9
The Wilderness Years
Kylie Minogue was about to embark on one of the most difficult periods of her life. It was 1997 and she hadn’t had an album out for three years. She was still out to achieve credibility, still battling demons from the past and still unsure as to where to go in the future. Again, it was Nick Cave who was responsible for her next inspired act – standing up at the Poetry Olympics in the Royal Albert Hall and reciting the lyrics to ‘I Should Be So Lucky’.
It was actually Nick himself who was first invited to stand up and recite. ‘He’s so clever,’ reminisces Kylie fondly. ‘He just planted the seed so well. I wanted to go and see him perform and the day before he called me up and mentioned that it was an open affair and if I wanted to get up and do something I could. Thank you, I said, but don’t think so, poetry, never done it before, uh-uh.’
Nick, however, was not to be put off that easily and so it was that the next night a disbelieving audience watched Kylie walk up on stage. ‘Hi,’ she began. ‘I didn’t expect to be here today but here I am and I’m going to recite something I didn’t write. “In my imagination, there is no complication, I dream about you all the time…”’ The crowd went wild.
It was a brave act for someone who felt embarrassed about her past. ‘It was like I’d climbed Mount Everest or jumped out of a plane,’ Kylie said afterwards. ‘So many things that I had avoided for so long were right there. That was what Nick was saying to me: “It’ll be brilliant, it’ll confront your past, all in one fell swoop.” And he was right.
‘I am far more accepting about everything I did then. They carved out their own little niche in musical history and it blows my mind that I was part of it. For so long I had such an embarrassment about the early days … I was running as fast as I could away from it but now I realise actually I was pretty cool.’
It also took some courage to appear as she did: the audience got a very rare sighting of ScruffKylie. ‘I was wearing green tracksuit pants and a purple T-shirt, no make-up – it was the weekend and I was so scruffy. Until I’d got the first line out I was thinking, I’m not so sure about this… I broke so many rules. I didn’t take any of the steps I would normally take before a live performance. I hadn’t done any of the preparation, you know, slipping in to your “ego outfit”, the mental thing. I remember I was watching it with Nick on a monitor backstage and the guy before me was this old white-haired man with a long beard, reading poetry in Braille, and I said, “Nick, God’s on stage, how can we follow that?” But after he pushed me on and I read the first line – I had a friend scribble them out – I heard a titter run through the audience and I knew I had them. The reaction told me they knew what it was. I am still amazed that he thought of it, that I did it and by the effect it had on people and on me.’
And she was open about the effect Nick had had on her. ‘I saw Nick last night and there is a great mutual respect which is incredible,’ she said in an interview in 1997. ‘If I stop to think about it I am baffled, because considering where I come from, I would just never have expected that I would end up in that situation.’ So did she feel cool now? ‘It depends. I feel happy. I feel very excited about the future and very accepting of the past.’
The immediate future, though, was to be very difficult. It was in 1997 that Michael Hutchence was found dead, hanging from the back of a hotel door in Sydney. Kylie was utterly devastated and appeared pale and wan at the funeral, although with typical generosity she spoke out in defence of Paula Yates, Michael’s partner and the mother of his child, when she was criticised for making Michael’s life problematic. ‘The people who criticise her have taken no responsibility for their actions,’ Kylie fumed. ‘They make me very angry. Paula has a lot to deal with at the moment.’
And it was around the end of 1997 that she finally brought out a new album – which, in turn, eventually convinced Kylie that she had no need to worry about everyone taking her seriously and that it was absolutely fine to go back to boppy little disco numbers. She wasn’t quite there yet, though, and so it was that she went through the worst period of her career – and all because of her second album for deConstruction.
Kylie wanted this album to work; it was to give her the status of being a serious artist that she so very much craved, not least because she had written a lot of it. ‘It’s my album more than ever before,’ she said firmly. ‘Although I am reluctant to make declarations because I’ve said so many things before and realised later they were only right for the time. But to this point, it is the album I’ve had the most to do with. There are 12 tracks and I’ve written all the lyrics, except one which was a co-write.’
