Hayley Westenra (9 page)

A crew from the television programme
Sixty Minutes
followed my first trip to America. While we were there, they
filmed me and the rest of the family taking a horse-and-cart ride around Central Park. The driver asked me why I was being filmed. I explained that I was a singer from New Zealand.

'I had
Charlotte Church in my cart a few years ago,' he said. Now, Charlotte is somebody whom, although I've met her only the once, I feel I know extraordinarily well because her name came up in every single interview I gave in the first few years of my career and still comes up in every other interview I give now.

In the old days the question I was always asked was, 'Charlotte Church – do you mind the comparison?' For the record, my answer was always, 'No, it's fine. I can understand why the comparison's drawn.'

Now, the question is, 'A contemporary of yours, Charlotte Church, has gone down the pop route. Are you going to follow?' And, again, for the record, my answer is always, 'No, I'm very happy with the style of music I'm singing. I want to stay true to who I believe I am as an artist, so I'll continue working in the classical-crossover area.'

My one meeting with Charlotte was in a hotel bar, where she was sitting with her singing teacher. It was after I had appeared in Cardiff in concert with Russell Watson. After I had been on stage, Russell's manager Perry told me that Charlotte Church was in the audience. By this time, she seemed like the most famous person in the world to me, as her name was trotted out by every journalist I ever talked to, the world over.

We finally met at the St David's Hotel later that evening. I was sitting with Mum and a few of the musicians and I breathed in sharply when I saw her in the doorway. I nudged Mum and whispered, 'Charlotte Church's just come in.' I was suddenly very nervous of meeting this girl, who was only a year older than I was. Afterwards, I turned to Mum and said, 'How cool, getting to meet her!'

We were introduced and I talked to her very briefly, but she was constantly sending text messages on her mobile phone. Apparently, her boyfriend was waiting for her in the car outside, so she didn't really want to be doing the whole meet-'n'-greet thing. She was wearing a cute cap and she looked very starry as she walked into the bar. Everyone turned to look at her and I felt like a country bumpkin in comparison. It didn't worry me and it was not a big deal, although I did silently wish that I could look that stylish.

'Oh, yes, great concert. You're doing very well. Congratulations,' she said.

'It's lovely to be meeting you,' I replied. 'Congratulations on your success too.'

Our conversation was very polite – not tense at all, but just polite. Looking back, I guess it should have been more tense than it was because we were very much seen as competitors in the same market at the time. Now, we are a million miles apart in what we do.

Another big star whom I nearly met was
Victoria Beckham, but she makes it into this book only because I said 'no' to her. Sorry, Victoria. Her parents came to the concert that Russell and I gave at Wembley Stadium. While I was performing, her parents held up their mobile phone so that she could hear how I sounded. I was then invited to sing at one of the Beckhams' exclusive showbiz parties. To the shock of many of my friends, I turned them down.

To be honest with you, I would love to have gone along, but I was committed to performing in a series of concerts back in New Zealand, and in one of them my sister Sophie was due to perform with me. She was all psyched up for it and was really looking forward to the experience. I couldn't possibly let her down. I was also worried about cancelling the show and disappointing my fans. It obviously was not an easy decision to make, but I do believe that once an artist has made a commitment to do something, and their fans
have paid out their cash for tickets and are eagerly awaiting the show date, the artist should do everything possible to honour the commitment to their fans. And that means sometimes having to say no to other fantastic invitations that come along on the way. No performer should ever take their fans for granted.

By now, I was living a fairly nomadic existence, flying back and forth to New Zealand. We moved into a flat in the bustling Covent Garden area of London, which became our European base. I had been quite homesick for New Zealand on my first trip and, although I do still miss my friends and family when I'm away for a long period, I'm more used to it these days. Throughout the period that I was making
Pure,
I was attempting to carry on with my schooling at
Burnside High School, although my absences were not looking too good on the attendance register.

