Now I Can Dance Read online

  DEDICATION

  To Gabriel, Louis, Matéo, Sofia and Valentin

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  PREFACE

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1 YOU’RE MY WORLD

  CHAPTER 2 RING RING

  CHAPTER 3 THE WAY WE WERE

  CHAPTER 4 TURN UP THE BEAT

  CHAPTER 5 DON’T STOP ’TIL YOU GET ENOUGH

  CHAPTER 6 STRONG AS STEEL

  CHAPTER 7 WOMAN’S WORK

  CHAPTER 8 ANY DREAM WILL DO

  CHAPTER 9 CHAINS

  CHAPTER 10 CHAINS, THE S&M MIX

  CHAPTER 11 SHOW ME HEAVEN

  CHAPTER 12 IF I DIDN’T LOVE YOU

  CHAPTER 13 MASTER BLASTER (JAMMIN’)

  CHAPTER 14 STAYIN’ ALIVE

  CHAPTER 15 TORN

  CHAPTER 16 NO MORE TEARS (ENOUGH IS ENOUGH)

  CHAPTER 17 ALLER PLUS HAUT

  CHAPTER 18 I WANT TO KNOW WHAT LOVE IS

  CHAPTER 19 VIVRE

  CHAPTER 20 THE FLAME

  CHAPTER 21 GOOD TIMES

  CHAPTER 22 DARE YOU TO BE HAPPY

  CHAPTER 23 SYMPHONY OF LIFE

  CHAPTER 24 NEVER (PAST TENSE)

  CHAPTER 25 UN AUTRE UNIVERS

  CHAPTER 26 AIMER JUSQU’À L’IMPOSSIBLE

  CHAPTER 27 THE LOOK OF LOVE

  CHAPTER 28 I ONLY WANT TO BE WITH YOU

  CHAPTER 29 7 VIES

  CHAPTER 30 LIVING A LIFETIME TOGETHER

  CHAPTER 31 THE MAN WITH THE CHILD IN HIS EYES

  CHAPTER 32 HIGHER GROUND

  CHAPTER 33 RESET ALL

  PICTURE SECTION

  TINA ARENA

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  SEARCHABLE TERMS

  COPYRIGHT

  PREFACE

  In 2012 my family and I moved from our home in Paris to Australia for six months. While I was down under, I appeared as a mentor on a family entertainment TV show called Young Talent Time. The show featured a team of kids performing popular songs, as well as children from all over Australia who appeared as contestants each week. My job, alongside dancer and choreographer Charles ‘Chucky’ Klapow, was to help and advise both the YTT team and the guest performers.

  It was a wonderful time. My little boy, Gabriel, attended the local primary school and had the chance to experience Australian life. He loved every minute of it, and so did I. It was great to be back in Oz, and it was great to give back. It was also a trip down memory lane in a lovely way. Because, of course, my career as a singer began on a show called Young Talent Time.

  I was only eight years old when, in 1976, I joined the team on the enormously popular show hosted by Johnny Young. Dubbed ‘Tiny Tina’ (I’ve always been vertically challenged!), I appeared on that show every Saturday evening right up until two weeks before my sixteenth birthday.

  For many years after, I felt like I couldn’t escape from ‘Tiny Tina’, that I was dragging her around like a ball and chain as people struggled to accept me as an adult performer. But eventually, I not only broke free from Tiny Tina but came to appreciate Young Talent Time for what it was – innocent, joyful family entertainment from another, simpler era.

  As it turned out, YTT was just the beginning of my career in music. Or should I say careers – sometimes I feel like I’ve lived seven lives and had at least seven careers! I’ve sung onstage and in the studio in English, French, Italian and Spanish; I’ve written songs with all kinds of artists; won awards; performed in musical theatre in the West End of London, and around Australia; and I’ve performed onstage all over the world. I’ve been pretty busy since I first appeared on Young Talent Time singing ABBA’s ‘Ring Ring’ all those years ago.

