Joanna Newsom tells all

As unlikely seating arrangements go, being splodged in between Quentin Tarantino and Joanna Newsom has got to be the unlikeliest. One is a film director who can’t rest until all his characters have blown each other’s brains out; the other a polyrhythmic (the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms) harp player who composes intricate, beautiful song cycles about constellations and peonies and chalk. But I’m in a restaurant in LA trying to interview the harpist when the director sits down at the next table, and he’s louder than us, telling his friends about the time he fictionalised Hitler. “So I woke up one day and wrote on this piece of paper, just kill him,” he barks. “Just f***ing kill him.” “Damn,” mutters Newsom, grinning conspiratorially at me. “He stole my line.”