Kylie Queen of the World

by Julie Aspinall

  The other major influence on Kylie’s career has been her manager, Terry Blamey. Terry has been with her from the very earliest days in 1987, after she had recorded ‘Locomotion’, but before it was released. At the time he was an agent, rather than manager and went on to look after other artists such as Dannii and Gina G, but these days he works for Kylie full time.

  He now travels with her a great deal, which is unusual for a manager, looks after all aspects of her work, most importantly, ‘keeping record companies in all corners of the earth on the case. They’re employees and they’re not as passionate about her. She’s not their career, she’s just their day job,’ he explains.

  Terry manages her to this day and, like Pete Waterman, is something of a father figure to Kylies. He has been a constant support, considering her IndieKylie phase not to have been a failure, simply not as successful as the rest of her career. She takes his advice; he has got her career back on track. He is one of the charmed inner circle that Kylie always listens to – if Kylie were a company rather than a person, Terry Blamey would be one of the chief directors of Kylie plc. Speaking of which …

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  Kylie plc

  There are many advantages to being an internationally famous pop star and one of them is not having to worry too much about paying the bills. Kylie Minogue is a multi-millionairess many times over, estimated to be worth at least £16 million – and that’s without taking into account her current breakthrough in the United States, which could earn her many millions more. Nor is this a recent development.

  Kylie may be a glitter hippy in her appearance, but she’s been anything but carefree in accumulating a fortune. She started making a lot of money very early on and has always been sensible with it. As long ago as 1990, she was turning down a tour that would have earned her £800,000 on the grounds that, ‘I want to rest. Anyway, I don’t need the money.’

  And while Michael Hutchence might have taught Kylie about sex, art, wine, travel, poetry, drugs, very good hotels and I don’t know what else, the teacher learned about one subject from his pupil: money. In 2002, five years after his death, it was revealed that Michael’s fortune, if indeed it still exists, is proving remarkably difficult to track down given that it seems to be stashed away all over the world in various tax havens and trust funds. Michael learned how to look after his money from Kylie, just as she learned herself at the hands of an expert – her father, Ron.

  Even from an early age Kylie’s finances have been kept under strict control as Ron, an accountant, was leaving nothing to chance when he took responsibility for her growing fortune. Kylie once remarked that her father has always run her finances: telling her when to reign in her spending (which has never been excessive) and when it was all right to run wild.

  And it was a fortune that was to grow and grow beyond their wildest expectations. In 1987 she was earning £150 a week starring in Neighbours – actually, not bad money back then for a school leaver – but when Kylie Ann Minogue joined the Stock, Aitken and Waterman stable back in the late Eighties she wasn’t just on the road to becoming a star: she was on the fast track to making a fortune.

  After the success of ‘I Should Be So Lucky’, Pete Waterman remembers: ‘We released three more Kylie singles that year [1988] – ‘Got To Be Certain’, ‘The Locomotion’ (we’d worked on a new version from the one Duffy had engineered in Australia) and ‘Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi’, all of which went to number two, so within 12 months we’d made her a millionaire.’ (This wasn’t the only time Pete and co transformed someone’s finances: in his autobiography, Pete wrote that he was second only to the Lottery in creating millionaires.)

  And her fortune quickly grew from there: in 1989 she was said to have earned more than £7 million from her music and the film The Delinquents. Every year since then, even when her career appeared to be in decline, her wealth has increased, for her father has followed the most sensible line in investment and recommended that she diversify into property and shares – including a stake in the Fairfax Group, one of Australia’s leading newspaper companies. The result is an international property portfolio in addition to investments in stocks, shares and high-earning insurance policies.

  As far as one can tell, the future looks more rosy still. Kylie has finally broken into the American market: ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ topped the dance chart, while her album Fever went in to the Billboard chart at number three. It was her first success in the States since ‘The Locomotion’ in 1987 and, according to industry insiders, could earn her a further $10 million. And guess what won America over?

