by Tina Arena
Suddenly, one of the ‘stone’ walls slid away. Behind it was a sea of people. There was Tina Turner, Eva Peron, Elvis during his Las Vegas period, a sleazy-looking Santa, at least three Ralphs, a Sydney Swans player (who let him in?) and a couple of Marilyn Monroes.
I glanced at my drink – I actually thought it must have been spiked, the scene was so surreal.
‘Surprise!’ they shouted at once. ‘Happy thirtieth birthday!’
I spotted my mate Michael Angel dressed as a monk. That totally threw me – I burst out laughing. Mum and Dad were there too, looking as confused as I was. Then Nancy and Silvana appeared at my side. They looked like Anne Boleyn and her lady-in-waiting, in stunning gowns, makeup, the lot. When I saw Silvana I collapsed into tears of joy – having been away overseas for months, she’d snuck back into the country without me knowing, just in time for my birthday.
My sisters led me away to a back room where they had a costume ready for me. A shiny gold hoop skirt, a baby-blue satin bustier, an enormous white wig, matching shoes, a fan. When they’d finished, I was Marie Antoinette.
Everywhere I looked that night was like a scene from Peter Sellers’ The Party. Elvis, sporting the most spectacular cape I’ve ever seen, was serenading anyone who’d listen. Santa, in particular, was behaving very badly and was last spotted throwing up in the toilet. Eva Peron passed out in a barber’s chair. Mum and Dad finally left – I don’t think they’d ever seen anything like it, or would again. It was the craziest night of my life. I realised what a fabulous sense of humour my mates had. There’s no doubt Ralph had pulled a rabbit out of a hat again.
Three weeks later we kicked off a nine-city tour in Perth. The In Deep Live tour was also something that will stay with me forever. Jeff Jacobs, the keyboardist from Foreigner, had agreed to be the musical director as well as play keyboards, and together we’d pulled together a truly brilliant band. Jeff brought in Crystal Taliefero, an incredible multi-instrumentalist and vocalist. Crystal, who had played on In Deep, was in Billy Joel’s band and had also previously played with John Mellencamp, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, the Bee Gees – need I go on? Our bassist Schuyler Deale was another great American muso who had also played with Billy Joel. Then we had Virgil Donati and Jack Jones from Southern Sons, and Rod Davies, who’d toured with John Farnham.
My old mate from school, Clare Heasly, with whom I’d had such a good time on the ‘I Need Your Body’ tour, took on the job of tour manager. It wasn’t without its challenges – there were some disagreements behind the scenes, as there often are. But Clare stood up to Ralph in a way I’d never seen any other woman do. They never did see eye to eye. But I always believed in Clare’s vision and abilities.
Ralph’s assistant, Ann-Marie Meadows, also came on tour with us. A woman who, if required, could have run the country with her hands tied behind her back, Annie had previously worked at Mushroom Records. She turned out to be a lifesaver and fun to have around. Soon she was my right-hand woman.
Pierre Baroni designed the show, which included a sheer backdrop and curtains that glowed various shades of red and orange. I felt like the set of songs we played was strong – there wasn’t a weak moment. The audiences were just wonderful – excited, generous, supportive.
Channel Nine produced a documentary of the tour’s last concerts at Melbourne Park, where the Australian Open is played. I haven’t watched it in years, but I do remember the start included vox pops with fans. As usual, my lips proved popular with the blokes, but, in particular, the kids and their mums and grandmas were gorgeous. Their enthusiasm for the music was inspiring. And being a fan myself of so many artists, including the incredible Stevie Wonder, I could relate. I’m sure Stevie could too. Because, while he might be a genius, when it comes down to it, he’s no doubt a fan just like the rest of us. After all, he wrote ‘Master Blaster (Jammin’)’ as a tribute to the late, great Bob Marley.
For me, that was the thing about music that kept me going. It was what I particularly loved about performing live. Because, the truth is, whether we’re singing, playing, listening or dancing, in the end, we’re all jamming. We’re in it together.
CHAPTER 14
Stayin’ Alive
It’s 7.30 pm on Tuesday, 7 April 1998, and I’m holed up in my dressing-room having my makeup retouched. There’s a knock at the door.
