VOX, JULY 1991

'Shocked' Horror: Kylie's A Swinger!

In America, MCA are rush-releasing Kylie Minogue's 'Shocked' single, convinced it is the record that will elevate her into the same superstar category as Madonna. In Britain, DNA - the team behind Suzanne Vega's 'Tom Diner' hit - rang Pete Waterman begging for the chance to remix the single, and it has now become the first Stock, Aitken and Waterman record to be rehashed away from the team. In the VOX office there's now a distinct feeling that we may have underestimated the girl. Pete Waterman, of course, needs no convincing. Breaking a deliberate eight-month silence, during which the entire SAW operation has been overhauled, the 44-year-old producer has had no hesitation declaring the former Neighbours star will join George Michael as the only major pop star of the last ten years to make the sizeable transition from teenage to adult audience successfully.

"I honestly don't think there's anything this girl can't do if she sets her heart on it, and in that respect, she's probably the same as Madonna," he said.

"She was never just a soap star. This girl has grown in stature all the way down the line, and she's taken her audience with her."

The video for 'Shocked' certainly leaves no doubt in Waterman's mind that, at the ripe old age of 23, Kylie has shed her girl-next-door image for good.

"There are some shocking scenes in it," he said. "I mean: a whip and leather pants ... dear, dear, dear. I'm an old man now, and I'm not quite sure my heart can take it."

"But she comes in with those sort of things all the time. She'll say 'Look, I want to do this in the video', you sit there and think 'Either Kylie's on acid or I am'. Then you see the video and think 'Wow, that's amazing ...'

"We still think of Kylie as the little girl who came from Australia but you see her on screen and think 'Jeez - was she actually sitting on my desk an hour ago?' If it has that effect on me, and I've known her for five years and see her at least twice a week, it's got to have the same effect on someone who only sees her on video or television."

But the real revolution in Kylie's career has taken plance elsewhere - in the PWL recording studios.

Her latest three singles - 'What Do I Have To Do?', 'Step Back In Time' and the new 'Shocked' - have emerged in such radically different form from the original album versions that the LP is being re-issued with the tracked added. In new form, the album has already proved highly successful all over again in Kylie's native Australia - territory in which her older music received some of the sternest criticism. The real irony is that Waterman pinpoints Kylie's decision to quite Australia, almost permanently, as the key to her new maturity.

"On her first LP, she'd basically walked straight out of a soap opera and into a recording studio. But she's getting older and obviously more wordly wise and since she doesn't live in Australia that much, she's going out and absorbing a much wider range of influences."

Premier among these, Waterman explains, are the much deeper, R&B-influenced singles beginning to reach the charts, most notably Crystal Walters' 'Gypsy Woman' ("I scored heavy points," laughed Waterman, "for having that on my desk one day when Kylie walked in"); also the stunning soundtrack to New Jack City which has reiterated the American House movement's continued obsession with swing.

"Swing never really took off here when it first resurfaced in America a year or two back, says Waterman, "and it's probably the reason why American R&B went one way and the European/Italian House thing went another. Anyway, Kylie's well into swing, or at least where New Jack City is taking it."

Could the next Kylie single be swing-influenced?

"She wants to experiment," says Waterman, "and we're willing to experiment with her in areas we'd normally not have tried."

'Shocked' is probably the first major Kylie 'experiment'. Although not quite as good as Waterman's description of it - "we were making a House meets Rave meets Jimi Hendrix sort of track" - it brings Kylie impressively into line with more feisty chart acts.

"Kylie enjoyed it, we had a lot of fun with it - one of the multi-tracks got up to 11 and a half minutes long - and DNA's remix is amazing," enthuses Waterman. "They've taken it yet another stage. It's really made the Americans sit up and take notice."

It's testament, perhaps to Kylie's willingness to move forward that by July, when Jason Donovan finally leaves the SAW fold, she'll be the only artist left from the original hitmaking stable.

Donovan's departure, to take up lead role in Andrew Lloyd Webber's West End revival of Joseph And His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, is the final stage of a complete SAW overhaul.

"We have 15 records out last year and scored 15 hits," says Waterman, "but we took the decision last October not to release any more records for a while. We realised the '80s had gone and no matter what we'd done in the past, or how many number ones we'd scored, it was all irrelevant because in the '90s, we knew we had it all to do again."

There are three main elements to this restructuring - PWL Continental, PWL America and a new label, PWL Black.

Waterman admits PWL Continental, which he launched two years ago when encouraged be the UK success of French dance singles like Voyage Voyage, was "mis-timed'.

We started putting out French records and Italian thing took off. That," he laughs, "is how in-tune I was."

But, bending with the breeze, the label just issued a clutch of Italian House records, including 'Vivisection', a radical Rave re-working of Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

Surprisingly enough, the 18 month old PWL America is dependent only for finance on PWL. It's run by former Billboard wrier Brian Chinn, an early champion of SAW in America. He'd moved into the A&R department at Run DMC's Profile label, but was unhappy at the time he'd had a chance metting with Waterman in New York. Waterman offered to set up Chinn with his own Rap label, but Chinn insisted on calling it PWL America - even though Waterman, embroiled in the height of Kylie and Jason mania, knew it would be fatal to have SAW's name anywhere on the product. "If I was honest-to-goodness rap fan and I saw SAW on the label, I'd have a seizure," he laughs.

But the label benfits SAW by providing them with a much-needed source of American A&R, thus helping them compete even more successfully with the majot record labels who once cold-shouldered them.

"It's the one thing Warners and CBS had that we didn't," explains Waterman. "That is, another company in America with different people reflecting different people's opinions and giving them a different taste in music."

PWL has certainly been successful. At the time of writing, a rap tune by Chinn signing Ed Eg And The Bulldogs was sitting pretty at the top of the rap charts, while Waterman waxed lyrical of their latest act, DJ Box.

"For me, as an R&B fanatic, the rhythm tracks Box uses are sensational," laughs Waterman. "I'm there instantly."

The third, anmd most exciting part of the new PWL jigsaw is a "black only" record label called, simply enough, PWL Black. The first act on the label, singer Wanda Dee, was signed after Waterman saw her singing in the seminal break-dance movie Beat Street. She's since appeared in KLF videos, is set to star in the new bio-pic of Josephine Baker and has had one failed rap singles called 'Blue Eyes' released. She won't be rapping for PWL Black; Waterman says her singing voice "made me fall off my chair".

Waterman plans to sign two other acts in the label's first year, and will only issue albums . But isn't an exclusively black label only encouraging the sort of daft segregatory practices prevalent in America for some years?

"No," he says. "It's just honesty really. All the acts on PWL Black will be black, and rather than call it PWL R&B which is a bit presumptuous, we decided to call it what it is. It will be an outlet for black talent."

All of this should indicate, even to the non-detectives among us, that Waterman expects the charts to swing back to heavy R&B with a vengeance. What will happen to The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Charlatans - the famed Manc sound?

"I think that's waning in a big way already," says Waterman, "and I think the reason it will finally go is because R&B will come back in. If you look at pop historically, whenever a trend goes too far, it's always black music that comes in and takes over.

"The whole Mancunian thing has gone so far away from reality that people are saying 'Well, I've had enough of this now'. They're looking for something else and that something is always a great tune with a good rhythm. Now the New Jackthing has slightly tempered the swing beat, the doors are wide open again. No funny haircuts, no flares and guitars, just good, honest R&B. It's going to be great."