Kylie - Naked: A Biography

Kylie.

Kylie Fever

January – December 2001

It’s twenty past three in the morning, and Kylie Minogue is crying. She is tired. And all she wants to do is go to bed and sleep. She tried earlier, about an hour or so before but her mind was racing. Now she’s up, out of bed and in the kitchen of the pad she once shared with a girlfriend, not far from Parlophone, the record label she is currently signed to. The same one the Beatles made so famous. She flicks through the newspaper on the table until she calms down and can go back to bed.

She has every reason to want a good night’s sleep, rather than the exhaustion she now faces tying to get to the end of another day. From tomorrow, though, after one more interview with another magazine, another journalist, and another photo-shoot, she has five days off from the most successful year of her career.

That undoubted year of Kylie, as journalist Simon Gage correctly tagged it, had kicked off as early as January when she went back into several studios with numerous producers and engineers to start work on recording a follow-up album to Light Years that would build on the success of that album from the previous year. This time there would be more songs to choose from simply because publishers no longer had her pegged as an indie singer.

Not that it would matter. As with Light Years the choices would feature a number of her own writing and production collaborations anyway. Although not planned as such, there would be twelve songs but now with a more contemporary production than she had previously known. It would not, however, prove an easy task by any mean feat as all the material would have to be written and recorded before she got into rehearsals for her then upcoming tour of the UK and Australia in just two months time. Otherwise it would simply be a case of using any free days she had on the tour to spend either co-writing or recording. And if that wasn’t possible, then she would just have to wait until later in the year to complete the tracks. And to all intents and purposes that’s what she did.

But the hectic schedule of touring and everything else going on in her life would leave her completely worn out by the time she returned to the studios later that summer. ‘I’m totally shattered,’ she said at the time. ‘Everything has been so crazy. I’ve been trying to get my act together, but I am so exhausted I can barely string a sentence together. Making this album has really taken its toll.’

She didn’t let it show though. Even when she did find a break in her schedule, she filled it with work, work, work. She launched her own range of lingerie in Australia, at Melbourne’s Fashion Week. ‘They were gonna be called Lucky Knickers,’ she explained. ‘But it turns out the name Lucky is owned for everything, so we’re not actually allowed to call them that anymore. So now they’re called LoveKylie knickers. But we still call them Lucky Knickers.’

And if that wasn’t enough, she even found time to appear in Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge. ‘I play the green fairy in it,’ she said thrilled. ‘I have boundless amounts of respect for Baz Luhrmann.’ Even though she admits to having made some odd choices in her previous films, ‘I firmly believe that I need the right person to help me reach my potential. With acting, I’m not an overly confident person, although I have to act most days with what I do. There’s performance on different levels, but they’re all versions of me.’

She had even cut a version in Sydney of Olivia Newton-John’s 1981 hit Physical written by Steve Kipner and Terry Shaddick, for the soundtrack in much the same as the slow bluesy treatment she would later perform on the tour. Not that it would end up in the movie or for that matter elsewhere aside from the Australian Light Years: Limited Edition Tour Pack. Perhaps like the original it was considered too raunchy for its sexual innuendo.

Twenty years earlier, Newton-John’s version had been banned by most radio stations for that very reason, even if it did, at the time, become the equal second longest chart-topper in US pop history behind Elvis Presley’s Hound Dog. Like Kylie’s Spinning Around, it was Physical that took Olivia’s image from wholesome girl-next-door to her 1980s raunchy persona.

And if nothing else, it demonstrates Kylie’s impeccable taste for good song material, whether original or cover. Although rumours still persist that both Kylie and Olivia are to record a duet together, it is something that they both still have to do.

Even when she did resume recording after the tour, and thinking that she had indeed finished the album, with then thirteen tracks in the can, she received another, Come Into My World, from Cathy Dennis and Muds glam-rock guitarist, now turned songwriter, Rob Davis, who were also the writing team of Can’t Get You Out of My Head.

Come Into My World made such an impression on Kylie, that she immediately booked more studio time the same evening, recorded the song that night and added it the following day to the album that was now to be called Fever. At the same time, though, she also decided to remove two other tracks that she had up till then, considered definites for the album. Whenever You Feel Like It was originally intended for Light Years but held over for use elsewhere, and still to this day, has not been issued. Good Like That, on the other hand, would only remain unreleased other than in Japan, until February 2002, when it turned up in the UK as a bonus track on her then newest single, In Your Eyes.

