Now I Can Dance

by Tina Arena

  I hadn’t been nominated for any awards – I hadn’t even had a single out in Australia that year – but along with Slim Dusty I received an Outstanding Achievement Award, for my success in Europe. It sounds like a cliché, but to receive an award like that in my own country felt like a great honour – for some reason, recognition in Australia will for me always be the sweetest. Maybe I still hadn’t recovered from those early rejections when I was starting out as an adult performer. Either way, it was the icing on the cake following the Olympics, and a fantastic way to end a good year, during which I had at last begun to move on after the split from Ralph. I was starting to feel like a whole person again.

  On Christmas Eve I sang at Carols by Candlelight at the Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne. I’d done a few Carols by Candlelight over the years and it was always a magical night. The atmosphere was joyful, and seeing that galaxy of candle lights and smiling faces was a wondrous experience each time.

  Then, after a family Christmas involving more food and drink than the recommended yearly intake, I headed for the Sandcastle in Miami. The Sandcastle sounds like a fancy hotel, but in fact it was a songwriting retreat organised by the songwriter Desmond Child. Desmond’s success began with ‘I Was Made for Loving You’, which he wrote with Kiss. From there he wrote songs with Jon Bon Jovi, including ‘You Give Love a Bad Name’ and ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’. Since then he’d written hits for Cher, Bonnie Tyler, Aerosmith and many more. He’d co-written ‘Livin’ la Vida Loca’ for Ricky Martin.

  It was the second songwriting retreat Desmond had organised – he’d run a similar one the year before. He’d taken the idea from a legendary songwriter’s retreat, Printemps des Troubadours, held by Miles Copeland, Sting’s manager, in his medieval castle in France.

  Attendance at both retreats was by invitation only – somehow my manager Wendy had scored me an invite to the one in Miami.

  More than thirty songwriters turned up for the five-day fest. We started with a dinner at Desmond’s grand old home, which was like an English gentlemen’s club, right there in the middle of Miami. Desmond was larger than life, bright and hilarious, but demanding. I liked him straight away. Some of the other writers there included Richie Sambora, Mark Hudson and Julio Iglesias Jr.

  After breakfast the following day, we were each told where we’d be writing that day. I’d be in the studio. When I got there I found Desmond and songwriter Peter Amato waiting for me. By the end of that first day, we’d written ‘Soul Mate #9’. The song was tongue-in-cheek and we had a lot of laughs writing it. I loved the idea – how many soul mates can a person have in one lifetime? Working with those two pros, the lyrics and music just seemed to flow.

  Three other songs I wrote in those five days at Sandcastle made it onto my new album, which was good going. A lot had happened since I wrote In Deep and I was ready to get it all out. This record would be about love and pain, growing up the hard way and learning how to stand on my own two feet. I had consciously decided to freshen the palette and write and record with new people. I wanted this record to be a break from the past. I wanted to experiment a little, to create something exciting and new.

  I wrote ‘Tangled’ with Randy Cantor and Robbie Nevil (remember ‘C’est la Vie’ from 1986?) and it was an intense session. That song captured something about my heart at that time, my state of confusion. Meeting Vince had thrown me in more ways than one.

  I wrote ‘You Made Me Find Myself’ with Desmond and Ty Lacy on the second last day. It was another song that seemed to be just waiting to be put down on paper. The lyrics attracted quite a bit of attention when the album was finally released – everyone decided it was written about Ralph – but I wrote that song for me.

  I’d had those songs in me for too long, but at last they were out.

  On the last evening of the retreat we all headed down to Cafe Nostalgia in Miami Beach. Cafe Nostalgia was a nightclub that had started out as a home to Cuban music in Miami but had lately become a bit of an industry hangout. The place was vintage Miami, with worn 1970s decor and some colourful characters gracing the bar. We were there as the entertainment, performing our new songs. After five days of hard work it was great to have a drink and enjoy the show. Mark Hudson played MC and he had us all laughing.

  Desmond, Victoria Shaw and Gary Burr performed a song they had written at the previous Sandcastle, and which Ricky Martin had just released as a single, ‘Nobody Wants to Be Lonely’. Everyone else got up and did their stuff. Finally it was my turn, and I sang ‘You Made Me Find Myself’. I’m not sure why I decided to sing that one, but it encapsulated how I felt about my previous life and where I was at now. Whatever it was, it brought the house down. I guess everyone in that room could relate to it in some way.

