Now I Can Dance

by Tina Arena

  Tommy had decided to get personally involved, and he commissioned America’s top songwriter, Diane Warren, to write a big ballad for me that he hoped would put me on the map in his homeland. Diane had previously written ‘Strong as Steel’, the song I’d covered all those years ago on that album of the same name, but that was just one among countless hits she’d penned since. Diane’s achievements would fill a book, but suffice to say she has written a fair swag of the hits we’ve all heard on the radio since her first, in 1983 – Laura Branigan’s top ten hit ‘Solitaire’. The woman behind the names, Diane has written for top artists in every genre.

  Diane turned out ‘If I Was a River’, a power ballad in which the singer professes unconditional eternal love for her amour. Tommy gave it the thumbs up – I guess he liked its sweeping, majestic style. To be honest, it was never my favourite song, and I do remember telling the guys at Sony US quite categorically that I didn’t believe in the song’s sentiment. How could I honestly sing that song when I was struggling with the whole concept of love at that time? Still, sometimes you put up and shut up, especially when you’re on someone else’s turf. I had to respect that they knew their territory and would do their best. Which I believe to this day they did.

  Some time in the first half of 1998 I’d made the trip to the US to record the song at Sony in-house producer Walter Afanasieff’s home studio. Walter was another big name on everyone’s lips, and Tommy had had the sense to sign him to the company, so Walter only worked for Sony artists. He was Mariah’s co-writer and producer, and had gone on to produce just about every hit that Sony had during the 1990s. He’s produced songs for Celine Dion, Michael Jackson, Barbra Streisand, Whitney Houston and Lionel Richie, to name but few. He was also an exquisite pianist and crazy Russian genius, a sweet man who lived to produce records.

  Walter’s place north of San Francisco was a compound, with an enormous garage full of priceless cars and motorcycles. Walter also collected guns and apparently had a shooting range out the back. More up my alley was his immense wine collection. Sony was clearly paying him well, which was fair enough because everything he touched was turning to gold. Nevertheless, Tommy himself sat in on the mixing sessions for ‘If I Was a River’ and threw in his two bobs’ worth.

  By hooking me up with the number-one writer and number-one producer in the US, Sony were showing their commitment. It was even more evident when they sent me off with Pierre Baroni and a large budget to Egypt to shoot the video for ‘If I Was a River’ on the Nile. We travelled there in September 1998, just after the show with the Bee Gees.

  The video was shot at three or four different locations. The heat was almost unbearable – 50 degrees Celsius on the ground, and I was barefooted – so we filmed only at sunrise and sunset. I remember one day fronting up to the gate to one of the pyramids with Richard, my UK publicist. We had a photographer in tow, ready to shoot a feature for the UK’s OK! magazine.

  We asked to be let in. After some negotiations, the man on the gate offered Richard 300 camels in exchange for me.

  ‘Keep your camels,’ Richard joked. ‘You can have her.’

  It was extremely generous on Richard’s part. For my part, at least I now knew what I was worth! But seriously, it was extraordinary to dip my toes into the Nile. And Pierre created something truly stunning with the video. Somehow I was transformed into an Egyptian goddess with waist-length hair and fluttering scarves. That man could perform miracles!

  So with ‘If I Was a River’ coming out in the UK just days after my duet with Marc Anthony had been released in Europe, October 1998 was a crazy month of interviews, photo shoots, showcase performances and travel, travel, travel. At the same time, what had once been just a nagging whisper of doubt about the relentlessness of it all had grown to a roar. I don’t think I’m the first artist to have felt, at some point in their career, that they’ve become little more than a business asset. Whether it’s actually true or not, it’s still a terrible feeling, and it causes major damage to your self-esteem. You start to question all your working relationships and begin to believe that everyone wants you for just one thing. It’s twisted, I know, but that’s the dark side of mainstream success. People tend to assume success must be great for your self-confidence, but so often it’s the opposite. Anyway, that was roughly where I was at during those final months of 1998. Where, how and when would it end? I had no idea, but I just knew that something had to give, and soon.

