Behind The Voice: Dietro La Voce

By Anthony Callea and Tim Campbell

An honest and candid memoir from one of Australia’s most phenomenal voices. A story of determination, humility and self-discovery.

Top 10, Booktopia’s FAB Award

All Anthony Callea wanted was to sing. From his first memories of singing for his family, Anthony knew that he wanted to share his voice with the world. He had a strongly held dream but was as surprised as anyone when his breakout moment (his heart-stopping rendition of ‘The Prayer’ on Australian Idol) turned him into a household name overnight.

Now, in his own words, Anthony shares the joys and challenges of becoming celebrated for his voice, all while navigating the twists and turns of life. It’s a story of a kid from the working-class western suburbs of Melbourne with a big dream and an even bigger voice, who had to finish growing up in the spotlight.

Anthony’s 20-year career has spanned stage, arena, and screen, and he now invites you backstage to share his journey. One day you are working at a suburban shopping centre as a Freddo Frog mascot, the next you are topping charts, winning awards and sharing stages with Celine Dion, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston.

These candid, courageous and, at times, very amusing anecdotes take us beyond the slick facade of showbiz, to the hard work, blood, sweat, and tears that it takes to become one of Australia’s most enduring and beloved entertainers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia
• Release date: Apr 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781761109300

Anthony Callea

ARIA Award winner Anthony Callea is one of Australia’s finest and most recognised singers. From one of Australia’s most memorable TV performances on Australian Idol in 2004 came his #1 debut single. ‘The Prayer’ became Australia’s fastest and highest selling single of all time and Anthony continued with a string of multi-platinum and chart-topping releases. Anthony headlines his own national tours regularly but has also had the privilege of touring with Celine Dion, Diana Ross, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Westlife. To add to this list of honors, Anthony has also performed by special invitation for Luciano Pavarotti, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, and Prince Frederik and Princess Mary of Denmark. The powerhouse vocalist released his much-anticipated 8th studio album Forty Love in 2022, marking his 40th birthday year.  

Book preview

ONE

ANTHONY THE SINGER?

I made a dramatic entrance. Is there any other way a born performer enters this world? Not that I’m a dramatic person, it’s just that dramatic things happen to me sometimes. They have since the very beginning, literally day one of my life.

When I was born, I stepped out onto this stage called life not breathing. Apparently, I did something like a double pike somersault with a twist on the way out and managed to wrap the umbilical cord around my neck. I arrived, not breathing, completely blue from lack of oxygen, and was rushed out of the room by the doctors. Not dramatic at all, right?

I blame stage fright. Italians get very excited about babies. Particularly first-born babies. I happened to be the first grandchild from two Italian families, which is a significant occasion. My grandparents, uncles and aunties from both sides of the family were all gathered in the waiting area of the hospital for news of the child. I’m putting tickets on myself to say it was a massive event. Think of the opening scene to The Lion King – everyone gathering while the music swells on the song, ‘Il Cerchio Della Vita’ (The Circle of Life). But Italian Simba was born not breathing. There I was, one minute old and already choking on stage. The struggles to forge a successful singing career were mounting from day one.

While the doctors were working on getting my little lungs started, Mum and Dad were left on their own for a short time and the news was delivered to where my extended family were waiting to see the baby. Naturally they all whipped out their rosary beads and started to pray. Imagine all those Italians walking around, wailing and reciting their prayers for me to be alright. Tough crowd for a first gig, but hey, I brought the drama. Maybe I am a dramatic person… I’ll leave that for you to decide as you read on.

Spoiler alert: I started breathing. They brought me back to my mum, who was obviously relieved. Honestly, me too. To this day, the worst thing I can think of is to let down a crowd with high expectations. My mum and I must have looked an odd pair with her red hair and blue eyes, and my dark hair and monobrow. I’m definitely my father’s son. Funnily enough, my husband shares my mum’s complexion, so we’ve continued the tradition. Is that a weird observation? Don’t answer that.

I do love the irony that the kid that came out not breathing would end up becoming a singer. But there was simply no other option. There’s nothing else I ever wanted to be.

So, I gave my poor mum a heart attack the minute I was born, but I began life the way I intended to go on. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.

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My first experience of concussion was the time I was hit by a car. Mum had picked me up from primary school and needed to go to the bakery to get a loaf of bread. On the way there, she told me that for the first time in my life, I was allowed to go into the shop all by myself. Naturally, I was pretty excited about this.

‘Oh my God,’ I remember thinking to myself. ‘I feel like such a big boy!’