  When the Sandcastle wrapped up I flew to LA. There I caught up with some other songwriters and wrote ‘But I Lied’ and ‘Woman’. Next stop was New York, where I wrote ‘Something’s Gotta Change’ with Russ DeSalvo and Arnie Roman. I was quickly getting enough songs together for the new album. Now I just needed a producer.

  One night while I was in New York I was having dinner with Wendy, and we were talking generally about the music we loved and whose work we admired. Nile Rodgers’ name came up. Now, if you don’t know who he is, that’s okay – but let me give you a quick run-down. With his co-writer Bernard Edwards, Nile is one of the original architects of contemporary dance music. His ‘chucking’ guitar style has been copied or sampled on probably every dance song you’ve ever heard. His hits began with his 1970s band Chic, songs that are now part of popular music’s DNA: ‘Le Freak’, ‘Everybody Dance’, ‘I Want Your Love’, ‘Good Times’, Sister Sledge’s ‘We are Family’ and ‘He’s the Greatest Dancer’, Diana Ross’s ‘Upside Down’ and ‘I’m Coming Out’. His production credits include David Bowie’s Let’s Dance album and Madonna’s Like a Virgin. He produced INXS’s ‘Original Sin’. More recently he did some co-writing with Daft Punk and appeared on their hit album Random Access Memories. In short, the man is a musical god.

  It so happened that Wendy knew Nile – her cousin Nick Rhodes is in Duran Duran and Nile produced their album Notorious. So when I wondered aloud what it would be like to work with the Godfather of Dance, she said: ‘Do you want to meet him?’

  Of course I wanted to meet him, regardless of whether we worked together or not. So Wendy teed up a meeting while I was there in New York.

  Meeting Nile was a thrill and we seemed to get on well together. He’s a lovely guy: friendly, funny and cultured. He’d spent quite a bit of time in Europe back in the days of Chic, who were huge in France, and he knew I’d spent a lot of time there recently, so we talked about that. By the end of the meeting we’d agreed to give some thought to working together, but nothing was definite.

  Then he said, ‘What are you doing tonight?’

  ‘Not much,’ I responded.

  ‘Well, my old mates Duran Duran are playing. Do you want to come?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  So I went with Nile to see Duran Duran at the Beacon Theater on Broadway. Nile joined them for the encore. He’d brought along his famous Fender Strat guitar that he calls ‘the Hitmaker’, and seeing him on stage playing in his utterly distinctive style was inspiring. Nile’s mother was fourteen when she had him and both his parents had drug problems (Nile had struggled with his own addiction, too), but I got the sense that nothing was ever going to hold back this brilliant mind and musical genius.

  After the show we hung out for a while, then went back to his Manhattan apartment to keep talking. We ended up riffing in his kitchen and later he told me that was when he made his decision. He wanted to work with me. By the end of the night, it was almost all arranged. Nile would produce songs for my new record.

  First, though, I was set to do some writing and recording with Peter-John Vettese, a mad Italian–Scottish musician and producer who had an abiding interest in quantum physics. Pete had played keyboard in Jethro Tull in the 1980s and had since worked wit
h all kinds of artists. I’d loved his work on Annie Lennox’s Diva, and he’d recently co-produced the Bee Gees’ new album, which ended up being their last one together.

  Pete’s studio was in Parsons Green in London. So I headed back to London and the house in Knightsbridge. Not long after, though, I sold my apartment in LA and bought a little house in Fulham (well, the bank did). It was back in the days when a British pound was worth three Australian dollars, so I was mortgaged to the hilt. But it was great to have a house of my own, and being able to write and record around the corner with Pete was so easy and convenient it felt like a luxury. For a while at least, I would no longer be the girl from Moonee Ponds. Now I was a Fulham girl. I was back within cooee of Paris, and Vince, too, although I still had no idea whether that was going anywhere …

  CHAPTER 22

  Dare You to Be Happy

  I’ve never laughed so much. I wasn’t joking when I said that the guy who would be co-producing my new album, Peter Vettese, was mad. It must have been in his genes – his Italian dad was a saxophone player who brought gelato to Scotland, which sounds like a good idea until you remember that up there it’s freezing for eleven months of the year. Pete had a way of looking at the world that cracked me up – his Scottish side clicked with my Aussie side while the Italians in us understood each other.