  One afternoon I was in London rehearsing with my UK band. I called a halt to proceedings to give a phone interview to an Australian journalist and accidently put my foot in it. When he suggested Natalie Imbruglia and I were ‘legends’, I made what I thought was a pretty honest and realistic observation about so-called legendary status in music. Neither of us were bona fide legends, not yet, I said. I wasn’t having a go at Nat – I’d met her on and off over the years and liked her a lot. She’d just won a bunch of well-deserved ARIAs and had broken into the US market with the song ‘Torn’, and I was genuinely happy for her. But I knew from experience that in pop music, today’s big story can be tomorrow’s chip paper.

  In the same interview I also may have called the then Australian prime minister ‘an uneducated peasant’, or something along those lines. Not my finest moment, I’ll admit, and I regret it to this day. But from afar I’d been quietly horrified by what appeared to be a rising tide of racism in my own country, as One Nation grabbed the headlines that year, and I thought a prime minister should lead by example and stand up and speak out against divisiveness. As a child of migrant parents growing up in the public eye, I’d encountered a bit of casual racism now and then, but I’d hoped we’d moved on from those days. In hindsight, however, the comment was not only uncalled for but also unbelievably naive on my behalf.

  The truth was, I was so burnt out at this point I shouldn’t have been doing interviews at all. When I’m exhausted I can’t think straight and I tend to blurt things out. Which is exactly what I did. I learnt my lesson: I now never give interviews when I’m tired.

  Anyway … needless to say, when the article was printed the proverbial hit the fan back in Australia. According to reports in the media, Nat and I were now sworn enemies. My wading into the political debate caused even more of a fuss. Not long after, I was in Amsterdam getting ready to do a showcase. There I was, dressed to the nines in the makeup chair, when my mobile rang. It was Ralph, explaining in no uncertain terms how he’d spent the entire evening at the ARIAs apologising to Natalie on my behalf and how much I’d screwed up. As if I didn’t know! After he said his piece I took the opportunity to inform him I no longer required his services and our marriage was over. We left it at that.

  I felt sick with a mixture of pain and relief. Nevertheless, I had a sip of water, took one last look in the mirror then went out to do the show. That’s it, I said to myself as I stepped onto the stage. It’s done.

  It had been a long time coming. Years of all work and no play had killed both our relationships – business and personal. For too long now, communication between us had been confined to work issues. We’d tried in the early days to keep our personal relationship alive but it had been too hard. So what had seemed a perfect solution to the loneliness and non-existent family life that so many artists experience had turned out to be quite the opposite. It just never worked. And now the house of cards was about to tumble to the ground.

  I have no doubt it was a difficult time for Ralph too. He knew things weren’t right, but probably didn’t know how to begin to fix them. We’d been apart so much over the past couple of years we were like strangers.

  From a career point of view it appeared to be terrible timing. Everything was being put in place for a major tilt at the US market. ‘If I Was a River’ had just been released in the UK in the lead-up to that campaign. And now ‘I Want to Spend My Lifetime Loving You’ was charting all over Europe. What had seemed like a crazy year just got even crazier in those final weeks of 1998.

  ‘If I Was a Ri
ver’ didn’t make much of a mark in the UK, but Sony went ahead with plans to release the album there, and In Deep came out in November in Britain. At the same time, ‘I Want to Spend My Lifetime Loving You’ was sitting in the top ten in France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

  I didn’t know it then, but the story of those two songs, both released in October 1998, set the path my life was to follow from then on. Ironically, they were both songs about unconditional lifelong love, something I now realised I knew nothing about. My marriage was over. And while Ralph was still acting as my manager – I hadn’t had time to organise anyone else to do it – our days together as artist and manager were also numbered. What had started out as a great team had, over time, become increasingly dysfunctional. It was time to call it quits.

