Well, dear readers, once upon a time I had an idea for an album and it went something like this: Tell a love story, from the end of one relationship through the end of another relationship, using Broadway songs to do so. No dialogue, no cheating by changing lyrics or music, no leaps – just to tell a story clearly and succinctly and be able to follow it without any problem. I tried for three years to give this concept to various singers I’d worked with on solo albums – none liked it or wanted to go anywhere near it. I didn’t really understand that at all, but I just kept hammering away at it from time to time. I can’t remember how I met her, but I’m thinking she or her agent contacted me, but Christiane Noll got hold of me and wanted to sing on one of my albums. I heard her and, of course, said yes immediately. I can’t actually remember what her first album was but she did a great job on it (was it Sondheim At The Movies). I then used her several more times. We were supping at Joe Allen’s one night and she said, “I want to do a solo album.” I said my usual response – “Why?” She didn’t really have an answer other than she thought she should do a solo album. I told her that I didn’t do albums just to do them, especially solo albums. I said there had to be a reason and then there had to be an interesting concept or group of songs or whatever and that it had to show off the singer in every possible kind of light. I told her to think about it. A couple of months later we were back in the studio again, and we supped after and she again brought up the solo album, this time with more insistence. But she still couldn’t answer my basic question of why and what’s the point? But I looked at her and then said, “You know, I have this concept and I’ve never been able to get any of my singers excited about it. I told it to her. She practically leaped across the table saying, “I want it, it’s great!” I said, “You’re on.” We had a reason, a purpose, and a point. We had a concept. And that was it.
Now came the hard part. Even though you’d think it would be easy, what with all the great Broadway songs ever written, it wasn’t. It was HARD. In fact, it took eight months to get it right. It was the “no cheating” part that made it so difficult. So many songs seemed so perfect and then suddenly the lyric would go somewhere we couldn’t have it go in our storytelling. Yes, we could have revised the lyric but I was dead set against it and wouldn’t hear of it. The opening of the album was the easiest to set – I knew I wanted a mini-overture that would end with a door slamming, and then an almost spoken and slow beginning of Wherever He Ain’t and then that would morph into the song No More, from The Goodbye Girl, a statement of resolve that the next time there’d be no more of things that didn’t work in that relationship. The second song came easily – it had to be a girl on her own song, had to be charming and funny, and the natural choice was the great Ahrens and Flaherty song, Times Like This. It was perfect. And on we went. We had to do a put-together of two Gershwin songs because of the lyric problem – one was perfect for two-thirds of the song, and the second was perfect for the rest. Problem solved. So far, we had a story that was being told in song and it all made perfect sense. We chose Tonight At Eight for the getting ready to go on a first new date song – it worked beautifully – I wanted it to start slowly and get more and more frantic, and I arranged it so that then it would go to an orchestral break that would lead the girl into a restaurant and her first look at her blind date – and we went into an inner-voiced Look At That Face. And so it went – we needed a “sex” song and we chose Twenty-four Hours Of Loving from The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas. I have to tell you that the first time I got a cassette of her and Todd Ellison, our musical director, rehearsing the arrangement of the song, it was so blatant and hit you over the head that I called her and said a really funny and really rude thing about her interpretation, and then I proceeded to break the song down for her and gave her some of the funniest direction I’ve ever given anyone. And boy, did she get it. It was fun to make certain discoveries – like when we were missing a tiny beat between two story points and I thought of doing just four lines from the Bye Bye Birdie song What Did I Ever See In Him – and that solved that problem. We ended with a lovely Rodgers and Hammerstein song called The Next Time It Happens, which had a perfect lyric for our story – failed romance again, but plucky heroine is ready for another try, having learned some more lessons in love. And here’s where the arrangements on the album MADE the album and concept work – for example, she sings The Next Time It Happens – we get to a certain point and if you listen to the accompaniment you’ll hear the music from the very first song in the underscore – No More. It’s subtle, but we did it a lot (listen carefully and you’ll hear it) throughout the album. We’d go into a song by using the music from an earlier song.
