Fast forward to about two to three years later, my parents finally taught me how to manipulate their record player and play records on it. As you may gather from their jobs, they weren’t intellectual people who listened to Bach or Beethoven or anything even slightly highbrow. But I at the time was more than happy with their repertoire – Abba, The Beatles, Elvis, Mišo Kovač, Kićo Slabinac and other international as well as Croatian pop bands. I remember being particularly fascinated with Abba. But I mean, who wasn’t circa 1978? The whole world was Abba mad! And so I remember putting the records on umpteenth times and singing along to them until my voice went hoarse. And loving every minute of it.
Switch to 1990. It was my second year of university with nothing but study, study, study and exams, exams, exams in my life. Nothing to stimulate or arouse my senses at all it seemed. And then, out of the blue, on July 7th, something happened that changed the way I looked at music forever. The Three Tenors held their historical concert in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome on the eve of the World Cup. I’d never been a great fan of opera, except for Mozart, always loved EVERYTHING by Mozart. And Tristan and Isolde by Wagner, hated everything else by him though and still do. But that’s another story… ANYWAY, now don’t ask me why or how but that one concert inspired me in a most peculiar way to take up singing. Seriously. As in, take lessons. As in, try to sing opera myself. I naively thought, if these four fellas could turn opera into pop, why couldn’t I then have a go at singing it? I was later to find that, like ballet, it looked much easier watching it than actually attempting it…but I gave it a try and even entered a couple of competitions with some success. But in 1992, I moved to Croatia and the singing career was put on hold, more like into formaldehyde than on hold, for a very, VERY long time…
…and the last part coming soon…