My Dream Dinner with Celine Dion

How a serious journalist got snowed

This off-beat column is a blast from my past. It’s one of my favorite compositions that never got published—until now.

First, some background. When I was the Deputy International Editor at Time magazine back in the 1990s, I helped nurture the early career of Canada’s Céline Dion. I started writing about her in 1994 and later got her on the cover of our Canadian and European editions. I was influential enough in her rise to be mentioned by name in at least a couple of biographies of her. For that, you may love me or hate me. Her “My Heart Will Go On” from the movie Titanic won an Oscar, a Golden Globe and Grammys for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Anyone as ubiquitous as that is bound to stir a backlash. But even her harshest critics have to admit that she is one of the most globally successful singers of all time.

In 1996, two years before Titanic, when many people were still barely aware Céline’s existence, Time International ran a cover story called “The Divas of Pop.” Céline was the cover face for Canada and Europe, Gloria Estefan for Latin America and so on. In preparation for overseeing the cover package, I had one of the most pleasant—and strangest—evenings of my life when I met Céline for dinner. The project worked out fine. The late, great Richard Corliss wrote an overview of all the divas, and I wrote an accompanying story on Céline’s growing success. I was hoping the Céline story that appeared in Time International would later run in Time’s U.S. edition, and I decided to spice it up with a sidebar focused on my dinner with Céline. The sidebar was meant to be tongue-in-cheek—an attempt at humor from a normally serious writer. But my bosses didn’t buy it. They said that I had shown myself to be “too close to a source” and not “objective.” Well, Céline and I do look pretty close in the picture above, but she was just goofing around for the photographer. And c’mon, guys, can’t a writer have a little fun? In the field of celebrity journalism, writers have long injected themselves into stories. Maybe I took it a little too far, or maybe I was just ahead of my time. You be the judge. Here’s the story, rescued from the editorial spike, exactly as I wrote it 26 years ago:

I’m 46 years old, a devoted family man and a serious journalist. But I admit it: I have a crush on 28-year-old Céline Dion, the French Canadian pop singer. My wife knows it. My kids know it. My colleagues at work know it. Everyone is greatly amused.

As Deputy Editor of Time International, which publishes 10 editions of Time magazine that go to almost every foreign country, I deal with the most important people and issues on the planet. Over the past year, I have watched Russian presidential candidates debate each other at the World Economic Forum, visited the Secretary-General of NATO and lunched with Fidel Castro. I shook hands with Yitzhak Rabin less than two weeks before he was assassinated. I repeat: I’m a serious journalist.

But when I grow weary of reading Foreign Affairs, I turn to affairs of the heart: I lie back with my stereo headphones on and listen to such unabashedly schmaltzy Céline Dion ballads as “The Power of Love” and “When I Fall in Love.” I shouldn’t really be defensive about this. After all, she’s sold more than 27 million albums around the world in the past three years, and her song “Because You Loved Me” from the Redford-Pfeiffer movie Up Close and Personal was No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart for an unprecedented 19 weeks. I’m about as “adult contemporary” as they come.

The events that led to my rendezvous with the singer of my dreams started out innocently enough. Last spring I gave a copy of Céline’s new album Falling into You to Richard Corliss, a Time movie-theater-music critic, and asked him to check it out. He came back and said that Céline would make a great face for a cover story he thought TIME International should do on the world's most acclaimed pop divas. Richard loves to write cover stories and knows how to play upon editors’ preferences.

My boss, the editor of Time International, was receptive to the idea, especially when I told him that Céline’s album had hit No. 1 in Britain, France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Austria and Australia, and No. 2 in Canada, the U.S. and Japan. We quickly compiled a list of other foreign-flavored divas to report on, including Gloria Estefan and Hong Kong’s Faye Wong. And when both Céline and Gloria were selected to sing at the Olympics, the timing for the story looked perfect.

