by Tina Arena
A guiding hand was provided by Peter Asher, a legendary Brit whose illustrious musical career began with a stint as a musician in the 1960s before he became head of A&R at Apple Records. From there he signed and then managed and produced James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt. Peter, who some say is the person Mike Myers modelled Austin Powers on, helped with production on my record and even played a bit of percussion. He had a particular interest in female vocalists, I think (as well as being Linda Ronstadt’s producer he’d worked with Bonnie Raitt and Cher), and he took a bit of a liking to me.
And finally, there was the wondrous Chris Lord-Alge, who engineered during the mix.
Working with such an incredible bunch of musicians and artists was a huge eye-opener for me, and I learnt so much. I’d come a long way already from singing jingles for cash, and that felt good.
Making that record felt like falling in love for the first time. I just adored the process of writing and felt so liberated by it – I could write from the heart. And then to have musos of such a high calibre bring those songs to life meant so much to me – it was, dare I say it, awesome.
Technically, that record may have been my second album, but in many ways it felt like my first. The songs, while co-written, all gave expression to my experiences and feelings. It was my heart and soul in that record, which was truly satisfying.
‘Honey, you’ve got a lifetime to make your first record and five minutes to come up with the second,’ one of those brilliant musos said to me at the time. How bloody true that was, though at the time I didn’t understand what he was getting at.
Unfortunately, the other half of making and selling music is image, look, presentation – whatever you want to call it. I say ‘unfortunately’ because I’m just a singer, not a clothes horse or a style guru (okay, I do love a good frock and a nice pair of Italian shoes). I’m inspired by music, not image, and I’ve always wanted to move people with my voice, not my outfit. I knew that my strength came from my voice and its ability to tell stories via song.
I’d learnt the hard way that the visuals or the clothes should rarely speak louder than the person. I knew from all the fuss around ‘I Need Your Body’ that in the image department it was easy to get attention for all the wrong reasons, especially when you’re a woman.
This time around, I was determined to have control over all that. I was ready to keep it real, to go for a look and feel that was true to me. I figured I’d be better off looking natural, in jeans and a shirt, whatever, but just being myself.
Instrumental in helping me get there was a Melbourne art director and photographer called Pierre Baroni. Pierre had been art director at Mushroom Records, where he’d started photographing artists. He always says he just tries to capture people’s eyes, and the rest takes care of itself. Whatever he does, it works.
Ralph contacted Pierre and asked him whether he’d be interested in creating the album cover art. Pierre said yes. I have no doubt that Sony would have wanted to control the visual marketing, but somehow we managed to convince them to use Pierre. Thank god.
But we needed a title for the album first. Lists were drawn up, and I very quickly settled on ‘Don’t Ask’ as my favourite. It was simple, and was taken from the idea of ‘Ask no questions and I’ll tell you no lies’. In other words, just listen to the bloody record and judge it on its merits, without any preconceptions. Please!
With that title in mind, Pierre came up with a powerful but simple cover idea: just a close-up of my face looking straight at the camera, with very little makeup, simple hair, nothing too contrived.
Now back in Melbourne, we shot the cover image in Pierre’s studio, which was above Ralph’s new office in a townhouse in Richmond.
A young guy called Michael Angel styled me for the cover shoot and later the clip. He was working for Joe Saba back then. Michael and I had a good time on those shoots and we ended up becoming great friends. Now he’s a hot shot designer in New York.
On the surface, the cover idea was hardly revolutionary – a close-up of the artist’s face is probably the most common album cover style you’ll find. But Pierre knew how to capture a certain something in a face to create a dramatic image.
The result was classic and timeless, a cover of which I’m still proud (well, I’m proud for Pierre). The image was understated, almost soft, but it had a power that was quietly confronting: ‘Here I am, this is me, unchained. Now sit down and listen!’
Once the cover art was nailed, photographer and director Grant Matthews was charged with directing the film clip for the first single off the album. It hadn’t taken us long to decide which song that would be. Of course, it had to be ‘Chains’.
