Q&A with Tina Arena

Tina Arena

Mass appeal ... Tina Arena counts shock-rocker Alice Cooper amongst her fans.

In the opening shots of your live concert special we see you backstage looking nervous. Do you still get butterflies?

I think I was nervous. I think I always am. I think that if that goes away I'd be a bit concerned. I was surprised by the whole thing, but I was also very honoured by it as well. It's a beautiful Melbourne venue. It was a great privilege to be asked to be the opening of the theatre.

How much do you have to put into a show like this?

It's physically and emotionally very consuming. It's not just about you at the end of the day. You're in front of 64 bodies, and another six that surround you - your own musos. Everybody has to be taken into consideration. Everybody plays a link, particularly when its orchestral and it's so subliminal. It's a different approach, a different concentration, a different focus. It's disciplined. It's not like thinking you can improvise. There are charts to respect. There are feelings to respect. You've got all the production and the lighting and the staging of it. Worrying about where you stand - am I in the dark, am I in the light? There are so many elements to think about.

So, the opposite of your performance of the anthem at Cadel Evans's Tour de France victory?

I think that's probably the most impromptu to date. It was a really bloody hilarious scenario. Looking back at it now, we often laugh about it because we think to ourselves even if you had a band of people trying to organise that, you might not have been able to pull it off. The fact that we woke up that Sunday morning and I got that text from my Belgian promoter, going from there and leading up to the podium was really quite hysterical, the whole moment was really surreal. I was in my dressing gown about three and a half hours before that, a beautiful Sunday morning with no intention of going anywhere and then by the mid-afternoon, you've hit a couple of billion people, it's quite hilarious.

How did you find revisiting Young Talent Time this year?

I had a really great time when I took the chair at the beginning of this year from January to April. It was a great little fun project to work on. I had a lot of fun. The whole company had a great time, actually; it was a terrific experience. Would I take to it again? I don't know. There's no talk of Young Talent Time coming back.

Any temptation to become a judge on another show?

There's certainly no intention of it, not at this point, no.

You talk in the concert about a meeting with Alice Cooper. What happened?

He basically wanted to meet me. He was a fan of my work, which I found really rather curious. I had a pre-conceived thought of Alice Cooper, thinking that he would never really be into that kind of stuff. It just proved me absolutely wrong. You can never judge a book by its cover. The man was deeply intelligent, very approachable and just lovely. He was just curious to meet the spirit behind those songs that he was listening to at the time, which was my record. Then, when it came time to do the song list and I chose Only Women Bleed, I wrote it down with a smile on my face thinking, I really hope one day he hears this and he loves it. He wrote a beautiful song. The whole subject and the whole beauty of that piece deserved to be reapproached.

Who Do You Think You Are? Tina Arena

Studio, Saturday, 7.30pm


Tina Arena: Live in Melbourne

 Studio, Saturday, 8.30pm