Despite Kylie’s enthusiasm, there were problems right from the outset. For a start, it had taken three years to get the album into the shops as Kylie continued to meet the grooviest people in the business, formulate all sorts of exciting plans and then come up with nothing that was particularly exciting. Not that it was her fault. She had made it plain right from the outset that she was counting on the creative powers that be at deConstruction to help her find interesting new projects and if they were not able to do so, then they really had no one but themselves to blame.
And the timing of the album could not have been worse. Originally entitled Impossible Princess, it was first due to be released in January 1997 as a collaboration between Kylie and the Brothers in Rhythm. At the last minute, though, it was decided that more collaborators were needed and so the Manic Street Preachers, Dave Ball from The Grid and a host of others were drafted in to turn Kylie into the ultimate indie impossible princess.
The next release date was set to be September 1997, which turned out to be just a couple of weeks after Princess Diana was killed in a car crash. Both the release date and the title were immediately put on hold: it would have been massively inappropriate (and commercial suicide) to have done anything else. ‘I’ve lived with that title for two years,’ said Kylie sombrely, explaining the changes and her own reaction to Diana’s death. ‘And I had already done a lot of press talking about the name, but after the tragedy of Princess Di occurred, we had to rethink.
‘It didn’t hit me immediately, because I found it so hard to comprehend. But then I thought I don’t want to be constantly explaining or upsetting people. So we’ve taken the name off for now, but I’d like to keep the option for putting it back in the future. That’s what the album is called, it just won’t be on the cover.’ And guess who was responsible for the title? ‘It came from a book of poetry, Poems To Break The Hearts Of Impossible Princesses, by the poet Billy Childish who gave it to Nick to give to me,’ Kylie explained earnestly. Truly, Nick Cave has a lot to feel responsible for …
Kylie loved the name, though. ‘The first time I saw Impossible Princess on the Billy Childish book, it had my name written all over it,’ she gushed, having perhaps mislaid the spectacles she’d sported on the cover of her previous album. ‘I can be the girl on the show pony at the circus with sparkles and sequins and I adore the spotlight – so that’s her [the Impossible Princess]. And then there’s the flip side of me, which is completely not that … the green tracksuit pants … no make-up and being a wreck! I regard it [the title] with humour, with irony and with a certain amount of realism because I can change my mind about things all the time and be completely impossible.
‘It is about practically everything, even impossible things – the desire to have all my senses fulfilled, to experience life in the broadest possible way … I’d like to think that if you make yourself open to almost anything, then those experiences will come … I talk about it and hope to do it at some point.’
At first, Kylie thought that her change of image would go down well. ‘People love to pigeonhole you, no matter what you do,’ she argued. ‘They place a box over you and you can’t get out of it, but I have been able to stretch it a little each way, to lift up one side and peep out, to shuffle it here and there. I know that’s not normal. I don’t know how I’ve done it. I was supposed to be a one
-hit wonder. I can remember having my second hit and thinking, mmmmm …’
In many ways, Kylie was right: she had been able to change her image, although given that she went from girl next door to sex bomb – as opposed to say, going from sex bomb to middle-aged housewife – her continuing popularity was perhaps not such a surprise. And she had shown courage: it’s hard to imagine, for example, Victoria Beckham going on stage in a poetry recital at the Royal Albert Hall and reciting the lyrics to ‘Wannabe’ (although it’s very easy to envisage Madonna taking on such a challenge with one of her own songs). But with the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that Kylie’s new persona didn’t work because it simply wasn’t her: she’s appeared much happier in recent years as born-again SexKylie than she ever looked drowning in a river with a rose over her face. Actually, to be fair, she adored her collaboration with Nick Cave – it’s what came next that was to prove the real problem.