In keeping with Pierre’s cover, Grant went for a muted palette. There I was, dressed in jeans and a shirt (yay!), cowering in the corner of a darkened room. As the song built, I began to pull the coverings off the windows and managed to let the light in, until I finally started throwing things out the window. The video captured the pain and struggle of the song but had a liberating and empowering mood.
‘Chains’ was released as a single at the end of August 1994. The B side was ‘Standing Up’, a song I’d written with Rick and Heather Field when I was in Sydney the year before.
With the record in the stores, the irony didn’t escape me that a song about feeling trapped by my past might be the very song that freed me from all that. Fingers crossed.
CHAPTER 10
Chains, the S&M Mix
A month after its release, ‘Chains’ was still only getting airplay in regional areas. Sales were relatively modest. Without metropolitan radio stations behind it, the song had little chance of charting. It wasn’t exactly a great start.
Then someone at Sony mentioned that, for some reason, a popular radio station in Greece had put the song on high rotation, even though it hadn’t yet been released over there. That gave me a lift – trust the Europeans to get in first, I thought. But what about my homeland?
Finally, the metropolitan stations in Australia picked it up. By early November the single had taken off and gone gold, reaching number 4 in the charts. I was blown away. I knew ‘Chains’ was special the day we wrote it, but I also knew that often that’s not enough. While I’d hoped the record would strike a chord, after so many obstacles along the way, I had low expectations. So I was genuinely bowled over.
Once I’d scrambled back onto my feet, though, Sony, Ralph and I flew into action. It was back in the days of faxes, and the fax machine chirruped night and day. The album was finally released later that month. By Christmas it had gone gold and ‘Chains’ had hit platinum.
I felt mainly shock but also relief. I’d put everything I had into Don’t Ask, and now it was out there for people to discover and enjoy. And they actually were! I remember seeing a record shop window plastered with posters of the album cover and feeling so proud and grateful.
Promoting that record had become the centre of my relationship with Ralph – after all, what had always united us was a shared love and respect for music. Now our lives were intertwined in every way, but it was Don’t Ask that connected us most and drove us onwards and upwards. Neither of us was scared of hard work, which, it was quickly becoming apparent, was just about all there was time for.
Nevertheless, Ralph and I began to make plans for our wedding. We’d been engaged for two years but had never set a date. We’d just been too busy. But I was ready to commit. Like most women of my generation, I had a dream that somehow I could make it all work, that I’d fall in love and live happily ever after with a caring husband, a successful career and a family.
Ralph’s and my relationship seemed to tick all the boxes for exactly that reason, even if we were so focused on work that our personal relationship increasingly came second. I was sure we’d find the right time to reverse that, down the track, once we’d put in the hard yards in music. But while we were riding the ‘merry-go-round’, as I came to call it, being a couple just made sense. After all, I was spending an enormo
us amount of time away from home and the people I loved – it could be an incredibly lonely existence. I was never going to get into bar hopping in search of company or romance.
I was still living at Keilor East with Silvana – Mum and Dad were at Moonee Ponds running the nursing home, where Mum’s total commitment was rewarded with adoration from her clients. Ralph was in a terrace in Richmond which he owned with his brother. We decided I’d buy Ralph’s brother out and we’d renovate, and hopefully the house would be finished by the time we were married. Can you believe it? A crazy work schedule, a wedding and now a renovation? We were fucking mad! But that’s what we did.
Somehow we remained focused on promoting the record. Almost everything else was on hold – there’d be no trip down to Sorrento this year. I made a string of appearances across the country, sang at Carols by Candlelight, gave interviews and did countless instore signings at which thousands of people turned up. In January I sang ‘Waltzing Matilda’ before the men’s final at the Australian Open. That was fun – I love watching tennis, and seeing the stars battle it out from the baseline at the Australian Open is one of my favourite pastimes.
