The following interview transcript with John
Kander has been carefully broken down into
segments involving a variety of topics. Below
each segment is a link to the corresponding
video clip. Please attribute research sources to
Mike Wood, Interviewer and the William
Inge Center for the Arts.
|
|
Learning to play piano in Kansas City |
| |
There was a big piano in our house, in Kansas
City, and I found it when I was four. And my
Aunt Rita, my mother’s sister, one day, put her
hands on top of mine and we made, what I now
know is a C Major chord. And that changed my
entire life, that your own hand could make that
sound. I guess I messed around with. Shall I
just ramble on? I studied with a woman, when I
was six, named Lucy Parrot, who looked very much
like her name. She lived about six blocks away.
She lived in a dark house, and she seemed to me,
at that time, to be very tall. She looked a lot
like the Wicked Witch of the West, and she
scared me a lot, but she was also a terrific
teacher, or my memory was for me. And she
had--it is funny the things that shape your
life--she had a complete recording of Tristan &
Isolde on about twenty-six 78 records, and if I
had a good lesson, she would give me goat’s milk
and cookies and let me listen to Tristan &
Isolde, along with her slightyly demented
mother, who was not exactly in this world. So
looking back on it it now, that was pretty
exotic, but I think that’s how I started being
so enchanted with Wagner. And I think she
helped me understand how much music meant to me.
MW: That sounds like a play. Did you take
lessons all through your young life?
JK: Yes. Then, and I can’t say what year, I
think probably when I was getting into high
school, I studied with another teacher, who was
then the head of the Kansas City Conservatory,
whose name was Victor Lebronsky. He and his wife
both taught in the city, and they were a
considerable force in the musical world of that
city for quite awhile. That was sort of it. I
studied a little theory toward the end at the
Conservatory, but mostly I was in school, and I
had been playing I guess now since I was four,
and I wrote. I always wrote. I don’t know how
that happened, or where I got the nerve to.
When I was in second grade, during arithmetic
class, I think the teacher’s name was Miss
Matthews. She asked me a question, and I
couldn’t answer it. And she said, “What are you
doing?” and I said, “I am writing a Christmas
carol.” And she came to the back of the room to
see what I was talking about, and she looked
down, and there it was. It was a Christmas
carol, with big notes on it, words all about
Jesus and the manger, and she made me stay after
school, and she played it, and sure enough it
was a Christmas carol, and they did it at the
Christmas assembly. And I didn’t find out until
some years later, that she had called my parents
to see if it was alright for me to be writing a
Christmas carol since I had come from a Jewish
family, and they said that was fine, but then I
think at that point they sent me to Sunday
school to learn about another kind of religious
approach.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Summer
stock in Rhode Island |
| |
I don’t know how it happened. I got a job in
Summer stock as an assistant conductor, and we
did a show a week. I was there for three years,
first year as an assistant conductor, and the
next two years as a conductor, and the first
show I ever conducted was a matinee performance
of Finians’ Rainbow. And, as I said, we were
doing a show a week, and I walked down, put the
score on the stand, looked at the orchestra,
raised my baton, and I looked down, and there
was the score for Wonderful Town, because that
was what we had been rehearsing all week, and I
didn’t know what the musicians had. It was the
longest downbeat probably in the history of
music. And out came a horn playing “How Are
Things in Glocca Mora?” and I knew I was going
to be alright. It was a terrific educational
experience, to work that intensely, and to do
those shows.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
West Side Story
and Gypsy |
| |
West Side Story had just opened, and somehow or
another I ended up at the opening night party at
a place called the Variety Club in the old
Belvue Stratford Hotel. It was sort of the
hangout for theatre people when they were in
Philadelphia. This was really exotic for me to
be there. There was a bar in the center, I
remember, and, in my memory, like eight or nine
deep trying to get to the bar, and I was, as I
said, not very aggressive, and I would sort of
raise my hand, and couldn’t get a drink. And
this little, short, bald man was in front of me,
and he saw my distress, and he said, “What do
you want? When I order my drink, I’ll get
yours.” He got me a beer, and we talked for a
while afterwards. His name was Joe Lewis, and
he was the pianist with West Side Story. And
that was really all there was to it. We kept
up. Occasionally there would be a call, and
then once I got a call from him saying he was
going on his vacation, “Would I like to sub for
him in the pit?” which is usual. And typically,
I said, “Sure.” So I subbed for him for about
three weeks in the pit of West Side Story, and
Ruth Mitchell, who was the stage manager at that
time, was having to put a lot of new people into
the cast. She always needed a pianist, and that
was my job for that period, and we got used to
each other. I liked her a lot. And then some
time later, very shortly after that as a matter
of fact, she was having to organize the
auditions for Gypsy. Jerome Robbins was
directing, and she asked me if I would like to
be the pianist for those auditions, and I said,
“Sure,” and so I played what seemed to me like
many, many weeks of auditions for Gypsy.