  In fact, in my early thirties, while at the top of my game, I left Australia for success in Europe. There, I fell in love. So to find myself back in Oz, working on YTT mach II, made me realise that things had come full circle. And as I reflected on the past three and a half decades, I had to admit it had been an amazing ride. There’ve been incredible moments, funny moments, and some tough moments. I’ve met and worked with some extraordinary people, including brilliant musicians, writers and visionaries. I’ve experienced the gifts of love, family and children. And, of course, I’ve been blessed to have a wonderful career that allows me to do what I love to do, which is to sing and make music.

  It was time to tell the story, to try to make sense of my colourful life so far. It’s the tale of a young girl who lived to sing, and a woman who, whatever the cost, tried to stay true to herself and her vision of music. It’s taken faith, hard work, courage and a thick skin! But finally, here I am, in a happy place, humbled by – and grateful for – my past and excited about what lies ahead.

  So here it is. Sure, you can find out on the internet just about anything you want to know about me, but it’s not the same as hearing it from the horse’s mouth. If you really want to know who I am, and what made me who I am, you need to read this book.

  But be warned. I’ve still got a lot to do: more albums, more concerts, more dancing, more joy – and more stories, of course. So there may be further instalments down the track. I just hope you enjoy this one.

  Melbourne, September 2013

  PROLOGUE

  1999

  What had I done to deserve this? What had I done wrong?

  It was 1999 and according to Prince in his famous song, I should have been partying like there was no tomorrow. After all, my career as a singer and now songwriter was going gangbusters.

  Since childhood I’d been able to follow my passion – music – and had great success doing it. From the age of eight until I was sixteen, I’d enjoyed a career as a child performer on the Australian TV show Young Talent Time, so much so that ‘Tina Arena’ was now a household name in my homeland. Then, during my twenties, I’d had three hit albums, two of them recorded in the US with some of that nation’s top musicians and producers. I’d gone on to sell millions of records around the world. I’d won a World Music Award and six Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) awards, including Song of the Year for my bestselling single ‘Chains’, and Album of the Year, an award never previously won by a woman, for my second record, Don’t Ask. I’d sold out national concert tours. I’d performed major roles in several musical theatre productions. The previous year I’d finally performed at the Royal Albert Hall and Wembley Stadium in London and had begun to break into the French market in a big way.

  And now the boss of Sony in the US, Tommy Mottola, the man who had guided the career of Mariah Carey (then married her), had taken a personal interest in my career. He’d chosen the song that his company hoped would help me crack the tough US market – ‘If I Was a River’ – and Sony had footed the bill for an expensive video to promote it as well as a two-month promotional tour of America. To have a major record company backing me in the US was a dream come true. And to top it all off, I’d found love, marrying in a beautiful white wedding a man who, very conveniently, was also my manager.

  And yet, as I boarded a plane bound for the US and the start of that promo tour, all I could think was: ‘I’m dying.’

  You would be forgiven for thinking I was simply spoiled and ungrateful – a right diva (which, in all honesty, is usually just another word for ‘difficult brat’).

  But I’d only ever been deeply grateful. Grateful for the opportunity as a child performer to learn my trade. Grateful to be able to continue pursuing my passion as an adult. Grateful to learn the craft of songwriting from true artisans. And, more than anything, eternally grateful for a love of music that had buoyed me up every day of my life.

  The truth was, though, by 1999 things had gone pear-shaped. Not my career, obviously. That was powering along, thanks to mo
re than twenty years of relentless hard work. I guess I’d inherited my capacity for work from my Sicilian parents – they’d arrived in Australia in the 1950s and had been toiling away ever since. But that capacity for hard work, for never giving up, for keeping on keeping on, had become a double-edged sword. Because I fronted up every day, no complaining, and just got on with it, no one – not me, not my then manager–husband, not my record company – had ever thought to stop, not even for a minute. I’d been twisted and pulled in every direction, to the point where I’d been wrung dry. And now I felt I had nothing left to give.

  How had it happened? How could I find myself at the age of thirty-one so completely burnt out? Stressed and full of fear, I was waking every night in a cold sweat. It had become so bad I’d taken to showering in the middle of the night. By the morning I’d look like a ghost, haggard, pale, with hollow eyes. The curvy, fresh-faced girl I once was had become a tiny slip of a thing. I hadn’t lost my appetite – quite the opposite – but I was burning so much energy I couldn’t put on any weight.

