Yvonne Elliman

Yvonne Elliman
Elliman on tour with Eric Clapton, San Bernardino, California, August 15, 1975
Background information
Birth name	Yvonne Marianne Elliman
Born	(1951-12-29) December 29, 1951 (age 65) Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
Genres	Broadway, disco, pop
Occupation(s)	Vocalist, songwriter
Instruments	Vocals, piano, guitar
Years active	1970–1980 and 2004–present
Labels	Purple Records, Polydor Records, Umgd Records, Umvd Import, Polygram Records, Taragon Records
Associated acts	Eric Clapton, Bee Gees
Website	Yvonne Elliman.com

Yvonne Marianne Elliman (born December 29, 1951) is an American singer who performed for four years in the first cast of Jesus Christ Superstar. She scored a number of hits in the 1970s and achieved a US #1 hit with "If I Can't Have You". After a long hiatus in the 1980s and 1990s, during which time she dedicated herself to her family, she made a comeback album as a singer-songwriter in 2004.

Elliman was born and raised in the Manoa neighborhood of Honolulu, Hawaii; her mother was of Japanese descent while the ethnic background of her father—a salesman for Best Foods—was Irish. Elliman was musical from an early age, playing the ukulele by age four and taking piano lessons at age seven; while attending President Theodore Roosevelt High School Elliman performed in the school band on standup bass and violin, but it was the guitar on which Elliman became most proficient, and she played guitar and sang in a folk music group named We Folk formed with some schoolmates. The group fared well in local talent shows. According to Elliman she was an absentee student during her senior year at Roosevelt but graduated owing to the intervention of the school's British-born band teacher, who persuaded Elliman's teachers to pass her; shortly after her high school graduation Elliman, then seventeen, relocated to London—at her British-born band teacher's suggestion—to pursue a musical career.

Elliman's singing career began in 1969 in London, where she performed at various bars and clubs. At the time she did not like what she was singing. "I hated the music then," she recalled in a 1973 interview, adding "I did it for the bread. I was into drugs and all that, and thought Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane was it." While still an unknown, she was discovered by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, who asked her to sing Mary Magdalene's part for an audio recording of Jesus Christ Superstar. After its release as an album, they invited her to join the stage show's traveling cast, which she did for four years.