Madison Avenue: Andy Van talks about memories of dance-pop duo

THE turn of the 21st century was a magical time for Australian pop, as any Rumba Festival attendee will attest.

Vanessa Amorosi, Bardot, Scandal’Us, Nikki Webster — but among all this manufactured homegrown pop, an underground dance act managed to sneak in the back door and become as big as Britney, if only ever so briefly.

Dance duo Madison Avenue (DJ Andy Van and vocalist Cheyne Coates) scored a runaway international hit with Don’t Call Me Baby in late 1999. Three more hits, an album — and an infamous ARIAs performance — followed, before Madison Avenue quietly disbanded just a couple of years later.

Van is set to perform at the Central Station Records 40 Years Party in Sydney next month — spinning a special Madison Avenue DJ set, no less — so we spoke to the now-veteran DJ to ask about his memories of life as a pop star ... and where on earth the other half of Madison Avenue has gone.

The duo’s breakthrough single and biggest worldwide hit, Don’t Call Me Baby, was meant for another singer.

“We did another version — which I can’t find — with another singer, Kelly Wolgramm, from a group called the Wolfgramm Sisters. She did a really good job, but there was a character, a Crystal Waters-type character, about what Cheyne had done. There’s something unique about her voice which some people find a bit harsh but other people really love — we just couldn’t go past it.”

The version of Don’t Call Me Baby you heard on the radio is that original warts-and-all demo.

“It was sung on an $80 microphone with (DJ and producer) John Course on the phone in the background and the door open in the studio. In the a cappella, you can actually hear John talking in the background.”

The song took off — and even started a UK record label bidding war. Van and Coates found themselves at British dance legend Pete Tong’s office.

“Within 15 minutes of being there, they’d run upstairs to legal to get contracts for us to sign. We’d come to play the record, not sign up with them. We got back in the taxi and we had calls from other record labels all trying to sign us. We were in the middle of a fight between labels ... it was awesome!”

Don’t Call Me Baby even knocked Britney Spears’ Oops! ...I Did It Again off the top of the UK charts. Frontwoman Cheyne was suddenly an accidental pop star.

“Basement Jaxx were around at the time, and we wanted to do that: Cheyne and I as the producers, with various singers. We planned for male singers, vocal samples — it was just meant to be one or two songs by her. But it just turned out that we followed up Don’t Call Me Baby with Who The Hell Are You, which was again super-strong, and another Cheyne song.”

More singles and an album followed as the duo toured the world to capitalise on their success. It put a strain on their relationship.

“Burning out is a good term. Cheyne and I previously went out for a little while before Don’t Call Me Baby, and we were mates after that. It was almost like a brother-sister, Seinfeld and Elaine relationship. But then a lot of pressures come on board — we were doing 20 flights a month around the world. It’s a lot of pressure, and you’re exhausted. We once went to Poland for six hours, did 27 interviews, then left. It was too much, too quickly.”

The heat was on for a follow-up — but creative differences were emerging.

“People were asking, ‘When’s your next album?’ One thing about Cheyne that a lot of people know: She’s got a super-strong head on her. She was a great voice for girls, saying ‘I can be a music producer, singer and songwriter, I don’t need a man to do it’ — that was her approach. But then as we got bigger, that attitude came on to me: ‘I can do it myself.’ She became quite headstrong. We made about 15 tracks for the second album which no-one ever heard. She had what she felt were really strong tracks, but I thought they weren’t quite right. We were disagreeing on how to move forward.”

The division between the pair — dance vs. pop — deepened.

“I work in clubland, and DJs are my allies — they play what works on the dance floor. That’s what it’s always been about for me. But for her, it was about pop music — she was doing gigs with Spice Girls, super-super pop things. I didn’t want to go down that path and become a pop act. She wasn’t doing anything wrong; she was just following a different path to what I wanted. We walked in different directions until we were miles away from each other, and it just fizzled out.

“Quite a few friends said, ‘You had a successful formula, why change? I was trying not to change. If she’d have written a stronger song for her solo career, she might’ve ended up being super-successful. It didn’t work out — the song was OK (Cheyne’s 2004 debut solo single, I’ve Got Your Number, hit number 26 in the charts). It was pretty good, but it wasn’t a monster hit. But she was like ‘This is the song, I’m going to go for it’ — and that was the end of our relationship.”

Van saw the infamous 2000 ARIAs ‘water glass’ performance as a symptom of Madison Avenue struggling to fit the pop star mould.

“That took on a world of its own, that performance! We were pushed into an area that I wasn’t comfortable in, and that Cheyne tried to be comfortable in but wasn’t great at. The whole media pop star thing, she wasn’t great at. You have to be really liked by everyone and not rub people the wrong way. We just wanted people to judge the music, not us.”

Cheyne released a solo album in 2004, guested on a single by the Soundbluntz in 2006, then — nothing. Van, still a successful DJ, says fame had taken its toll.

“It was very hard on her, very judgmental. We put ourselves out there and we really wanted to be seen as this cool dance act, but parts of it got quite ugly. I remember she did one interview and she was tired, gazing out the window, and the interviewer said she was ‘staring at her next Porsche.’ She had a lot of those sort of things happen to her. People especially judge women so harshly. I found it quite harsh the way people treated her.”

Coates may have retreated from the public eye (she declined to participate in this interview when contacted via Van) but she and her former musical partner are still in contact.

“I’ll text her and maybe a week later she’ll get back to me. She’s not really that connected to the entertainment world anymore. I think she looked at the entertainment world and thought: You guys kinda bagged me, I don’t want to be part of this.”

info: Andy Van will play a special Madison Avenue set at Central Station Records — 40 Years Party, Friday August 11 at Sydney’s Home — The Venue. Other headliners include Dannii Minogue, Starley and Bexta.

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