Jenner told Sam to book us in with the local boxing gym to get some moves down pat. ‘I can picture the reviews now,’ he smiled lazily. ‘“Fight Like a Girl” really packs a punch,’ blah blah blah.’
‘What a pair of knockouts,’ Mason replied, barely concealing a sneer. ‘Get in the ring.’
Rose and I exchanged eye rolls over our noodles. If he’d listened to the song properly, he’d know I’d already used ‘get in the ring’, anyway.
•
YOUNG FEATHERWEIGHTS HIT HARD
It’s almost embarrassing how quickly the ‘Fight Like a Girl’ phenomenon has catapulted Sydney band The Dolls into the ring, writes Andy Carmichael.
Not since the Temper Trap’s ‘Sweet Disposition’ has the first swoop into a chorus triggered the adrenal glands so readily. Becoming the earworm theme to reality shows and ringtones alike, (‘Fa-fa-fa-fa’) ‘Fight Like a Girl’ is guaranteed to live on for all eternity in karaoke dens across both the East and West.
The first single from The Dolls’ hotly anticipated debut album has enjoyed the full might of Grandiose’s hype machine. While the video clip couldn’t be called progressive, the skimpy boxing bout is a natural hit on both early-morning pop shows with kids high on frooty-loopz, and on late-night music marathons with highs of a different nature. It also cunningly disguises the fact that neither Dall is likely to win Dancing with the Stars anytime soon. The king hit, of course, came when Prince Harry was spotted throwing punches to ‘Fight Like a Girl’ at Mirabelle’s in London’s West End.
While some dismiss ‘Fight Like a Girl’ as being aimed at the Bieber demographic, it cannot be denied that many credible rock journalists are salivating over the idea that we have the next t.A.T.u-style one-hit wonder on our hands—with Greg Mickiewicz as the cunning pimp. Will the rest of It’s Not All Ponies and Unicorns live up to the hype? Who knows? But right now you couldn’t blame The Dolls for thinking they can punch above their weight.
INDUSTRY EYE
13
LOS ANGELES
After Wayward was released we were guilty of believing our own press. As a disaffected young woman, I’d always dragged my ego after me in the mud, but suddenly I was being told I was the saviour of rock’n’roll and the centre of the universe. And why wouldn’t I want to listen to that?
POUR ME ANOTHER—ALANNAH DALL (SABRE BOOKS)
America. The word was buzzing with opportunity—and we would feel that buzz, once the Valium had worn off. We’d played a guest DJ set the night before our flight, which was a big mistake. You had to knock back a lot of vodka to feel comfortable taking turns leaning over a laptop or dancing in the booth with your hands in the air. The rest of the night was lightning flashes of incidents. Rose, doing a ‘do you know who I am?’ to the bartender. A bloke, all tilted chin and arrogance, pretending he’d never heard of The Dolls when he was blatantly there to perve at us. Me, saying something to this effect. Rose, skittling his phone across the floor when he tried to take a photo. The guy’s girlfriend, yowling in protest. The guy, in my face, calling us fucking puppets. The girl, calling us fucking whores. Us, out on the pavement. Jenner, gone. Jimmy’s face, unreadable, as we wait for the cab. Cab. Dad’s place. No room service. Airport wake-up call. Fade to hangover.
We shuffled towards the sliding doors of LAX, feeling the vulnerability of the travel weary. Rose hugged a pillow, oversized sunglasses dwarfing her face. In every shiny surface we passed in Duty Free, I checked my reflection to see if my skin was still as shithouse as it was a minute earlier. I needed to moisturise, stat.
We were here to meet our new American record company. Elementary Music had a licensing deal with Grandiose and so had first dibs at releasing our album. They were keen to ride the hype surrounding ‘Fight Like a Girl’, and so It’s Not All Ponies and Unicorns would be released in the States a couple of months later than in Australia, to give us time to clear our schedules for our first American tour. Clearing schedules meant dispensing with Australia as fast as possible.
Surprisingly the airport was ghetto. At customs we’d been singled out and pulled aside by armed officers who made us unpack everything in front of them, even our make-up cases. Rose cried when her tweezers were confiscated but it was only because of the stress of meeting our American record company. It felt like first-day-at-school nerves. Then I broke out in a sweat with the sudden certainty that Hank had left some drug residue imperceptible to the naked eye on my suitcase.
