Once silenced by authorities, Iran's Olivia Newton-John reveals her 'sinful voice' at 75

The archetypal clip Googoosh was asked to constitute a memoir, the petition came from Iran’s Islamic Republic interrogators. Their extremity was for the popular superstar to relay a “cautionary tale.” This, of course, did not beryllium close with the beloved diva who was the Olivia Newton-John of Iran’s euphony satellite until the Islamic Republic of Iran was established successful 1979 — and each pistillate performers were banned from singing successful public.

“I didn’t privation to cooperate with them,” Googoosh tells maine arsenic she reflects connected the sham memoir the agents tried to get her to write. “I hated to archer my communicative to them.” Decades aft refusing to enactment her sanction connected a government-sanctioned lie, Iran’s biggest popular prima has yet breached her silence. Her caller book, “Googoosh: A Sinful Voice,” was not a choice, she writes, but a “necessary duty.”

The lyrical communicative chronicles her beingness from commencement to the present, including Googoosh’s 4 marriages and moments of joyousness and despair spent nether decades of location apprehension portion Tehran was rocked by war. It’s shockingly candid, revealing aggregate abortions, cause maltreatment (including her own) and chilling moments of suicidal ideation. “If radical hatred maine erstwhile they work it, it’s OK. That was my life,” Googoosh says. She asserts she didn’t privation to constitute thing conscionable to beryllium pleasant. She besides considers her location state tenderly, and successful her publication notes, “Iran is portion of my being. You tin instrumentality Googoosh retired of Iran, but you can’t instrumentality Iran retired of Googoosh.”

Googoosh’s publication chronicles her beingness from commencement to the present, including her 4 marriages and moments of joyousness and despair spent nether decades of location apprehension successful Tehran.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Faegheh “Googoosh” Atashin was calved successful 1950 successful Tehran to parents who were Azerbaijani Iranians. Googoosh wasn’t adjacent potty-trained erstwhile she began performing arsenic a toddler astatine cabarets arsenic orchestrated by her showman father. She was mostly self-taught, imitating different celebrated singers. Soon she was successful films and by the ’70s she was Iran’s astir celebrated popular export, performing connected planetary stages alongside Ray Charles and Tina Turner. Her infectious vocals, whether upbeat disco bops oregon heartwrenching ballads, became imprinted connected the nationalist consciousness. Ultimately her vocation was chopped short. She writes: “The gyration swept crossed my homeland similar a raging storm, unraveling the delicate cloth of a satellite erstwhile interwoven with tradition, modernity, and poetry. Almost overnight, the shimmering parties, the premieres of daring boundary-pushing films, and the intoxicating bushed of euphony and state were replaced by fear, uncertainty, and darkness.”

On a caller autumn afternoon, I met with Googoosh and her co-writer, Tara Dehlavi, connected Zoom. Googoosh appears arsenic chic arsenic ever with her signature honey-gold hairsbreadth slicked to the broadside and impeccable Covergirl-worthy shimmery constitution that makes the 75-year-old look decades younger. Googoosh mentions galore celebrated writers implicit the years person reached retired wanting to enactment with her connected a memoir, but Dehlavi is not a known writer; she’s alternatively a soft-spoken 39-year-old erstwhile objective scientist whose exile from Iran has placed her successful France astir of her life.

“I said let’s constitute it successful English,” Dehlavi tells me. She adds the crushed she wanted Googoosh to constitute her memoir was that truthful overmuch of it was untold, including however astatine property 50 she made a miraculous comeback. “I proposed, let’s delight stock your communicative with the satellite ... and aboriginal generations. Because determination person been galore documentaries made astir you but thing from you yourself,” Dehlavi says.

(Brian Bowen Smith/Simon & Schuster)

Googoosh places afloat work for the memoir’s beingness connected Dehlavi. “With Tara, I opened my heart,” she says. “I was escaped to speech astir myself.”

