Dado Topić, the 57-year-old Croatian rock singer who unexpectedly won the national Eurovision Song Contest pre-selection DORA on Saturday with his band Dragonfly, has told the national daily newspaper Jutarnji List that his band had come out of a garage” and that's where they'll return!

Dado said that he and his band, Drago Vidaković, Branko Kušnar, Branko Badnjak and Iva Gluhak, had been treated as "outsiders" by their fellow competitors from the start, and still can't believe they had won Dora.

Below is an interview by Jutarnji List journalist Klara Ro�man:

KR: Are you happy?

DT: I'm always a happy man. I've got my wife Mira who loves me. I've got two wonderful sons and a job that I love. There's nothing more I need to be happy, although victories, such as this one at Dora, are always welcome.

KR: Can we say that one of your musical dreams came true on Saturday?

DT: Yes. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to stop dreaming now. I've been dreaming since I bought my first electric guitar in a garage in Osijek as a young lad.All these years I've been feeding my need to dream with songs, and I do this with lots of love, patience and courage. This sounds a bit poetic, but I am a poet. For as long as I rememeber I have wanted to be involved in music.

KR: How did you feel when you were announced as the winner?

DT: Confused.And when we were performing the song the second time on the stage of the Crystal Hall of the Kvarner Hotel, at one point I had to close my eyes, because pictures from my memories started to come into my head. I remembered when as a young man in Osijek I entered seven music competitions. My band came last in all seven, and this was because of me. I was a bad singer then. I didn't have a clue. However, I learned a thing or two with time, and there you have it, now I'm talking about what I'm going to do for Croatia in Finland. This is phenomenal for me.

KR: Are you afraid of your placing at Eurovision?

DT: Not in the slightest. I'm not afraid of anything or anyone.

KR: Have you perhaps listened to any of the Eurovision songs you will be competing against?

DT: No, I haven't. To be honest, I have never really followed Eurovision before now. Shows like this haven't really interested me.

KR: Are you going to perform your song Ja vjerujem u ljubav in Croatian or English at the Eurovision Song Contest?

DT: Definitely in English. Despite the fact that we never expected to win Dora, we prepared an English version of our song, which I like the sound of. For me everything sounds nicer in some way when it's in English.

KR: Is this the peak of your career?

DT: Not at all. This is only one step towards heaven.

KR: And where is heaven?

DT: Very far away. Heaven has to be earned, you have to work very hard in order to get to heaven. We are a band which originated in a garage, and we shall never stop respecting the place where we started out. And where we're going to reach from this moment in time, nobody knows yet.