PJ Harvey

Polly Jean Harvey was born on 9 October 1969 in Bridport, Dorset, and grew up on her family’s farm in Corscombe. Her parents, Ray and Eva, owned a quarrying business on Ham Hill and introduced her to blues, Captain Beefheart, and Bob Dylan. They were keen music fans who hosted small gigs and counted Ian Stewart among their close friends.

Harvey attended Beaminster School, where folk singer-songwriter Steve Knightley gave her guitar lessons. As a teenager, she learned saxophone and played in an eight-piece instrumental group called Bologne, run by composer Andrew Dickson, as well as the folk duo the Polekats, for whom she wrote some of her earliest songs. After school, she took a visual arts foundation course at Yeovil College.

Automatic Dlamini: 1988–1991

Harvey began her music career in July 1988 when she joined the Bristol-based band Automatic Dlamini, founded by John Parish in 1983. The band had a rotating lineup that included Rob Ellis and Ian Oliver. Harvey met Parish in 1987 through mutual friend Jeremy Hogg, the band’s slide guitarist. She played saxophone, guitar, and backing vocals, touring East and West Germany, Spain, and Poland to support the band’s debut album, The D is for Drum, and later a second European tour in mid-1989.

The band recorded a second album, Here Catch, Shouted His Father, between late 1989 and early 1990, which remains unreleased except for bootlegs. Harvey has said her time with Automatic Dlamini taught her to play guitar and perform in front of audiences, crediting Parish as her “musical soulmate.” Parish’s girlfriend at the time, photographer Maria Mochnacz, became a close friend of Harvey and later shot most of her album artwork and music videos. Harvey also wrote to the American band Slint after they asked for female singers on the sleeve of their 1991 album Spiderland, but Slint broke up before the album came out.

In January 1991, Harvey left Automatic Dlamini to form her own band with Ellis and Oliver. She named it the PJ Harvey Trio, rejecting other names as unsuitable, and to allow her to continue as a solo artist. The trio featured Harvey on vocals and guitar, Ellis on drums and backing vocals, and Oliver on bass. Oliver later left to rejoin Automatic Dlamini and was replaced by Steve Vaughan.

The trio’s debut performance, at a skittle alley in Charmouth Village Hall in April 1991, was a disaster: they cleared the hall of about fifty people, leaving only two. Despite this, the trio released two studio albums, Dry (1992) and Rid of Me (1993), before disbanding. Harvey then continued as a solo artist, releasing ten more studio albums from 1995 onward, collaborating with Parish, Ellis, Mick Harvey, Eric Drew Feldman, and producer Flood.

Harvey has received numerous accolades. She won the Mercury Prize in 2001 for Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000) and again in 2011 for Let England Shake (2011), making her the only artist to win it twice. She has also received a BAFTA Award, eight Brit Award nominations, eight Grammy Award nominations, and two additional Mercury Prize nominations.

Personal life

Rolling Stone named her Best New Artist and Best Singer Songwriter in 1992, and Artist of the Year in 1995. The NME Awards gave her the Outstanding Contribution to Music award. In the 2013 Birthday Honours, she was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to music.