This album remains a favorite amongst fans. Very different from previous albums it remains alongside Gaia as one of the most personal. After a self-imposed three year album gap it was welcomed with open arms by fans but despite international promotion and lots of TV appearances sales weren't as good as expected. No one can deny that the title track with its sexy, upbeat video deserved to be a hit. This CD interview disc is of UK origin and like the Back With A Heart interview the actual questions are absent from the CD.
What's been happening in the last three years?
I had a baby, I got married first I must say. Had a baby and then decided I want to devote the first few years of her life to just being at home, to being a mom and giving her my time.
How did the collaboration with Elton John on The Rumour come about?
Yes Elton I'm very happy to say wrote me the song and Bernie wrote the lyrics. I asked would he write me song and didn't really think it would happen and I was really thrilled when they did. To add to that Elton produced the track for me so I'm very happy. We used to run into each other socially and I did a Special a long time ago and he played Candle In The Wind for me which was a highlight, I loved that. It was one of my favorite songs but we didn't get to sing together which was a shame. But we get to sing kinda of together cause he did some background vocals for me on The Rumour.
He was acting a friend I think. And I think he was so excited about the song and that I liked it so much that he decided to stay an extra week and produce it, he actually co-produced with James Newton Howard. He played all the piano on it, he was at every session he was at the drum track laying session, everything. He did the backing vocal, he and Bruce Robert and myself did that. It was fun, we had a lot of fun doing it.
Yes I think you can interpret it many ways that song. But I interpret it as a personal relationship. Once you start to believe things it can never be right again. It's a very clever lyric, it's very unusual.
How did the video come about?
As it was the last song to be recorded on the album we did this video in America whereas I did a special of the album in Australia. But it was the last one to be done so we did it in LA. And Kenny Otegra who did all the choreography for Dirty Dancing did the choreography. And he 's an old friend cause we worked together in Xanadu. So it's kinda been an old home week this last week.
It's a performance song, videos are normally a little bit abstract. So we a lot of little vignettes to do with rumours and the different ways they're spread. But it's a little bit abstract
Love and Let Live?
I thought this song was an important one. My producer David Segitt found it who produced the majority of the album and thought it was important topic. And nobody, I'm sure they've may have been other songs, but I haven't' heard one about this topic. It's a very sensitive area but I think the lyrics are done in such a way that it's not offensive in any way. I think if we can even get through to one or two young people the dangers of those things today and just to take precautions. Which is really what the song is saying we have to tell others how to love and let live. And I think if we reach a couple of people that's what it's meant to do, I think music is a gentle way to get through to people more than the hammering home messages.
It's sadly a world problem. It's not a judgmental song it can happen to anybody. As time goes on it seems to be spreading. The research that they have these are some of the ways you can prevent it. So if I make someone aware of it that's a good thing.
What's Can't We Talk it over in Bed all about?
Yes I love that song. I think the record company are hoping it'll be the second single. This song grabbed me right way, I just heard a rough demo of it and I thought yes it's an instant. One of those songs that gets you right away. It kinda had a Sam Cooke feel and the lyrics also apply to most people in a relationship. This album is a lot about relationships. It's grown-up lyric about people who've had an argument and it is true you usually say things when you're angry and then regret them. And with a busy life the one place you get to talk about them is in bed. Whatever way you want to interpret that (laughs) it's usually is the way it happens.
Can you describe the video to Can't We Talk It Over In Bed?
The video to this I haven't seen it put together because we only filmed it last week and it's being cut. I made it with my husband Matt and it's really synaroes in the day of the life of a couple, like making the toast, having a cup of coffee, shaving and having an argument over something minor which is what they're usually about. It's really about the emotional things people go through in a day. Little vignettes mostly in close-up.
What are your feelings about Australia and England?
Well there's the LP around I Still Call Australia Home. I feel that I lived there the most important years of my life 5 to 16 which are your school years, your teenage years. There's a very warm spot in my heart for Australia and I have a little farm there I go and visit. But America has been really good to me and I've been living there for the last 13 years, my husband's American, my baby's American. I've had a wonderful life there. England I was only here for the first five years of my life so my childhood memories are pretty short. I lived here for the kinda of beginnings of my career. So I owe it a lot. I worked with Cliff Richard here and he kinda gave me my start in television and records. So England has some very fond memories too.
