The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 70

applause S3 music (1 career path, it's not so much Left Of The down the road. But Natalie Imbruglia's serious attention. By Larry Schwartz IER- the the lack you ay a in me. the wasn't happy But now I actually have quite fond memories of it. I learned a lot It was a very good growing experience." She was still with the show when she travelled to London in 1994.

"I went over there doing a promotion for Neighbours and then loved it and decided to stay. She had hoped to establish a career in theatre. And, waiting for that to happen, revelled in the nightclub scene that raged with an intensity she nad not known in Australia. Then she enjoyed getting dressed to the nines, wearing high-heels, "trying to be like the English. There were visa problems and, for months, she languished in rented accommodation with fast-dwindling savings.

"I didn't really make a career decision for 12 months after that. I didn't know what to do. I was a little bit full of false confidence, 1 think, and just went out a lot and tried to have a gooa time. I think I was actually quite scared Meeuwen, who accompanied Imbruglia to the station, insists that the singer told the DJ that she did not wish to discuss the matter. Van Meeuwen says that although Imbruglia tried to change the subject, Williams became increasingly aggravated at her unwillingness to respond.

Finally, Van Meeuwen intervened. Along with the Minogue sisters, Imbruglia is rated high in the "sexiest woman" category in. an annual survey published in the English music paper, Melody Maker. "It makes me laugh," she says. "It's not what I'm doing my work for.

It's very two-dimensional. I wouldn change it tomorrow. Don't get me wrong. I love doing photo shoots and I'm not trying to make myself look unattractive by any stretch of the imagination." But despite all her talk of wanting to be seen as is, the record company, BMG, called on the morning of our encounter to announce that we need not bother with a photographer: they'd provide us with a photograph. Van hat I ielf.I be old jgest talia cast She sat in a house outside London and penned her first lyrics.

"Doesn't really matter where you take me," she sang in one of the first, City, "Away from the city 1 wanna start Then came a chance meeting in a pub with manager Anne Barrett and an introduction to former Cure bass player Phil Thomalley, who has produced Duran Duran and mixed Ash. "He said yes, to do it," she recalls. "I was a bit taken aback that he would want to do it, to be honest." In Melbourne, en route to Japan to promote not just the album but what she calls "the second phase" in her career, Imbruglia is trying to assert her credibility as a singer who pens lyrics and collaborates on the melodies of most of her songs. In the meantime, she is withstanding the charge from some quarters of grunge posturing, with collaborators hand-picked to help her pitch at the alternative rock crowd. Her aim, she says, is to "be myself as much as I possibly Despite the sales, there has been a cautious critical response to the album, mixed by Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich and produced by Phil Thornalley.

"Imbruglia carries crunchy melodies and her lyrics have a salty bite," Matthew Hall recently wrote in Rolling Stone magazine. "But she appears to be trying too hard and and this is her downfall it's all a little bit too cutting edge loin the dots? "It's an opinion," says Imbruglia. "I don't think it's accurate. I was just trying to be creative and experiment as a writer. I wanted to sound like myself.

I knew I didn't want to make a cheesy pop record. I wanted to have Those were the goals that I set myself." Jyto Irom raig febut ie in 'If they want to talk about you and they're not getting anything from you, then they have to make it up' how her UK too has about my career. I didn't know how to fix it and didn't want to go home. So I just took a year out, you could say, and probably was hoping that something would fall out of the sky and save me." That something turned out to be a passion for music as diverse as the Violent Femmes and early Shawn Colvin. She thought back to the offer she'd received at 14.

I asked myself why haven't I done it and what am I scared to tor ft pies pre- javid lows llian ethe i as a here Iglia, cally bbie at to Tory irom sons ieryl id. I ip. If not re to I over hore aily." View I her teith isly" trhe Sked Meeuwen had told us that instruction not to make her available for photographs had come from the London office of RCA, subsidiary of the German company, BMG. Such is the care with which the label handles the portrayal of a star. It's been a longer road to pop stardom than you might guess from Berkeley Vale, north of Sydney, where Imbruglia enjoyed childhood in a family she has likened to the Brady Bunch.

She is the second of four daughters; her father, Elliott, is a parking inspector and her mother, Maxene, a primary school teacher. The first of two career phases began early. Imbruglia took dance lessons from a young age, and acted and sang in her early teens. At 14, she auditioned for an all-girl group and turned down an offer to sign as a solo act. Within months of leaving school at 16, she had roles in commercials, including a Twisties ad shot at Sydney's Taronga Zoo in 1992.

Soon she was in Neighbours. It may well have created a window of opportunity but it can be a daggy drawback if you're trying to pitch yourself at the alternative rock scene. Imbruglia now sees herself as liberated from the kind of constraints she felt in two years as Beth Brennan in the TV soap, during which time she said she felt her life was Beth's, not her own. "OK, this is not the debut album of the year," a reviewer recently opined. "But it could stand as the best ex-soap star debut album for quite awhile." Imbruglia dismisses a comment that might be construed as backhanded with a little laugh.

"It doesn't really bother me," she says. "I was so prepared to be up against a backlash that (compared with) what I imagined would be said, that's nothing." Though she has been strident in her criticism of Neighbours, Imbruglia has made peace with the show that first brought her to prominence. "I think it's something that I've now accepted as a part of my history and I wouldn't really be where I am without it. I did go through 1 2 months after we finished the show, being a little bit bitter and twisted because there were a lot of things I guess maybe that I (ship ion, lusty not sted ams like jdto Van.