  ‘Kylie is the hottest property we’ve seen in a long time,’ said one extremely overexcited source in the US record industry. ‘But it’s the body as much as the voice that has won us over – in particular that incredible tush. [That’s American for bottom.] Her picture is everywhere. She’s sassy in Tallahassee and has finer contours than the American hills.’ Kylie herself is delighted by it all. ‘I’m so used to being unknown in America that it’s hard to believe this sudden change around. It feels fantastic.’

  Not bad going for a little girl from Melbourne. But the sudden accumulation of wealth was not going to change Kylie: not for her the stories of instant excess and a dwindling fortune – and even when she started behaving like a rock chick a couple of years later, she remained financially astute. Right from the start, under the watchful gaze of her father Ron, Kylie had her financial dealings taken care of. In 1989, despite having already earned more by the age of 22 than most people will throughout the whole of their lifetime, Kylie insisted on living on £110 a week – all the while making sure her growing fortune was carefully stashed away for the future.

  Her management team were also working on her behalf behind the scenes: in 1989, they hammered out a new deal for Kylie to guarantee that she got a minimum of 10 per cent royalties from worldwide record deals. Given the fact that she had by now topped the charts in 23 countries, it was an astute move to make.

  Property was the first and most obvious investment to be made and has been a feature of Kylie’s saving and investment right from the start. In 1989, she bought a Victorian house in Melbourne for £250,000, spending a further £300,000 on renovations for the property, which dated back to 1880. ‘It’s very old for Australia, but I just love it,’ she said at the time. But she didn’t immediately move in. ‘I haven’t got time at the moment, so I’m staying with my parents until the decoration has been completed,’ she went on (she was also spending an awful lot of time with Jason Donovan, who owned a property nearby).

  ‘But it’s a beautiful Victorian house. I’m going to have it extended and renovated and all done in period. Although it has got a wonderful Seventies bathroom and kitchen, I’m taking them out and having it all original. I want it to look just like a Victorian home inside and out. I love that era and hate most modern-style houses.’

  Kylie’s next brush with the property market came the following year: she was offered a luxury home near Tokyo worth £250,000 for three days’ work – her first Japanese tour. The deal was said to have had beneficial tax implications if she took the property rather than cash, although it was unclear what she eventually chose to do. The following year, having moved to England, Kylie bought a three-bedroom flat in Chelsea for £300,000 – and even the most conservative estimates would value it at very significantly more today.

  It emerged at the time, incidentally, that Kylie still hadn’t moved into her first house: ‘A few years ago I bought a house in Melbourne,’ she said a few years after purchasing that Victorian property, ‘but it’s still not finished because I wanted to do it just right and I never have enough time.’ Exactly the same was to be the case in Chelsea: Kylie lived in a hotel for some months before finally moving in to her new bachelor girl pad.

  Nor were Kylie’s earnings just coming from her acting and singing careers. She’s never gone over the top doing promotional work, but she has done advertisements here and there – work that also stems back over
many years. As far back as 1990, she was believed to have earned around £750,000 for participating in a commercial campaign for Coca Cola in Australia: it featured a pizza delivery boy going up to a penthouse flat while whistling his favourite song by Kylie Minogue. And guess who answers the door?

  Fellow Coke promoters at the time included George Michael, Don Johnson and New Kids On The Block and Coke went on to sponsor Kylie’s 1991 ‘Rhythm of Love’ tour. By this time she could also command more than £10,000 for public appearances, placing her firmly in the big league of A-list stars who can very nearly name their own fees.

  Of course, in the years since then, Kylie’s earnings have continued to rocket through records and concerts, with her early success more than enough to cushion her through a difficult patch: between 1988 and 1992, Kylie notched up 14 top five hits, bringing in millions in the process. She also has her own company, Kaydeebee, which owns the copyright on her photographs, merchandise and music. This means that whenever you hear a Kylie record being played or see a Kylie-commissioned photograph in a newspaper or magazine, she is almost certain to be getting a chunk of the profits.

