De Telegraaf-Weekeinde

OTHER RISING STARS HATED IT, BUT TIFFANY LOVED TO DO IT: A MALL-TOUR.
RESULT: FIRST SHE WAS SINGING FOR 12 PEOPLE, BUT NOW SHE'S VERY RICH AND HER SECOND ALBUM WENT ALREADY PLATINUM IN THE FORWARD SALE!

TEENAGER PAYS SMILING FOR HER FAME: SHE HAS NO FRIENDS LEFT AND SHE SUES HER MOTHER.


TIFFANY: 17 AND WORLDFAMOUS.

Amsterdam, Saturday.

"They say girls like shopping or wandering through malls. You know what they like most? Standing in front of the mirror! Sulking, winking, throwing their from front to back and smiling, lots of smiling. Practice makes perfect. But only the advanced play records at the same time and imitate Stevie Nicks or Belinda Carlisle. I was one of those advanced."

Tiffany doesn't need to stand in front of the mirror. Tiffany does it in real.
Since two years she's the biggest teen-star the world has ever known, bigger than Connie Francis and Brenda Lee in the 1950's, the first woman her age that made her debut with two singles that went #1 in the Billboards Hot One Hundred. Suddenly she had almost no friends left, jealous most girls at school were because of her success.
That problem is solved. Tiffany doesn't attend school anymore, but travels around the world with a tutor (on HER payroll).
"I can imagine their jealousy", the just 17 year old says worldly-wise, while she pours her guest a cup of tea herself instead of letting the hotel staff, who take good care of her, do it.
"As soon as I got famous, the press described me as the typical girl from next-door. My friends, rightly, found that they fell under that category just as well and punished their poor little heads why I, the one who didn't dare to volunteer for the school-choir and always was rejected for the Christmas-play, achieved so much more then them.
They couldn't stand I was on MTV all the time, and could be heard on the radio constantly, was free of school for a tour and had hanging golden and platinum records from all over the world on the wall when they dropped by."

Girls her age often see their mother as their best friend, but Tiffany doesn't, eversince she only communicates with hers by way of lawyer. "That lawsuit? How can I explain that without giving your readers the impression I'm a bitch?
Look,I am a minor according to the law. My parents, who by the way got divorced when I was two, are responsible for me. But they're not dealing with a common teenage daughter who calls to ask if she may stay at the party a bit longer or begs for more pocket-money, they're dealing with a superstar who is always travelling, a millionaire also.
I'm convinced my parent mean well, but they've made so many wrong decisions in the 15 years before I got famous, together and seperately, that I won't listen to them anymore, certainly not letting them control my finances. If I would agree on that, I'd be bankrupt and forgotten in no time.
The details still need to be settled, but the judge officially decided that I'm everything but the girl from next-door and gave me the status of 'Minor Adult', something only happened a few times in the 200 year of American Law.
Commercially and artisticly George (Tobin, Tiffany's 45 year old manager, JG) is my father and because we are always in the company of eachother and attached to oneanother with golden chains, he also sets himself up as a kind of foster-parent in real time."

- George Tobin has become almost as famous, well: notorious, as his own partner-the Tiffany Ltd. founded by him exists four years now.

"George made himself hated in the business, especially in the media, for only no other reason than to enable me to be the innocent angel. Normally he's no diplomat, so when he's dealing with people he messes things up more than 10 other managers I know. Contractual he gets half my income and has a total control over my career, whatever that may be, because I'm present at it myself. But sometimes he gets too flamboyant in using his power, I admit. The other day he was too late for a photo-shoot, and saw that I let the photographer and his assistent make me up as a prostitute from a tent-brothel from the Wild West.
No 17 year old girl that doesn't like that, but George let himself go like Jesse James, to keep up the imagery. He couldn't avoid those pictures to be placed in all kinds of magazines, but he managed to break up the relationship between the photographer and my recordcompany."
His hard regime wasn't unsuccessful.

"THE JUDGE GAVE ME THE STATUS OF MINOR ADULT."

Since he is, except manager, also Tiffany's producer, he's even richer than his pupil. Five million copies of her debut album have already been sold, the first two singles, ITWAN and CHB, reached #1 in the Hitparade, ISHST went Top Ten.
We haven't seen the last of it, because the new album HAOFH went platinum in the forward sale. Only Stevie Wonder achieved this on his age, he was eleven years old, but Tiffany is the first girl.
Stevie Wonder vs Tiffany, no compromise say connoisseurs; but Tiffany doesn't believe in connoisseurs.
"People George's age, who claim to hate my versions of the songs from their youth (ITWAN is from Tommy Jones And The Shondells, ISHST is from the Beatles,JG), but when they were as young as I'm now they bought everything from Paul Anka, Connie Francis and Bobby Vee and were standing in the row for stupid beachmovies with Frankie Avalon and Anette Funicello.
I sell records to people my age, the people who don't care about old men like Bruce Springsteen, Prince or Michael Jackson.
I don't care about the critisism, ever seen a 45 year-old who bought a teen-star record?"
And still, repertoire is a problem for a 17 year-old admits tiffany unasked. "I got my record deal when I was 14. What should you let a 14 year-old sing about? Dozens of songwriters have been approached at the time, but they couldn't put themselves in the place of a girl my age, so they always came up with something too risky or too childish. Only Donna Weiss, mother of a teen-daughter herself, set the right tone.
She is my favorite songwriter. HAOFH is from her.
If I can't picture anything with a song; how would my fans?
My fans are everything for me. I know from my time as a nameless citizen how difficult it is to buy records you want with the pocket-money you get. That they want to have my records and put my posters on the wall, is the biggest compliment the fans can give me.
Above all, they made me rich, so shaking a few hundred hands and deal out autographs is not tooo much asked."
Her knowledge of the american trade and industry, which is considerable, acquired Tiffany during her now famous "shoppingmall- tour" .
"It was the egg of Colombus, but before me no one had come up with the idea. Firms yearly keep thousands of demonstrations of their products in shopping malls; teenagers hang around there all day long. When Larry Soltes of my recordcompany proposed the shopping mall-tour, I thought it was insane, like most of his collegues.
Now everyone thinks it was a brilliant move, but on some occasions I was singing for twelve people.
But by the end of the tour, when we had been from California to Florida, I was singing for 4000 people.
Just a fraction bought a record in the recordshop of the mall, but a larger part called the local radiostation with requests. When the smoke of that chainreation was gone, "Tiffany" was on 5 million.
Connie Francis and Brenda Lee could only dream of that, because in their time a teenstar only sold singles, not albums.
I was that kind of child that knew as an infant what it wanted to become. When I was three I first sang the matching commercial before passing my mother the ketchup.
I could remember complete songs when I was five. The first one was Delta Dawn (Tanya Tucker, only 14 herself at the time, JG). I sang it in the mall! My mother used to look around her skittishly, but most people found a little singer just as adorable as she did. My parents found me a manager, but he aimed at a career a la Tanya tucker and countrymusic made me sick at that age. You only learn to respect see-me-crying-over-my-beer-music when you're George's age. Of course George ran over my first manager. My parents were terrified of actions even before my career had started, but George conquered. Now they think he cheats them for millions, with me in the plot, but though George undoubtly takes good care of himself, what he has, he has deserved. Many managers would have quit when they had had so many rejections as George has.
When another demo-tape had been returned and my heart was broken again, George said: 'If I had heard that tape in an office instead of having recorded it myself, I might have rejected it too. Just wait until one of the the record-bosses hears you.'

Interview by Jip Golstijn; De Telegraaf (one of the biggest Dutch newspapers)- Weekend special.