Robbins, I think, just got used to me, and
toward the end of the audition experience, he
said, “Hey, do you want to do this show with
me?” meaning do the dance arrangements, and the
conversation was, “Do you want me to?” And he
said, “Yeah,” and I said, “Yeah.” And so I got
to work on Gypsy, because of that, and from
then, because this business is very small, they
were looking for a dance arranger or dance music
composer, in a sense, for Irma la Douce that
Peter Brook was directing. So I ended up doing
that, and by that time, because the theatre
community is so small, you can really sort of
get to almost anybody you want to. Anyway, I
was living with two friends from my childhood,
named James and William Goldman, and we wrote a
musical together, and it got produced, and one
thing leads to another, and I end up with Fred
Ebb, in our life today. And I’ve often said
that I’m really convinced that if I had had the
guts to get my own drink at the Variety Club
bar, I would never have had a career of any
sort. It was just a series of accidents that
came from that.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Irma la Douce:
Dance music |
|
|
If you, let’s just for example, you’ve written a
song for a musical in a scene, and the
choreographer or choreographer director wants to
expand that. He doesn’t know exactly what he
wants to do yet, but he is going to stage it.
So there is somebody who sits with him and
improvises variations around that music.
Sometimes, as in the case with Irma la Douce,
there was a whole ballet that was created which
didn’t have that much to do with the original
score, but it was just a piece, so that was kind
of more fun, because you could branch out and
spread….it was more creative. To this day, in
shows of mine, even though I have done that job,
I will always use a dance music arranger,
because somebody has to sit there and be with
the choreographer for those hours that he is
creating. There’s simply not time to do it.
I’ll come back in after it’s been done and take
a look at it and rewrite it if I choose to or
not. It’s very interesting. It’s fun, because
while you’re working, while the choreographer’s
thinking, you have to try and be inside the
choreographer’s mind. In Irma la Douce, there
was this ballet that went way up to the Arctic
Circle, and there were penguins in it, and the
cheoreographer was a women named Ona White, and
everybody connected with the show remembers this
story I guess. She said, “John, play me some
penguin music,” and so without thinking, I put
my hands on the piano and played penguin music,
and that ended up as the kind of basis for that
ballet. It’s hard to describe but it’s fun, if
you have someone who is really creative.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
A Family Affair:
The Goldman Brothers |
| |
James Goldman and William Goldman and I were
friends from camp. I’d known Jim since I was
ten years old, and Billy was a few years
younger. And, for a time, when we first really
came to New York, we lived together, for some
years, in an apartment all the way west on 72nd
street, 344 West 72nd street. It was nine rooms
for $275 a month, looking all the way up the...
It was gorgeous. Jim, of course, was a
playwright and went on to….each one of these
people went on to greater glory. Bill is a
screenwriter and a novelist. But we wanted to
do something together, so we wrote this musical
called A Family Affair, and it just said by the
three of us. So, to this day, it’s hard, when
you get into business things about it, to figure
out who wrote the music and who wrote the
words. It was a flop, but it was a really good
experience. We had an extroadinary cast, and we
had a show on Broadway.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
A Family Affair:
Hal Prince |
| |
Hal Prince was a sort of friend by then, and he
came out of town to see a A Family Affair, and
it was a mess, and I have this image of myself
actually going down on my knees to take it over
and direct it. Hal had not directed before.
