Helen Reddy talks about out-of-body experience in final Adelaide interview

Singer Helen Reddy, who has died in Los Angeles, discussed her out-of-body experience and paranormal beliefs before her final Adelaide concert in 2014, after a decade in retirement.

Helen Reddy remembered exactly where she was when John F. Kennedy died: It was Adelaide, where she was due to perform that night.

“The news came on – I don’t remember whether I read it or somebody told me – that JFK had been shot,’’ the 1970s chart-topping singer said in 2014, just before what was to be her final Australian tour.

“The 22nd of November, 1963. I had my daughter with me, she was still a baby – I used to take her everywhere.’’

Helen Reddy at the peak of her 1970s success.

The Australian singer – best known for her international hit I Am Woman – died aged 78 overnight in Los Angeles, where she had lived since 1969, after a five-year battle with dementia.

Reddy’s decision to return to the Australian stage in 2014 – including a concert at Adelaide’s Festival Theatre – came after a decade of retirement.

“I got back in the saddle about a year ago and have really enjoyed it,’’ she said at the time.

“I particularly love doing live shows – I don’t know how to explain it.

“There’s just something in that feeling you get when you are onstage with an audience, as opposed to being in a studio and talking to a machine.’’

So why did Reddy decide to stop performing in the first place?

Australian singer Helen Reddy on her 2014 Australian tour. Picture: Craig Greenhill

“Well, if I had to sing Leave Me Alone one more time, I was going to commit suicide,’’ she said, only half joking.

“Have you ever listened to that song? Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone … and that’s just the first part of the chorus!’’

The lyric went on a total of 43 times, she said. When she resumed performing, Reddy would only perform “a few bars – just for the hell of it’’.

In truth, Reddy said, her decision to retire wasn’t down to just that one repetitive song: “It was a whole bunch of ‘em,’’ she laughed.

“There are so many wonderful ballads – Paul Williams’ ballads – and so many songs I’ve recorded that no one’s ever heard because they’ve never gotten airplay.

“I wanted to be a blues singer – I love blues and jazz, and that sort of thing. I had to become a pop star to get the attention, I guess.’’

Helen Reddy, right, with her sister, stage star Toni Lamond, at the opening of Priscilla the Musical in Sydney, 2006.

At that time, Reddy was 72, and had first been first coaxed back to the microphone to sing at her sister, fellow Australian stage veteran Toni Lamond’s 80th birthday party.

“I had not sung at all for 10 years,” Reddy said.

“She (Lamond) asked me if I would sing a duet with her at her birthday party. There were 80 people there too, mostly all in show business. Well, I’m not going to say no, am I? So we sang Breezin’ Along with the Breeze.

“It was the first time I’d heard my voice in 10 years – and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s not bad’,’’ Reddy laughed.

Helen Reddy at the start of her Australian tour in 2014, after a decade in retirement. Picture: Hamish Blair

“That was it: I decided I wanted to sing again and that I was depriving myself and other people.

“But I could only go back on my own terms and that means singing the songs that I want to sing.’’

Born into a showbiz family, where she joined her parents Stella Campbell (nee Lamond) and Max Reddy’s vaudeville show at age four, there was never really any question whether Helen would become an entertainer.

Singer Helen Reddy in the 1980s.

A publicity shot of Helen Reddy from the 1970s.

“I do think that we choose our parents, and that I chose those two particular parents because they would give me an outlet for what I was supposed to be doing. I do believe in eternal life,’’ she said.

That opened the door for a conversation about the singer’s more unconventional spiritual beliefs.

“I’ve always had wide interests. I had an out-of-body experience when I was 11 and that let me know that we were souls inside our body,” Reddy said.

“I fainted, we were in school and we had been standing for a long time waiting for the headmistress – she had been held up with a phone call.

“Because of various congenital problems, I faint easily – and that’s what I did. The next thing I know, I’m at the back of the room, looking down and there’s this girl lying on the floor there with other girls standing around her.

“It sounds weird … but I looked down and it was me. I was looking at myself and at that point I thought I had died because I knew I was not in that body. But I was able to go back into it. It did let me know that there’s far more than an afterlife: it goes way beyond that.’’

Singer Helen Reddy in the 2000s.

Helen Reddy performing on stage in the 1970s. (Photo by Tony Russell/Redferns)

In fact, way back in 1969, Reddy had enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles to study parapsychology and philosophy part-time.

In her decade away from the concert stage, Reddy had worked as a hypnotherapist.

“I went back to school for a year, and got my degree in clinical hypnotherapy. I don’t practice it much, but I really enjoy it,” she said.

“My interest is seeing how people can change their way of thinking.’’

That tied in with the theme of Reddy’s biggest hit, I Am Woman, which became an anthem for the second wave of the feminist movement in the early 1970s.

Reddy said she was unprepared for how the song would transform her into a spokeswoman for the movement.

“It was not something that I saw coming – but I’m glad it did, because I am in several of the high school American History textbooks. It was a message that had to be sent.’’

First published in SA Weekend magazine, April 3, 2014.