In February 1995, when we released ‘Sorrento Moon’ as a single, sales of Don’t Ask hit platinum (70,000 records in Australia) and were still ticking over well. This time radio immediately got behind the single and ‘Sorrento Moon’ was soon top ten. My life was getting more hectic by the day. Then ‘Chains’ was released in the UK and Europe, and things got really crazy.
The single was picked up by Capital FM, which had the top breakfast radio show in the UK. I heard later that Sony UK had passed my single to the show’s programmer, a woman called Annie. She heard it and loved it, and pressed it onto Chris Tarrant, the show’s host, who is a radio and TV legend in the UK. Chris started playing ‘Chains’ and off it went. Soon it had reached the top ten and I was heading over there to appear on Top of the Pops, the BBC’s music show that aired on Thursday nights and had been running since the mid-1960s.
The first thing I heard when I arrived at Heathrow airport was ‘Chains’ on the radio. I heard the song again in the car on the way to the hotel. Seeing my reaction, the driver, a hilarious northerner called Reggie, said: ‘You know I only drive stars in my car.’ (I found out later he was actually telling the truth – he’d driven countless stars around London in his time.) I couldn’t have asked for a better welcome to the UK.
‘Chains’ had reached number 7 by the time I sang it on Top of the Pops. Most artists mimed on the show, but not me – I insisted on singing it live, something I’ve always preferred. The week after I was on, the song went to number 6. I did the rounds of the media and appeared on a bunch of other TV shows, performing ‘Chains’ each time. I never grew tired of singing it – I could always throw myself into it, let loose, so to speak, and sing it like I meant it. Because I did.
I toured Britain from bottom to top, working fourteen-hour days, but I didn’t care. I believed in that record. So did the Sony team in the UK. Terrie Doherty, Amanda Beale and Jo Headland, a bunch of fabulously strong women, were vital to the success of that record in Britain and I’m forever indebted to them for all their efforts.
After Britain, I was off on a whistlestop tour of Europe. Ralph was with me when he could be, but sometimes we were apart. That’s just the way it was. Luckily, I travelled a lot with Mitch Vannoni, who was in charge of international promotions at Sony Music Europe. Thank god for Mitch! She was a brilliant organiser and great team player. But it was her local knowledge that made all the difference. Wherever we were, Mitch knew where to eat, what to drink, how to say it in the local patois, local customs – you name it. She was a woman after my own heart and we drank and ate ourselves under the table on more than one occasion. It’s thanks to Mitch that I developed a nose for fine food and wine.
Following the success of ‘Chains’ in the UK and Europe, I was asked to perform at Sony Music’s International product presentation in Rome in May that year. Sony Music boss Tommy Mottola would be there, as well as Sony heads from around the world. This was huge – if you were invited to appear it usually meant the big guns were looking to invest money in you in their territory. I was a bundle of nerves just thinking about it.
Ralph came with me on that trip. We were met at the airport in Rome by Sony Italy’s head of promotion, Susan Duncan Smith, a stunning redhead with a winning smile and limitless energy. She took us to our hotel just near the Spanish Steps. Our room was on the top floor and had 360-degree views of Rome.
Italian is my first language – I didn’t learn English until I started school at the age of five – and I had an overwhelming desire to hit the streets and converse.
Wandering around that city I felt a profound sense of belonging. As for the Italian men – those Latins are ballsy! Guys on their Vespas would try to pick you up, right there in front of your husband!
We met Susan for dinner at a restaurant. Over a piccolo aperitivo Susan explained how the conference worked. When she discussed Tommy Mottola’s visit you would be forgiven for thinking the president of the United States was coming. There was no doubt that Tommy was important. On his watch, Sony Music had become a global success. But Tommy wasn’t just a numbers man. He’d started out as an artist in the 1960s, before moving into artist management. He took the job at Sony in the late 1980s. Tommy had nurtured the careers of many artists, including Hall & Oates, Celine Dion and his then wife, Mariah Carey. He truly understood and loved music.