But back to the album. This was Kylie’s indie moment and she was bubbling over with enthusiasm. ‘It’s eclectic, some dance, some guitar-based pop,’ she burbled happily. ‘One track is a smoky nightclub thing, another is psychedelic and one of them is almost reggae. I’m reluctant to say it’s all personal because it sounds like gush, but they all came from moments, little vignettes, different stories. It was about going inwards, it wasn’t like I was looking for stories. I always had a pad and pen with me and the lyrics I’m most pleased with came out whole. They just said everything I wanted to say. I just had my head down trying to do something that was truthful to myself. I’m pleased with it, but I’m much more pleased it’s out. I felt overly pregnant because it’s been two years in the making. Now it’s out, I can fully let go of it. But it’s scary, because if it doesn’t work, I can’t blame anyone else.’
Those words were to be prophetic, as were Kylie’s next thoughts on the matter. ‘I have become a symbol of having things too easy,’ she admitted. ‘But I don’t take it for granted. I admit I have a great life. I have a great family and a job I enjoy. I don’t have to turn up to a job I hate every day. I know I’m lucky.’
The album, not very imaginatively retitled Kylie Minogue, came out in early 1998. Despite her brave words, Kylie might have had an inkling that there would be problems, for by this time she was only too eager to dismiss the idea that she was after anything as trivial as a number one. After all, she’d been there, done that and bought the hot pants. ‘I’ve had to redefine success for my sanity,’ she said in an interview at the time, ‘because if I put the expectation of massive success, which I had in the past, on myself to try and maintain all those chart positions which I had initially, I’d go round the bend. You know, number one, number two, number one, number two, they were all top 10. I’m not expecting that. Musical fashion is constantly changing and if Gina [G] is the fashion now like I used to be it doesn’t worry me. What a diabolical state that world would be if those changes didn’t take place.’
They were noble sentiments, well expressed, but not the type guaranteed to bring a smile to the lips of her record company. Kylie, however, was still giving every impression of being blissfully happy with the way the album had gone, not least because she was involved in writing the lyrics, something that had long been her ambition. ‘They’re all autobiographical,’ she revealed. ‘They’re all what I’ve felt, been through … I don’t know how to write any other way. Even if I did I wouldn’t want to. I haven’t reached the stage yet where if the songs aren’t smash hits I’m going to take it personally. I don’t have extra nerves about the fact that I’ve written this album. I’ve got the same nerves and excitement as I have with every album. It’s, “Please do okay.”’
And Nick Cave was still playing as big a part in Kylie’s life as ever. ‘What I was going to say about redefining success is that the one and only Nick Cave, who I totally adore these days … I did a performance with him in October. He called up and asked whether I was interested in doing a song in a jazz café the next day in London. He said it was a song he’d just written three days prior and modestly he said, “I think it’s really good and I know it’s late notice but would you do it.”
‘And so the next day I found myself at another poetry-type affair which was much smaller [than the Poetry Olympics at the Royal Albert Hall] singing this gorgeous … piece with Nick Cave and I realised then that if I had the opportunity of a number one record or doing this with Nick Cave, I’d probably choose doing this with Nick because that’s something, a moment, that’s just fantastic: a miserable, grey rainy Saturday afternoon in London and we were in such a tiny environment.’
Kylie continued her praise of Nick, becoming slightly incoherent in her excitement. ‘I wasn’t nervous when I first met Nick because I hate to admit that I was really naïve and didn’t know about this god that was Nick Cave, the icon,’ she gushed. ‘That’s probably part of the reason he’d been wanting to do something with me for a while; I’m so far removed from where he comes from that in a strange way it makes our meeting more harmonious … to come from the Birthday Party [Nick’s first band] and me trying to speed-read his autobiography and learning about urination at various gigs and whacking the people over the heads with microphones … to meet when you’ve got all that space between [us], for [us] to overcome, to get to that point, I just think it’s gorgeous and it constantly thrills me.’
