Hayley Westenra

by Hayley Westenra

  Now, I can understand that I should not have been embarrassed at all because there's nothing wrong with our house. But, at the time, I just assumed that Costa was going to be kind of disappointed in it.

  Mum really picked up on Costa's view that I should not just be plucked out of my family unit and flown halfway around the world. Instead, he stressed how important it would be for the whole family to be involved. This reassured Mum, since it had been something that had been gnawing away at her.

  It was a pretty big thing for me to be working with Universal Music New Zealand, but then, suddenly, here was this global record company showing an interest. To be honest with you, in my naivety, I didn't realise its significance. I just assumed that the next step for everyone who had made an album was to move on to an international release. I was not aware that a local Universal Music company couldn't finance that and it was unlikely to happen without help from the international part of the company. I just assumed that the album would be handed over to other companies and somehow I would find myself on the other side of the world.

  Costa flew home and he must have liked what he had seen, because, shortly afterwards, the deal was done between Decca Music Group and Universal New Zealand. I was lucky enough to become a Decca artist, which is an amazing privilege, because it's a record company that can really make things happen for an artist.

  The deal was done in the background. I must admit that I was not really aware of all the negotiations that were happening between Universal Music in New Zealand and Decca. Before I knew it, I had a contract. We employed a music-industry lawyer, Campbell Smith, to go through the terms. When it came to actually signing the deal, I had to sit in the Universal Music offices with a massive document in front of me, every page of which had to be initialled. Campbell had been impressed by the fact that, at our previous meeting, I was asking questions about the contract as he went through it with me, but really I was not that interested at all. I was just being polite! I trusted my lawyer to look out for my best interests.

  All I was excited about was making music and recording albums. I had been offered a five-album deal, which, although it sounds amazing, is actually fairly standard in the record industry. What tends to be missed out from the press releases that announce these deals is the absolute certainty that, if the first album doesn't sell enough copies, the other four will fail to materialise. I was not really worried about how much money I would earn from the contract, or for how long it was tying me to Decca. However, I did realise fairly quickly that it's the artist who tends to pay for everything. My parents have always been good at explaining things to me. They have never treated me like a child, so I've always been aware of how the financial side of things is structured.

  Signing to Decca created one particularly big change for me. I would need to spend a lot of time away from home, both to make the album and then to promote it. There would be an awful lot of travel and so many different hotels in so many different cities, in every conceivable time zone, that I would lose count. It seemed like a fantastic adventure.

  It would create a challenge for us as a family. Either Mum or Dad would need to travel with me as a chaperone, leaving the other parent to look after Sophie and Isaac, back at home. Mum travelled with me on our first trip to London. We would be away for a few months, so it was a real wrench leaving the other three behind. I chatted excitedly to the lady at the check-in desk, telling her where we were off to, and she wished me luck. Dad, Sophie and Isaac waved to us as we passed through the barriers into the departure lounge. Not long afterwards, we were sitting on an Air New Zealand plane as it taxied down the runway. I turned to Mum and said, 'Oh my gosh! This is it!'

  It was my first big trip overseas. Previously, I had only ever been to Australia a couple of times for concerts and once to Hawaii as a three-year-old, when Dad had won a trip in a competition. Otherwise, the North Island was the extent of my travelling horizons. Usually, our holidays were local camping trips. Many families went to Australia for regular holidays but for us the money was spent on things such as music and ballet lessons.

  I noticed that we had been put in business class on the plane, which made the whole flight even more exciting. I was not sad to be leaving – it was the beginning of a whole new adventure. I loved the service on the plane. It's something I still enjoy now. Although I'm usually a very careful eater, I said yes to everything that was offered to me: the nuts with the drinks, all of the meals, the dessert, the cheese and even the chocolate. I was relishing the whole experience.

  I started to appreciate just how far away New Zealand was from the rest of the world. It was a long flight, which we broke up with an overnight stay in Los Angeles. While we were there, I became sick and ended up with a sore throat. I think that the initial excitement had evaporated slightly and I was starting to become nervous about what was to come. Because my throat was not feeling great, I became even more stressed. After all, I was about to meet the people from my record company for the first time and would need to perform for them. I also had only a hazy idea of what would be happening to me over the next few months and that added to the nerves.

  We were in LA for the first time and I've taken a few years to warm to the city because of this initial experience. We were staying at an airport hotel, which was not great, and I was feeling sick. Mum and I decided to go for a walk to take in some fresh air. We have since learned that walking around this area of LA is simply not the done thing and we were a little confused as to why cars kept tooting at us.

  We went back to the hotel and the restaurants were shut. We needed some food, but were reluctant to order room service because it looked so expensive. In the end, I ate a bowl of onion soup, which had way too much salt in it. It did nothing to alleviate my glumness. Only recently have I come to terms with the price of room service. I've now actually got over the fact that sometimes it's going to be expensive. At the end of the day, you've got to eat. I used to worry about it, but now I've become a little more relaxed about the whole thing.