In any case, a week before the session we still were missing one song. We could not figure it out. And I was, frankly, ready to cancel the session and push it back until we found it – I did not want to compromise. I remember Todd and Christiane and I were in a rehearsal room. We’d gone through everything, and it was great – the story was crystal clear and she was doing a wonderful job and the arrangements that Todd and I did really worked well. But there was this damn hole two-thirds of the way through. The song where the girl realizes that the relationship is doomed and is stunned and hurt. We tried everything. I remember stacks and stacks of music and I was just so annoyed that nothing we tried worked. And then we came to a Sondheim songbook – we’d already tried most of the Sondheim oeuvre and nothing had really worked for us. I was flipping through the book and came to Good Thing Going. We’d tried that months before and we hadn’t liked it at all – in fact, it’s one of my least favorite Sondheim songs. But I looked at the lyric and the lyric made sense – in fact, it made perfect sense for our story. In fact, it couldn’t have been more perfect. She sang through it and I just didn’t like it. And then I realized it’s because we were playing it the way it was written and I suddenly got an idea and I said to Todd – take the accompaniment away at the beginning and just play a low octave like a heartbeat, an erratic heartbeat, like someone has just been slapped across the face and is in stunned shock. He knew exactly what I was talking about and started doing it. And Christiane “got” it immediately and started singing it as if she could barely breathe and get the words out. And voila, we had our missing piece of the puzzle – the accompaniment snuck in after about twelve bars and it was just magical. And that is the power of an arrangement.
We had the best time making the album – Christiane was great about taking direction and I threw all sorts of stuff at her and she did it all in her own way. The album came out and everyone responded just the way we hoped they would – with most saying the obvious – why hadn’t anyone done something like that before. It’s not that the concept hadn’t been done, but it had never been done with such rigor and without cheating. Everyone got the story, and I purposely did not provide any kind of synopsis in the booklet. It remains, for me, one of the most successful things I’ve done. Christiane did a live version of the album for several months – I never saw it, actually, but I’m told it went very well. And I have to give a special call out to both Todd Ellison, one of my favorite musical directors, and to David Siegel, who did a fantastic job orchestrating the whole thing.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because it is getting late and I have a very long day and night tomorrow and I must be alert and alive and twitchy and bitchy and manic.
I must say that yesterday was quite an odd and foolish day. I got up early, did the long jog, had a breakfast meeting at Du-Par’s and came to the realization that the magic of the Du-Par’s pancakes has been lost. I mailed some packages and then came home and worked on questions for Saturday’s LACCTAA event. I then picked up some mail at the mail place and then sat down and addressed a slew of packages, so many, in fact, that I got a roaring headache that I still have. After that, I finally sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched two count them two motion pictures on DVD. The first motion picture on DVD was entitled Three Sailors and a Girl, starring Gordon MacRae, Gene Nelson, and Jack E. Leonard as the three sailors, and Jane Powell as the girl, along with Sam Levine (about the same time he’d do Guys and Dolls), and in small sailor roles Jack Larson (who would shortly thereafter play Jimmy Olson in Superman) and King Donovan, as well as Burt Lancaster in a cameo role. What a bad little musical this was – the songs by Sammy Fain and Sammy Cahn (who also produced) are simply mediocre – one mediocre song after another. The comedy is forced and unfunny and the whole thing is just a leaden soufflé gone awry. The only saving grace of the film are Mr. MacRae, who is charming, and Mr. Nelson, who dances up a storm (the choreography is very good). Miss Powell is fine, too. It is very clear why Mr. Jack E. Leonard’s movie career ended with this film. The Warner Archive transfer is just okay – color is fine, but it’s murky and soft and dupey-looking. I then watched the second motion picture on DVD entitled Dream Lover, starring Kristy McNichol. I hadn’t seen it since it came out, and was interested to see if time had been kind to it. Time hadn’t been kind to it and it’s really a piece of dreck. For whatever reasons, by this point in his career, Mr. Alan Pakula, who’d directed some great films, was floundering like so many 70s filmmakers. The script to Dream Lover is the real culprit – the ideas are very interesting, but the writing is just bad. Miss McNichol is fine, but the men and young men in this film are terrible – every one of them. In fact, it’s so poorly cast, male-wise, that it’s shocking. The film has a good score by Michael Small, and good photography by Sven Nykvist, and Pakula’s direction is also fine, but nothing can save this film – and the ending is especially bad. The transfer is okay – color’s fine, and it’s reasonably sharp – the extreme red-bathed scenes don’t fare well, but it wasn’t a disaster or anything.
Today, I shall try to get up really early and do the long jog, because the helper is coming at ten and we’ve got about three hundred more packages to address, and then they all have to be stamped, and then we have to pull all the CDs that people have ordered WITH Illya Darling. And then I have to produce a little recording session for the Ahmanson Theater, so I’ll be working all the livelong day and then off to a session at six that I won’t leave until nine.
Tomorrow, I have a work session in the morning and then the Illya Darling CDs should hopefully arrive by three and we’ll try to get as many of them to the post office as possible. And then I’m treating myself to a good dinner somewhere.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do the long jog (time permitting), address packages, lunch, address packages, do a recording session and come home. Today’s topic of discussion: What is your absolute favorite album of the 1990s and the 2000s – the one you’ve played more than any other. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I get ready to hit the road to dreamland.