Tell me about your TV special
I took a film crew and went to Australia and we filmed the opening celebrations of the Bicentennial, the tall ships race. We went to Hobart and I went on an Australian Navy Destroyer and filmed with all the crew. Everyone in the show were all Aussie and not actors, there were all real people. We filmed in Sydney Harbour the day of Australia Day. It was on eof the most incredible days of my life, there were about ten thousand ships in the harbour, airforce planes going overhead and Charles and Di were there and went by our boat. We had this huge, huge lens trained on them and I was waiting for the boat to come by. At the last minute they changed course. The film crew picked up everything ran the other side of the boat and set it up. "Here they come. Here they come" turn on the tape. I was trying to get a little bit of the song in the background and just as they got within frame Di turned around and walked to the other side of the boat (laughs). So we got the Prime Minister for one second and Charles for one second.
Tell me about Koala Blue
It was a little business but is now quite a big business. But I have a chain of stores now called Koala Blue, started out as one store in Los Angeles on Melrose Avenue and it started out as an Australian import store. And my girlfriend, Pat Farrar, Pat was my singing partner a long time ago and we've been friends ever since. And John Farrar has produced the majority of albums in my career so we're very close knit. When I was on the Physical tour I was telling Pat that it'd be great if we had a place we could open that had Australian everything: candies, newspapers, meat pies, you'd hang out there. And she wanted to open a clothing store so she suggested we put the two ideas together. So we went to Australia with our briefcases and knowing nothing and picked out all the people who we thought would be accepted in America. We picked up the clothes and books and everything and opened it. For the first year we were an import store but found that anything with the name Koala Blue on it was what people wanted. We had some t shirts left over from the opening party and they sold immediately so we just kept adding things. We started out with T shirts and sweatshirts and now we have four fashion lines a year and we're also franchised out to other stores and have 15 around the country and we're opening in Japan in September.
Let's Talk About Tomorrow?
This is a song about ecology and I co-wrote this with two friends and I am concerned. I think when you become a parent you become even more concerned that there's a world for your child and it's a clean world and a healthy world and they'll be the animals left that you enjoyed. I wanted to write a song about this very topic so that how this began.
How did you choose your producer?
It was interesting really. I had another manager at the time and Davitt who produced James Reyne for Roger Davis who was my manager then. Apparently Davitt was in the office and saw my picture and said you know the kind of album she should be doing and was telling Roger. And I had been telling Roger just a few months before about the kind of album that I wanted to make. The two ideas were the same so he put us together. And I liked his David and David album that he'd made very much, I thought it was very nicely produced and I loved the songs and content and we clicked. And he inspired me to write more of my own material and so it was a good marriage. I enjoyed working with him very much.
What's the album concept?
We started out wanting to make an album about women of my age group, women with children, women who are divorced or single parents. A woman's view of the world as it is now, it's changed a lot. So that's really how it started out and I think we've pretty much stuck to it.
Tell us about It's Not Heaven
You've got to have life experience to write songs and to sing them. I feel every time it's been time for me to record an album I'm attracted to a different type of song because of where I am in my life right now. It's like anything and this song I started as I was driving up my hill in my car and pulled over on this terrible bend with my tape recorder in one hand and paper in the other and wrote the first two verses. We had been talking about the fact of writing a song about single parenting and I have a couple of friends who are in this position and they are raising children on their own and it's not perfect but.. Most women start out marriage with this fantasy, maybe it's not a fantasy for some it works, but for some it doesn't. That it's forever and everything is going to be perfect, well life isn't always like that so the song is about the fact that it isn't like that but that doesn't mean that it's bad. Life isn't perfect if you accept that from the beginning maybe things are easier.
Some people say it's an innocent album, others say it's brave?
I don't think it's naive. I don't think I'm that any more, I hope I am in some areas but I don't think so. I don't even know that it's brave. I don't think it's brave to sing about what you feel. I'm putting out things that I feel strongly about and that I like. I hope there's an area of people out there who also like the same thing. I don't feel like I'm being really brave. It's the music I like right now.
How do you feel about your past albums and biggest hits?
All of them were very important to me and to my growth. I wouldn't be here now without them. John Farrar wrote You're the One That I Want and Steve Kipner wrote Physical and they're both Australian. See, they bring me luck
What's Get Out about?
I wrote this with Randy Goodrum. This started out, we were in his studio and he was going "I hear something about kitchen - a kitchen". It kinda evolved from that. And this song is about role reversal in a family and it's a little bit tongue in cheek. This is also very common now a lot of women are out there working and the men staying home minding the kids. And there's nothing wrong in that. It's just a change in roles and the acceptance of that is hard for some people so it's just one attitude of role reversal.
