Charlene Oliver is best known for her world-renowned mega-hit “I’ve Never Been To Me.” I first came to know Charlene and “I’ve Never Been To Me” in 1994 when I saw the film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

From the moment I heard “I’ve Never Been To Me,” I was hooked. The song really resonated with me. I wasn’t fully aware at the time, but I must have had inklings of my gayness, and I just kept thinking about the lyrics “I’ve been to paradise, but I’ve never been to me.”

In this interview, Charlene answered my call to share:

• How "I've Never Been To Me" came into her life
• What it was like to have success with it the second time around
• Why she likes being a gay icon
• What she learned about herself from writing her autobiography
• So much more

It is a real honor to be able interview Charlene and talk about her life & career!

Charlene Oliver

1. Who or what inspired you to become a performer? I was inspired by The Beatles mainly and a lot of the British artists that came over from Europe. Also another band by the name of The We Five. They had a song and a female singer, Beverly Bivens, that I loved.

2. Let's start with "I've Never Been To Me," the song. How did this song first come to you in 1976? I had just been signed to Motown Records and I was recording many demos for different producers at the label. One day I was at the office and a man approached me by the name of Ron Miller. He told me he had a song that he thought my voice would sound really good on. He played it for me. At the time, he didn’t realize, I had been going through a very bad marriage and hopefully divorce. The song spoke volumes to me. I felt like it was my life story. I felt close to the lyrics of the song.

Ron, who is playing the tape for me, sat behind his desk and watched me cry so hard I could hardly breathe. I was so touched by the lyrics of the song. We recorded it in 1977. The record company didn’t do anything with the song. They basically let it just sit on the shelf.

But Ron & I still went into the studio to record the song. With the violins and all the Instruments, the song came alive. It was beautiful. The most beautiful song I’ve ever heard then. I had to put my vocal on it, and when we did, it was magic. It was a magical moment I’ll never forget.

Charlene Oliver

3. What was it like to revisit it in 1982 & have such success with it the second time around? I wasn’t ready for the music to enter my life again, a second time in 1982. I had been living in England, just got married and was working in a sweet shop, which is a candy store.

My mom told me that somebody from Motown Records was looking for me. I didn’t know who it was or why they were trying to contact me. So I called Motown Records and got the president of the company, not Berry Gordy, but a man named Jay Lasker.

He told me that the song “I’ve Never Been To Me” was on the pop charts on the Billboard 100 and it was climbing off the charts. I couldn’t believe it! It was crazy! I was wondering, “Why now, seven years later, was the song a hit?” It was very strange.

All I knew was I had to record in America. It came over to England, where it was number one. It was number one in Australia, Canada, Japan, and I think it even charted in China. It was an amazing feeling, but I was very disoriented. It didn’t seem real. It had been too long since I sang the song. I was out of the industry for such a long time that it seemed foreign to me. It was like a dream, but it wasn’t.

I think they flew me on the Concorde to New York from London to do Good Morning America with one of the Bee Gees. It was in that moment, I knew it was real. It was amazing. I was on so many TV shows. I was still pinching myself, saying, “This can’t be real. This can’t be real,” but it was very real.

So, we moved back to America and proceeded to record some more stuff. Then the writer of “I’ve Never Been To Me,” Ron Miller, decided he wanted me and Stevie Wonder to do a duet together. So we did. The song was “Used To Be.” It was a Ron Miller soapbox yelling at the world.

The song was telling the world how messed up it was and how messed up our kids were. The song hit a nerve, a very bad nerve with the fans that I had. The public did not like the song because it was very very truthful and Truth Hurts.

So, that was my introduction to working with Stevie Wonder. It was incredible. The most incredible time of my career.

4. Then in 1994 (which is when I discovered the song & fell in love with it), "I've Never Been To Me" was featured in the cult-favorite film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. How did it feel to have this song become a gay anthem? I had my daughter Bethany. We were living in Santa Clarita California. I got a call from Ron Miller who was my producer. He told me about the movie The Adventures of Pricilla, Queen of the Desert. I couldn’t wait to see it. OMG, the movie was incredible. I loved it.

When the musical opened up in Australia I was asked to come and perform “I’ve Never Been To Me” for the cast on opening night. It was amazing. I realized then, that I was a Gay Icon.

I totally loved the amazing adventure I went on. I got an agent who booked me in London. I had family there and a home there, so it was easy for traveling. I so wish I could have come and toured Australia. But it would have been too difficult because it was so far and I would not have had my family with me. But I had a lot of fun with the experience.

5. How do you relate to “I’ve Never Been To Me” now as opposed to its previous incarnations? The song “I’ve Never Been to Me” will always be a part of my life. Especially having it be written for my voice. Ron Miller told me he wrote the female version after hearing me sing all the other Motown songs, which really didn’t suite my style.

I wasn’t too fond of the dance version. Whenever I performed it, people liked the dance version, but when I transitioned into the ballad version, they flipped out. It was and still is a classic song. I’ll always love it!

6. In addition to music, you are also an author. In 2017 you released your autobiography, I've Never Been To Me. What did you learn about yourself from this process that you didn't know going through it originally? I must say I regretted a lot of the things I said 😱 But it is an autobiography and I’ve had a pretty bad life. I guess I felt good about it at the time, but as I thought about it, I was fearful.

I’ve always been a fearful person. I was always afraid of what people thought of me. I was a horrible student in school. I joked about it and said, “I even failed lunch.” 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 And me writing a book!!!! Seriously!!!!!!!

Then I wrote Oliver’s Army andThe Quill. I thought the men in the white coats were going to take me and lock me away. It is one of my greatest books that no one will ever read. They’d have to put a warning: “Reading this book May be serious to your mental health.🤣🤣🤣🤣”

It’s a very deep and terrifying book. If we ever have a phone conversation I’ll tell you a bit about it 😊😱😊

I learned how messed up I am. I love writing so much.

7. What was the hardest chapter to write? Why was it so hard? The hardest chapter was in Oliver’s Army. It was the part about the child who was tortured by his mentally ill mother. She killed children and buried them in the floor. It was set in Brandon England, early 1900’s. Her boy was rescued and he was visited by the children who were killed by his mother.

8. What was the easiest chapter to write? The best part of the book was the trial of the mother and how she blamed God for her insanity. And the court exploded in a rage from the families whose children were killed.

9. What are some upcoming projects you can tell me about? Well I am a teacher. I love teaching piano. I teach kids who have never played. They are wonderful and smart. I get such a reward from it.

10. What is something about yourself that you have never revealed before in an interview that you would like to share with me today? I seriously can’t think of anything. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I am an open book. Thank you for allowing me to share. God Bless.

Charlene Oliver

More on Charlene Oliver:

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.

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.