At the luggage carousel, taxi touts boxed us into the wall as they spruiked their rides to the city.
‘Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa . . .’ one of them said. I looked again. A young guy holding up a cardboard sign with ‘The Dolls’ on it was snapping it taut to get our attention. ‘Fa-fa-fight like a girl . . .’
He wore: white Gap T-shirt, tight grey Wranglers, cap worn flipped up at the front, soft leather satchel. He was no tout.
The moment we followed Clay out of LAX into the soft heat, we felt the stress seeping from our bodies. There were palm trees. There were white taxis. Everyone looked like a hustler.
Clay was our A&R guy from Elementary, the man who held our American future in his manicured hands. It was the job of your A&R to soothe and berate you, and order you back into the studio if necessary. They were tastemakers who discovered and developed artists. They liked to think of themselves as mentors, but they were really those Year Twelves who thought they were cooler than you back then and were unwilling to relinquish the advantage as adults. They had the power to hold your record up for months, or even years, if they felt they hadn’t tampered with it enough, or if—heaven forbid—they left the label and you got a new A&R who thought you sucked. We immediately liked Clay, though, and his equally stylish boyfriend, Matthew, behind the wheel.
Clay had our album masters on the Jeep’s stereo. ‘Aussie invasion,’ he said, turning it up as Matthew navigated his way onto the freeway and thumped the wheel in time. ‘You guys and The Dummies and Gotye are knocking it out of the ballpark. Everyone’s so excited right now.’
This was just the kind of bullshit we needed to hear. It had been two years since we first laid down demos with John Villiers and we were through with waiting for Grandiose’s wheels of industry to creak into motion. The hype behind ‘Fight Like a Girl’ was like cortisol, straining the adrenal glands of our fans. If we didn’t release this album now they’d burn themselves out, and then where would we be?
Los Angeles stretched squatly for miles, and Rose held my hand as we drove past endless blocks of Dunkin’ Donuts and Taco Bells to the syncopated beat of ‘Chica Rock’n’Roll’. Clay kept up his spiel about the steep trajectory and world domination of The Dolls. The exhaustion hurt, but we were finally here.
‘Oh my god, you two are unbelievably cute,’ he said.
‘Aw, you’re so sweet!’ Rose returned automatically, looking out of the window.
‘No, really,’ he insisted, ‘I love listening to your Aussie accents.’ He said ‘Ossie’ instead of ‘Ozzie’.
‘I can’t wait to introduce you to the team and get you playing some showcases. You’re going to love the Viper Room, we put all our international artists on there.’
‘River Phoenix,’ Rose said automatically. We knew all about the club River OD-ed outside, but The Dummies had warned us that in reality it was just as stinky as Dingo’s. That was okay—it was still on The Dolls’ to-do list; another stripe to earn.
We fell into a reflective silence, taking in the suburbs and picturing ourselves walking among them. Or driving, more like. Nobody walked in LA, so I had better get my licence. Rose and I saw LA as a new dawn, but for different reasons. Rose was ushering in phase two of her dream-chasing; I wanted a clean slate with nobody talking about what the hell I’d been up to. A new beginning.
•
Looking back, the precise moment I threw myself on to the back foot with Elementary’s senior publicist, Diana Etie, was my opening gambit in the lift but, to be fair, I didn’t know who she was at t
hat point. I blame Jenner for staying in Australia when he should have been with us.
Elementary were licensed by Grandiose to put out our highly anticipated album in the States, which was funny because their offices were forty times the size of Grandiose’s. Once we’d received our passes at reception, a junior publicist named Grace came down to meet us, dressed a lot more expensively than Grandiose’s junior publicists.
I wore: leather jacket that jangled as I walked, bustier, wet-look pants and wedge heels, like teenage jailbait from the seventies. I was going Whisky A Go Go. Sable Starr or Lori Lightning.
Rose wore: Audrey-from-Twin Peaks-style plaid skirt—or was it Tai-from-Clueless?—and tight sweater, ballet flats.
