Kylie. Julie Aspinall
which had come about almost by chance. In 1986 Kylie, along with the rest of the cast from Neighbours, had been asked to sing at an Aussie Rules football club benefit. She contributed a duet with the Australian actor Jon Waters: together the two of them warbled a rendition of ‘I Got You Babe’. No one could believe it. This chirpy Aussie sparrow turned out to have the voice of a fully grown Aussie songbird: the girl with the tiny frame was pelting out the number in a manner that wouldn’t have been out of place on Broadway.
As luck would have it Mike Duffy, a producer with songwriters Stock, Aitken and Waterman, was visiting Australia and Kylie was asked to go and see him. Intensely nervous, given that disastrous demo she had recorded a few years earlier, Kylie none the less plucked up the courage and went to discuss working on a project together. The result was her first single, ‘The Locomotion’, a cover version of the 1962 hit. Everyone was staggered: the tiny little actress had one belter of a voice, to say nothing of a presence that lit up the whole video as she pranced and skipped across it. The song reached number one in her home country and by the end of 1987, was Australia’s best-selling single of the year. Carol, Kylie’s mother, was as delighted as everyone else, and amazed at the numerous talents her children were now displaying. ‘I have no idea where they get their singing from,’ she said. ‘I can’t sing a note. I couldn’t even sing in church.’
But by now Kylie really was pushing herself: some reports claim that she was close to a nervous breakdown as she pursued both careers in tandem, taking almost no time at all off to relax. ‘I was so sick I had to have a day off,’ she explained later. ‘It gave me a few minutes to think, What am I doing? What am I doing here? I would rather have a little shop which is what I have always dreamed of and having a little holiday house and getting married and having kids. That would be easy. Why can’t I just do that? There was so much pressure by so many different people and I just had to say, “Whoa! Stop!” I had everything but I had nothing.’
The trouble was, of course, that she didn’t really just want to have a little shop; she wanted a big, international, successful career. And so Kylie didn’t stop for long. After the success of ‘The Locomotion’, another record was on the cards and this time, on Duffy’s recommendation, it was decided that Stock, Aitken and Waterman themselves should be involved. Kylie flew in to London in 1987 to meet the trio. Never having seen Neighbours and having entirely forgotten his promise to meet her, Pete Waterman was surprised to receive a call from Mike Stock informing him that there was ‘a small Antipodean in reception expecting to do something with us now.’ ‘She should be so lucky,’ retorted Waterman. By all accounts, Stock liked the idea of that, picked up a pen and wrote a song. A superstar was born.
Pete Waterman and Mike Stock remember the initial meeting, in which Kylie looked absolutely nothing like a superstar. ‘She looked tired out,’ said Pete in 1989. ‘I suppose it was like looking at your youngest daughter. There was this quiet, rather shy and slim little girl, who had flown halfway round the world to see us. To be honest, we were rather brusque and off-hand with her.’ They certainly didn’t see her potential and it was to be some time before they realised quite what a winner they had on their hands.
Kylie had waited several days to see them, though, and, with the determination that has been such a help throughout her career, point blank refused to go away until they had agreed to write her a song. So they did. Mike weaved his magic: ‘I Should Be So Lucky’ took 20 minutes to write, 30 minutes to record and, as they tell it, they put her in a taxi and sent her back to Australia. ‘When she left the studio,’ said Mike, ‘we honestly thought that we’d never see her again. We could see that she was a good singer, had a quick ear and could pick up songs easily, but that was really about all. We knew nothing about Neighbours. We just bashed the song out and sent her on her way.’
The producers were so unimpressed with their new discovery that they didn’t even listen to the tape they’d recorded with Kylie until the following week. ‘I can remember being at our Christmas party and hearing this record which was so good I went over to ask the disc jockey who it was,’ said Pete in an interview a couple of years after that small Antipodean became famous, ‘and it turned out to be Kylie. We completely underestimated her popularity. She’s a star. Kylie has the potential to become an enormous celebrity.
‘She’s a millionairess already, but the sky’s the limit for what she could achieve,’ he continued. ‘She could be the biggest female singer of all time if she wants to. She has a very special talent. She just comes alive the moment she’s put in front of a microphone. I’ve seen her look ill with exhaustion after flying in from Australia, step on stage and be electric. It’s the sign of true star quality. She’s a very quiet, normal girl but the moment she has to perform, wham! She comes alive. It’s really quite dazzling, because when you meet her she’s really not very impressive.’ What Pete really meant was that Kylie can be very quiet. But like so many stars, she has something like an internal switch: put her in performing mode and she will turn in to a megastar, beloved by camera and audience alike.
There was a very short blip, however: the trio tried and failed to get a record company to take Kylie on board, and so Pete set up his own label, PWL, and released the disc. ‘I Should Be So Lucky’ was an enormous success, reaching not only the top of the charts in Australia and Britain but also in numerous other countries such as Hong Kong and Finland, previously Neighbours-free zones. It sold 700,000 copies and made the 20-year-old Kylie the youngest female artist to have a British number one. And this was just the start. Out of her next 10 singles, she had three number ones, five number twos and two number fours. Her first album, Kylie, went on to sell 14 million copies. ‘I don’t know if any pop star will ever be as popular as Kylie was back then,’ reflected Pete Waterman later. ‘She just transformed from this innocent non-worldly wise little girl in to a star. She was a tiny, 18-year-old girl, had a huge workload and was exhausted half the time, but as soon as she had to work her whole personality would transform.’
Then came the next question: Kylie was the ultimate in unthreatening girls next door, but would that sell records over longer term? Would she, at some point, have to grow up? Now in her mid-thirties, Kylie still has the body of a 14-year-old, but for many years now that’s been combined with a sultry, sexy sophistication, making her one of the world’s most desirable women. Back then, though, her idea of sophistication was blowing bubble bath off her nose as she relaxed in the tub (as witnessed in the video for ‘I Should Be So Lucky’). What should be done?
Stock, Aitken and Waterman deny they did anything to boost Kylie’s popularity by changing her image. ‘We never tell any of our artists how they should look or what to wear,’ said Pete just before the big change did, indeed, come about. ‘We don’t change their names, either. The Americans wanted Kylie to change hers, because they couldn’t pronounce Minogue. We fought that one hard. We really didn’t change her at all. Her appeal is very much as the girl next door. That’s the way people see her as Charlene in Neighbours, and that’s how she is in real life.
‘She’s not sexy and sensuous. She’s not busty and teasing. She’s lovable, wholesome and ordinary – she’s definitely not a fantasy figure. She’s the real thing.’ Pete was certainly wrong in part of that assessment – in that Kylie was shortly to become one of the world’s most sought-after fantasy figures – but as far as her staying power was concerned, they were absolutely right. Kylie, after a variety of incarnations, is still here.
Back then, Kylie even achieved the previously unthinkable: she toppled Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s golden boy, Rick Astley, off the top slot in the charts and became the jewel in the crown of PWL. ‘I think it’s a perfect pop song,’ said Kylie. ‘You can’t help singing it even if you hate it and it’s certainly gone on to prove that.’ Pete, meanwhile, was delighted. ‘This girl is a phenomenon – kids relate to Kylie,’ he said. ‘But it’s strange looking back now to January ’88. In November ’87 Rick Astley was our biggest star and potentially our biggest for the next two years. Kylie Minogue outshone him and that’s a real quirk of fate.’
Kylie was delighted with her new-found musical success. She had become a famous soap star and was now a famous singer, quite making up for her early teenage years in the shadows – and yet still