  Pete was a bit like me, considerably louder than he was tall. In the studio he’d get up to all kinds of crazy things – we danced a lot, he’d be jumping off the walls (it was his studio, so I guess he could do what he liked). He once said that when it came to making records, people came first and the music second. It was a refreshing way to approach it, and it meant he got the best out of people – happy and comfortable musos make for better music (industry types take note!).

  The mad Scot may have been fun but he challenged me every day, tearing away my safety net and constantly pushing me to take leaps of faith. Together we wrote a couple of songs. ‘Dare You to Be Happy’ summed up how I was feeling at that time. Pete had come up with the line and I’d embraced it as a challenge to myself – get it together, start enjoying yourself. I did and I was. I’d rediscovered my mojo and was determined to have fun, which was easy when Pete was around.

  We demoed ‘Dare You to Be Happy’, but when I suggested we start working on the track he refused. ‘No, no, no. I can’t do that one. That one’s for Nile.’ It turned out he was right: when I listened to it again I realised the song had disco anthem written all over it, and if anyone knew how to create a disco anthem it was the songwriter from Chic. So I put that one in the back pocket to take to Mr Rodgers later. That Pete had so easily relinquished a song he’d co-written was typical of his approach – he always wanted what was best for the music.

  The other song I wrote with Pete was ‘Symphony of Life’. It was a special song to me, because it expressed my feelings about having Vince come into my life.

  My relationship with the handsome blue-eyed Frenchman had started out as a friendship. But recently it had developed into something stronger and deeper. Despite a considerable language barrier – his English was poor, and my French was ordinary – we had no trouble communicating. We talked for days at a time, thumbing through dictionaries to find the right word. We seemed to have a lot to share, and we shared it, in two languages. I felt a real spiritual connection to Vince, and ‘Symphony of Life’ was about that.

  Not surprisingly, ‘Symphony of Life’ was one of my favourite songs on the new album. After we’d recorded the vocals, Pete went away to play with the instrumentation and arrangement. A few days later, he played me what he’d done. I listened to it but didn’t say much. I wasn’t sure at first. But as I’m always telling other people, forget your preconceptions – just listen to the bloody song! And when he played it to me again, I just loved it. It has an ambient Europop feel that moves from dark to light and literally ‘takes you higher’, as the song says.

  Another song I worked on with Pete was ‘God Only Knows’, which I’d co-written with Jeremy and his friend and musical collaborator, Rémi Lacroix. We’d written it one Sunday afternoon at Jeremy’s place in Paris. They played me a piece of music they’d been working on and I started singing a melody. Later, I penned the lyrics. In retrospect, the song was a true and honest account of my relationship with Jeremy. We’d been in it together, but we had no idea where it would lead, if anywhere. It was about living in the moment, without any guarantee of a future. Because ‘god only knows’.

  Both songs feature live strings – recording a string orchestra rather than using synthesised or sampled strings – which always adds something rich and lush to a song. Pete was keen on live strings, and so was I. One day he said to me, ‘I want to introduce you to a mate of mine, a bloke called Simon Hale.’

  ‘Who’s he?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s a string arranger. He’s worked on loads of things. He does all the strings for Jamiroquai,’ Pete said.

  Jamiroquai, who had ingested their fair share of Chic pills and Nile Rodgers licks (who hasn’t?), featured stunning disco strings on their records, which, coincidentally, charted all over the world.

  ‘Great, I’d love to meet him,’ I said to Pete. But I was in and out of the studio a lot so I still hadn’t been introduced to Simon weeks later. One day we were working on ‘Symphony of Life’ when the doorbell rang. I went to get it – Pete was too busy groovin’ out, as usual.

  I peered through the window and saw a guy in head-to-toe cycling gear standing there with something in his hand. I opened the door.

  ‘Hi, you must be the courier,’ I said.

  ‘And you must be the artist,’ Simon said. ‘Hi, Tina, my name’s Simon Hale.’

