 311:16

Be

Presenter11:21

The Jackson Five and A B C. So you went to Brighton Polytechnic, Rachel, where you got a first class degree. But it it was painting you did in the main, and you were getting bored with the edge of the canvas, you said. Now where were you going then when you went off the edge? What did you do? All over the place.

Rachel Whiteread11:35

Yeah.

Presenter11:37

I couldn't sort of work out what an edge was about actually, and I was attaching things to it and bringing them down to the floor. And and then actually my real kind of uh love was going beach combing and getting all these

Presenter11:49

what I used to call found lines, which were just all these bits of old metal and tires and bits and

Presenter11:54

bobs and stuff and took them all back to the studio and made Papi and Mache and made these kind of three-dimensional drawings that you sort of walk through.

Presenter12:03

But towards the end of that I had done a casting course when I was there. And it was really at that point, I think, that

Presenter12:10

It was the first cast that I made and it really I begun to sort of find a language, I think. What was it of, the first cast? The very first cast I made was a spoon, and I simply got a spoon and I pressed it into the sand.

Rachel Whiteread12:17

The very first

Presenter12:23

and got the indentation of the spoon and then filled it with lead or aluminium, I can't remember, and picked it out and I had it it had lost the spoonness of the spoon, so the indentation had disappeared and I just realized that doing something as simple as that could change your perception of an object and you know twenty-two years later I'm sort of still doing the same thing one way or another.

Presenter12:48

And what did you feel as you did all of these? I mean, you were y you were ploughing your own furrow here, weren't you? You were the first person to do these kinds of things. Where did you did you have a sense of where you were going or I had no idea where I was going actually. I think when I was at the Slade the first year

Presenter13:04

I was there, I c I nearly left actually. My father had been very ill and I I was really in a bit of a kind of muddle and um I hadn't made a sculpture at that point make something that would stand in the middle of a room as to as opposed to that point because I didn't really know that it was sculpture I was trying to make, but I think when I left college

Rachel Whiteread13:12

You're trying to say.

Rachel Whiteread13:16

What I know is that

Presenter13:24

I wanted to make something that was really trying to make a a childhood experience concrete, which was casting the inside of a wardrobe. And I I'd thought about having been a child and sitting inside a wardrobe,

Presenter13:35

And it was something I like to do. People think that's a bit strange, but I actually know lots of people that did it. It was sort of comforting. It was sort of comforting, yeah, and I could just remember it then the smell of the clothes and the blackness and the sort of furry blackness of the space. And I wanted to somehow make that real. And I made a piece called Closet actually about a year after I left college, which was exactly that. And it was the cast of the inside of a wardrobe, which was then covered in black felt.

Presenter14:03

And I remember making it and uh

Presenter14:06

putting it up in the studio and really having a kind of Eureka moment and being very elated that actually I'd made something that you could walk around. And it wasn't really about, you know, that that's what sculpture has to be, but I'd spent about fifteen years trying to do that. And it was an accomplishment. Absolutely of you, and as you say, of your emotion, of your memory.

Rachel Whiteread14:15

It wasn't

Rachel Whiteread14:21

It was absolutely.

Presenter14:27

Yeah. Um exactly what you've been aiming at all that time. And in fact you got a solo exhibition I think practically I think it was the year after you got came out of the Slade and that weekend. Yeah, there was a a woman called Barbara Carlyle who came to see my show and um at at The Slade.

Rachel Whiteread14:37

Yeah, there was a

Presenter14:43

And, you know, it was a very odd show, but she liked it and offered me sh an exhibition. And I think because I had that focus, actually, that's really why I was able to make Closet. Let's have some more music. What's your fourth record? This is Keith Jarrett's, the Cologne Concert. And actually, this piece of music, I think it's the first sort of piece of music that really I really had sort of found myself at this point. And I listened to this at Brighton a lot. You know, and I've listened to it ever since. Great piece of music.

Presenter15:14

Yeah.

Presenter15:42

That was the opening of Keith Jarrett playing at the Kerln concert, Part One.

Presenter15:47

Rachel, another of the exhibits at that first exhibition of yours in nineteen eighty eight was called Shallow Breath, which was really in in memory of your father who who died about that time, indeed very early in his life.

Rachel Whiteread15:59

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter16:01

The peace shallow breath I made very soon after my father died, um, you know, within a couple of weeks actually.

