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Show Celebrities rJ On The j j4 Couch JvLi 1 C&U Anne Murray By DICK MAURICE Copley News Service LAS VEGAS - For someone who just wanted to be a physical education teacher, Anne Murray has done all right as a reluctant star. Even after dropping out of sight for three years to get married and have a child," she's managed to pop right back with a Top 10 hit, "You Needed Me." Her other hits include "Snowbird" and "I Just Fall In Love Again." She has just released a new album, "Anne Murray's Greatest Hits." She still regards her success suc-cess as something separate from her and her home life. And for a pop music star, she is hopelessly and charmingly normal. MAURICE: You come from a family of five brothers. broth-ers. Were they very possessive posses-sive of you? I understand that if you wanted to kiss a boy, you bad to kiss him across the street MURRAY: How did you know that? They were just teases. They would drive anyone crazy. Any guy that I would bring home they would just tease to death. I come from a small town so they wouldn't be able to forget about it It was just horrible so I never would bring them home. MAURICE: And you were out there playing baseball and being one of the boys. Could you have been considered consid-ered a tomboy? MURRAY: Very much so. I didn't have much of a chance. I had a baseball glove on when I was 6 months old. MAURICE: What was it like going for an audition, getting turned down, going back and finally getting the job and then marrying the producer? MURRAY: Well, it's great now. It was all the years in between that weren't so terrific. ter-rific. It's been a lot of hard work, ya know? MAURICE: At one point in your career, you were " working like 365 days and all of a sudden, one night, in a motel room, you sat down and started to cry and you said, "I just can't do this anymore." MURRAY: Well, I don't know. I'm not really a nervous ner-vous person. What I ended up doing was taking two days off, and then just going back to it again. But it did me a lot of good to tell everybody. ev-erybody. That was as close as I'll ever come to any kind of a breakdown and I've never come even close since. MAURICE: What comes first the family or the career? ca-reer? MURRAY: Oh, the family no question. But it never comes to that You really never have to make that choice. I've spent the last four years just adjusting and making sure that one doesn't suffer. MAURICE: Could you have been happy as a gym teacher? MURRAY: I don't think so. I think I knew deep down that I was a good singer. But I never thought about entertaining enter-taining and in my wildest dreams I never thought I could play Las Vegas. MAURICE: Is show business busi-ness the loneliest existence in the world? MURRAY: I'd say that before be-fore I got married and got my life into perspective and started doing things proper ly, ya know, working for the right reasons at the right time and taking a little more time off and not doing eight straight months of one-nighters one-nighters I think in those days it was pretty lonely. I can't imagine anything being any more lonely. MAURICE: Do you identify identi-fy with the lyrics of the songs that you chose? MURRAY: Oh, very much so. I thijik everyone does. They say that the demographics demo-graphics of the people who bought "If You Needed Me" were women between the age of 18 and 35. MAURICE: What do you think Anne Murray's image is? How do you see yourself? MURRAY: I think it is "Miss Goody Two-Shoes." I don't see it that way. But I think a lot of people do. Image doesn't bother me anymore because I'm beyond be-yond that I used to fight it but it has gotten to the point where as long as people enjoy and listen, it doesn't matter what they call me. MAURICE: Are you your own best friend? MURRAY:" I think so, yeah. The problem of being in the position that I am in is that the focus is always there and I try my damnedest damned-est to put the focus on other places. I think that is one of the reasons that I live in Canada. I get away from that show business thing. I think another reason for having children is for just trying to get away from that A lot of people thrive on that and want that happening hap-pening to them all the time. To me, it's just a pressure that sometimes I just have to get away from. |