When I was there, I did well, particularly in maths and science, and I was reasonably good at English. If I'm being honest, I would have to say that by this stage, with so much happening to me in terms of my music career, my heart was not really in school. As I neared the end of my high school years, I felt that even if my marks were a little on the low side, it wouldn't matter, since I didn't need bits of paper to make it as a singer. Mum and Dad took a slightly more pragmatic view and were keen for me to keep up with my schoolwork. They, along with my lawyer, did some negotiating with the record company and organised a tutor for me while I was in London, although this still was not ideal, since he didn't travel with me, so I could have lessons only on my days off from recording. I suppose that my school-work did come second to my music. Put it this way: I don't ever remember doing homework sitting at the back of a recording studio. I probably should have been keeping up with schoolwork on a daily basis, but,
instead, everything had to be squeezed into the occasional day off.

I ended up taking the British GCSE exams a year later because, the year that I was due to take the New Zealand School Certificate, a new system had been introduced, which made it very difficult for teachers to give me work that they had prepared in advance. There was also a good deal of internal assessment, with the aim of taking pressure off the students by assessing coursework through the year and making the final exam only part of the overall mark. The problem for me was that, because I was constantly travelling, I missed each of these assessment dates. That meant that my potential grades at the end of the year were gradually being eroded away. I did manage to sit the end-of-year exams and my grades were good, but I could have done so much better had I been there throughout the year – hence the need for me to do GCSEs when I was in the UK.

I've not carried on with any formal further education after that, but I honestly don't feel that I've missed out. Nobody ever asks me about exams or grades these days, although there seems to be a general assumption that I finished my high school years up to NCEA Level 3 in New Zealand, or A-levels in the UK.

Sure, there are times when I wish that I had continued my German and French. They would have actually been useful for me as I travel around, but I think my time is much better spent on my singing career. It's not too late either. I've just bought myself an Italian language course, which I'm studying at home. There's always time to keep on learning. I'm a firm believer that, for people with enquiring minds, learning never stops – and it does not have to be formal, either. I'm planning to keep on working on my Italian, because it will be useful for my singing, particularly since many of my favourite arias come from Italian operas. At the moment, I
work on the basis of reading a translation of a song and then knowing how the words sound, rather than being able to translate it directly myself. I've picked up a little of the language through singing it, but, if I went to Italy, I would be completely stuck.

After I had finished recording
Pure,
Giles and his team worked on making the album ready for presentation to the record-company bosses. One particular song that we had recorded was to prove to be a big sticking point for everyone concerned. I fell in love with
'Wuthering Heights' after Mum played me the original
Kate Bush version back home in Christchurch. We were working through the family's record collection looking for potential songs for me to record and she put the disc on the turntable in the living room. Out came the utterly unique sound of Kate Bush.

'What on earth is this?' I asked her incredulously. I really didn't know whether I liked it or not, but it was very different from anything I had heard before. It's one of those songs that really grow on you, and I listened to it again and again, letting it whirr over in my mind. Soon, I was dancing around the house to it. I couldn't get the song out of my head.

'I
have
to record this song,' I said to Mum. And that is exactly what I did with Giles when we came to work together on the album. The Decca bosses had other ideas, though, when they heard the album. The ominous message came back: 'We just don't think that "Wuthering Heights" fits.'

I was not happy and I was not backing down.

There were an inordinate number of phone calls and then suddenly it came to the big meeting. It had turned into a big deal and I was called into the Universal building, where all of the senior executives had turned out. There were a lot of them there, so it was just as well that I had brought along my whole family as my support crew. It was quite an
intimidating environment for a fifteen-year-old girl to find herself in, but, strangely enough, I felt quietly confident.

I was very firm with myself ahead of the meeting: 'Hayley, you're not to back down,' I instructed myself. 'Don't be nice. You believe in this song, so go for it.' I knew that I was resolute on this. There was nothing they could do to slay me.