This was his first show. Anyway, to shorten the
story, he, after watching the director for two
days, he kept saying, “No, no, you’re just being
hysterical.” He said, “I’ll do it.” So for ten
days he worked on the show, and he almost made
it hit. He almost made it work. We, as I said,
we had known each other before that, but that
was the beginning of our professional
experience. I think, the only other time I had
worked with him was to write some incidental
music for a play that George Abbott was
directing called Never Too Late.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Meeting Fred Ebb |
| |
My biggest memory of how we met is that because
of Hal--he got me signed up with a publisher
named Tommy Valando--and Fred was signed also to
Tommy Valando with another…he was working with
somebody else--and in my memory Tommy said, “It
think you two guys should meet each other. I
think you’d like each other.” And that would
have been…Family Affair was 1961, so this would
have been about 1962. And basically what
happened was we did meet each other, we did like
each other, and we started working together very
soon after that. And that’s a long time ago.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Two songs
for Kaye Ballard |
| |
Fred came over to my house. I was living in the
Village, and he had an idea for a song about a
coloring book, and he felt it can be a funny
song, a piece of comic material. We had written
for Kaye Ballard some material before that, and
he thought we could… she was on the Perry Como
Show, and that maybe it would be for Kaye, and
for some reason or other I didnt feel like a
comedy song. I don’t know how it happened, but
we ended up writing a serious song, a serious
ballad, and we gave it to Kaye, and basically
what happened was, on her way to the studio, to
the Perry Como Show, she said, “They’ll never
let me sing this, because I’m the comic, but
maybe they’ll let Sandy Stewart, who was the
singer on the show, sing it. And when we got
there, I don’t remember the order of events, but
it happened just the way she said, and Sandy
sang the song, and over night, it was just
amazing. They got apparently thousands of
letters about this song. The song was a hit, a
real, live, actual hit. And lots of people sang
it and recorded it, and it was an amazing
experience. As a matter of fact, later on we
wrote a song for Kaye which was called “Maybe
This Time,” because it hadn’t worked out with
“My Coloring Book.” So the title was “Maybe This
Time” it’ll work. And it didn’t. She recorded
it, but the song never happened, and then later
on, as time goes on, we gave it to Liza, and she
sang it in her nightclub act, and eventually it
ended up in the movie of Cabaret. When
Fosse—this is jumping—described a song that he
wanted us to write for a moment where Sally
Bowles has just discovered that she is pregnant,
and Cliff has decided that he wants to stay with
her and be the father. He says, “She’s going to
have a moment where she’s thinking, ‘This could
happen. Maybe this could happen.’” What he was
doing was describing “Maybe This Time.” So we
showed it to him, and that ended up in the
movie. And that’s an accident.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Golden Gate |
| |
The first musical we wrote was called Golden
Gate. A friend of Fred’s, named Richard Morris,
who had written the book for Molly Brown, had
come up with this idea, about a musical taking a
character who actually was a real character, the
Emperor Norton of San Francisco, who was sort of
a mad man, a very colorful man, who believed
that he was the Emperor of San Francisco. In
fine San Francisco tradition, they let him be
the Emperor. He would go to restaurants. He had
printed his own money. He was a famous
character. I think he actually existed before
the San Francisco fire. Anyway, we took that
character and wrote a story about San Francisco
right after the earthquake and the rebuilding of
San Francisco, with him as a central charcter.
Richard wrote the book, and Fred and I wrote the
score, and a producer named Martin Tossi almost
got it produced, but it never happened. We
played a lot of auditions. There were some nice
things in it, but the show never happened.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Flora the Red Menace:
Liza Minnelli |
| |
Hal Prince had bought the rights to a novel
called Love is Just Around the Corner, which was
about the early Thirties in New York and a group
of pretty hungry, aspiring artists and the
experience with the Communist party that one of
them has. And it was a terrific novel, but it
came out during the newspaper strike, so I don’t
think anybody….nobody every read it. It’s too
bad. It’s really good. Hal bought it in
galleys, and he thought it would be a good idea
for a musical. He, in those days, always tried
to find something for Mr. Abbott to direct. How
this all came about I‘m not quite sure, but he
wanted us, wanted Fred and me, to be considered
for the score, and so we played the score of
Golden Gate for Mr. Abbott, and that was like
our audition score. And, low and behold, we got
the job. And, we were thrilled of course. I
mean Hal Prince producing a George Abbott show
that we were going to write the score for, “My
God!” Then, while we were working on it, I think
before we really got into serious casting, we
met Liza Minnelli, who was sent to us by a
friend of Fred’s who had worked on a show with
her or was working on a show with her. And Liza
came over to Fred’s apartment, and it just
happened.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Flora the Red Menace:
Allowed to fail |
| |
Flora was not a hit, but something happened then
which I’ll never forget. One of the things…I’ll
preface this by saying that my generation of
music theatre writers, Fred and me, and Jerry
Herman, and Sondheim, all of them were the last
generation of people who were allowed to fail.
The week before—about a week before—Flora
opened, Hal Prince said literally, “Whatever
happens with Flora, the day after it opens,
we’ll come up to my house, and we’ll talk about
a new show, and that was Cabaret. Flora
opened. It was not a success, and the next day
we were up at Hal’s apartment starting Cabaret.
Now that’s impossible today to think of a young
writer or writers who open a flop, and the
producer says, “That’s alright. Now we’ll do
something else.”
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Cabaret:
What if? |
| |
What I remember most is that for months Hal and
Joe and Fred and I would sit in a room and play
“What if…” What if such and such happens? What
if somebody throws a brick through the window?
What if Sally has an abortion? That’s, in many
ways, still the most fun in the creation of any
piece of theatre, when the sky is the limit.