Naturally, I reserved the reporting on Céline largely to myself. We don’t promise cover stories to celebrities, but when I told the folks at Céline’s 550 Music label (a division of Epic Records, which is part of Sony Music) that we wanted to do a “major story” on Céline and other pop divas, they were only too happy to cooperate. Soon I was told that Céline would be pleased to meet me for “dinner” on her next trip to New York.

Unable to keep this information to myself, I became the subject of quite a few giggles along the august corridors of Time. And by the time the big day arrived, my anticipation was palpable. That afternoon one of my colleagues—a divorced middle-aged editor—came to me with a pointed question. “If you’re having dinner with Céline Dion,” he asked with a straight face, “would you mind giving me your wife’s phone number?” As the appointed hour approached, I had no idea what to expect. I figured Céline’s 54-year-old mentor, manager and husband—René Angélil—would be there, but who else? In an article I’d read from The Times of London, the writer said he’d attended a dinner for Céline with 150 guests. I began to worry that she had invited half the journalists in New York.

When I stride a bit too eagerly into Harry Cipriani on Fifth Avenue at eight o'clock sharp, I’m told I’m the first to arrive and seated at a table for eight. It could be a lot worse, I think.

To kill time, I ask the maitre d’, a young man whose name I later learned was Sergio Vacca, if he knows who will be sitting at the table. “Of course,” he replies, “she always eats here when she’s in New York. I love her music. If I had known about tonight in advance, I would have brought in her new album for her to autograph. She’s so nice.” Then Sergio leans over and confides, “If you won’t say I told you, I’ll tell you what she’s going to order. She always has the same thing: veal ragù and a drink called the Bellini—white peach nectar with Italian champagne."

After a few minutes, one of Céline’s executive producers, Vito Luprano, walks in with his fiancée, followed by a phalanx of publicity people from 550 Music. Luprano says that Céline and her husband have just landed in New York and are on their way from the airport. I look at my watch and think about how Céline is supposed to sing the next morning on Live With Regis and Kathie Lee. She will need beauty rest more than a long dinner with me. This is not good, I fear.

Finally, at about 9:45, Céline and René suddenly appear. She smiles and proffers her cheeks to be kissed by Sergio, her producer and all the record-company people. To the stranger from Time, she offers a friendly handshake. My first thought is that she looks extremely thin (on stage she denies tabloid stories that she’s anorexic and pleads with her fans to stop sending her cakes and pies in the mail). Her brown hair is pulled back severely behind her head, and she wears a conservative black suit (please don’t ask what designer; I’m a serious journalist). She’s not quite the knockout who appears on her album covers, but she’s unmistakably the same Céline Dion who sings, “Cause I’m your lady—and you are my man. Whenever you reach for me, I’ll do all that I can.” My pulse quickens.

Surveying the crowded scene at the table, Luprano decides that Céline and I should have a table to ourselves, off in a corner. Well, I’m certainly not going to argue with that.

When we’re seated, Céline immediately takes charge, rearranging the various plates and silverware to make room on the small table for my tape recorder and microphone. “Should I pick up the mic and sing?” she jokes. I just smile, weakly. She suggests that we order—sure enough—her favorite peach and champagne drink. “I don’t usually drink,” she insists, “maybe a sip of wine once in a while. I hate champagne. This is the only place and the only taste of champagne that I like. It has a lot of peaches in it. I love it.”

The French-accented words bubble out of her mouth, ceasing only when she has to search for the right phrase. She seems comfortable speaking English, especially for someone who didn’t take up the language until she was 18. When the waiter comes by, she says, “We’ll wait a bit before ordering.” That’s a good sign, I hope.

The first part of the interview goes over biographical ground that’s very familiar to me. She was born in Charlemagne, Quebec, a small town outside Montreal—the last of 14 brothers and sisters. The family owned a restaurant, but their love was music, almost every kind of music. Parents and kids all played instruments or sang. “One of my brothers was in a rock ‘n’ roll band. Another one was into ballads. Another was country.” Early on, it was clear that even in this talented family, little singing Céline was something special. “What I remember most is my brothers and sisters taking me and putting me on top of the kitchen table and making me do a whole show for them.” By the time she was five, she was singing from the tabletops of the family eatery, attracting customers from miles around who wanted to hear “that little girl.”