Mum gave me a dollar (remember the days when a loaf of bread was under a dollar?) and instructions on the specific type of bread to ask for: a Vienna loaf, sliced. She made me repeat it back to her. ‘One Vienna loaf, sliced. Got it?’

When we reached the bakery, Mum couldn’t find a car park, so she stopped across the road where she would wait for me. I jumped out of the car, but I was so excited to be given this responsibility that I didn’t check for traffic while crossing the road and ran straight into a car. Well, the car actually ran into me, through no fault of its own. I bounced up onto the bonnet and bumped my head, and then ended up under the car. Thankfully, the brakes were applied instantly.

My mum saw this from across the road. Can you imagine? She screamed and started to rush over to help. Naturally I gave the driver of the vehicle one hell of a fright. But the boy who had bounced back from not breathing wasn’t going to let this stop him. I stood straight up and assured my mum across the street that I was fine and determined to finish my mission. Vienna loaf, sliced.

I was worried that if I didn’t get the loaf of bread, Mum would never let me go into the shop on my own again. I felt a huge responsibility and, again, I didn’t want to let her down. So, I got up, went into the shop, held out my dollar and made my purchase, then wandered back out onto the street where my mum had finally reached me, still freaking out.

I was very proud that I’d completed my mission and handed Mum the little paper bag I was holding.

‘What’s this?’ she asked, looking very confused.

‘It’s a vanilla slice!’ I said. ‘You asked for vanilla slice.’

In my defence, it was a hazardous, distracting trip to the shop, but I went in for a sliced Vienna loaf and came back with a vanilla slice and a concussion. Which sort of sums up my childhood really. Adventurous, independent, fallible, but never wanting to let loved ones down.

Actually, now that I think about it, my first concussion was earlier than the Vienna loaf incident. (Am I perhaps still suffering from it?) I was probably five or six years old, visiting the butcher as my mum ran errands, when I decided to jump on a chair. I immediately slipped, fell, and cracked my head on the concrete floor. They had to rush me to the hospital for stitches, because I was bleeding all over the shop. In my defence, if it had to happen anywhere, at least it was a butcher’s, where they know how to clean that stuff up!

I was obviously a pretty accident-prone kid. It seems like every time I had to play sports, I managed to come away injured. How many people do you know that split their head open and gave themselves concussion while doing the long jump? Well, I did it twice. Who knew your final landing position was meant to be in the sand?

It was a similar story when I tried to play soccer. I didn’t realise you had to kick the ball into the goal, not run face-first into the goal post! I was never really a soccer player, but I tried because you couldn’t be a cool Italian kid in a Werribee primary school if you weren’t good at soccer, and I wanted to be cool. I guess I missed that part in my DNA, even if I was Italian in pretty much every other way.

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Our family didn’t speak that much Italian at home, mainly English, but there were some words that my parents only used the Italian for. For example, they called the dustpan and brush ‘scopa e paletta’, so I grew up thinking they were just the words everyone used.

Then one day, we had classroom clean-up working bee and our teacher, Mr Carlin (who I really liked and respected, because he was one of those teachers who treated kids like equals), asked me to fetch the dustpan and brush.

‘What?’ I asked him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The dustpan and brush. Go get it for us please.’

‘Mr Carlin, I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I told him, and everyone in class started laughing at me, because who didn’t know what a dustpan and brush was?

I was in tears, and just so embarrassed. After school, I went home, in tears again, and confronted my parents.

‘Why did you lie to me about the scopa e paletta?’ I cried to them.

‘We don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s what it’s called.’

Then there was the time, around grade three, when we had a multicultural day at school. It was a small school, around 200 kids, lots of Italians, but also kids from a variety of cultural backgrounds. The school had asked us to bring in something from home that summed up our culture. I told my mum that I needed something Italian, so she made cannoli. (I guess showing them the scopa e paletta was off the table.)

I rocked up to school with a huge plate of cannoli so overly stacked that it could feed about seven schools. So, before the plate was even finished, the other kids started calling me ‘Cannoli’, which gradually got shortened to ‘Cannols’. The nickname followed me to high school. Funny how these things stick. But at least it’s better than ‘Concussy’!

Werribee back then was a very working-class suburb. Not rough exactly, but it wasn’t a prestigious place to grow up. The most well-known Werribee landmarks were the safari zoo, the Werribee Mansion and the water treatment plant (otherwise known as the Werribee ‘shit farm’). Hey, we were on the map! But Werribee wasn’t known for its music and arts culture. Let’s just say that the pipeline from shit farm to showbusiness didn’t really exist for me as a kid.