Some men don't like it, they think get out what do you mean? It's tongue in cheek but it worked for the song really well. It's angry but it's not angry. It's like if you can't handle it this is how life is right now. I'm out there working and you're at home. The most important line is "Doesn't matter who does what, we're family." That's really what it's all about, most people find it kinda of fun.
How did you find Big & Strong?
Big & Strong that was interesting how we found that song. We were working in a studio in Hollywood and one of the tape operators in the studio just happened to have made an album, cause everywhere you go in Los Angeles people are actors or singers, and he gave Davitt an album of his to listen to and Big & Strong was on the album. He thought it was a strong message and a strong performance song for me.
Do you welcome submissions from other songwriters?
We went through hundreds, Davitt probably went through even more than that and the record company went through a lot more too. It's amazing when it comes down to it how few songs, it doesn't mean that there aren't great songs out there, but how many get to you and how many you like. A lot of singer/songwriters keep them for themselves now or send them directly to an artist who's kinda hot at the moment. I'm coming out with a new album and haven't been around for a while so it was very hard to get strong material but we would record outside stuff if we found the right one.
What's the idea behind the album cover?
Yes it was a pretty windy day (laughs). I shot the album cover with Herb Ritts who did my Physical album cover and I've worked with a lot. And he's my favorite photographer I'd say. It was done on the hillside behind my house, very casual really it isn't really a posed photograph it's just a very casual shot.
Who decided the image for the album?
They're involved of course, we went through all the photographs. When I say we I mean my manager, my secretary, myself - basically went through all the photographs and selected the ones we thought were most suitable. We came to a common agreement on the one that should be it. And I think this is the one they liked the best.
What's Car Games about?
Well this song I wrote again with Randy. And I had written the lyrics and the melody to this song about four years ago because it intrigued me. When you live in Los Angeles you spend a lot of time in your car and I used to drive along and you know you see someone out the corner of your eye and I used to daydream about fantasy people you'd meet on the street. I'd wonder if that person met that person, if they travelled to work everyday this way. I'd make up stories about number plates and I thought this would be a very interesting idea for a song. The song is about people on the freeway who see each other and.....well you listen to the lyrics (laughs).
Randy came up with a great feel for it and we wrote the song together. You spend a lot of your time in your car. I spend, if I go to town, an hour and a half going back and forth each day and that's a lot of time I listen to the radio etc. But this is how the whole thing came up in my mind.
Do you enjoy living in Los Angeles?
The city itself really doesn't have a heart, you can take that either way (laughs). It doesn't really have a middle place that you could say was the centre. It has these little areas and I like living there in the fact that I have a lovely home in a beach area that's removed from the downtown area, the really busy section. It's a very pretty place, it's very polluted I'd say that would be the negative side but it's really where everything is going on as far as music and film. So for me at this point in my life it's the place to be and my husband too.
Are you writing any films?
I have a friend and we got married around the same time and we had our children six weeks apart. We wrote a script together that was the next step. We had a funny idea when we were both single women and this is really what the album is about too, single women who wanted to get married and have children and weren't married yet and the time clock is running out and that's what the film is about. A lot of women are going through that, a lot of career women who want to have families, now in their late thirties are thinking about settling down and they can't find the men.
What's Walk Through Fire about?
I love this song. This was written for me by David and David, Davitt produced I think they've had two albums he's going to do the next one. One of the Davids, I get their last names mixed up, played all the keyboards for me on it. I think it's a beautiful lyric, an adult love song about commitment. I feel in love with that the first time I heard it too.
What's Tutta La Vita about?
It was originally Italian and was a very big hit for the author. Apparently it was a monstrous hit in Italy and in Spanish too. Don't ask me his name I've gone blank right now. But anyway, Davitt wrote an English lyric too it, it's kinda a tongue in cheek look at life. I've enjoyed this track a lot, I've got all my friends on the end singing along.
Do you think your style has changed over the years?
I can see a lot of changes. I hope they never stop.
What does the future hold?
Gosh, everything's pretty great as it is. I look forward to a healthy life and career and continued happiness with my family. Chloe really is all that's important. I'm very lucky.
Will you be performing live?
Probably at the moment as Chloe is still little I don't really see myself doing live performances. But I do television and videos and all that stuff so I'll still be around.