They soon got the message when I started crying. The meeting had dragged on with the bosses going on and on about it, but I was quietly sure of my opinion. I was not cynically turning on the tears. At the time, I didn't realise they would help me, but, of course, large groups of middle-aged blokes always struggle to cope with a girl bursting into tears. The waterworks worked.

'I think that this meeting has come to an end, so we'll think about it and then we'll get back to you,' I was told. Later, Costa Pilavachi called me up.

'We now know that you feel really strongly about this song,' he said. 'And, if you feel this strongly about it, we don't feel that we're in any position to stand in your way. One thing I always say is that the artist is always right.' As ever, Costa had been very diplomatic and very sweet. He always instinctively knew how to say the right thing at the right time. So 'Wuthering Heights' stayed on the album.

Pure
was first released in New Zealand in July 2003 with the UK release coming a couple of months later. Back home, I toured around all the radio stations accompanied by the guitarist
Kurt Shanks. This allowed me to give impromptu performances of the songs, which always went down a treat. The presenters seemed genuinely surprised to discover an artist who was prepared to sing the songs from her album on demand and without the safety net of the recording studio's electronic wizardry. One of the upsides of the promotion phase of a record's life is that all the expenses are paid for by the record company, so you tend to be well
looked after. The artist's meals are paid for and you are put up in nice hotels. Each territory around the world vies to look after you the best – probably just to make sure that you actually come back again next time.

One of the more challenging parts of doing promotion is the relentless round of interviews, which can become very monotonous. Sometimes, I have to sit in a hotel room for a whole day, which has been divided into ten-minute blocks, one for each different journalist. That is a tough call when they come in through the door one after another. I often find myself struggling to remember what I've said to the other journalists who have already interviewed me and whether I'm repeating myself or not.

Sometimes I try to change my answers, just to keep myself alert. I try to think about each question in a new light, rather than just giving the same answer over and over again, because, if you repeat the same reply all the time, it can come to sound too rehearsed. The risk of attempting to vary each answer is that it does not come out right because I'm trying to avoid saying what I would usually say, when it would be much easier to have just given a tried and tested answer. The best interviews are those that seem more like conversations, as opposed to my being thrown a series of questions in the order that they are written on the interviewer's notepad.

One of my favourite interviews happened in Japan. Rather than the normal session about how I came to have an album deal, what my school friends thought of my having an album and the ubiquitous Charlotte Church question, all I had to do was give my verdict on a series of different Japanese sweets and cakes. It was a bit different and didn't require me to do too much thinking; it was more a workout for my taste buds than anything else.

I also enjoy it when I'm asked random questions, usually at the end of an interview after all the normal stuff. This particularly happens on local radio stations, where the
presenter asks me a series of completely unpredictable questions, such as whether I prefer fish and chips or curry. (It's fish and chips, by the way – although Steve, my manager, is forever trying to convert me to curry.)

Pure
went straight to the top of the charts in New Zealand. At that stage, we were not to know that it would go on to become the country's biggest-selling album ever by a local artist. As I read that sentence back, it still sounds like the stuff of dreams to me and I can't quite believe it, even now. There certainly was no time to take it in back in 2003, because no sooner had I finished promoting the album at home than I jumped back on a plane to London to work on the UK launch. In terms of sales, if we got it right, this would be the big one.

Just before that album's release in the UK, I performed at Bryn Terfel's
Faenol Festival in North Wales. This is an annual event, organised by Bryn, near to his home. As it turned out, Faenol was one of the most significant events in my career, although at the time I had no idea just how important it would prove to be. It was my first introduction to Wales and, at this stage, I was still pretty much unknown in the UK. I did some interviews in a magnificent part of North Wales. We stayed in a beautiful hotel that was surrounded by grassy hills. The contrast with London and city life was wonderful; it felt as though I had been transported to a picturesque, tranquil wilderness, filled with some of the most friendly people I've ever met.