At 12, she got an audition with Angélil, a musician and would-be impresario. He was moved to tears by her strong, sweet voice and mortgaged his house to help launch her career. “I wanted to live on stage,” she recalls. “I wanted to sleep there.” Cutting her first album at 13, she became a teen heartthrob all over Quebec, and then in France. At 18, she took a Berlitz course so that she could learn to sing in English—the only way to become a global star. Signed by Sony Canada, she got a big break when Disney tapped her to sing the theme from Beauty and the Beast with Peabo Bryson. For that, she won a Grammy and was on her way.

The waiter interrupts her memories to take our order. “I don’t want to interfere,” she says, “but if I may suggest something to you: the veal ragù. It’s to die for.” Céline insists, as she does in almost every interview, that stardom is not the most important thing to her. She claims not to look at the charts, but admits that her husband can recite how high every hit got—in the U.S. or France or Japan. “I don’t want a hit,” she says, “I want a career. I want to sing all my life.” Fine, I say to myself, but I’ve read all these well-rehearsed quotes before.

Only when I press her about her relationship with Angélil does she become more contemplative and move away from her prepared script. Her mentor became her lover at some point after she turned 19. “The kisses gradually moved from the cheeks to the mouth,” she recalls. They kept their affair secret for several years, but finally disclosed it in 1993 (in the liner notes to her The Colour of My Love album) and married a year later. She doesn’t dodge the issue of the differences in their ages (54 vs. 28). “I was talking to René not long ago, and I asked if there was anything he would change. He said he would love to be 20 years younger. And I said, ‘Don’t say that. What do you think I love you for?’ We love each other for who we are. He’s bringing me the experience that he has right now at his age. He makes me feel secure. I learn a lot from him, from his mistakes. If I think about the fact that he’s so much older, I would like to stop time. But I wouldn’t want him to suddenly be 20 years younger. I don’t think he would be the same.” I’m thinking that a psychologist would have a field day with all this, but far be it from me to question her preference for older men. I'm a pretty good father figure myself.

It’s difficult to eat and take notes at the same time, so I’m not making rapid progress with my ragù. The waiter tries to clear my plate several times, but she keeps waving him away, insisting that I finish my meal. “We have all the time in the world,” she says. I wish.

How important, I ask, is connecting with her audience? “As important as eating and breathing to me,” she says. She tells of seeing people in her audiences so overcome with emotion that they’re crying. Admirers often come up to her to tell her how much her music has meant to them. “They’ll say, ‘You know, my husband and I were going through a divorce and because of your song “Colour of My Love,” we got back together, and I want to thank you very much.’ Or really young kids having problems with drugs or something like that coming and saying to me directly that I’ve been helping them, and you know it makes it so worth it. If I can sing, and if I can help people on top of that, I don’t even want to think about asking for more. Because I think that when there’s music in your life, there’s happiness. If you can touch people and they can relate to your music, I think it’s to be intimate with them. That’s wonderful.”

It all sounds sappy, but if you’re sitting there with her, you know she means every word. From time to time, when she wants to emphasize a point, she squeezes my arm. I’m having trouble concentrating on my work.

To change the mood, I ask about Phil Specter. She had tried to record some songs last year with the legendary producer of everyone from the Righteous Brothers to the Beatles, but the studio sessions went too slowly, and the tracks were never finished. Creative differences erupted between Specter and her other producers, who decided that his songs wouldn’t blend in with the rest of the new album. Yet Céline speaks wistfully of the experience, thinking about what might have been—and what could still be. “It was another world,” she recalls. “Like a storm. He’s alone in his league. I wanted to go for it. I wanted to go with him the whole way. Working with him was like very intense. I’m not used to going into the studio and recording with 60 musicians at the same time. Like three pianos, like six percussionists. He was amazing. It was pretty wild. The first session didn’t start until four in the morning. He arrived, and there were 50 people in the studio. All his buddies were there. It was rock ‘n’ roll party time....You cannot say you’re going to have Phil Specter do part of your album. His music is different. If you do a thing with him, you go all the way or you don’t do it. That’s why it didn’t work out this time. On top of that, we never had the time to finish. That’s a shame. I don’t know what happened. I had to go. I was on tour at the time. But I think I’m going to work with him one day.”