Since settling successful the West successful 2000 — archetypal Canada, past Los Angeles wherever she inactive resides — Googoosh has enjoyed aggregate tours, including performances astatine the Hollywood Bowl, Madison Square Garden and the Sydney Opera House. Her fame is arsenic coagulated arsenic ever, acknowledgment to a loyal diaspora afloat of fans aged and new. Last spring, not lone did she prima successful Ed Sheeran’s euphony video “Azizam” (she appears successful the last seconds, wherever Sheeran is launched from the endless festivities of his Persiophile fever imagination backmost into the signaling studio. There, Googoosh tells him successful Persian, ‘Azizam, let’s spell constitute a deed song, hurry up!’), the opus was released a week aboriginal with her vocals for a Persian version. Like everything she touches, it was a immense hit.

Googoosh admits her prima has not yet dimmed, not adjacent successful her 70s. “For 21 years they closed the bottle, and each of a sudden, the vessel is opened and [out] I popped!” Googoosh says with her signature grin arsenic 1 of her beloved Pomeranians pops up connected her lap.

It turns retired Dehlavi was the cleanable idiosyncratic to person asked her to chronicle her beingness — and possibly the lone 1 who could person gotten that eventual yes. “Actually her ma is my precise champion person from erstwhile she was 13 years old,” Googoosh says. “They are a portion of my family.”

Dehlavi did not expect to beryllium a cardinal portion of the team, a task that would fundamentally encompass the full of her 30s, but it’s wide this would not person gotten done without her. “There were times wherever I jokingly felt I was worse than the interrogators successful Evin [Prison],” she says. “But I conscionable wanted to beryllium the task manager connected this. … I conscionable got frightened if we recovered a ghostwriter, her dependable would get mislaid successful translation and truthful I got much and much protective of that voice. I was conscionable similar a bodyguard — I can’t conscionable fto anyone instrumentality Googoosh’s dependable arsenic the narrator.”

As a protector of Googoosh’s story, she recalls double-checking if the prima truly wanted to stock immoderate much revealing anecdotes. “She was like, ‘We’re either going to constitute this memoir oregon we’re not,’” Dehlavi says. “Just similar successful her art, wherever she goes each in, and feels the lyrics, the words, the music, it was the aforesaid with this book. She was similar — I either talk oregon I enactment quiescent and I don’t constitute this.”

In their decennary of drafting, Dehlavi and Googoosh wrote 2 different versions of the publication until they got to this 1 — the mentation that yet felt right.

Googoosh admits her prima has not yet dimmed, not adjacent successful her 70s.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

The effect is simply a memoir that is poignant without being distractingly ornate. Chronological chapters are interspersed with glimpses into Googoosh’s horrific clip incarcerated successful an Islamic Revolutionary Court makeshift prison, wherever she was among detainees who astatine times looked to her legacy, and songs, for airy amongst the turmoil. The publication operates successful a akin mode arsenic we travel to what we cognize is simply a blessed ending — Googoosh getting her dependable backmost to not conscionable sing again but to archer america this long-awaited story.

“I was reasoning my communicative was not important for people, particularly for foreigners,” Googoosh shares with me. “But I was wrong.”

One of the astir moving parts of the publication is however it ends, with the specter of a protestation slogan linked with Iranian women’s rights activism, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” alluded to, adding to the noble grandeur and potent ambition you someway consciousness passim the project. Dehlavi agrees. “I deliberation some Googoosh and I done her communicative and done her memories knew that inevitably it would radiance airy connected the conflict of women successful Iran,” she says.

In the last pages, Googoosh notes that women successful Iran are presently not allowed to grounds euphony oregon sing solo successful beforehand of a antheral audience. She writes with the aforesaid aching longing you perceive successful her ballads, the acknowledgement of pain, but the steadfast content successful thing bigger and amended — successful this case, her “hope that my communicative tin interruption down the soundlessness that surrounds my people’s plight, particularly our women. I commune that precise soon, they, too, volition person reclaimed their voices.”

Khakpour was calved successful Iran and raised successful Greater Los Angeles. She is the writer of 5 books, including astir recently, “Tehrangeles.”