After exiting the lift on the thirty-fifth floor, Grace led us smoothly down a wide carpeted corridor. I smiled at a woman hastening along her little girl. The child had ‘NAOMI’ embroidered in large purple letters on the back of her cardigan under an appliqué of flowers.
‘Great advertisement for paedophiles,’ I thought out loud, swivelling my head as we passed. Grace turned around and shot me a look not befitting a junior publicist.
‘Fortunately not everyone thinks that way,’ the woman said icily. I flushed, but I didn’t get it. It was a wry observation, not a cheer turn for perverts.
‘That was Diana Etie,’ Grace hissed to us as she speed-walked us away from the scene. ‘You don’t want to be on the wrong side of her.’
And so already the junior publicist was on a downer with me and Rose was on a downer with me and Diana Etie was on a downer with me, and we hadn’t even begun negotiating what we wanted from Elementary, which Rose had written down on a neat list. I didn’t know how everyone had managed to misunderstand me already.
We waited mutely in Diana Etie’s office for her to dispatch Naomi to the crèche and click in on her heels. Rose trained her eyes on me but I stared out at the view of the city.
‘Good morning,’ Diana said, throwing her coat over the back of her chair. ‘Now we can be introduced properly.’
As I shook her hand I noticed her well-arched brows and one of those smiles that turns down at the corners, like it was battening down the hatches. Jenner had warned us record companies weren’t actually creative hubs interested in nurturing talent. ‘They’re moneylenders,’ he’d said, ‘and in reality it’s the worst loan you can take out—you have to go into all this understanding that. Record-industry people are basically all capitalists.’
Clay came in and I latched onto him, a friendly face, as Grace distributed the filter coffee and muffins.
‘They’re gluten-free,’ said Diana. ‘Mickey, come in here and meet Rose and Nina.’
At the door there appeared a guy in his forties, dressed smart-casual like he was trying to get into a Jupiter’s casino back at home.
‘This is Mickey E, our marketing manager, and you’ve met Clay. We’re all extremely excited to have you on this journey with us.’
Subtext: It’s our journey and we’ve dibbed front seat.
Diana punctuated her opening gambit by straightening the papers on her desk like a newsreader. ‘Some key points to go over today: how we’ll be panning this campaign out across the territory and what you can expect to be covering on the promo trail. In layman’s terms, that means we’ll be coaching you on how to play nice with the American media—who are very different to the Australian media, I’m sure.’
Subtext: You’re not in Kansas now, Westies.
I looked over and saw Rose folding her list of demands into a very small square on her lap. We had felt powerful knowing that we were a top priority at Grandiose. Everyone there, from reception up to the penthouse, flattered us about specific moments in our songs, which they’d listened to, and congratulated us when they excelled their targets. The feeling in the Elementary meeting was very different, like we were lucky to be getting any attention at all.
Jenner had already warned us that the terrain of American music was very different to that of Australia. Sometimes I missed being an Aussie. In Australia you had to sell thirty-five thousand records to go gold, and we were about to hit that. But over here it was five hundred thousand. It was like you cleared one hurdle and another came along.
Diana talked us through the tactics of hitting up radio, which was split up into hundreds of college stations, instead of a few networks having their grubby fingers in every pie.
Mickey cracked open his portfolio and laid out the artwork proofs on the desk. ‘These are some options we came up with for the album cover,’ he said. ‘You can see there are a few to choose from.’
We’d decided to call the album It’s Not All Ponies and Unicorns to emphasise the fact that we were disaffected youth. And thus I’d suggested a collage of a unicorn spewing glitter while a pony rolled in the hay behind it, but I couldn’t see that option here. No gatefold sleeves either, although there was a little lyric book.
We leafed through the options, as imagined by some demented Elementary designer.
1) Artist’s impression of Nina and Rose in a shower, panting and dripping. ‘The Dolls’ embossed top left in gold.
2) Artist’s impression of Nina and Rose with bronzed, oiled skin, wrapped in an Australian flag against a backdrop of LA. Top right, ‘The Dolls’ rendered in gold.
3) An outtake of our promo photo shoot showing us leaning against a white wall. Above us, ‘The Dolls’, printed black on gold.
‘Well, I like this one,’ Rose said, spinning the latter across the desk to me.
Subtext: I’ll say anything if it helps me get on Glee.