‘Come in!’ I call. I can’t turn around – the makeup artist is dabbing gloss on my lips.
‘Tina?’
I look up into the mirror and see the reflection of a dark, handsome man. He’s clutching a red rose. It’s Antonio Banderas.
Antonio hands me the rose. ‘Good luck, tonight,’ he says.
‘Thanks.’
I blow him a kiss. (I know – he’s married. But then, so am I. And it’s Antonio Banderas!)
He smiles, bows, then is gone.
Wow! What a gentleman!
I take a deep breath. Butterflies the size of cats are making hay in my stomach. Not just because I’ve been given a rose by Antonio Banderas – although that has something to do with it – but also because tonight is not just any night and it’s not just anywhere. Tonight, I’m the opening act at a celebration of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s fiftieth birthday. The evening’s entertainment includes Antonio singing (and he sure can!) ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ with Sarah Brightman, and Glenn Close singing (and so can she!) ‘With One Look’ from Sunset Boulevard. There’s also Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Julian Lloyd Webber playing cello, and Bonnie Tyler, to name a few. All at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
The Royal Albert Hall! Its beautiful, vast but strangely intimate interior echoes with the names and sounds of past legends who have performed there (in fact, it is famous for its echo, now reduced by upside-down mushrooms hanging from its dome). I had dreamt about singing there one day. Now that dream had come true.
The song I sang, which was the first of the evening, was ‘Whistle Down the Wind’ from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical of the same name. The first time I ever heard the song I cried. It’s a monumental composition – sweet with a kind of innocence, and yet emotionally powerful. For that reason, it’s a bugger to sing. In fact, it’s one of the hardest songs I’ve ever sung, and that was one of the toughest performances I’ve ever given. But it was also a beautiful moment.
Ralph told me later people were scrambling for their programs to find out who I was. Hopefully I made a good first impression!
At drinks after the show I met David Gates, a great singer-songwriter who, with his band Bread, had had many hits in the 1970s. I grew up with those songs on the radio – ‘Make It with You’, ‘Everything I Own’, ‘Diary’, ‘If’. I’m sure I performed them all under Nancy’s tutelage, dancing on a chair, decked out in some ridiculous outfit my sister concocted. And here was the man himself, seemingly oblivious to the effect his music had on a generation of young girls.
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s invitation to sing ‘Whistle Down the Wind’ had come out of the blue. I had just finished the In Deep Live tour in Australia when he rang.
He asked me to record the song for an album of the musical and sing it at his birthday bash. So I’d flown over to LA to record it with producer Simon Franglen, just weeks after the Australian tour finished. Andrew and his wife also flew to LA and popped in while I was recording. We managed to get the vocals down in just two takes, which is not bad going and made a good impression on Mr Musical Theatre, I hope.
The Whistle Down the Wind album featured various artists, including Tom Jones, Donny Osmond, Boy George, Meat Loaf, Boyzone and Bonnie Tyler. Around the same time that the show Whistle Down the Wind opened in the West End, my version of the title track was released as a single, occasioning another appearance on Top of the Pops. But the big hit from the album was Boyzone singing ‘No Matter What’. It was huge around the world, especially in Britain. The show ended up running for three years.
The man who wrote the lyrics for Whistle Down the Wind was an American composer and producer called Jim Steinm
an. Jim wrote Bat Out of Hell with Meat Loaf and has written or produced countless other hits, including ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ for Bonnie Tyler. The story of Bat Out of Hell gives you some idea of the kind of man Jim is. No one in the industry wanted to release that record but Jim and Meat Loaf never gave up. Forty-three million copies later, Bat Out of Hell is one of the biggest-selling albums of all time.
Jim was busy producing the musical soundtrack for a new movie starring my favourite Spanish actor – you guessed it, Antonio Banderas. The composer for the Mask of Zorro soundtrack was James Horner, whose soundtrack to Titanic was then topping the charts around the world, as was the signature song, ‘My Heart Will Go On’, sung by Celine Dion. Like Bat Out of Hell, the Titanic soundtrack went on to become another of the biggest-selling albums of all time.