As long as she’s being candid about collaborators, I ask her about Jim Steinman, the producer-songwriter well known for the epic hits he’s provided to Meat Loaf. Steinman wrote and produced Céline’s current hit, “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now,” a romantic saga in song as overwrought as anything on the Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell II. “Jim Steinman? He’s crazy. He’s a workaholic. Normally I do seven or eight tracks of the same song. He makes me do 30. And the next day we start all over again. He’s like this [she makes a stern face]. No emotion on his face. I can’t believe a guy who doesn’t show his emotions can write songs like “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.” A woman could have written that song—someone so sensitive and romantic—and yet someone like Jim wrote it. He’s amazing. At the same time, he has a very big sense of humor, but without a smile—so serious. But he knows what he’s doing. You just have to follow him. He wants me to be an actress on every word, every breath, every pause.”

Finally I finish off the ragù, and it's time for her regular last course: Earl Grey tea and zabaglione cake, a creamy confection laced with Marsala wine. How does she stay thin eating that? The conversation, meanwhile, turns to odds and ends. Does she still have a shoe fetish, as she once told Arsenio Hall? “It’s amazing. I don’t know why I have this craziness about shoes.” Shopping is a good way to fill the down time on a world tour. “Sometimes I might buy two suits and six pairs of shoes. I don’t buy shoes to go with my outfits. I buy outfits to go with my shoes.” How many shoes does she have? “At least 500 pairs.” Imelda Marcos, eat your heart out.

At one point René strolls over to see how we’re doing. He pulls up a chair and recites some believe-it-or-not Céline facts (her last French record is the biggest selling album in the history of the French language; she’s the first non-Japanese artist in 12 years to have a No. 1 song in Japan). Satisfied that the interview is going well, he returns to the main table.

But René’s appearance brings out the big news of the evening. After completing an Asian tour in early 1997, Céline intends to retreat to a getaway home she and René have bought in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and take at least a year off from concerts and recording. Moreover, her No. 1 objective is to become a mother. “I’m not going to try to beat my parents and have 15 kids,” she says, "but I would love to have children.” At last, I realize, I have a bombshell worthy of Entertainment Weekly! (Unfortunately, my scoop was soon ruined when she blabbed about her maternity plan to Canadian TV.)

As the tea cups are cleared away, she seems pleased. “It's been wonderful to talk to you," she says. "We had a nice meal, a nice chat. Very nice and interesting for me." In what way, I can’t resist asking? “You asked unusual questions—not what I was expecting. You’re one of the best.” This may be her most shameless ploy yet to get a favorable article out of the dinner, but I love it anyway. Maybe she'll tell people I'm amazing.

Alas, it’s almost midnight, and one of Céline’s handlers comes over to remind her that she has to be up early in the morning. How early will she have to rise, I wonder, to have her hair and makeup done in time for the 9 a.m. appearance with Regis and Kathie Lee? An unpleasant thought crosses my mind: if she flubs up “Because You Loved Me,” it will be all my fault.

As we leave the table, René offers me a lift, saying his driver can take me home after dropping off him and Céline at the Four Seasons hotel. I accept, telling myself that a good reporter always grabs every opportunity for more time with his subject. So the evening lasts just a few moments longer, while the stretch limo travels four blocks from the restaurant to the hotel. As Céline steps out onto the sidewalk, she blows me a farewell kiss. In a daze, I wave back, struggling to the end to maintain my objectivity. After all, I am a serious journalist.