Reddy Looking Forward to the Roaring Nineties

Helen Reddy shudders to think what her career might have looked like had she been born a couple of decades later.

“If ‘I Am Woman’ were coming out now, it could never become a hit,” Reddy says in that Australian accent of hers. Her signature song, which she will perform alongside her other ‘70s hits at Santa Ana’s Crazy Horse Saloon Monday night, took the better part of a year to scale the pop-chart heap. “ Nine months ,” she emphasizes. “Nowadays, if something isn’t up there in six weeks, they (record company officials) don’t push it.”

Reddy, 48, hasn’t been tearing up the charts lately, but she’s just off a successful tour of England and is busy writing new material. The feisty but personable singer hopes to have an album recorded before the summer’s out, but is discussing distribution only with overseas firms. Reddy’s not ready to embrace a domestic label just yet.

“I don’t think they’ve got a clue as to how to market to my audience anyway,” she asserts.

Well, Reddy’s audience still shows up, en masse, to hear her belt out “I Am Woman.” When she sat down to write the No. 1 hit at the outset of the Me Decade, Reddy had nary a clue as to its anthem potential. Was she surprised when the record’s success splashed her all over the map? Shocked, even?

“All of the above,” says Reddy, whose smile suddenly fades when the topic turns to the issue of the women’s movement.

“What is the women’s movement?” she asks rhetorically, gazing into the ‘90s. “I would like to think that the ‘90s are going to see an improvement, in fact, as it seems there are a lot more women running for public office. I thought that the ‘80s were very regressive; there was a lot of backlash during that decade. But also, as the population ages, older women aren’t as much of a threat. They’re more acceptable in positions of power.”

Hear her roar.