  But these things tend to play out in slow motion and that’s what happened. Ralph remained my manager for the time being and on paper we were still married. I kept working right up to Christmas, doing promo, then returned home to our little house in Melbourne. Ralph was away. I had just a couple of weeks to recharge my batteries before I was due to start a promotional tour in the US, planned to coincide with the release of ‘If I Was a River’ over there. In Deep was scheduled to come out just after. This time, the Sony guys in America were backing me all the way.

  For most artists in the music business, the States is the mountain we want to conquer, because, I guess, it’s the tallest and the toughest. So, on paper, everything I had ever dreamed of was at last within my grasp. All I had to do was to hold it all together, keep turning up, reach out and take it.

  But while I was incredibly grateful that Sony was prepared to take a serious punt on me in the States, I was also extremely nervous. Now I can look back and think, ‘At least nobody died’, but back then, with so much going on, it only added to the stress. I was already a nervous wreck, but the prospect of taking on the US was enough to keep me awake all night, tossing and turning in a cold sweat. The pressure was enormous.

  In fact, sitting with my family around Mum’s table in Moonee Ponds during that summer break, I was ready to give it all up. I’d worked so hard, given it my all. I’d never lost my love for music, for the craft, for singing. But somewhere along the line, my love for my job, for the business of making music, had begun to flicker, then fade. A relentless promotion schedule had taken its toll. I was thirty-one years old and I felt like I was dying inside.

  Christmas passed in a blur. After twenty years as a performer I’d become an expert at going through the motions, smiling when required, looking like I was interested. But the truth was I just felt empty.

  CHAPTER 16

  No More Tears (Enough is Enough)

  Since I was a kid trying to learn my dance steps, I’d always viewed the ups and downs of my life and my career as a necessary part of growing and learning. If you don’t push yourself, if you don’t take risks and you never fail, you’ll never learn anything from life, I’d told myself on countless occasions. I’d come to believe that most things happen for a reason, and usually the reason is that you need to learn something.

  But during those last months of 1998, I’d begun to question that thinking. What could I possibly be learning from all this? I was so exhausted, so overstretched, I was falling apart. I was also struggling to figure out how to properly extricate myself from my relationship with Ralph.

  A few weeks later, as I sat on a plane bound for the US, I had turned that thinking right around and was coming at it from an even darker place. Instead of focusing on what I might learn, I was focusing on what it was I must have done wrong to deserve such a harsh lesson. With twisted logic I’d turned it all back on me. I must deserve all this pain for something I’ve done somewhere in the past. It’s all my fault – I’m just a bad person who deserves everything I get.

  In other words, my self-confidence had collapsed. The chains I thought I’d broken seemed to bind me even more tightly. I’d struggled to be free to be myself, free to sing, work and love. And now I felt that that person – Tina, Pina, whatever she called herself – hadn’t been worth all the trouble.

  Not to put too fine a point on it, I was a basket case. Especially when I had to admit that, on one count, I was right – it was my own fault. My capacity for hard work and my desire to keep everybody happy, whatever the price, had taken their toll.

  And now, just when I had nothing left to give, I was heading off for a brutal two-month promotional tour of America, the toughest territory on the planet. If I could have prised open the window on that plane I would have jumped right out.

  Luckily, the windows on planes are glued in. Also, lucky for me, my job is my addiction. It may have almost destroyed me, but in the months that followed work became my saviour. If it hadn’t been for that, I probably would have found a way to force open a window on one of the countless planes I took across America and around the globe.

  So when I arrived at my apartment in LA, I pulled myself together, had a shower and something to eat, then rang the Sony offices in New York to report for duty. Lee Chesnut, one of the guys in charge of A&R at Epic back then, got on the line.

  Lee was a friend and something of a fan. He sounded even more upbeat than usual. After a bit of banter he slipped in nonchalantly: ‘What do you think of Donna Summer?’

  ‘She’s my hero.’ That was putting it mildly. As I mentioned earlier, Donna Summer was one of my touchstones when I was growing up, one of the artists against whom I measured all others. She was brilliant, a woman who, with Giorgio Moroder, had changed the face of popular music. Plus, and this had always inspired me, she’d co-written many of her hits. It was something most people didn’t even realise, a state of affairs that had always bugged me.

