I've Never Been to Me

In March 2009, the stage musical version of Priscilla Queen of the Desert arrived in London following a sell-out run in Sydney, Australia. At the heart of that wonderful musical lies a performance of the iconic 1982 worldwide hit, "I've Never Been To Me," originally sung by Motown artist Charlene Oliver. This is her extraordinary story. Charlene always knew she wanted to be a singer, from her childhood in Hollywood in the late 1950s, one of two sisters in a loving family of Italian/American origin. When the Beatles and the Rolling Stones first came to America, Charlene cheekily got an audience with them—she knew even back then that stardom was attractive. At the age of 16, she met and fell in love with a California guitarist called Larry—and to the horror of her parents, she dropped out of school and moved in with him. Not much more than a year later, she was married and pregnant with Larry's child. Life with Larry was a rollercoaster. They couldn't afford to keep their child, Chadney, and she went to live with Larry's parents. Charlene's life alternated from parties with Brian Wilson to poverty, physical abuse, and the violent effects of Larry's increasing drug addiction. Charlene's first break came with the offer to join Petula Clark's backing singers at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. Before long, she was auditioning in front of legendary Motown boss Berry Gordy and to her joy, being signed—the first ever white female singer to be signed to the label. Her first song, "All That Love Went To Waste," came out in 1974, followed by two albums on the Motown label. These were the heady years of parties with Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, and all the other great Motown names. Then writer Ron Miller persuaded Charlene to record his song, "I've Never Been To Me," in 1977—but the single only just scraped into the Top100. Charlene's career seemed to be stalling. And by the early 1980s, she had left the US to move to her second husband Jeff's home in Essex, England, where she found work in the local sweetshop. It was there that she heard, in 1982, that a Florida DJ had been pushing her song so much that it had been re-released, and was finally hitting the charts. Within a few weeks, the singer found herself back at the top, as the song hit Number One in country after country all over the world, and she left her Essex sweetshop to fly on the Concorde to perform internationally. But the rollercoaster dipped again. A duet with Stevie Wonder, "Used To Be," proved a controversial failure, and the royalties from her massive hit just disappeared. Now Charlene is back doing what she does so well: performing live and singing in that mesmerizing way to fans all over the world. The growing international success of the musical Priscilla Queen of the Desert has confirmed her as a hugely popular singer amongst the gay community, and recently she released a new club version of her iconic song in association with Eye Witness. Charlene's story has it all: the stars, the fame, the struggle, the pain. No one does it better than Charlene.