Jim and James were looking for a female vocalist to sing the Mask of Zorro signature song, called ‘I Want to Spend My Lifetime Loving You’. Apparently Jim heard my version of ‘Whistle Down the Wind’ and decided I was the woman for the job. He tells the story that he rang James, but when he mentioned my name, James said: ‘Who?’ Luckily, after James listened to a few of my previous recordings, he gave me the tick. It probably helped that my record company, Sony, would be releasing the soundtrack.
When I got the call I was still in London doing promos and showcases in the lead-up to the release of In Deep. It was another one of those can’t-say-no opportunities. When asked if I’d do it, I think my actual words were: ‘Well, bloody hell, yeah, absolutely!’
The song is a duet, and originally I was to sing it with Ricky Martin. Ricky and I were mates – we’d bonded in various cities on various promo tours – and I was excited to be doing the song with him. But then his track ‘The Cup of Life’ was released as the theme song for the 1998 FIFA World Cup and suddenly Ricky’s schedule went completely loco. Overnight, his life became a conveyor belt of appearances, interviews and international flights. I’ve never seen anyone work so hard. So now they were looking for a male vocalist to replace Ricky.
Regardless, I toddled off to Sarm Studio to meet Jim Steinman. Jim’s like a vampire – he only comes out at night – so we recorded my vocals under shadow of darkness. It’s a very sensuous song, so I just imagined that a dark handsome man was singing it there beside me and off I went.
James and Jim were gorgeous to work with. James was particularly divine – down to earth, creative, unaffected.
In the end Marc Anthony was teed up to sing the song but Marc and I didn’t cross paths until I made the trip to Burbank Studios in Hollywood to make the video. I dropped in to see him at his home the night before. We got on famously – he was such a funny guy, a natural comedian.
I was back and forth between London, Europe, Australia and the US a lot that year. Ralph was sometimes with me, sometimes not. Things between us went from bad to worse. Now not only our personal relationship but our working relationship had soured. From where I stood, Ralph seemed interested only in work. From where he stood, he probably just didn’t get it. When business is going well, what could be the problem? And with both of us on such a crazy schedule, there never seemed to be the time or the place to talk about it.
On the career front, things were going well thanks to my, Ralph’s and Sony’s efforts (as well as Pierre’s, Ann-Marie’s and others). Still in London, I fronted up for Capital FM’s Party in the Park one warm Sunday in early July. It was only days after the premiere of the show Whistle Down the Wind and around the same time the single was released. The event was a fundraiser for the Prince’s Trust, Prince Charles’s personal charity, which raises funds for youth. Around 150,000 people were in London’s Hyde Park that afternoon to see a killer lineup of acts and artists, which included Tom Jones, yours truly and Shania Twain. Natalie Imbruglia was also on the bill. Her album Left of the Middle had been a hit around the world the year before, as had ‘Torn’, the single.
There’d been a time when nothing could have topped performing at the Royal Albert Hall and in London’s Hyde Park. That was until we got a call from the Bee Gees’ management. Maybe it was Sony who suggested it to them, but the Bee Gees would have known me as one of John Young’s protégés. Barry Gibb and John go way back, to the mid-1960s when they shared a flat in London. Either way, the brothers Gibb were keen for me to support them at their London show, so my next stop that year was the Bee Gees’ ‘One Show Only’ concert at Wembley Stadium.
I’d looked up to the Bee Gees since I was a kid and John Young told me stories about his days living and working with Barry Gibb, who wrote quite a few songs for John back in the day. They were some of the greatest songwriters in the history of pop music. Barry also wrote all the songs on Barbra Streisand’s Guilty album, which, for me, is a masterpiece. And then there are all their other hits from the 1960s through to the 1990s. Those guys were giants of pop music.
We flew over the band from the In Deep tour as well as my long-time live mixer, Steve Scanlon, to do the show. It was to be in the old Wembley Stadium, which was pulled down five years later in 2003, having stood for eight decades. Old Wembley was often called the Twin Towers, due to the two domed towers that stood on either side of the entrance.