  Ouch. ‘Fuck! I’m so sorry, Simon.’

  While it was not exactly the reception he’d been hoping for, in true Simon Hale style he burst out laughing.

  Simon went on to create some beautifully memorable string arrangements for the record and we’ve been working together ever since.

  Nile Rodgers’ studio was at his house in Connecticut, which overlooked a little bay. I spent eight days at Nile’s place, staying in the guest quarters. With rolling lawns, a private jetty and a view, it was very different to Pete’s studio in the middle of London.

  Also working on the project was Richard Hilton, who played keyboards for Nile’s projects, as well as engineering and programming. Richard and I struck up a friendship – he was a lovely guy and great musician and more than a decade later we’re still friends. What a talent he is!

  Nile produced, but he also played all the guitar on the songs we did together. I still pinch myself when I think about it – thousands of records feature Nile-like guitar, but mine had the real thing.

  Pete had been right – Nile knew exactly what to do with ‘Dare You to Be Happy’. And when it came to ‘Soul Mate #9’ he tinkered with the arrangement and put the chorus right up front, an old trick he’d perfected in his Chic days.

  After I finished at Nile’s, I flew to Paris to record a handful of French tracks for their version of the new album: ‘Coeur de Pierre’ (Heart of Stone), ‘Tu Es Toujours Là’ (You Are Always There) and ‘Si Je Ne T’Aimais Pas’ (If I Didn’t Love You). French legend Johnny Hallyday was lined up to produce ‘Coeur de Pierre’ and singer-songwriter Pascal Obispo would produce ‘Si Je Ne T’Aimais Pas’. Jacques Veneruso, who wrote ‘Tu Es Toujours Là’, produced that song.

  Valérie Michelin and I decided ‘Tu Es Toujours Là’ would be the first French single, but when I heard the mixes I wasn’t happy. It had such a different sound to the album; to my ears it lacked a certain pizzazz I was looking for.

  During that period the French–African singer Kelly Joyce, daughter of chanteuse Emmanuelle Vidal de Fonseca, had a smash hit in Italy with a song called ‘Vivre la Vie’. It had a fantastic retro sixties sound, à la Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black, which came out five years later. (And which, of course, had been produced by Mark Ronson, the stepson of my mate Mick Jones, who co-produced In Deep
. Talk about six degrees of separation …) When I heard ‘Vivre la Vie’ I had to find out who had produced it. It turned out to be an Englishman called Paul Manners. Paul was a bass player who had travelled to Italy for a two-week gig decades earlier and had never returned to his homeland. He had a studio near Rimini and had produced this brilliant record.

  I convinced Valérie to let me demo ‘Tu Es Toujours Là’ with Paul. So off I went to Falcon Valley, Paul’s studio in Italy, and we quickly put together a demo of the song. But when I played it to Valérie later she didn’t like it and they ended up canning it. I was devastated, but one good thing came out of it: I had made a connection with Paul.

  In fact, I recorded a song for the new record while I was there – ‘I’m Gone’ – and I made a mental note in my head that I wanted to work with Paul again.

  I called the new album Just Me. It represented the past two years of my life, and the songs on the record covered the full gamut of emotions. Just Me was about my experiences as a survivor determined to move on and grow. The title was pathetically obvious, really – I wrote the album for me, and no one else.

  The album was slated for release in Australia and France in November. The first single was to be ‘Soul Mate #9’.

  But when the guys at Sony Australia heard the mixes they were confused. I’m not sure what they expected, but often record companies hope beyond hope for more of the same, in this case more of Don’t Ask and In Deep. When it’s not more of the same, they scratch their heads. (And when it is, they’re just as likely to tell you it’s too much like the previous albums!)

  I said what I always say: ‘Listen to the bloody songs before you make up your minds.’

  But at that time, the local artists who were selling well tended to be indie rock or pop: Killing Heidi, Powderfinger, Regurgitator. Having spent a few years in the UK and Europe, my musical tastes had moved towards dance and Europop. And anyway, those who knew me would know I’d always been a fan of R & B and dance music. It was in my blood. For this record I’d chosen to move away from big ballads and had gone for more of a pop vocal style. To me, it seemed like an exciting but natural progression.