You can say the dumbest things in the world.
In a good collaboration, and Hal was a brilliant
head of collaboration, he was the captain of
this collaboration, but he really knew how to
manage it to get the best out of everyone. So
we would just play “what if…” and then sometimes
Joe would write a scene, or sometimes Fred and I
would go off and write a song. We wrote lots
and lots of songs for that show. In my memory
it was fun. Actually--this sounds really
stupid--but from the moment we started writing,
the one thing that’s continued for forty years,
is that writing is always fun for us. We write
shit and tear it up fast. But even writing bad
stuff is fun. The act of creation for us has
never been torture. It’s been hard, but never
unpleasant. And I think that’s the key for both
of us, why this has gone on so long
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Cabaret:
Listening and soaking |
| |
I listened to lots and lots of German jazz, and
there’s a lot available, and a lot of vaudeville
stuff and cabaret stuff, and I just listened. I
didn’t do anything very organized. Then I just
put it away, with some dim-witted belief that it
would soak up into me, and come out in my own
style but evocative of that period. And that’s
what happened. It’s not a very concious
thing. You don’t say, “Ah, there’s that
interval of a fourth that’s used here a lot. I
can take that.” It all has to do with your
ears. There was a wonderful composer, Carmen…he
did a lot of musicals at a church downtown, Al
Carmine. And a critic once wrote about him—he
said, “Everything that Al Carmine’s ever heard
went in one ear and stayed there.” And in some
way that’s probably true of me too, partly
because, as I said, I like to listen, and I
spend a lot of time in that music library
upstairs, just for pleasure. And those things
influence you. Anyway, it became a conscious
thing with the shows that I researched in that
way. But, at no point, once you start to write,
do you say, “Oh yes, I remember that folk song
or that whatever.” It just comes up through the
seat of your pants and onto the paper, and
sometimes it’s rotten, but sometimes it’s pretty
good too.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Cabaret:
Joel Grey |
| |
There was no Emcee at the beginning of the show
when we were writing it. There was a collection
of what we called Berlin songs. Fred and I
wrote lots and lots of Berlin songs, and I
cannot tell you at what point we all decided to
make it one person, but at that point… and then
I also can’t tell you when it became
specifically Joel. I don’t remmeber there being
much discussion of it being somebody else. But
the Emcee’s role was so—what’s the right word—we
were still so unclear about it, that if you look
at the original poster, Joel’s underneath the
title. The Emcee’s now become a star, the star
of the show, and indeed it was by the time Joel
was playing it, but in our concept, that whole
concept came along so gradually, that I don’t
think any of us had any idea how powerful it
was.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Cabaret:
“Tomorrow Belongs To Me” |
| |
One thing has never been duplicated though in
the film or even in this current version, and
this was Hal’s idea, and it was a really
teriffic one. In the original, the first time
you hear "Tommorow Belongs To Me” it’s sung by
six young waiters, and it’s very pretty. And
this was when the show was in three acts, and it
was sung by these young guys, in a very lyrical,
dreamy kind of way. And at the Intermission,
audiences would feel, “Yeah, I’d like to be part
of that. Wasn’t that lovely?” So, that at the
end of the Second Act, when it turns out to be a
Nazi anthem, you’re really stepping on their
necks, because they would have… It’s saying,
“You could have all been that. We could all be
that.”
MW: How easy it is to be pulled in and romanced
by that.
JK: Bobby found a good solution…Fosse found a
good solution in the film where you start off
with this very idealized thing, and it’s just
pretty, and then as you pull back, you realize
what it is. But I still don’t thnk it’s as
effective as just letting the audience sit on it
for awhile.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
“I Don’t Care
Much” |
| |
Well we only did it once. It was an exercise in
vanity. I was at Fred’s house for dinner, and
there were some other guests there, and we were
boasting about how fast we write. This was
fairly early on in our collaboration, and one of
us said, “We’ll write a song between dessert and
coffee. You clear the table, and…” So they took
us up on it, and so Fred and I, while they were
clearing up, Fred and I went to the piano and
set on the piano bench, and he said, “What do we
write about?” and I said, “I don’t know. I
don’t care much,” and he said, “Play a waltz.”
And we wrote a song called “I Don’t Care Much,”
which was a waltz which ended up in Cabaret and
has now been expanded to be quite a moment. But
it took us about fifteen minutes. We were
showing off, and but it… There is something
about it that’s interesting, and that is
sometimes you can write something (whish) like
that, that’s really terrific, because this is a
very good song, and sometimes you can spend days
and days working on a piece and finally finish
it, and it’s absolute crap. So it’s not always
a matter of application and serious hard work.