As for the tour itself, it would be her first one of the UK and Australia in quite a while. Although she had played three gigs at Shepherds Bush three years earlier, in effect the upcoming dates would, interestingly enough, be her first for ten years. Just one year more than the same exact time that Elvis Presley had not performed live in between his discharge from the US army and his Las Vegas comeback back in 1969.

For Kylie though, her production ideas for the tour were literally light years away from Presley’s. Never one for the minimalist approach, her shows would build on the theatrical extravaganza she had devised for her tours in previous years. Perhaps not too far removed from what one would expect in Vegas. It would, of course, incorporate living out the dream of her showgirl, cabaret and pop fantasies. It would also spell out indulgence.

Above all else, she wanted her audience to have fun and for them to take a journey with her through the years. The concert will have a mixture of old and new, she raved. And will have quite a musical feel. To create a sort of storyline to which the songs can be related to. Lets say pop, cabaret and disco – and whatever else takes shape. It’s a luxury now to have such a history with my audience. We’ve grown up together and have a lot to share in the show.’ Maybe from that point of view, it did share something that Presley had with his audiences.

By the time tickets went on sale the previous November the tour was now called On A Night Like This 2001. And when rehearsals began shortly after laying down the first tracks for the Fever album, she had put together a main show set list, encore numbers, and even ones that would be omitted or added to some of the European dates. One of the ones that was included everywhere was the debut of Can’t Get You Out of My Head. First put down at the studio sessions in January, it seemed, as far as fans were concerned, unlikely that it would ever turn up on a single and perhaps even less likely to become the monster hit that it eventually became. It is to this day the best-selling single of her career and the most played record of all time on UK radio.

But maybe it’s what keeps Kylie on the ball. It wasn’t just the twelve thousand or more fans at each concert, who by now, were probably expecting an event rather than a show, but the complexity of what she was planning to do on stage: working with eight dancers, singing twenty-two songs, making five costume changes and moving in style from seventies kitsch to current high tech pop while everything is recorded and filmed at the end of the tour. No wonder she was feeling exhausted backstage just before showtime at the Sydney Entertainment Centre.

All the same, the reviews were ecstatic. ‘If her sell-out concerts and stunning performances are any measure, Kylie’s pop crown looks safe for years to come,’ said the Sunday Mirror. Choruses of approval wrote the Daily Telegraph. ‘Sold out nights such as this must be sweet revenge for Kylie Minogue, the actress-turned singer who has been a feature at the top end of the British charts over three decades. From the opening note to the thank you’s to her dancers and band, the key to Kylie’s pop longevity, her adorability never once faltered.’

The Independent agreed. ‘As well as a formidable singing voice, she has a personality all her own and it shines best amid hi-NRG beats, silver tassels and six inch stiletto heels… it’s riotous fun… a fantastic encore… has the audience screaming themselves silly.’

It was much the same elsewhere, noted the Daily Mail. ‘To the delight of the screaming crowd she sings her latest hits, including her number one single Spinning Around. It’s an intoxicating mix of pop, cabaret, camp, glitz and glamour and adoring crowd – excited teenage girls, couples and throngs of gay men – laps up every single foot-tapping minute of it. Kylie is in her element, revelling in her status as the queen of pop – a woman at the apex of her career.’ Even the NME joined in the applause. ‘Tonight’s show scales heights of theatrical aceness… Generation K has glimpsed heaven. And, that is just slightly wonderful.’

They literally couldn’t have been better if Kylie had written them herself. And having won one victory, she prepared herself for another. Adding an unprecedented number of extra dates to another Arena tour in the UK for the following year, after initial dates had sold out within one hour, the total number of ticket sales that October had now easily eclipsed Madonna’s Drowned World tour. Not only that but she was also breaking other box-office standards. Over one weekend she sold more than 140,000 tickets. And at the Newcastle Telewest venue, tickets sold so fast that she broke the previous record set by Robbie Williams. It was clear that Kylie’s next outing around Britain and Europe was already the most popular tour since God knows when.