  Kylie’s protective about the use of her name, too. In 2001 she sued the Australian magazine Cleo over an article in which it claimed she had endorsed Tommy’s Girl perfume: entitled ‘Tommy’s Girl Rocks Kylie’, the article said the fragrance was created for her. This was not the case and Kylie forced a settlement with Cleo’s parent company ACP. Kylie cultivates a very charming, hippyish persona, often claiming that she hardly knows what she’ll be doing from one week to the next, but it is increasingly clear that she’s inherited her father’s business acumen and will protect, as well as promote, the Kylie ‘brand’ as she sees fit.

  And while Kylie may have had hits and misses with records throughout the years, that Kylie brand is as strong as ever. In fact, in recent years she seems to have done a lot more promotional work than previously, possibly aware that she has a shelf life as an artist – although it’s proving to be a pretty long one – and should make the most of it while she can. She’s been careful not to make the same mistake as people such as the Spice Girls, though, who went too far in the early days and promoted everything they could lay their hands on (or so it sometimes seemed), thus resulting in massive overexposure. Kylie has picked products carefully, judging the effect they will have on her image and whether they will fit in with the Kylie brand. Thus we have seen her advertising an awful lot of lingerie, as well as soft drinks, international travel and a sexy little sports car. It’s not just a good way to make a lot of money; it’s also a good way to promote her own image.

  The biggest deal came in 2001, when Kylie switched allegiance from Coke to Pepsi, landing a £2.5-million contract to advertise the soft drink Down Under. But unlike some of the other advertisements Kylie was to make that year, of which more below, these ads were to feature a fully dressed Minogue: ‘Ours is a fine, upstanding brand,’ sniffed a Pepsi spokesman. ‘We do not encourage our artists to remove their clothes.’ Again, Kylie was in good company: fellow Pepsi stars included Britney Spears, Madonna, Michael Jackson and the Spice Girls before they went too far. And because of its roster of artists, Pepsi is seen as a good drink for a performer to advertise: there is a certain prestige in signing up with one of the world’s most famous names.

  Kylie has put the money to good use; her lifestyle has never been excessive. As we have seen, she loves designer clothes, but is equally likely to splash out on second-hand clothes – such as that pair of gold hot pants. (And her reaction to the £50,000 offer for them is telling as well: she immediately mused on what a good investment she’d made rather than relating them to her own sex appeal.) And as for her designer wardrobe – Sting once remarked that when you’re rich, you never have to pay for anything, especially your clothes so it’s a fair bet that Kylie, at the very least, gets offered good discounts when she goes on the odd shopping spree.

  Clothing generally has been good to Kylie. In 1998, she joined the likes of Claudia Schiffer, Helena Christensen, Naomi Campbell and Jade Jagger, when she was photographed by Ellen von Unworth for H&M Hennes. The photographs, which concentrated on Kylie in her undies, were a great success and a picture of them plastered all over the underground actually features in Kylie’s coffee table book.

  In 2001, a further commercial opportunity became available when she designed her own range of lingerie called Love Kylie x, which was launched first in Australia and then in the UK. Even the Guardian, not normally the kind of newspaper to celebrate Kylie’s commercial exploits, was delighted, calling the product ‘Magic!’

  The manufacturer issued the following breathless statement at launch: ‘Holeproof is proud to launch the best thing in lingerie for years – Love Kylie x. Personally designed by Australia’s own Kylie Minogue, Love Kylie x is a reflection of that distinctive Kylie style – sexy but still “girl next door”, pert and provocative but stylish and sophisticated. The Love Kylie x collection has been designed to maximise style and comfort and includes a range of briefs, bras and camis.’ Hyperbole, yes, but backed up by the underwear itself. The only trouble is that it doesn’t make anyone else look like Kylie. As Cathy Dennis, who wrote ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ once remarked, ‘I wish I looked like Kylie when I take my clothes off. Respect.’