  ‘How would you like to be Barbra for a night?’ Lee was still trying to sound blasé.

  I didn’t have to ask who Barbra was, not when we were talking about Donna Summer in the same breath. Donna and Barbra Streisand had sung a duet on ‘No More Tears (Enough is Enough)’, a track that had been a big hit in 1979, back when I was twelve and searching for artists to look up to. I’d certainly found two in Donna and Barbra.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Lee told me his plan. He’d run it past David Massey, who was looking after me at Epic, and David had loved the idea.

  ‘We want you to sing “No More Tears” with Donna, live. What do you think? Could you do it?’

  Lee was working with Ms Summer on a live album and TV documentary. She was scheduled to do a show on 4 February at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York, an elegant, turn-of-the-century concert hall in the heart of Manhattan. Sony was planning to release a live recording to coincide with the launch of a doco of the concert by VH1, a cable TV channel a bit like MTV.

  I didn’t need to remind myself that I was in this business for moments like these. So often, just when you’re down for the count, someone gives you a hand up and you’re back on your feet, ready for the next round. That’s how you keep going. It’s how it works.

  ‘Hell, yeah,’ I said. ‘I’d love to do it. Just tell me when, where and how and I’ll be there.’

  Lee sent me a CD of the track overnight, to refresh my memory. Not that I needed it. I already knew the song by heart – I’d probably memorised it as a kid. Still, I listened to that CD over and over and over again.

  Wow! What a song! If anything could inspire someone to take a stand, it’s ‘No More Tears (Enough is Enough)’. Every word in that song hit me like a punch to the heart. I was living it! How strange that the opportunity to sing that particular song, of all songs, came along at that moment. Maybe everything does happen for a reason, because there’s enough guts and humour in ‘No More Tears (Enough is Enough)’ to make the most downtrodden, the most heartbroken, lift their eyes to the sky, raise their hands and say: ‘That’s it! No more!’

  I met Donna Summer at the Sony offices in New York the day before the concert. I was horribly nervous – it was such an honour even to meet her. Donna was professional and charmi
ng. She seemed genuinely pleased that I would be singing the song with her. I’m guessing she’d heard some of my stuff – Lee would have filled her in.

  We rehearsed the next day, the same day as the concert. Everyone was edgy and it was pretty intense, because the whole thing was going to be committed to video. We couldn’t stuff this up!

  I was singing Streisand’s part. We ran through it a couple of times. Donna tweaked things as we went and that was it. Sink or swim.

  That very evening there I was, watching from the wings at the Hammerstein, waiting for my cue. Donna looked and sounded spectacular. Slim and statuesque (I’d be playing the part of the mushroom again, as I’d done with my mate Julie Field), she sang with poise and grace, filling that room with her stunning voice. After a few songs, she introduced me to the audience as her ‘little sister from Australia’. That worked for me.

  I think we both enjoyed singing the song. I don’t think I let her down. Halfway through, the song turns into a big disco anthem, at which point we just let rip.

  Anyone who saw that performance would vouch that we both sang our hearts out. I know I did. I don’t usually read or quote reviews, but Billboard described it as ‘the genius pairing of the year’. It certainly was in my book.

  A week after my duet with Donna Summer, ‘If I Was a River’ was released in America. I was on the road, crisscrossing that great land, meeting radio jocks and programmers, TV hosts, journos, retailers and, most importantly, fans, shaking hands, making small talk, performing. We went just about everywhere, from Minneapolis in the north to Kansas City in the centre and Houston and Miami in the south. In those days, when the music business relied so much on radio, and sales depended so heavily on bricks-and-mortar retail, it was the only way to do it. But it was a mammoth task. During the entire tour, I barely communicated with Ralph, who was back in Melbourne. It was left to one of Ralph’s offsiders who was travelling with me to keep him informed.