And how better than to celebrate with the release of a new single. Can’t Get You Out of My Head, the song Kylie had premiered on the tour earlier in the year, was released on 17 September. According to the Parlophone Press Release, the track would display a harder sound than had been featured previously on the now platinum selling Light Years and the three singles that came off that album. Two months earlier, of course, the writing was on the wall. A twelve-inch promo featuring a Superchumbo mix of the track, had by that time, already been going down a storm in clubs.

In the video, directed by Kylie’s favourite video maker Dawn Shadforth, Kylie would once again demonstrate just how impeccable her taste can be. First shown on CD:UK two weeks earlier, the promo remains among the best loved of all Kylie’s videos, and would even go on to be voted and win the Best Video in Heat magazine’s readers poll. It also won in the Best Outfit category.

Not surprising really when you consider the white hooded catsuit she wore among others, in the urban environment setting of the piece, was probably more skimpy and designer show-stopper than anything she had sported previously. Slashed to expose part of her bare breasts down to her naval, and again up each side of her legs to her thighs, with just a hint of what is suggested could also be her naked bottom every time she moved, it was indeed a masterpiece. Even with the help of double-sided toupe tape to keep her nipples covered as it would for the later In Your Eyes video, it was still a wonder how she managed to keep everything just about covered.

But according to Kylie, ‘all that vampy stuff had been brewing in my head and it just reached the point where I had to let it out. I was just so tired of flashing the pearly whites and feeling like I was the star of a soap commercial.’

Almost to aid her never-ending quest to be gracious, Kylie remembers the moment when she discovered that her single was due out the same day as Victoria Beckham’s first solo effort, Not Such An Innocent Girl. ‘I rang my manager as soon as I heard and asked whether we should change the date but it would have been a nightmare. Also, Id just be up against someone else,’ she says. ‘The cards had been dealt and I just thought I should play the game and go along with it.’ She need not have worried. Can’t Get You Out of My Head, quite remarkably, out sold the Beckham single eight to one.

Within one week of Can’t Get You Out of My Head being released, Kylie was filming An Audience With Kylie Minogue - probably showbusiness’s most coveted role in front of the television cameras.

In fact, it now seems almost ironic that the day she recorded the programme, with exactly the same format that previous performers such as Tom Jones and Cliff Richard had done before her, on Sunday 23 September for broadcast two weeks later, the single had entered the UK charts at number one.

Kylie couldn’t believe it either. That was just incredible, she told Heat magazine when they caught up with her for a December 2001 feature. She was rehearsing for the TV show that morning when she heard the news. ‘My record company has a number you can call which gives the week’s chart result; my TV promo lady handed me the phone and the voice on the phone was saying, Kylie’s entered at number one with sales of 306,000 copies, and it was like a movie moment. I couldn’t speak and I just handed her the phone and said, You have to listen because that can’t be right. I was just flabbergasted.’

Much the same as the celebrity guests, colleagues, friends and family were that crowded into the London Studios that Sunday evening to watch Kylie belt out a selection of her greatest hits, some newer material from the then forthcoming album and to take centre stage in between the music to answer questions from the star-studded audience.

For Kylie, they included everyone imaginable. Boy George, Julian Clary, Pete Waterman, Cat Deeley, Lady Victoria Hervey, cast members of Coronation Street, EastEnders and Brookside, her brother and sister, Brendan and Dannii, and of course, Anne Charleston, her former on-screen mother from Neighbours.

Even with the series of eye-catching and stunning costume changes she made during the taping, equally she would spring a couple of other unexpected surprises. One of those was inviting Olympic boxing gold medallist Audley Harrison, Big Brother’s Paul Clarke and Brookside star Phil Olivier up onto the stage to join her in a gamely rendition of her first-ever hit The Locomotion.

Another, of course, was the duet she performed with Kermit the Frog on Especially For You. The number one hit she had originally shared with Jason Donovan in 1989. And if that wasn’t enough to strike a chord with the crowds both in the studio and at home, then the toe-tap collaboration with Adam Garcia on Better The Devil You Know certainly would. It was, raved most, like one of those classy song and dance routines reminiscent of classic Hollywood.