Presenter16:08

And people have written about it saying it was the bed I was born on, or it was the bed that he died in, and no, it's none of those things, but it's really to do.

Presenter16:16

Um with his memory. It's the underside of of the bed with the with the mattress pushing against the struts that would have supported it. It's actually the underside of the mattress. You know, it's the space underneath the bed actually. But it looks like a a rib cage, it looks like, you know, all sorts of things. There there's something about mattresses that I think are very sort of human. It's the kind of l lungs pushing against the ribcage.

Rachel Whiteread16:40

That's the ripped.

Speaker 216:41

Yeah.

Presenter16:41

This exhibition, we've talked about the first exhibition, was very successful. I think Charles Saatchi bought a piece not long afterwards, and, you know, you were made, it made your name.

Speaker 216:48

Dear no, you were made

Presenter16:50

Yeah. What in all of this, how did your your mother react to your success?

Rachel Whiteread16:51

Yeah.

Presenter16:56

Must have been quite difficult. I think it was quite difficult. I think first off, she was um.

Rachel Whiteread16:57

I think it wa

Presenter17:01

You know, she was very proud and then she, you know, was maybe a little bit sort of jealous, but um.

Presenter17:08

Essentially, though, she was really proud of me. If I'd been painting, or if I'd been doing sort of slide tapes, or doing

Presenter17:16

Work with computers, it was much more in the sort of language that she was using. It would have been harder, but because I made all this sort of big

Presenter17:24

Sculpture, and she was quite frail. I think that was a good distance for her. She said, Oh, I couldn't lift that bucket of plaster. Oh, how do you do it?

Presenter17:34

And then you won the Turner Prize, aged thirty. Although it has to be said at the same time you won another prize. Turner Prize was worth twenty thousand. At the same time you won the Worst Artist Award, um which privately funded award, which was worth forty thousand, but you took the money.

Presenter17:49

Well, I did take I took the Turner Prize and then I took the the I was blackmailed with the other prize. They said that they were going to turn up with forty thousand pounds of the Tate and they were going to burn it on the uh steps of the Tate. And you know, I didn't have any money really at the time and I thought what an outrageous thing to do. So I took the money and then spent six months giving it away.

Presenter18:15

I gave a large donation to Shelter and then the rest of it we gave in grants to young artists. Number five. Number five is Nick Cave and the Bad Seas with Kylie Minogue singing Where the Wild Roses Grow. This is another piece of music that I listen to in the studio. I listen to Nick Cave an awful lot and I think it's a bit of sort of contemporary opera really. Very beautiful piece.

Speaker 318:42

Don't need the

Presenter18:48

My name was Elizabeth He said give me your loss and your sorrow I nodded my head as I lay on the bed If I show you the roses, will you fall?

Presenter19:09

The Cave and the Bad Seeds and Kylie Menogue and where the wild roses grow. There's something of a theme of death in your work, or has been anyway, Rachel, because you were obsessed by mortuary slabs at one point, weren't you? There's a lot of that, and we've just heard about the the shallow breath and the lungs and the rib cage. It wasn't perhaps therefore necessarily a surprise when you were commissioned to do this memorial in Vienna in memory of the sixty-five thousand Jews who died under the Nazi regime. You were commissioned when you were thirty-two and it took five years of sheer hell and torment. You see, why why was it so hard?

Presenter19:47

I'd never realised quite how complicated it was in Austria. And I think throughout the five years that we worked on it, I think there was like three or four different sort of politicians in charge of it. It was always just the ground was always shifting. Nothing stayed still. It was just this very, very complicated, politically complicated and emotional thing which you know I don't want to go into it too much. It was a very, very, very difficult thing to do. I'm now very proud to have made it. Let's just describe it for a second for those who are not familiar with it. It's again a large

Rachel Whiteread20:18

And let's

Presenter20:25

Concrete.

Presenter20:26

Rectangular edifice, isn't it? And again, it's a negative imprint. Yeah, it's sort of a negative imprint. It it it's it's as if it's a a room taken from one of the surrounding buildings and it's the cast of a library. Um so thousands and thousands of books attached to the outside of it, all cast in concrete. You can't see what the books are because the spines are faced inwards and it has an inscriptions on the outside of it and two blank doors that you can't open.

Presenter20:55

It's a bit like a bunker, which is something that I had intended. And representative, I don't want to be too literal about this, but of the books that were never written and the books that were never read by the sixty-five thousand Jews who paid. Yeah, and the Jews were also known as the people of the books. So I think it's you know, they're all sort I never like to sort of

Rachel Whiteread20:57

Intended to be a little bit more difficult.