When I was growing up, the most celebrated people to have come from Werribee were all sportspeople. Famous footy and soccer players, and an Olympic shooter. All excellent in their chosen fields and worthy of the proud local admiration, but they were not people I could relate to or was inspired by.

Don’t get me wrong, I had a wonderful childhood, and I’m extremely proud to have come from Werribee, and the ever-growing community that we have there. My siblings and I were happy, even if my parents worked their arses off to make sure we were.

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Like many people from working-class backgrounds, my parents didn’t have much spare cash for luxuries and holidays when I was growing up. The word ‘holiday’ meant one thing: car trips down the coast to my grandparents’ place in Anglesea, a beach town about an hour-and-a-half southwest of Melbourne. A lovely old place that of course they eventually knocked down and put a few townhouses on.

Have I mentioned I come from generations of carpenters and builders? For Italians of my grandparents’ generation, certain traditions were sacred – you go to church every Sunday, you work hard and show respect, and the minute you get some land you do a reno/knock-down, plant some fruit trees and concrete the rest of the backyard. Especially when you’re a builder. Magnifico!

The Anglesea house had three bedrooms, which was not nearly enough. We were a large family – eventually sixteen grandchildren – and Italians (well, in my experience anyway) like to share. If someone went to Anglesea for the weekend, then everyone had to go. The whole extended family. That way, no one missed out. It also meant that no one could have a holiday by themselves… Magnifico?

Of course, that meant at times there’d be a dozen cousins, all piled on top of each other in sleeping bags in the lounge room of this townhouse. Everyone just needed to find a spot and then not give it up. But my grandparents loved to see us all fighting it out, because it meant having the whole family together. Now those memories are very precious to me, too.

When I look back at my childhood, there is the sense of simplicity and innocence. Those holidays to the beach were amazing experiences, because a weekend at my grandparents’ was the most luxurious and exciting thing I could imagine. I didn’t know what it was like to get on a plane or visit another country or even another state. There was Werribee, and then there was Anglesea. What more could you want?

Although, don’t tell my nonno, but I was never a fan of surf beaches. All that sand! I much prefer a pool or, if it has to be a beach, then give me a rocky European beach with umbrellas and sun lounges and cocktail waiters. People tell me that I’m a neat and clean freak. Personally, I don’t see it…

Back then we had to be thrifty. We had boogie boards and wetsuits, which would all become hand-me-downs, but in the beginning there were just four kids old enough for the surf, including my brother and I, and a couple of cousins. I remember the whole family going into a surf store and asking for four wetsuits for the kids and four boogie boards.

Then, every couple of years, the eldest grandchildren would get new wetsuits, and the old ones would be passed down to the younger children.

That was an arrangement I was happy with, being the eldest grandchild. I was automatically the tallest and biggest, so I got to wear the brand-new wetsuit. But then, at around the age of twelve, this arrangement became less than ideal. I’d call it a nightmare. I stopped growing, but my younger cousins kept getting taller, so I didn’t get the new one anymore. I’d watch my cousins out in the surf in these shiny new wetsuits and I’d be climbing into this nasty prehistoric hand-me-down. Putrid! This is clearly where the short man issues started.

Thankfully, salt water is a perfect cleanser in my mind, so it was still an amazing time. As kids, we would tear it up in the waves all day. Maybe because we were still wired from the special breakfast Nonna would whip up some mornings: Uovo sbattuto.

It’s the most Italian and non-nutritious breakfast you could imagine. Just an egg yolk, whisked with two teaspoons of sugar, a shot of coffee and some hot milk. Sometimes you would add a little bit of marsala fortified wine, just for a kick.

‘You’re on holiday. Go have a nice time!’ she would say as we finished our breakfast marsala.

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My grandparents on both sides were a unique blend of gentle and hardcore. My nonna on my mum’s side – who passed away from pancreatic cancer when I was still fairly young – was nurturing and maternal but didn’t take any bullshit.

She was always sweet to us grandchildren, but you certainly never wanted to disappoint her because she had a tough side. At one stage, she had a pet cockatoo that had learnt to swear like a trooper, in Italian, from listening to her, which was just about the most hilarious thing we could imagine as kids.

Nonna had a hard life. She emigrated from Italy to Australia via boat to make a better life for her, my nonno and their family. My mum was three at the time, and my zia and zio (aunt and uncle) weren’t much older. Thankfully, there was work in Australia, so Nonno got a job at the Smorgon factory in Footscray. But just twelve years later, on an otherwise ordinary day, my nonno kissed my mum on the head, left for work, clocked in and then had a heart attack and passed away. He left this life before I ever had the chance to meet him.