  When I stayed in foreign cities, I used to avoid eating out at restaurants as well because they were so expensive. Instead, I would go to the supermarket and make up my own meal from what I could find on the shelves there. It probably came to more than the price of a meal at the hotel in the first place.

  The following morning, we boarded another plane for the final leg of the flight to London. I was feeling rather miserable because my throat was still playing up. I was increasingly stressed about what was to come. My mood didn't improve when we landed at a freezing cold Heathrow Airport and my mind drifted back to the lovely warm temperatures that we had left behind back home in Christ-church.

  We were met at the airport and driven to a flat right opposite Decca's offices in west London. My mood lifted considerably. It was a beautiful place and JJ, a lovely man from Decca Music Group who had been put in charge of looking after us, had gone to a lot of trouble to make it seem welcoming for us, even putting a bag of chocolate Easter eggs in a bowl on the table and stocking the fridge with food for us. Although I had seen only very little of London, I was struck by how busy it seemed compared with home. The area around the flat struck me as being very cosmopolitan and exotic and my sense of adventure kicked back in. Things were looking up.

  Mum and I had a great time in the flat. She would cook meals every evening, which we would eat in front of the television – we developed a real passion for British TV and we were already fans of Coronation Street, which runs back home. I became equally passionate about eating canned sticky-toffee pudding with milk poured over the top. British friends tell me this is a really weird thing to do and I should eat it with custard, but I enjoyed the contrast of the refreshing cold milk and the hot sticky-toffee pudding.

  We loved spending my days off exploring the local shops. We had a habit of always converting the prices back to New Zealand dollars. Because the cost of living is far lower in Christchurch than it is in the centre of London, this meant that we would be able
to justify buying only the very cheapest clothes, which didn't always look as great as they might have done. We loved visiting the charity shops. We call them 'op shops' back home – which is short for 'opportunity shops'. You might think that, with a new five-album international record deal, I would have spent my time buying up the latest fashions from haute couture boutiques, whereas, in reality, I spent hours searching out bargains, because everything seemed so expensive in London.

  One of my early discoveries was the Tube. We don't have an underground system in Christchurch, so it was a real novelty. I was amazed by how easy it is to use and the fact that it will take you anywhere you want to go in London, once you have mastered the art of reading the map. It gave us the independence to go where we pleased around London, although we didn't have to use it twice a day, every day, in the rush hour. So I can appreciate that familiarity might breed contempt after a time.

  I'm lucky enough to keep 'showbiz' hours, which tend to mean later starts and much later finishes than most workers, and, whenever I do have to join the commuters on their way to the office, I realise why so many people are not as enamoured with it as I had initially been.

  Soon after I'd arrived in London, I was told about an important morning meeting. It was all very sudden and nobody had been talking about it. It just appeared out of the blue in my diary. For some reason, I didn't think that I needed to be there. Mum told me that I absolutely did have to attend. I rushed into the shower and was still getting dressed when one of the guys from the record company knocked on the door. I didn't quite understand why there was this sudden urgent need to get me to Decca's office, but all became clear when I walked through the door.

  It was my birthday and everyone had gathered together in one room ready to surprise me with a party. I was so embarrassed because my hair was still wet and I was not looking in the least bit glamorous. It was very sweet of them, especially as I was so far away from home, although I've discovered since that, once you've been around for a while, record companies tend not to care quite so much about your birthday. When they are attempting to make a good impression at the beginning, they tend to try a bit harder.

  The main reason for my having flown halfway around the world was, of course, for me to make my first album for Decca. Although London remained our base, the record company decided that I would make the album in Dublin with the producer Chris Neil and the Irish composer Ronan Hardiman. It was a wonderful creative process and I enjoyed working with both of them enormously. Working in the middle of the Irish countryside has its good and bad points. On the positive side, it's a beautiful country, with the friendliest people you could ever imagine. I also discovered the joys of Irish soda bread and, whenever I'm in Ireland now, I always have the most heavenly breakfast ever: Irish soda bread, a little butter and strawberry jam – it's the perfect way to start the day.

  I also had my first experience of Guinness after both Chris and Ronan managed to persuade Mum and me how good it was for us. He told us that it used to be prescribed to pregnant women because it was high in iron. Anyway, we were easily convinced, so, at the end of each day's recording, I would drink half a pint of Guinness – purely for medicinal reasons, you understand. I still have the occasional half now, but I drink it with blackcurrant these days.

  Working on the album was a real family effort and it was a lovely relaxed atmosphere. Ronan had two young children, Ellie and Sam, who were great to have around.