  Kylie took her raunchy image to new extremes in the same year when she made an advertisement for Agent Provocateur, which makes very sexy, very expensive underwear. She donated her £150,000 fee to charity but certainly made cinema-goers sit up and take notice. The ad was so over the top it wasn’t shown on television and only appeared in cinemas for films rated 18. It featured Kylie in bra and knickers riding a bucking bronco: ‘I was flattered when they asked me to star in the ad,’ said Kylie, ‘and I loved doing it. It was sexy and fun.’ An Agent Provocateur spokeswoman added, ‘This is our first cinema advert and it’s very exciting and sexy. People will be queuing to see Kylie. She’s amazing.’

  In an interview, Kylie admitted that the ad was really pretty outrageous ‘Oh my God!’ she cried. ‘I’ve really outdone myself this time! I’m basically riding a velvet bronco, wearing black lace knickers, bra, suspenders, stockings, high heels and a slight … sweaty glow. I was pulling all these manoeuvres and my make-up artist, Caroline, didn’t know where to look. She said, “How do you do that? In front of everyone?”

  ‘And I said, “How can I get up and do a lot of the things I do? I just do it.” You could put anyone in the same get-up doing the same moves and they may not get away with it. It’s because people know me so well – or even if they don’t, there’s something in the way I am. It’s like I’m winking but I’m not winking.’ The catchline of the advertisement, incidentally, is: ‘Would all the men please stand up.’

  Another of Kylie’s property investments is in Paris: she still owns a flat in the French capital as a hangover from her time with Stephane, which she escapes to from time to time because she can be ‘invisible’ there. ‘Paris is great because I can sit in a café and watch the world go by,’ she once confided. ‘It is nice being an observer for once rather than one of the observed.’

  Appropriately, given her love of Paris, she has appeared in advertisements for Eurostar, replacing the American actor John Malkovich. The ad showed Kylie taking the train for a shopping spree and she is glimpsed running across bridges, dissolving into crowds, sipping coffee in cafes and trying on a wedding dress: ‘Kylie is one of the biggest pop icons of the moment, but she’s still approachable. She’s perfect for the company,’ enthused a spokesman.

  The ads – which were shown in the break in Coronation Street, one of the prime time slots for an advertisement to be aired – appeared just before ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ reached the top of the charts and Joanna Howard, marketing manager at Eurostar commented, ‘The commercial has a special feel because of Kylie’s very natural expression of liberation and excitement.’ Kylie earned an estimated £200,000 for the £2-million campaign – and its timi
ng did her new single no harm at all.

  As you might expect by now, Kylie isn’t interested in simply hoarding all that money she makes. For one thing, she is extremely generous to her parents. In January 2002, she bought a £1 million home for Ron and Carol in Monmouth Avenue, Canterbury, one of the most prestigious streets in Melbourne. A 1940s, two-storey construction, it has a heated swimming pool and tennis court. Ron, who was 60 when the house was bought, had been ill and so the property was seen as a combination of a Christmas, thank you and get well present: ‘She owes much of her wealth to her dad’s judgement,’ explained a friend.

  And Kylie has also been investing in more property in Britain: in early 2002, she bought a £400,000 flat in Shoreditch, the new art capital of London, which for a while she shared with James, before returning to Chelsea. It was a two-bedroom waterside luxury loft conversion with wooden floors, situated close to the Bricklayers Arms pub – like Madonna, Kylie had become an unlikely aficionado of Britain’s public houses.

  And her promotional work continues. Most recently she signed up with Ford to promote the Street Ka, a little 1.6 litre two-seater that will retail for £11,000. Kylie will dance provocatively around it as well as draping herself on the bonnet – ‘They are the perfect match, both small and very sexy,’ said a Ford spokeswoman; the company will also sponsor Kylie’s 2002 concert tour.

  So Kylie has yet another persona: one that has yet to make it into her videos, but one that is quite as important as the rest: TycoonKylie. She has learned at first hand that she works in a very rough and fickle industry, and although James claims that she’ll still be wearing her gold hot pants at the age of 70, it’s unlikely that people would pay quite so much to see them.

  Like the wise little daughter of an accountant that she is, Kylie has put something aside for a rainy day – such a significant something, in fact, that she need never work again. It is a very pleasant situation for a 34-year-old to be in and is proof positive that Kylie works because she wants to, not because she has to.