Sometimes it just comes.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page
|
|
|
The Happy Time |
| |
The show was about a man who was a real fraud.
He’s a real second-rater, and he comes back to
his home constantly, boasting about prizes and
all sorts of things, none of which he’s ever
won. And, in my memory Gower was told, “You
cannot have Robert Goulet play a failure.” And
that killed us...one of the things that killed
us. The other was something much more
understandable. Gower was fascinated with the
idea of using film projections, and they were
quite beautiful. Unfortunately, they were so
huge on the stage that the actors got to be
about that big. There are many nice memories
that I have about The Happy Time, but
ultimately, it was not a good experience. (N.
Richard) Nash was in agony the whole time, and
nobody could do anything about it. We later
revised it with Nash and did a version, which we
now own a version, that we like very much, which
fulfills his original idea for the book.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page
|
|
|
70, Girls, 70:
A geriatric theme |
| |
We had a really good time with that piece, and
it was a big flop. It ran three weeks. There
were a number of reasons why it didn’t work.
The biggest reason it didn’t work was because it
was never intended to be a Broadway show. It
started off as a…our intention was a small
Off-Broadway piece, and then…Fred can, I think,
describe this more fully than I. Ron Field was
going to direct it, but he said, “It’s got to be
a Broadway piece.” And I don’t know why we were
so stupid as to buy that. But we did, and then
he left the project, and then we never had a
really first rate director on it. It still has
wonderful memories for me and those people.
Everybody but Boy was eligible for Social
Security, and I learned something about valor
and life and people who were determined to live
right up to the point that they died. I
remember there was a 74-year-old tap dancer who
said to us at one point, “Now this show is going
to run a long time, but after it’s over, can I
get your permission to use some of these songs
in my act?” And that’s what the show was about.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page
|
|
|
70, Girls, 70:
David Burns |
| |
David Burns had one of the leads in the piece,
and dropped dead in the middle of a performance
in Philadelphia, and got a hand.
MW: You mean people thought it was part of the
show?
JK: It was a scene near the end of the piece
when the police have come to this home, and so
the only way that they, these old people who
have formed a gang, could protect themselves was
to pretend to be old, and dodering, and
forgetful, and so the police would leave them
alone. And Davy had a line, which he came
downstage from a desk upstage, and had a line…it
was a laugh line. And it got a good laugh, and
he went back upstage, and then he came down for
his second line and dropped to the floor. And
it fit right in obviously with what the audience
thought was happening, and he got a big laugh.
They maneuvered him offstage. The audience
never knew that anything was wrong. They
probably thought, “Well, the show’s out of
town.” And Lillian Roth said, “Hey kids, it’s
time for the next number, the 70 Girls 70,” and
so they did the number. Right after that
Mildred Natwick came out and sang a song about
an elephant, about where do elephants go when
they die, and there’s Davy, in the wings, while
we’re waiting for the police to come. And they
finished the show. It was an amazing
experience.
MW: I would think so, because I can imagine
going into the show there were jokes
about…knowing the whole cast, they probably
joked among themselves, “Will will all finish
this?” or something. Gracious.
JK: Davy was very much alive that day. I mean
he was…he had his hand up under Lillian Ross’
dress saying, “One quick schtop from me honey,
and it will straighten you right out.”
MW: Well, he went out….
JK: Can you imagine a comic dying to the sound
of laughter? It may have been awful, or it may
have not registered with him at all, but the
poetry of it is something. We never really got
over that.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Chicago:
Dark themes |
| |
Bobby always had a vision for it, but the movie
was made for peanuts. In the case of of both
Cabaret, and Chicago, I think most business
types would tell you it’s way too dark to make a
film of. That was true of Chicago in general
when it first opened in 1975. The reviews were
very mixed, and a lot of the critics, a number
of the critics rather, said it’s just so mean
spirited and unpleasant. Then twenty years
later—is it twenty years later—some of the same
critics loved it who had hated it before—same
orchestration, same text, same choreographic
approach--so it teaches you something A about
crtics, and B about time. Cabaret today is far
more successful than it was originally in terms
of public acceptance and critical acceptance.
Sometimes things just don’t come around at the
right time.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Chicago:
1975 vs. 1996 |
| |
It was not lavish, by any means. I mean it was
different color schemes, but it was not a big
lavish production. This is leaner because it
came from Encore Productions, and they did this
remarkable job of boiling it down to its
essence, but there is not an essential
difference. It’s the same piece. As I said the
orchestrations are the same, the text is the
same, the choreographic style that Annie used is
Fosse-esque all the way through. I think we’ve
changed, and that’s always going to happen.