Rachel Whiteread21:06

Yeah.

Rachel Whiteread21:09

So I

Presenter21:13

say too much about work once it's been made, but people seem to be very, very happy with it now actually. But when it was unveiled in the year two thousand, you were terrified from everything that I've read that you said at the time. You were very, very frightened. What were you frightened of?

Rachel Whiteread21:18

No.

Rachel Whiteread21:26

That you set it.

Presenter21:29

There was a lot of um

Presenter21:33

sort of resentment, I know, towards me and I know towards the work. I actually I don't think I really mattered, it was more to to towards the work. But you obviously felt physically threatened. I did feel physically threatened actually, yeah.

Rachel Whiteread21:42

I

Presenter21:44

Yeah. But that was a real physical fear. Why? You really thought that someone might attempt to assassinate you because you're not. Well, not assassinate me necessarily, but I I just felt very physically threatened. So it was a very intimidating situation to be in. There was a a lot of sort of unrest politically and I was, you know, part of that. But you felt that the pressure of the right wing who i in Austria, in Vienna, who did not want such a memorial erected. Yeah. I felt I personally felt that. Yeah. But I don't know if it was in my head. I don't think so. And during the unveiling there were

Rachel Whiteread21:50

We're not assassinating.

Rachel Whiteread22:01

But you found that.

Rachel Whiteread22:04

In Austria

Rachel Whiteread22:07

Yeah.

Rachel Whiteread22:08

Lyric

Rachel Whiteread22:12

But I'll

Presenter22:18

um, snipers on all the rooftops and I had to s watch all the Secret Service police standing around whispering into their microphones and and with guns everywhere pointed sort of in our direction. It was just terrifying actually. I walked away and collapsed.

Presenter22:35

You make a habit of walking away and collapsing after after house and after this. But y do you have a bad taste in your mouth about it? I mean, have you been back to see it? Do you stay away? I haven't actually been back. No, I will go back. You know, I think it's worked very well.

Rachel Whiteread22:43

Um I haven't

Presenter22:49

I know people use it as a as a memorial, should be, and um uh you know, it's yeah, I'm proud.

Rachel Whiteread22:56

Sixth record.

Presenter22:57

The sixth record is Cicilia Bartoli and it's Ave Maria. Tell me why you want it. This is uh a beautiful piece of music that um I my parents had played at their wedding and we recently played at my mother's funeral.

Speaker 323:35

I want to see.

Speaker 323:47

Not me.

Presenter24:11

Catilia Bartaly singing Ave Maria, um, which you played at your mother's funeral a couple of years ago. Her death took you and your sisters by surprise, I gather. It was rather sudden, wasn't it? Yes, yeah. She she, I mean, she hadn't been well, but she went in for a sort of investigative procedure and um sadly died. A devastating experience. On the other hand, there are people who say that these days they sense a kind of lighter touch in your approach to your work. There's sort of more of a fun-loving bit of you coming through. Is that what you're doing? I think that's b yeah, I wouldn't say that was to do with my mother dying, I'd say it was to do with becoming a parent, actually. That's um, you know, one of the greatest joys in the world. How old is your son? He's five, just five.

Rachel Whiteread24:44

Well I see I think that

Rachel Whiteread24:50

Clean it.

Rachel Whiteread24:56

Just thought.

Presenter24:57

And is he allowed into your studio in the same way that you were into your mother's? Absolutely, yeah, he loves it actually.

Rachel Whiteread25:01

Uh

Presenter25:04

You know, he says, Oh, I know, I mustn't touch that'cause it's sharp you know, and so but he pl you know, he plays with I've got a whole collection of dolls' houses in my studio, so he loves playing with those. And he, yeah, he comes and helps, as he calls it.

Presenter25:19

He's changed your life, but has he changed your art in the way that I'm suggesting? I think certainly with um Embankment. Um that makes sense. My break among the boxes. Yes, and he he came in a lot when I was installing it and um

Speaker 225:27

Yes, and he.

Presenter25:33

We played with walkie-talkies, and you know, it was great fun. Since having him, I found that there's a certain sort of joy in becoming a parent. I think maybe.

