Killing Heidi celebrates 25 years of debut album Reflector, which made them ‘teenage rock stars’ overnight

Ella Hooper had a glass of champagne on her 17th birthday, but not to celebrate her milestone. Killing Heidi, the pop-rock band formed in rural Violet Town with older brother Jesse, had topped the ARIA charts with their single, Mascara. After finishing Year 11, the young singer with dreadlocks and an eyebrow ring dropped out of Benalla High School in country Victoria and moved to Melbourne to pursue a career in music. Now 42, Hooper says it was “the beginning of a very strange new millennium” as she became a “teenage rock star” and experienced “cataclysmically life-changing times”. Two months after Mascara went to No.1, Killing Heidi unveiled debut album Reflector. The raw distillation of the Hooper siblings’ teenage dreams, life in their country town and the influence of Triple J radio spent six weeks on top of the national charts between March and May, selling quadruple platinum. The siblings, along with then bandmates, Perth drummer Adam Pedretti and bassist Warren Jenkin, collected four trophies at the 2000 ARIA Awards, including album of the year and best group. Almost overnight, they were superstars — Australia’s hottest act since Savage Garden and fellow teenage rock stars Silverchair. Hooper recalls moments from the maelstrom: copping flak in the press for her underage drinking and flying over the Grand Canyon in the US “making some weird video with our American record company”, but not much at all from the ARIAs. “Every day felt like Christmas,” she says from her home in Melbourne. “It was over the top. We probably had adrenal fatigue for years because it was one awards show after another … excess and glitz and glamour everywhere. “Whenever we had a free moment, we were back in the studio,” Hooper adds. “Even those off days when we went to the studio, we were still pinching ourselves.” When Reflector, also home to platinum-selling debut single Weir, went to No.1 and stayed there, Hooper felt “really humbled”. “To be honest, I felt a little bit like ‘Oh s…, this is more than we needed, more than we wanted’,” she says. “There’s only one place to go from No.1. It’s a scientific fact. You’re probably gonna go down.” The awards, acclaim and adulation must have been overwhelming for a couple of country kids. Did egos stay in check? “I wish I could tell you different,” Hooper admits. “We did fall prey to thinking ‘Maybe we’ve got the magic sauce. We are the magic sauce’.” What she calls the “golden formula” was the authentic depiction of teenage life, with all its mistakes, imperfections and piercings. “It’s not a perfect album,” Hooper agrees. “It’s raw and it’s ambitious and it’s hopeful and it’s energetic and it’s overly dramatic. “It’s all those things teenagers are. It responds with its instincts, not its brain.” The singer adds that Reflector reflects their “true teenage heart” via songs written “in our bedrooms in the hills, a million miles away from any city, let alone a music scene”. Hooper and her brother were “telling our teenage stories and taking influence from the radio and transmitting that into the best kind of basic power pop-chord songs that we could”, she says, adding that “Reflector was a beautiful moment where everything aligned”. Killing Heidi’s first national tours were intense. Anyone who attended the early all-ages shows at venues such as Perth’s Metro City will remember the high-pitched screams of Heidi-mania. During that crazy first year, Hooper says she mostly wondered what the hell was going on. “Who is directing this movie,” she laughs. The band’s name juxtaposes the fictional Swiss children’s book character and, well, death. Killing Heidi implies the end of innocence, an apt metaphor for their brief, bright burn. “It’s the old life imitating art,” Hooper says. “We weren’t in control. It felt like there was something bigger at play. “I don’t mean to be dark on it … but there are two sides of the coin to every extreme experience, and there certainly was in this case.” Much credit for the polished and well-produced debut album goes to Melbourne studio hound Paul Kosky, who heard enormous potential in Killing Heidi’s Triple J Unearthed recording Kettle in 1996. In addition to being producer, Kosky was also their manager, label boss and video director. He sacked the band’s original rhythm section, recruiting Pedretti and Jenkin to beef up their sound. There wasn’t an aspect of Killing Heidi that Kosky did not control. Today, Hooper says describing the former manager as a Svengali is “perfectly accurate” but at the time, she and Jesse were cloistered in Camp Heidi. “We were quite protected,” she says. “He was very, very involved in many ways that wouldn’t fly today. “If we had our time again, we would have liked to have been more free to really connect with people more broadly in the industry. “Instead, we stayed in our little camp, Camp Heidi, which in retrospect was kind of unhealthy and probably shortened the lifespan of the band.” Hooper has not had contact with Kosky since 2003, when the group acrimoniously split from their manager following the poor performance of second album, Present. She says her late mother had a cup of coffee with him a few years back, but she is not interested in catching up. “I just always declined the offer because I really wanted to move on with my life,” Hooper says. “And I still do.” The flipside to every day feeling like Christmas was that Killing Heidi never slowed down or stepped back to have life experiences to filter into new songs. That old truism that you have your entire life to write your first album came back to bite them. “We were trying to be strong and trying to do our best, but people were saying ‘You’re amazing, just keep plugging away and you’ll get it right’,” Hooper says. “We really needed to take some time, do some soul-searching and write some better songs. “You’ve got the commercial expectations, you’re in a very rarefied position — everybody wants your s… ‘Let’s get it out’. You’re not allowed to get off the wheel. “But creatively, I knew we hadn’t topped up.” Released in 2002, Present peaked at No. 12 while 2004 follow-up cracked the Top 10. Both sold enough units to earn gold accreditation, but neither captured the zeitgeist, nor the national airwaves, quite like Reflector. Despite being the youngest member of the quartet, Hooper was the one who made the tough call to get off the hamster wheel in 2006. “I said we should rest the whole thing and call Killing Heidi a teenage experience,” she says. “That’s how I see it now.” After calling time on the band, Ella and Jesse played acoustic gigs as The Verses, while the singer toured with all-female group Broad and released two solo albums, with a Nashville-recorded, country-leaning solo album planned for next year. She also became a TV regular, appearing as a team captain in the relaunched version of musical quiz show Spicks and Specks. Hooper says that during those years the “long tail of youth dropped off like a skink” and she feels far more clear-eyed about her former life as a teenage rock star. While the artist struggles with some material from the second and third albums, Reflector doesn’t “trigger” her. After being invited to play a headline slot at the Queenscliff Festival in 2016, Killing Heidi has embarked on what Hooper calls “an extended reunion” offering music lovers a “portal” to their 1999-2001 heyday. The line-up heading around the country on Reflector’s 25th birthday tour in June co-stars Pedretti, alongside keyboardist Clio Renner and bassist Phoebe Neilson. “There’s been a real healing in playing these songs again,” Hooper says. And she’s even got a soft spot for the turn of the millennium, when two kids from country Victoria tore up the charts. “I must be old because I really miss those days,” Hooper laughs. “The innocence.” Killing Heidi plays Magnet House on June 21.