These great prodcutions that we think of of
plays—sometimes we just read about them
historically. You find yourself wishing you had
been there, and if you saw those today, you’d
feel either slightly embarrassed or kind of,
“Well, what’s the big deal?”
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Chicago:
Bob Fosse |
| |
The writing experience was fun before we went
into rehearsel, and Freddy and I could do no
wrong at that point. He was having a good
time. Once we got into rehearsal, and
particularly once he’d had the heart attack,
things got very, very unpleasant, not for me.
Fred had a terrible time, and the atmosphere was
not a good atmosphere, and he and Gwen were
having a terrible time too. At one point I
remember she said, “They can pack his heart in
ice as far as I’m concerned.” I remember lying
in my hotel bed, looking at the ceiling, in
Philadelphia thinking, “I’m going to die here,”
and I wasn’t the one who was having the terrible
time. Freddy was. But it was a terrific show.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
“New York, New
York” |
| |
We were presenting the songs for the film to
Scorsese and to Liza. And when we went down to
wherever the place was that we were playing
these, De Niro was there too, but he stayed out
of it. And we played the songs, including a
song called “New York, New York,” which was a
sort of a lighthearted piece, and Liza and
Scorsese both said, “Fine,” and then over on the
couch, a little ways away from, we saw De Niro
(motions) going like this to Scorsese, and so
Scorsese said, “Just a minute.” He went over
and talked to De Niro, and it was one those…it
was like a silent movie, ‘cause you couldn’t
hear what they were saying. You see De Niro’s
arms moving all over the place. Scorsese was
listening, and finally he…Scorsese came back to
us and said that De Niro didn’t think the song
was strong enough, as strong as one of the other
songs in the movie—I can’t remember the
reasons—and would we feel terribly upset about
going out and writing another one? And we said,
“No, that would be alright.” And we left in a
huff, an internal huff. Nobody knew. Our
attitude was, “Some actor is going to tell us
how to write music?” Well, we went home, and we
wrote “New York, New York” very fast, the
current “New York, New York,” and of course he
was absolutely right. The second one was a
much, much stronger song. I can’t even remember
how the first one goes. But, if it hadn’t been
for him, the song would never have existed.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
The Rink:
The set |
| |
It was the story, really the story of a marriage
that disintegrated, and a kid growing up in the
middle of a terrible marriage, and the old
Italian family clinging to this rink. The set
didn’t change. The lighting, the props and
everything…it was ingeniously constructed, I
thought. I loved that production. I really
loved that show. And at the very end of it, in
that production, when things are resolved, and
the mother and daughter have put their war aside
and are going off into the world, the organ
started again. I had nothing to do with this.
This was just a brilliant thing, and the whole
set rose, just like, rrrrrr, with this huge
sound, and you were left off on a beach, on a
boardwalk on the beach, with the birds. It was
a… I was very proud of that piece.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
The Rink:
Chita & Liza |
| |
It was odd when we did The Rink, it was very
much with Chita in mind when we finally got it,
and the part of her daughter, Angel, was really
not the first lead. It was a big part, but it
was a second lead, and Liza literally—I think
Fred will remember it the same way, which is
interesting—said, “I want to do it.” And I
remember she was in England, and Fred I think
was with her, and she called to tell me she
wanted to do the part, and I said, “But it’s not
the lead. And it’s certainly not glamourous.”
She was playing a thirty-year-old woman who was
really schlumpy, and she said something I will
never forget. She said, “Johnny, I want to do
it because it doesn’t have one spangle in it.”
And I knew what she meant, and she was brilliant
in it, and the audience did not want to see her
without sequins and spangles. It was a very
strange thing.
MW: How about the critics? Would they allow her
to do that?
JK: No, she was…it was a bitter thing for her,
because she was terrific in it, and she’s a
terrific actress. And I remember, Terrence
McNally, who wrote the book, telling me the
story--he went backstage, after the reviews came
out, and Frank Rich…he’d hardly had a sentence
about her performance, and she was crying, and
she said, “He dismissed me in two sentences.”
And Terrence said, “You’re lucky. He dismissed
me in two paragraphs.” There was something
about that show that rubbed him and several
critics the wrong way. I still think it’s one
of the best things we ever wrote.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Kiss of the Spider Woman:
“Yes!” |
| |
You have to be really turned on by a piece, to
write it. The interesting thing about Kiss of
the Spider Woman, as a matter of fact, just
briefly, is that Fred and I were sitting in this
house. We were talking about a project, and
Fred said Kiss of the Spider Woman, or like a
question mark, and I said, “Yes,” like that. And
the next person we spoke to was Hal Prince—I
think he could have even been on the phone--and
we said Kiss of the Spider Woman, and he said,
“Yes,” right away. And nobody, afterwards,
thought it was a good idea. But in each of our
heads I think we saw immediately what the allure
of creating it would be. It’s the story of…it’s
a story that’s told, half the time, in a movie,
in a fantasy, inside a man’s mind. What could
be more musical than that?