The crowd was near 60,000, so I’m told. But whatever the number, I felt only terror – until I convinced myself I was back at the Grainstore Tavern in Melbourne. And when I thought about it a bit more, I realised that Wembley was actually less intimidating than the Grainstore. For one thing, if there were hecklers at Wembley they were far enough away that I wouldn’t be able to hear them. And even if there were 60,000 people out there, they were sure to be considerably more sober than the late-night punters at the Grainstore.
Once I was onstage I was fine. I’d been right – it was a doddle compared to the Grainstore. I didn’t hear anyone yell out, ‘Show us your tits, Tina,’ that night.
In fact, the crowd was great, the place was packed, the band was tight, and it was a truly incredible evening. The Gibb brothers were lovely. Backstage was like one big happy family, with kids running everywhere, wives and dear friends having a quiet drink. They were a close-knit family, a bit like the Arenas.
While we were hanging out backstage, a young Aussie athlete stuck her head in. I’d known Cathy Freeman for quite a while. We saw the same beautician in Richmond – Sarah – and we’d become friendly over the years. I loved Cathy – so warm and modest and yet full of determination and dedication. She was already a great Australian. Cathy was taking a break from running, but I knew she had more to do and would be back with a vengeance. Turns out, I was on the money.
Onstage, the Bee Gees were like they were offstage – open and unpretentious. They performed so many of their hits that night, including ‘To Love Somebody’, ‘Massachusetts’, ‘Words’, ‘I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You’, ‘I Started a Joke’, ‘Jive Talkin’’ and many more. The One Night Only shows turned out to be the last tour in which the three brothers performed together – Maurice died far too early just four years later.
The set finale was ‘Stayin’ Alive’, from their Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. I got down with the best of them to that song. It captured my mood around that time. I was so busy, I was boogieing like there was no tomorrow just to keep it all together. It was working, but only just.
CHAPTER 15
Torn
October 1998. When I look back, I can now see it was a turning point in my life. Talk about sliding doors – so many opened and closed during those four and a half weeks in ways that have played out in my life ever since. Not that I had any idea – I was absolutely oblivious to it. After all, as usual, I was too bloody busy.
My schedule had been punishing all year and it was showing no sign of slowing down. By then I was renting a little flat in London, but I’d spent most of my time crossing the globe from the UK to the US, to Europe, to Australia and back again. On and on it went. It was fun, it was mad, it was draining, lonely, exhausting. At one low point, Nancy dropped everything and flew
over to be with me. That’s the kind of sister Nancy is: she has never been afraid to speak frankly, and on more than one occasion her wise counsel and support have got me through tough times.
In early October, ‘I Want to Spend My Lifetime Loving You’, the duet I sang with Marc Anthony as the theme song for the movie The Mask of Zorro, was released in Europe. It had come out in the US in July, when the movie was released there, but hadn’t charted. Still, Marc and I had done some promotions over there, including an appearance on the national morning show Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee.
A week or two after that song came out in Europe, my single ‘If I Was a River’ hit the stores in the UK. Many Australian readers may have never even heard ‘If I Was a River’ – it didn’t appear on the Australian version of In Deep at all. It wasn’t one of my own songs and it wasn’t recorded at the same time as the rest of In Deep.
In fact, the story of ‘If I Was a River’ began back in 1995, the year I met Sony boss Tommy Mottola in Rome. From then on, Tommy had taken a special interest in my career. I guess after Sony’s success with Celine Dion and Mariah Carey, Tommy was on the lookout for another diva to help keep the Sony coffers filled. That’s just how the music industry works. But as I mentioned earlier, Tommy was a music lover who had a great ear as well as a great nose for business, and his decisions were usually based on both.
I’d always had a good working relationship with the guys at Epic in the US. Peter Asher, who’d produced so many wonderful female artists, including Linda Ronstadt, Cher and Diana Ross, had taken an interest in me, producing my version of ‘Show Me Heaven’ as my follow-up to ‘Chains’ in the States. So this time around, my Sony friends Stateside were keen to help me crack their territory well and truly.