In Hines sight

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

Marcia Hines was once an Australian Idol. But she didn't become a judge on the show just because of that. She had to audition.

Yes, like the thousands who lined up to show their vocal prowess — or their delusions of it — in the Aussie version of the hit American format, Hines, 50, had to front up and try out in front of the cameras.

"They actually brought people in who were singers and not singers and I had to speak to them about their performance.

"I like being fair and that's what I was. I didn't see any reason to be mean or nasty to the people who were performing because some of them were actually performers ... but some of them were so bad I just cracked up.

"And they put it on tape for the big kahunas to see and it had to go to America, I think. But I really don't care because I got the gig," she laughs.

Now she's stuck on that table between fellow judges Ian "Dicko" Dickson and Mark Holden until November as those thousands are eliminated to 40 — which we've already seen on the first four shows — and then slowly to The One.

On the first episode, there was a reminder about why Hines was there — a group of competitors having been told "sorry, next please" asked could they hear a song before they headed back to obscurity.

Hines delivered a purring soul number while still seated at that table, and the rejects went home perhaps feeling a little better.

"That was really weird. What could I do? If you really wanted to know I wanted to run out of there screaming, but I had to set an example for what they had to do if someone just said 'sing'. But I owed it to those kids to sing to them."

Hines says apart from being a great — and presumably well-paid — gig, her involvement in the show is also about putting something back into the Australian music industry she's been a part of since arriving there in 1970.

The Boston 16-year-old had auditioned to be part of the Australian production of Hair. By the time she arrived with her mother, she was pregnant with daughter Deni — who launched her own singing career in the 90s — and decided to stay on.

About then, Australia was establishing a homegrown pop industry with a heavy emphasis on television exposure.

Her appearances in musicals such as Jesus Christ Superstar began to give way to her recording career, and between 1975 and 1979 she was Australia's biggest female recording artist with a string of top-ten singles and albums.

Her recording career went off the boil in the early 80s and she concentrated on live and stage musical work.

That was before a comeback album in 1994, an Australian Olympic team anthem, Rise, in 2000 and now Hines is back on television every week, just as she used to be in her pop heyday. Funny how things work out. But is acting as the jury on some teenager's singing dreams really a good way to be "putting something back"?

"I sing and so, you know, I know a good singer when I hear one, and I come from a place of total empathy because I know what it is to be on the other side of that desk.

"The strange thing about auditioning is you never get to see the person for what they really are. You are doing all that you can just to control your bodily functions, and if you get a note out that is like a plus.

"So I so understand how all the kids are feeling and a large part of this is telling you that you can, not that you can't, and that encouragement is an incredible thing."

Hines says though she started young, she wouldn't have contemplated something like Australian Idol had it existed back then.

"No, I wouldn't have entered it when I was 16. I am not a pageant or a competition kind of person. I remember they would come up in America when I was a kid and my mum would say, 'You don't need to do that'.

"I mean, having said that, it's a different time now and television — I never realised what a big medium it was. Even my hardware store people have got a set to tell me about the show.

"That's the good thing about this show, I believe, the positive side of it is we're trying to nurture talent and everybody keeps saying, 'Where are the singers?'

"Well they're here and this is what television does now, television brings what you need to know and what you don't need to know to the fore. It's just a different time. I have to respect it. I don't think anything's wrong with it at all."

Yes, but singers these days ... so many Idol competitors seem to treat it as a gymnastic event.

"Yeah, I always say to people I want to hear the song. Don't try to impress me with your vocal gymnastics, you can do that later with the melody because whoever wrote the song had a melody in mind.

"Whenever you sing a song, you should always keep that in mind and sing it as if it had been written for you or you wrote it yourself. The vocal gymnastics, it becomes a bit tiring. If you start at 11, where have you got to go? If you start at one and then take it to 11, then that's the best way to go.

"I think people are singing differently from the way they used to sing when I began."