Nick more than returned the compliment: for a start, his name was romantically linked with Kylie’s. Kylie is incredibly good at turning down men she’s not interested in and still making them feel like heroes – Robbie Williams, a couple of years later, was a case in point – and the full Minogue charm came into play in Nick’s case too. So Nick had the hots for her? ‘Umm,’ mused Kylie. ‘I do know he was talking about that. He would say to me around that time, “I’ve been talking about you again and all my stories keep getting more and more exaggerated and obsessive.” I think he knows that I’m slightly in love with him and if the feeling’s mutual, then that’s nice. He’s had such an impact on my life. He’s lovely and gorgeous and intelligent.’ In the middle of all of this it’s quite easy to miss the fact that their relationship never actually progressed – rather, you suspect, to Nick’s chagrin – beyond friendship and artistic collaboration.
Kylie did, however, become some sort of muse, to the extent that she inspired a Cave lecture entitled The Secret Life Of The Love Song. Originally conceived for the Vienna Poetry Festival, it was a reflection on Nick’s artistic muse and the whole genre of love songs, and was eventually delivered to a capacity audience – and great acclaim – at the Royal Festival Hall.
Kylie might have been more credible than at any other time in her career, but, sadly, she was also a good deal less popular than she had ever been before. The record-buying public simply didn’t want GrungeKylie. It was SexKylie who was the stuff both of adolescent and middle-aged male fantasy, to say nothing of a role model for her female fans. And so nothing went according to plan. The single ‘Some Kind Of Bliss’ was released in September: it spent one week in the charts at number 22. Its follow-up, ‘Did It Again’, got to number 14, as did the next one, ‘Breathe’. The album, when it was finally released, made it to number 10.
To be fair, the timing was seriously out. ‘Some Kind Of Bliss’ was released in the same week as ‘Candle In The Wind ’97’, Sir Elton John’s ballad to the late Princess of Wales. It didn’t stand a chance. ‘I think the statistic was that Elton had 75 per cent of the singles bought that week, so mine didn’t get off to a good start,’ admitted Kylie a couple of months after the single had been released. ‘I’ve told myself not to be frustrated but actually I am frustrated, because the album should be out. The point of it is to get it out and maybe people will like it, maybe they’ll love it, maybe they’ll hate it. But at least it will be out of my hands. I could be upset about it but then you look at the bigger picture and I have no right to be annoyed. It’s just been delayed because a tragedy occurred. Being born under a lucky star, I’m used to seeing things go s
mooth. It was a reality check. Shit happens.’
With such problems with her current pop career, Kylie was now beginning to appreciate her former mentors rather more. For some time she had been resentful of the fact that Stock, Aitken and Waterman had pretty much run her career with little input from the star herself, but she was beginning to understand that there was something to be said for working with a team who got you to the top of the charts on a pretty regular basis. This dawning realisation came when Kylie was accosted on the street one day.
‘I bumped in to Mrs Stock the other day,’ she said in the same interview. ‘She came up to me and said, “I’m Mike Stock’s wife.” Now I don’t know what those guys are up to now but I said to her, “Please say hello.” There was a period when I wasn’t speaking very highly of them, but time changes a lot of things. For whatever we’ve been through, there’s a lot to look back on and a lot to be pleased with.’
As time wore on, the records continued not to sell well and ‘Is this the end?’ headlines started appearing. GrungeKylie vanished almost overnight, while SexKylie suddenly started making a reappearance. Kylie began explaining earnestly that, actually, grunge wasn’t quite her. ‘I can only say that I do what comes naturally to me and I think it would be more of a lie for me to be wearing baggy pants and be coy and demure and not giving a nod to my sexuality,’ she said. ‘I’ve tried to tone down my flirtatiousness but it’s not something I think I should be ashamed of,’ she went on. ‘I don’t think it’s cheap in any way, I hope people can see I’m having fun with it.’
But still nothing seemed to be going right. For a while Kylie appeared to be in danger of being eclipsed by her fellow Australian Natalie Imbruglia, who also starred in Neighbours, and who was now also pursuing a singing career: when Breathe was released, music paper NME rather loftily pronounced, ‘Kylie now sounds exactly like Natalie.’
Kylie Queen of the World Page 11