  For the most part, I realise now, it was my own bloody fault. My capacity for hard work went hand in hand with a desire, a need, to fit in, to keep everyone happy, to always give my best. I always said yes, to everything. I’d never learnt how to say no.

  For ten years I’d been struggling to find my own voice and my freedom. I wrote my hit song ‘Chains’ about that struggle, about trying to break free of my past as ‘Tiny Tina’. I wrote the song ‘Now I Can Dance’ about experiencing that freedom in a foreign land, where no one knew who I was or had been. But now, if I was honest with myself, I had to admit I’d failed to break free from all that. I was still ‘in chains’. Underneath, I was still that little girl on TV, the smiling poppet with the big voice doing her very best to please everyone, regardless of the price paid.

  Unfortunately, that price was turning out to be high. I had no personal life at all – when I married my manager I’d unwittingly forfeited it completely. What had seemed in the beginning to be a match made in heaven had turned out to be a mistake. And as that realisation slowly dawned on me, my marriage and my work became increasingly untenable. How or where would it end? I couldn’t even begin to imagine.

  Sitting in the plane, counting down the hours until I landed in LA, I asked myself again: What did I do wrong? And what am I supposed to be learning here? But I had no answers.

  All I knew was that the flame that burned in my heart for music, for life, was slowly, painfully fading. Soon it would fizzle out. Inside my head, a voice repeated over and over again: ‘I’m dying.’ And for the first time in my life I didn’t care.

  CHAPTER 1

  You’re My World

  Perhaps it was Aunty Gisella who brought out the singer in me. Gisella was Egyptian – she wasn’t really my aunty – but like me, she was of Italian descent. There were lots of Italian families in our neighbourhood and she lived just behind us. When Mum went off to work – back then she was a machinist in Flinders Lane in Melbourne – sometimes Gisella would look after me. She and Mum were good friends.

  I was only three or four, but Aunty Gisella impressed me enormously. For one thing, she was tall and striking, and she dressed like an Italian movie star. She also happened to speak seven languages, sometimes, it seemed to me, in the same sentence. When we spent the day together we’d play records all day long: Italian singers such as Massimo Ranieri singing ‘Rose Rosse’ or Orietta Berti singing ‘Fin Che La Barca Va’.

  ‘What will we listen to today, Filippina?’ she’d say. Filippina – or Pina for short – is the name my parents gave me. I’d choose a record, she’d put it on and then I’d dance, flouncing around in her floaty dresses, chic hats and gloves and Italian shoes to die for. Gisella would sing in her rich and sultry voice – she sounded like Anne Bancroft. Soon I was joining in. I was better at singing than dancing, I discovered. It was Aunty Gisella who introduced me, when I was four, to Edith Piaf. Now there was a voice that commanded the attention of a little Italian–Australian girl growing up in the suburbs!

  Or maybe it was my older sister Nancy’s fault. She was already six when I was born on 1 November 1967, and she had a pile of records, top forty singles and LPs too, that she’d bought at 100 Puckle Street, a rambling variety store just down the road in Melbourne’s Moonee Ponds, where we lived. We played that vinyl over and over on the stereo in the huge sunroom at the back of our house. Nancy always had a way with fashion, and in the days when too much satin was barely enough – it was the early 1970s – she’d dress me up in her version of cool. Then she’d stand me on a chair in my borrowed high heels and have me sing along to her favourite songs, things like Alvin Stardust’s ‘My Coo Ca Choo’, Sweet’s ‘Ballroom Blitz’ or ABBA’s ‘Waterloo’. I’d have memorised every lyric and would belt out the number into an unplugged power cord while Nancy choreographed.

  You could say I was Nancy’s muppet, but I wasn’t complaining. Soon I was buying my own records to sing and dress up to, captivated by what I’d heard on the radio or seen on TV: ABBA’s Agnetha and Frida sending out an ‘SOS’ in pageboy haircuts and knee-length white boots, or Daryl Braithwaite, Sherbet’s lead singer, bare-chested but for a cream satin waistcoat, singing ‘Summer Love’. Then there was rock, which I fell hard for straight away: Suzi Quatro goin’ down to ‘Devil Gate Drive’ in top-to-toe leather, or Bon Scott grinning wickedly as he sang ‘It’s a Long Way to the Top’ while Angus rocked out in his little school uniform.