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Kiss of the Spider Woman:
A rocky beginning |
| |
It was a very messy thing. There was an
organization called New Musicals, and it was a
great idea, and they made a deal with the
theatre up at Purchase, New York, so we could
have the theatre and work on a show and run it
for six week or eight weeks and change it all
the time, and the audience would give you
feedback, and you’d learn about your show, and
at the end of that time you could stop and go
back and rewrite from what you had learned. We
were the first show up, and there were three
other shows to follow us. My Favorite Year was
one of them and a couple of others. Anyway, the
important thing was that you should be able to
work in perfect safety and with no critics.
Everybody had agreed to that except The New York
Times. And their justification for it still
makes no sense to me. At one point, when we
found out that they were going to send somebody,
seventeen of us, not just from the show but from
the whole theatre community, including Peter
Stone who was the head of the Dramatists Guild
at the time, went down to try and explain to
them that they would then destroy the whole
project. Well to make a long story short, they
did send Frank Rich who hated it, and then that
meant all the other critics came, and the
program was destroyed, and we were the only
musical that got a shot. The fact is, because we
did have that experience, when Garth Drabinsky,
who is from Canada, came to produce it, we had
had that experience, and we could rewrite with
some sense of… My Favorite Year, which was one
of those almost shows, probably would have been
a big success if it would have had that
experience. I think Secret Garden was one of
the things coming up too. Anyway, they would
have all benefited from that experience, but the
whole thing got shut down.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Steel Pier:
Creating a theme |
| |
When we were doing Steel Pier, we were having a
staff meeting really, and somebody brought up
the idea of needing a theme for the leading
character, and we talked about what it would
be. And for some reason I just, “What about
this?” and I put my hand on the piano, and I had
no idea what I was going to play, and something
came out, totally unconsciously, and that was
it. That ended up being in the show and really
one of the musical moments that I am most
pleased with. For me, in terms of melodic
invention is concerned, it has to just come, or
you have to trust that it will come. Many
people work different ways. I don’t mean later
on when you’re really finishing it and deciding
on harmonies and putting in a vamp and stuff
like that. I mean the initial melodic idea.
There has to be… You just have to trust it. If
you think about, “Do I want to go from E to F
sharp or from E to F natural before I go up to a
climactic B flat,” you’re dead. I’m dead. Many
people would work differently, but I’ve always
worked that way.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Steel Pier:
Research |
| |
They did a lot of research, and I was the
connection, partly because when I was six years
old my grandparents had taken me to Atlantic
City and the Steel Pier, and I used to talk
about it a lot, and it was the year—I always
love this fact—it was the year that I was in
Atlantic City that the story takes place, so I
feel a particular affection for it.
MW: Did you ever see a dance marathon?
JK: In Kansas City, yes. Boy, talk about
depressing--at the Playmore Ballroom, when I was
a kid. There were just a lot of people hanging
on for dear life.
MW: Really depressing.
JK: But they weren’t all depressing. We talked
to people who had... We did a lot of
research--Scott and Tommy and Stro--were very
good about that, in getting people to come in
and talk to us about what it was really like,
and they didn’t look back on these as
depressing, and they would talk about you would
go from dance marathon to dance marathon
sometimes which ones had the best food. Or you
went to be seen. You didn’t go to win, because
only somebody was going to win. They would do
these little performances. You’d get a chance
to play your trumpet or whatever, and maybe a
vaudeville producer or somebody would come and
see you and give you a job.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
The next
generation |
| |
Scott Ellis was in The Rink, which was how we
knew him. Then he came to us and wanted to do a
version of Flora, the Red Menace, a revised
version. And an old friend of his, named David
Thompson, Tommy Thompson, revised the book and
he…this girl he had worked with a lot, named
Susan Stroman, was the choregorahper. We had a
very good time. They did it…the space for doing
it couldn’t have been much bigger than this
room, but they did a really terrific job. It
got good reviews too. And we all bonded very
strongly there, and we had a very good time
together, and so one of them came up with the
idea of doing a review of our music, and it
turned into The World Goes ‘Round that Scott
directed and Susan choreographed, and Tommy
Thompson sort of put together, and we had a good
time with that, so that we wanted to work
together, and that’s how Steel Pier came about.
