Ella Hooper was sitting in a Melbourne tram on her way to perform at the Big Day Out music festival when she found herself surrounded by replicas of herself. "I looked around," she said, "and there were teenage girls dressed exactly like me - same hair, clothes, jewellery and make-up. I thought "Oh my God, they're little Ellas!".
As frontwoman for the melodic rock/ pop band Killing Heidi, Hooper attained teen-idol staus across the country in late 1999.
"I'd get these letters from young girls saying "You changed my life," which is actually a little bit scary," she said.
Apparently, it was her physical imperfections as much as her zany self-confidence that connected the young singer to her audience. "I think young girls kind of thought 'Well, she's not perfect and she's a rock star, so maybe we're OK'."
Not that she was completely comfortable with being the object of emulation. "I never signed up to be a role model," she said. "It's not like I'm out there preaching virginity or A-plus marks because, quite frankly, I don't have them to preach about."
Hooper is incredibly savvy for 19, which is hardly surprising considering her life so far. She was just 14 when she began recording a debut album with her older brother Jesse and Adam Pedretti and Warren Jenkin.
"One minute I was on a country town schoolbus with my lunchbox" she said. "The next minute I'm in a recording studio in the city making an album."
Within months of its release in the late 1999, Reflector had rocketed to the top of the Australian album charts, spawned the hit singles Weir and Mascara and sold more than 350, 000 copies. Three years later, the band is poised to release its much-anticipated follow-up, Present.
Hooper credits the impact of her past with preparing her for the challenges of the future. "This new album has a lot more frustration and aggression on it," she said. "But there's also a lot of mourning for the many things I've left behind."
One of these was her first significant relationship, which characterises "the beginning of the end" is well represented on the album, including the new single Outside of Me.
Her handling of such a personal subject is both cautious and heartfelt. “We are really committed to staying friends better than we’ve seen anyone else do it,” she said.
She does acknowledge relief at embarking on the band’s upcoming national tour as a single woman. “It’ll be good not to be on the road and constantly missing someone or wanting to be home to sort things out with them,” she said.
Despite being determined to “try really hard not to think about boys for a while”, the self-confessed “crush master” admits it won’t be an easy proposition. “I have this ridiculous ability to look at someone I have never even spoken to and instantly project all these scenarios that are never going to happen,” she said.
One memory Hooper wishes she could leave behind was last year’s American experience. Killing Heidi was given the royal rock star treatment during the two three-week visits that made up its US launch.
“We hadn’t even released an album there and we were being flown around in private jets and driven around in limousines,” Hooper said. “It was a bit of a novelty at first, but none of us was very comfortable with it all.”
Inspired by the band’s domestic success, Universal Music financed a $500,000 video clip for Weir and a promotional video hosted by Friends star Courtney Cox.
“We actually shot an interview at Courtney Cox’s house in Beverly Hill,” Hooper said. “She was very lovely but seemed to be a bit stressed out that there was a TV crew and a strange band from Australia trampling through her house.” There was also the stereotypical stylist urging Hooper to “make friends with pink”.
“At first I thought she meant the single,” said Hooper. “Then I realised she meant the colour. It didn’t matter how many times I told her I hated pink (the colour, not the singer), she kept saying, ‘Make friends with pink!’”
There were no people like that in Violet Town in regional Victoria. Hooper credits her small-town childhood for fostering an intensely creative spirit in her and her brother.
“I loved the way we grew up.” She said, “because you couldn’t just go to the movies or the shopping malls, you had to make your own fun and that meant you had to have imagination.”
Early on, however, the siblings were hit by their parents’ unexpected separation. “I was about 10 and Jesse was 12 and we didn’t see it coming,” Hooper recalled.
“They tried to protect us from it until they felt they had no choice but to part ways.”
She believes the event drew her and her brother closer not only to each other, but also to music. “Jesse practically slept with his guitar after Mum and Dad split up,” she said, “and I wrote a lot of songs about moving on and letting go of things.”
Jesse Hooper was not initially thrilled about the idea of having his annoying kid sister in his heavy rock band.
“She used to drive me crazy because she was always either talking or singing- mostly singing,” he said. “Every time she sang along to the radio I’d say, “Can you shut up? I want to hear the song, not you singing along to the song’.”
But when no other legitimate prospects for lead vocalist showed up, he resigned himself to the fact that “well, at least we don’t have to pay her”.
The siblings immediately discovered that they could write songs together naturally and fluidly. “Jesse usually starts off with a riff for a verse of chorus and I get a lyrical idea from that,” Ella said. “We kind of work up the rest of the song together.”
Weir was one such collaboration and it won them the Triple J Unearthed competition, (the same event that launched Silverchair’s career) and subsequently radio airplay. Two years later Hooper was standing on stage at the 2000 ARIAs fumbling her way through four acceptance speeches, including one for Best Rock Album of the Year, for Reflector.
“Our speeches really sucked,” she said. “We honestly though that if we were going to win something, someone would have told us. So we didn’t even prepare one speech, let alone four.”
It was never going to be easy to follow up one of the most successful debut albums in Australian music history. But the result in a much tougher, grungier sounding album which allows Hooper to project a wider range of vocal personalities- from little girl lost, to woman scorned, to sexually charged rapper.
“We were all older and wiser this time around,” she said. “We wanted to take more chances.”
Hooper is in a fearless frame of mind. “I’m really not scared of anything right now and that’s a great feeling,” she said.
As the band awaits the public’s reaction to the album, out next month, she denies feeling the pinch of expectation. “Of course, we want people to love it but we’re already proud of it and we know we’ve done the best we can,” she said. “I don’t automatically take people’s word for things any more. I’ve got the strength to say ‘Excuse me Mr Record Company, Mr Tour Manager, Mr Stylist, I’m not sold on that so break it down for me’.”
-Killing Heidi’s new album Present is on sale on October 19. The band will appear on Telethon on October 19-20 and at Whitfods City Shopping Centre on October 20.