  Mum and Dad adored music, too, especially big voices and crooners. Tom Jones and Mario Lanza or Italian singers like Little Tony and Ada Mori serenaded us on Saturday mornings while my mum, Franca, scrubbed our old bungalow from top to bottom or cooked and cooked for us, and for our cousins, aunties, uncles, friends. When my dad, Joe, wasn’t at his job (for years he worked for VicRail, maintaining the Southern Aurora), he’d be toiling in the garden, his pride and joy. So much of what we ate he grew: olives, tomatoes, eggplants, fava beans, figs, basil, zucchini, prickly pears – you name it.

  That was my parents: working all week, then never stopping all weekend. They loved to entertain and as they both came from large families – six of Mum’s eight brothers and sisters had migrated to Australia, and Dad had several siblings out here, too – the house always seemed to be full of people. And full of music. That was my world.

  So, however it happened, I was singing as soon as I could mouth the words. Even before, in fact. Mum remembers that at a wedding when I was nineteen months old, I wriggled out of her arms and ran to the singer and insisted he hold me while he sang. I couldn’t talk but I wanted to sing along. I just loved singing – it was as natural and easy as breathing.

  In every other respect I was your average little girl. Which is why, when I was asked to be a flower girl at my cousin Gaetano’s wedding, I was mad with excitement. And when I tried on the long white dress, I thought the biggest moment of my life had arrived. The funny thing was, in a way it had. Because if it hadn’t been for Gaetano’s wedding in early 1976, I might still just be singing to myself in the shower.

  It was a big, loud, sumptuous Italian affair. More than 300 guests were invited to the Springvale Town Hall in south Melbourne for the reception. To my eight-year-old eyes, the building looked like an ancient palace, with imposing stone columns and a grand staircase. In reality, it was built of brick and concrete, probably in the 1960s, and is all clean lines and modern functionality. But when I tripped up those stairs and entered that grand vestibule, I felt like I was part of some fairytale pageant. Nancy was just in front, one of the bridesmaids dressed in pale green, and all the men were wearing brown velvet suits with cream trim. Even back then, I loved a good show!

  Through the glass doors we went, into the cavernous hall, which would be shared by two big weddings that evening. Table upon table was swathed in white and decorated with what looked to my childish eyes like the most beautiful arrangements of flowers I had ever seen.

  We kids – Nancy, my little
sister, Silvana, my cousins and I – all sat together, which added to the excitement. And when the food and speeches were over, the music started and the real fun began.

  Our large extended family took celebrations seriously, so the music that night wasn’t a few tapes or a DJ spinning records. At Gaetano and Theresa’s wedding there was a real live band, with drums and guitars, even a brass section, and a crooning singer. They performed on a real stage, and in the honey glow of the stage lights they played music to please all ages: old Italian standards such as ‘Mare, Mare, Mare, Mare’ and ‘Volare’ for the grandparents, Tom Jones and Frank Sinatra for my mum and dad’s generation, and a few top forty hits for the kids.

  Everyone danced, even the oldies. Nancy and I ran around, free as birds, while our parents socialised. What a night! Then, at some point during the evening, I had an idea. Or was it a feeling? Perhaps Nancy put me up to it – I can’t remember. But I do recall running off in search of my dad. I was on a mission, and I was in a hurry.

  Dad was easy to find, his loud voice audible above the music and the chatter. He was sitting down the front, talking with my uncle, probably about the new house we were building. That didn’t stop me. I knew I could bail my dad up anywhere, anytime, and he’d give me a big hug and stop to listen.

  I tugged on his jacket. ‘Dad, I want to sing.’

  Dad turned and looked at me. As always, he was smiling. ‘Go and dance, Pina. Find Nancy and have a dance.’ He kissed me on the forehead.

  ‘But Dad, I want to sing. Please?’

  Dad’s a big softie, but he was always firm with us girls. ‘Not tonight, Pinuccia. Look, there’s already a singer up there. He’s doing the singing tonight.’ He kissed me again and sent me on my way.

  But Dad should have known: we Arenas don’t give up without a fight. In fact, my little idea had become a need.

  Five minutes later I was back.

  ‘Please, Daddy, pleeeeeease? Just one song.’