Presenter25:42

one becomes less selfish and you just think about the bigger picture a bit more. More music, number seven. So this is for my son, who actually likes to be known as Oliver Dodger. Um he's he loves music and I think one of the

Presenter25:59

joys of having children is that they introduce you to other art forms that you never thought you'd appreciate and he loves the musical Oliver amongst others, so this is for him.

Speaker 226:10

Let us face this case. It's unprecedented quite utterly. Disgraced this place. And encouraging others to wallow it.

Speaker 226:20

On liver, on ever, locking in chain and the principal self of the highest peak, better meal,

Rachel Whiteread26:31

No came out.

Rachel Whiteread26:32

Collect his belongings, then bring him back to me when you're done. To bed, all of you!

Presenter26:40

That was the nineteen ninety four London Palladium cast and Oliver. I come back really, Rachel, to where we started, which is um about the destruction of your work. You've said that you you don't want to make plop art, I think you've called it, sculpture that gets sort of plopped down in places. I don't want to litter the world with my sculpture, you said. Well,

Presenter26:59

What what do you want for your work then? I mean, if it's not to have longevity? I d you know, I love the fact that my work's in museums all over the world and in private collections all over the world. That's fantastic. I think there's something about

Presenter27:14

Sculpture that stands in the street that I find very difficult, mainly because I don't like most of it. And it has to have a good reason for being there. You've turned down becoming a member of of the Royal Academy, and you were in two minds about accepting a CBE, but you did in the end. You d you really don't like being perceived as part of the establishment, do you?

Presenter27:35

Um

Presenter27:37

I don't know. I mean, I think there's something in my kind of family history, you know, that I don't know what it is. I'm not, as you s as I said before, I'm not a great team player. And I suppose something to do with the establishment, you know, that's a big team, isn't it, in a way? And of course I'm part of the establishment, you know, I'm a very well-known contemporary British artist. But I think with that comes a certain degree of responsibility. Maybe, you know, I'm enjoying having a family life and being a different kind of person for a little bit. You're saying you don't want the responsibility of accepting being becoming a member of the Royal Academy or well it you know to be to do something like that or to take on something like that if you're going to do it properly um you need to spend an awful lot of time doing it you know I'm a trustee to a museum I'm I'm

Rachel Whiteread28:14

Let's go.

Presenter28:25

You know, I I do all sorts of things, but you know, you can't do everything, otherwise, you spend all your time doing those things and not actually doing.

Presenter28:33

I see. So it's for a right and proper reason that you don't want to accept these things. It's not because somehow.

Rachel Whiteread28:34

I see six

Presenter28:40

Mm hmm.

Presenter28:43

Somehow you just don't like being sucked in, do you?

Presenter28:47

You want to stay out there. Maybe I do want to stay a little bit out there, yeah. But then I have, as you said, just accepted a CBE, so that's very much in there, isn't it?

Presenter28:57

Last record.

Presenter28:58

This is um Johnny Cash singing Would You Lay With Me in a Field of Stone? And um this is really for Marcus, my other half and soulmate, who I've been with for nineteen years now.

Speaker 229:12

Would you lay with me In a field of stone If my needs were strong, would you lay with me?

Speaker 229:25

Should my lips grow dry, Would you wet them, dear, In the midnight hour, If my lips were dry?

Speaker 229:39

Would you

Presenter29:39

Johnny Cash and Would You Lay With Me in a Field of Stone? Now, if you could only take one of those eight records, Rachel, which one would you take?

Presenter29:47

I think it would actually have to be the Cologne concert, partly because it's so long.

Presenter29:53

Twenty-six minutes of peace yard.

Speaker 229:54

Yeah.

Presenter29:57

No, I think mainly because it was really the music that I first sort of found myself with, I think.

Presenter30:05

Yeah, it's completely sort of overwhelming.

Presenter30:08

And what about your book, as well as the Bible and Shakespeare? Well, I think my book would have to be a sort of complete reference book on the natural history of the island. And a luxury.

Presenter30:20

Wow, that's been very difficult to choose, and I think in the end, I'm going to go for ink pen.

Presenter30:27

paper and correction fluid.

Presenter30:30

I know that sounds like a lot of things, but actually it's just for doing drawings.

Rachel Whiteread30:33

Why?

Presenter30:35

Because that's how I draw. I like to, um you know, I d I draw a line and then and then maybe get rid of a line and and also with writing you can just you know, I can compose songs and write stories and then get rid of them as well.

Presenter30:50

Rachel Whitread, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 331:01

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.