I tried to appear calm and professional but I was growing increasingly jittery. I knew there would be no room to mess this one up.
The conference was held at a villa just outside Rome. When we arrived, we were escorted to my improvised dressing-room, an area curtained off from what appeared to be an old schoolroom.
I made myself a cup of tea and had just had one sip when Susan stuck her head through the curtain. ‘Tommy will be here in five minutes,’ she said. ‘He wants to meet you.’
I nodded dumbly. I was so nervous I could hardly speak.
Sure enough, five minutes later Susan was back. ‘Can we come in?’
Behind her was Tommy, immaculately dressed in a dark suit, flanked by a couple of bodyguards. Susan introduced us and Tommy held out his hand.
He told me the company worldwide was very excited about what I’d been doing. ‘I’ve been getting some great feedback about you,’ he said. ‘I know you’re gonna knock ’em dead tonight.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ I spluttered.
Tommy nodded and was about to leave. Just before he slipped through the curtain he turned. ‘How old are you, Tina?’ he asked.
‘Twenty-seven,’ I said.
‘Well you’re twenty-two now,’ Tommy said. He smiled, turned and disappeared.
I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean, but I wouldn’t be fibbing about my age. After all, I was hardly over the hill. Not yet, anyway. But that was common practice. You could still get away with it back then, unlike today, when everything, including your G-string size, is published on the internet.
My nerves served me well, and the performance brought the house down. I was getting better at this kind of ‘showcase’ performance. It’s certainly an art in itself.
That same month, Don’t Ask was released in the UK. It reached number 11 on the charts and went silver. By then it had gone double platinum in Australia and was still selling well. In early June ‘Heaven Help My Heart’ was released in Australia as the third single off the album. Don’t Ask was now four times platinum.
Frontier Touring were organising a concert tour. We pulled together a backing band that included Rob Parde and began rehearsing. At the same time, Ralph and I decided to set aside a date for our wedding. I figured there would never be a ‘right’ time to get married – once all this was over I’d be back recording a new record and it would all begin again. What difference would it make, being a little busier, when we were already crazy busy?
But I wanted the wedding to be
a secret, if we could swing it. I just wanted one day for myself, for us, and our families and friends, just one day that was private rather than public. I was like so many young women – I wanted the white wedding that said loud and clear to the people who mattered most that this was special and this was forever.
When I gave my family the news they were happy for me – well, some more than others. I know Dad and Mum still had reservations about mixing my business and personal lives, but they knew I was a grown woman and would make my own decisions. Silvana, now in her early twenties, was more vocal. She’d worked for Ralph for a while but it hadn’t turned out well. There was not a lot of love lost between them. But, hey, that’s families for you.
Mum suggested we make a prenuptial agreement. She, sensibly, was concerned about how entangled my personal life and business arrangements had become. Dad agreed. I talked to my then lawyer, who told me that, in Australia, prenups were rarely worth the paper they were written on. Maybe he was right – I know I believed him. And anyway, why would I need one? Ralph and I were best mates.
Despite their misgivings, Mum, Dad, Nancy and Silvana all agreed to pitch in to organise the big day, which would be 10 December.
‘Wasn’t It Good’, the fourth single from Don’t Ask, came out in late September. Days later I sang ‘Advance Australia Fair’ and an a cappella version of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ at the AFL Grand Final between the Geelong Cats and Carlton Blues. Carlton had been my team since I was conceived in early 1967, so I was thrilled they’d made it through, but I was terrified on the day. I don’t know whether it was singing in front of a crowd of almost 100,000 people, or the thought I wouldn’t be able to hear myself and I’d stuff it up. Either way, I was sick with anxiety. But it all went to plan on the day, including the game, and the Blues won convincingly by sixty-one points!
Just a few days later I was at the Sydney Convention Centre for the annual Australian music awards, or the ARIAs, as they’re known. I’d been nominated for five awards and there was no way I was going to miss it.