So, suddenly, Nonna was on her own with three kids and very little grasp of the English language. She worked at a hospital in the kitchen, and at times had another job on top of that as a factory worker.

She eventually remarried, but soon after, her new husband passed away. Then there was a third marriage, which, you guessed it, ended with her being widowed once more.

She really faced it all, but none of this suffering and hardship ever broke her. After losing three husbands and raising three kids, she was incredibly tough, independent and still nurturing. She grew her own fruit and vegetables, exercised, and went to English classes mainly to make sure she could communicate with us grandchildren. She was so strong. You could never pull the wool over her eyes. I loved that about her.

We’d visit her on Sundays after church, so she could set up phone calls to Italy. Then she’d wander around the house with the phone, one of those old-fashioned ones with the 20-metre cord, constantly talking, not realising that as she would go around corners and get tangled up, she’d knock all the vases off the table. And she’d be yelling at the top of her lungs into the phone (that’s the Italian standard of general chit chat). It was a bit of a running joke.

‘Nonna,’ we used to tease her, ‘you don’t have to yell so loud; they can hear you in Italy from here. That’s what the phone is for.’

Then she would pause the conversation and yell at us in English, ‘Be-a quiet! I’m-a trine to talk-a!’

I can still remember her voice, high pitched with her very thick accent, and VERY stern. And gosh, the smell of her kitchen – she’d press bay leaves in paper towels to stack between her pots and pans, so I’d open the cupboards and be hit with that amazing scent. I still think of her when I smell bay leaves today. I also remember her playing music for me. My nonna loved her music.

She used to love to hear me sing and was so supportive of me. I started singing lessons from the age of five (more on that later), so when she’d babysit me, she’d always ask me to sing for her. She’d play me Italian songs and ask me to learn them. ‘Anthony, can you sing me that in Italian? I want to hear it in Italian.’

Her encouragement and her work ethic had a profound impact on me. Sadly, she passed away when I was in high school. She obviously knew within herself that she was about to leave us as, just before she passed, she requested to see all the grandchildren individually. Even in her last hours and minutes, she was still in control and put the care of her family first. My uncle came and picked us all up from school and took us straight to the hospital. One by one we went into the room to sit by our nonna. I don’t really recall what she said to me. She was extremely weak and frail by this stage and could barely speak, but I do remember holding her hand and she gave me a piece of jewellery, a gold crucifix, and a St Antonio card.

I still have both; the crucifix sits in my jewellery cabinet and the card has always been in the console or glovebox of every car I have driven. I’ll never forget her eyes and the way she looked at me that day. Even in her weakest moment, with hours left until she took her final breath, she had so much inner strength. Later that night, in the early hours of the morning, with my mum lying right next to her in the hospital bed, she passed. Calm, strong and dignified.

I’m so grateful that my nonna encouraged my interest in music, and for introducing me to those Italian songs. Who knew the profound impact it would have in years to come… I wish Nonna could have had the chance to see me sing in Italian the way I do now. But, to quote the title of one her favourite songs, que sera, sera!

While my nonna and other family members enjoyed music, musicality was not one of their gifts. When I’m asked who the big performing influences in my family were, I have to say that I suppose my mum enjoyed singing at church. Every week she’d be singing at the top of her lungs, and I’d (politely) tell her, ‘Mum, you sound horrendous.’

To this day, she tells me, ‘You get your vocals from me.’ But I can still hear those piercing notes singing, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd, no want shall I know’ in a pitch so high it would surpass even Mariah Carey’s top register. Is it wrong that this is one of my next favourite memories as a child?

My mum was and is the best mum in the world (I know everyone says that, but NO, my mum is!), but as far as a vocal influence, sorry, Mum, that’s a no from me.

Nonno, my dad’s dad, also loved singing. He thought that he could really sing, and in all fairness, he could hold a tune. But he wouldn’t be headlining a large concert hall anytime soon.

So, I didn’t grow up with a music pedigree, but music, specifically singing, was something I was drawn to for as long as I can remember. I always wanted to be a pop singer.

Back in the day, Mum and Dad didn’t have the money to go out and buy every record I wanted, so I used to sit by the radio for hours on end and wait to record the specific song I wanted to learn. Yes, I’m definitely old enough to have been obsessed with the mixtape. If any Gen Zs are reading this, I’ll wait while you Google what a cassette tape is…

All through school, I rarely got around to doing my homework, because I was sitting there creating my own mixtapes. I still have them,