The album, Fever, was released just two days after the sixty-minute special had aired on ITV 1. It featured Kylie on the cover standing sideways against a white studio wall, holding a microphone not far above her head, arms stretched, and the microphone cable running down the length of her body into a heap on the floor. She is in a white T-shirt, matching laced knickers with an extended tie-up sash hanging down over her bare slightly tilted legs to just below the back of her knees, and on her feet, white stiletto heels. Even if it hadn’t had the words Kylie and Fever on the opposite top left and bottom right corners, it would still have been perfect.

Parlophone was excited by the album and promoted it heavily, printing up the usual point-of-sale material, placing ads in all the regular magazines and newspapers, and even launched an exclusive online behind the scenes series of short programmes titled ‘Feel The Fever’ on Kylie’s official website. It would track her through the various stages of the campaign for the album and include candid footage shot at photo sessions and video shoots, rehearsals and interviews, with Kylie herself providing commentary. Although she would never be taken up by some quarters of the music fraternity, it was suddenly okay to admit to liking Kylie Minogue.

Reviewing the album in NME, the conclusion was clearly that ‘in many ways it’s her most daring yet, if not her best. Relentlessly upbeat, some songs nonetheless take a few listens until they make sense, but Can’t Get You Out of My Head took most people a few listens to get their heads around and now it’s being hailed as one of Kylie’s best ever singles! There are plenty of potential singles to choose from on this album and if you think the country was taken over by Light Years just wait for Kylie Fever to begin!’

Certainly it already had, and it didn’t go unnoticed either in the plethora of award shows with which the music industry now seems to abound. Not for the first time in her career, following similar nominations elsewhere, Kylie would scoop the Best Tour and Best Single awards at the Top of the Pops ceremony, Best Female Artist at the ARIA awards in Australia and Best Comeback at the Bambi’s in Germany. Although a clear favourite in many people’s eyes, it didn’t seem feasible that Can’t Get You Out of My Head could have possibly lost out to third place in ITV 1’s Record of the Year. And although only narrowly pipped, her show-stopping performances at MTV’s Europe music awards and the Smash Hits readers poll party were far greater than any award could have possibly earned her.

All in all, it truly had been her most successful year. Even if, as she sat in a makeup chair in a tiny West London studio having blonde extensions woven into her hair and preparing for the first of two days filming her next video for In Your Eyes, she must have already been looking back in reflective mood. ‘Yeah definitely. It’s been an insane year,’ she laughs. ‘It’s funny because people are all saying Oh, you must be so happy, it’s been such a great year. I don’t know if happy is exactly the word, because it has involved an incredible amount of hard work and I think the moments of happiness are short-lived. I haven’t really had much time to stop and enjoy it.’

Just A Girl From Melbourne

May 1968 – May 1985

Every new mother, quite naturally, harbours dreams for her child. In her eyes, no baby is going to be as special as the one she has just given birth to. Nor as intelligent, talented or as extraordinarily beautiful as her own. As far as any mother is concerned, every tiny, vulnerable part of their offspring, laying sound asleep in the neo-natal ward is destined for some kind of greatness.

Not that Carol Jones, born and raised in Wales, could be certain of that. Just four years after she had married, then barely twenty, and moved south from Queensland, she presented her husband, Ron Minogue, a native Australian, with their first born daughter. Much to their delight, Kylie Ann, named for the Australian word meaning for ‘boomerang’ was born on 28 May 1968 at Bethlehem Hospital in Melbourne. But never, not even in her wildest dreams, could she or Ron, have imagined the kind of phenomenon that their little girl would become.

Kylie, however, didn’t remain Ron and Carol’s only child for long. Two years later in 1970, when Kylie was two, Brendan; their only son, was born, and a year after that, their second daughter, Danielle, or Dannii for short.

Kylie, Brendan and Dannii spent most of their early childhood moving from house to house, school to school, and town to town. Right up to the time when Kylie was twelve, the family seemed to have moved around Melbourne as regular as clockwork, rarely staying put for more than a few years at a time. An existence that young Kylie disliked intensely. In fact, she hated it. From her point of view, it was quite understandable. No sooner had she made new friends and settled into a new school than the packing boxes got repacked and the removal vans ferried them to a new street and another new home.

In fact,