And, what’s thrilling, it’s like Rob Marshall,
people who start off at the beginning of their
careers with you, suddenly become the
establishment, and isn’t that great.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
The Visit |
| |
The Visit is an adaptation of a play by
Friedrich Duerrenmatt, which we’ve a had a very
good time working on with Terrence McNally, and
it was done at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago,
which was one of those really happy experiences
where nobody bothers you. I mean it’s a
not-for-profit theatre. They give you lots of
rehearsal space, and every once in awhile Robert
Falls who’s the director of it comes downstairs
and looks for a few minutes and says, “Great.
Keep on doing it.” And, we had a wonderful
director named Frank Galati, who was also from
Chicago. And we played our six week there, and
now, hopefully, we will be doing it for
Broadway, if we can get the right theatre next
fall.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Over and Over |
| |
There is an adaptation of the play The Skin of
our Teeth, which we did a production of in
Washington. We called it Over and Over, and we
didn’t do it right. We had a lot of work to do
on it, but we had the luxury of seeing it, and
so we’re in the midst of rewriting it, and
hopefully we will be doing a workshop on it in
the next few weeks. And then, after that, we
are doing a…Scott Ellis is directing a reading
or workshop on a musical that we wrote about
thirteen years ago with Peter Stone called
Curtains. It was originally called Who Killed
David Merrick? but then David Merrick died, and
we couldn’t call it that anymore.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Writing
music with a computer |
| |
And in the old days, when I was writing
everything out in pencil, I’d just get finished
with a piece, and Fred would call and say, “You
know, those two lines in the middle of…I want to
change them to such and such,” and I would give
a terrible groan, and I would get out this big
eraser, and there would be knurls all over my
lap, and I’d be cursing him out, because it was
such a mess on the page. Now when he does that,
it’s just, “Okay,” and you just click it in, and
you save the old one in case he wants to go back
to it, or, if the piece is for Chita Rivera, who
sings lower than anybody, and you have to
transpose it, you just put A-flat, and the whole
thing transposes. It’s a miracle, and I like
it. I enjoy it.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Improvising |
| |
Oh, no. Fred and I…it’s this weird thing that
we’ve had from the very beginning. We can both
improvise in front of each other, and we’re both
free to say, “No that’s not any good,” which is
very strange because we’re both very thin
skinned. But in the writing—when we’re working,
when we’re collaborating—that’s gone. We’re
absolutely open with each other.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
The keyboard
is a friend |
| |
Lots of things in life are scary. Most things
in life are scary, but not the keyboard. The
keyboard has ben my friend since I was four
years old, and it’s not going to hurt me. I
don’t know how to say that without sounding like
a fool. It’s not going to produce gem after gem
after gem either, but it’s right there. It’s my
friend, and we get along.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Writing in the
country |
| |
I have a little hut down near a pond, which is
maybe like a one minute walk or two minute walk
from the house. And Douglas Moore, whom I
referred to early on who was the head of the
music department at Columbia and an opera
composer and my surrogate parent when I was
here, had a house on Long Island, and he had a
studio, an old shack, and all of us who knew him
knew how sacred that was to him. And I think a
number of people, myself included, have gone off
to sort of reproduce that. So this is a little
shack, not as big as this room, but it’s glass
in front, so you can look out into the woods,
and I have a piano and a keyboard and a desk.
And the first day…when they finally finished it,
which is really before the house was finished, I
had this old couch in there, and I sat on the
couch, and I looked out through the glass into
the woods, and I watched the light change
through the leaves for a long time, and I
thought, “I will never write another note of
music as long as I live.” And it took me weeks
if not months to get used to it, so that you
didn’t see the beauty that was pouring in on
you.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Kander & Ebb on writing: Getting started |
| |
JK: He will have an idea very often.
FE: But I don’t complete it. I mean why
complete it.
JK: And I never come with a completed melodic
idea, we just…
FE: And the real reason for that is I don’t
want to inform John about what the form of the
shape of a song should be.
JK: Yeah, it could throw me into something, or
lock me into something.
FE: I would tend to write standard form, A-B-A.
JK: Well, lots of time that’s what we do,
though.
FE: John likes to go far afield.
JK: …but at the same time, if I were to bring
him a completed song song, then he’s stuck
with it.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top of Page |
|
|
Kander & Ebb on writing: Simplicity |
| |
FE: I like to be…I like simplicity. I like
being accessible, and I like using colloquelisms
when I can find them, so that people can relate
to your songs on a more personal… I don’t think
a song that is hard to decipher is really a song
at all. And, I don’t know how to write that
way. I don’t particulary admire it. You know
these really obscure, like super poetic…I don’t
get it. I like to say it simply. Maybe this
time I’ll be lucky. Maybe this time he’ll stay.
That’s it.
¹
56K (Dial-up)
¹
100K (Broadband)
Top | | | |