  The downside was more due to location than anything else. We were stuck in a hotel in the middle of nowhere and the room service was very expensive. There was no supermarket, so we were totally reliant on the hotel kitchens. The menus didn't change that much and living there for two months meant that things became a little monotonous on the culinary front – especially since both Mum and I are not big meat eaters. We would have much preferred to have been put in a little flat where we could have cooked meals for ourselves. It would have been much more our style. It really was not ideal and we felt completely cut off, with a long walk before the nearest stop for a bus to take us into town.

  One of Chris Neil's greatest strengths was in picking songs. He found some really wonderful tracks such as 'River of Dreams' and 'Dark Waltz'. Over those two months in Ireland, we made an album, which I loved at the time. I was so excited about the whole concept of having my own new songs to work with. Another one of my favourites was 'Who Painted the Moon Black?', which was written by Sonia Aletta Nel, who comes from Namibia. I was really pleased with the album that we handed over to the record company. I had played some of the tracks to my friends back in New Zealand and they had thought that the album had a very cool, New Age vibe to it.

  But the bosses didn't like it. It was a little bit too synthesised for the record company's tastes and it was not the classical-crossover album that they had imagined. There were a few more beats on the record than they might have expected and it was quite electronic-sounding in places. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I understand completely why they made that decision and I agree totally with what they were saying. But, at the time, I was really disappointed because I had been psyching myself up for the album release. I had poured my heart and soul into everything that we had recorded and it was very hard to find that they had pulled the plug on it. It had been a real team effort for Chris, Ronan and me – so that made the whole thing that much more difficult to bear. They were perfect gentlemen throughout and there was no great falling out, but people who run record companies are paid to make tough decisions and the Decca bosses decided that I would completely remake the album with a new producer.

  When I heard the news, I never reached the stage in my mind where I thought that it had all been in vain and that nothing would ever be released. However, I was impatient for people to hear what we had done. In reality, things moved on quite quickly, especially compared with how long some artists have to wait to have their albums released. But, at the time, I was so disappointed. There were no tears – just an immense feeling of frustration.

  I did have faith that we would get there in the end.

  CHAPTER 7

  PURE

  After a lot of thought, Decca decided that Giles Martin should be the producer of my first album for them. Mum and I met him for the first time in a cafe in the very trendy Notting Hill area of London. He was much younger, better-looking and more stylish than I had expected and I didn't quite know what to make of him at first. I gave him a Maori bone carving, designed to be worn around the neck as a pendant, which probably resulted in his not quite knowing what to make of me either. I explained to him what it was, but he seemed slightly bemused by it.

  We stayed in London working for quite a few more months on Pure – this was the version of the album that would finally be released. Mum and Dad took it in turns to fly over to spend time looking after me. The album was recorded in two different London locations: Eastcote Studios in Ladbroke Grove and Air Studios in Hampstead. When I was going to Ladbroke Grove, I used to catch a No. 52 bus each morning. So, if you are reading this and you think that recording albums is all about glitzy locations, spacious limousines and flunkies to fulfil your every need, then you should think again. That scenario couldn't be further from the truth. I used to wear clothes designed for comfort rather than style: khaki army pants, white sneakers, a cap – all bought at a bargain price at a Kensington charity shop.

  I liked those journeys to and from the studio on the bus because it meant that I could look at myself in the mirror each morning and honestly say that I was keeping it real. I was very conscious of not becoming too starry before I had actually done anything. Even though I was very young, I realised that there was a lot of hype around the music business and I promised myself that I would do everything I could not to become caught up in it. I was more than happy to walk to the bus stop and catch the bus to the studios with my little packed lunch under my arm each day. On the first day, my food included a hard-boiled egg, which stank out the studio. Giles told me how much he hated them.
But he was a great joker and so I brought in a hard-boiled egg every single day, just to wind him up. Luckily, he saw the funny side!

  On our days off, Mum and I would wander around Covent Garden market and discover London. But, on the days when I was recording, I followed a pretty set routine. After getting up and eating breakfast, I would set off for the studio and would always stay there through the day, until about six o'clock, when it was time to come home, eat some dinner and watch some television, before going to bed. I never thought of it as work, though, and I'm not convinced that I really think of what I do now as work, either, although I'm trying to force myself to develop a better sense of compartmentalisation for my work and my personal life. But this is a funny job and it does take over your life. If you want to do well, you can't just say, 'No, it's my weekend, so I'm not going to do that.'

  London was a very different sort of place from Christ-church, principally because of the scale. I loved the energy of the city. But I did miss the people back home. I didn't really know anybody in London who was not connected to making the album. I had Mum with me and, luckily, she's more like a friend than a mother. Even so, if you are a teenager and you have to spend an unnaturally large amount of your time with your parents, it can have its difficulties. Because of the nature of what I was doing, I needed to have at least one parent with me, so I guess that I'm very fortunate that Mum and I get on so well. When we go shopping, we fight over clothes; we enjoy watching the same television programmes and we like the same food, so we can hang out like friends. But, at the end of the day, she's my Mum and she's not in my age group.