‘Gold is very now,’ Mickey rewarded her.
I preferred to stay noncommittal, with the idea of ringing Jenner immediately afterwards and getting him to fix it all.
‘Okay, well, that’s certainly something we’ll consider,’ Diana said, after giving me a moment to react. She produced the reverse side of that design, with the track listing on it.
It’s Not All Ponies and Unicorns track listing
Cotton Candy (Rose Dall 2012)
Chica Rock’n’Roll (Rose Dall 2012)
Fight Like a Girl (Nina Dall 2012)
Daddy May I (Nina Dall 2012)
Charm Offensive (Rose Dall 2012)
Boy Crazy Girl Crazy Boy (Rose Dall 2012)
Who’s Sorry Now (Rose Dall 2012)
Cheap (Nina Dall 2012)
El Capitan (Nina Dall 2012)
Girl Crush (Rose Dall 2012)
I Will Take the Blame (Nina Dall 2012)
Can’t Say No (Nina Dall 2012)
‘Fight Like a Girl’ was track three. I’d noticed since I was about ten and started studying the craft that the biggest single always fell on track three.
‘Yay,’ Rose said and clapped her hands. Diana rewarded her with a benevolent smile. Rose fell in step with the superficial positivity of a certain breed of American and was, in her own words, a ‘people pleaser’. Meanwhile, my mind was clawed with selfish worries. Like, how we would ever face Australia again once Elementary had finished turning us into the Pussycat Dolls.
‘We could bring your band over here for the tour,’ said Clay, after a look passed between him and Diana, ‘but we’re thinking we may have some seriously kick-ass session players you’d want to meet. They’re perfect for your genre. They’ve worked with Good Charlotte and Fall Out Boy.’
Rose kicked me. ‘Too easy,’ she said.
‘And we’ll want to try another take on that single,’ he pressed forth. ‘The American territory’s a very different market. We need to get you remixed by a name producer over here—somebody people have heard of. Let’s do “Fight” and, say, “Cheap”?’ He looked to the others for confirmation as though he’d just thought of it, and they nodded on cue. ‘We’ll consider changing the album name to something more catchy as well, but that’s another meeting.’
Rose’s eyes bugged at that sly backhander, but I was buzzing over the revelation that I’d have sole songwriter credit on both singles. Jenner h
ad warned us that our American A&R would want to cock his leg over something to make him feel like he’d been involved, so we’d expected some surprises. I hoped this meant we could do another video. One with a super-sized budget.
‘Good,’ concluded Diana, even though we hadn’t spoken.
•
If a meeting didn’t go the way she had foretold it, or a schedule changed minutely, Rose would completely lose it the moment we were alone.
‘Oh my god, what a bitch,’ she spat, as soon as we were out in the car park. She scrolled through her address book until she had Jenner’s number poised under her thumb, as though she had a bomb strapped to her body and was prepared to detonate. ‘I’m totally ready to go home already.’
‘My unicorn’s gone,’ I said.
‘They’re ditching our band,’ she elaborated. ‘And you were no help at all. What the hell was that paedo stuff about? And what if they get rid of my scat part on “Cheap”?’
I wasn’t getting ruffled. It was in my nature to suspect a trap, but Rose couldn’t handle any aberrations from her plans: they were all painstakingly laid out in vision boards, in Excel documents and on slivers of paper, to be burned over candles. Within a few days she might realise that taking on Fall Out Boy’s sloppy seconds would provide a whole new address book of people to namedrop, but for now she was taking it out on me.
I’d been warned that in America you had to tip the bartender heavily every single time you ordered a drink, or else they’d chuck it when you went outside to smoke. On the plus side, they would free-pour your spirit to the top of the tumbler, so sometimes it was hard to tell whether you’d been spiked or not.
I directed our cab to a bar that Clay had, totally off the record, told us wouldn’t bother carding us. Brunelli’s was full of immaculate pin-up chicks with identikit tattoos and rueful-looking rockabilly guys. For all their tough exteriors, the girls were babyishly brash and some of them had to be in their thirties. I spun a paper coaster towards me across the bar and scribbled down ‘Damaged goods do it better.’ There was a hit song in this neighbourhood or I was an amateur.
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