God spelled backwards is dog
Or: How I ended up singing a solo on a Broadway stage
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My band - a guitarist and a drummer, were chosen by my actors, which was fine with me because I don't know any guitarists or drummers. It also helped the feeling that we were a company, which, if you've read the author's notes, is what the show's all about.
The song, On the Willows, must be sung by the band, because everyone else in the show has to say a very individual goodbye to Jesus, moving out of the Last Supper. I asked the two musicians who had more experience singing harmony, and the drummer had. Although he speaks in a really deep voice, he had no trouble with the F#s the harmony part required. So the guitarist learned the melody line. The song is in three parts: the first part is to be sung as a solo, the second part is two-part harmony and then the bridge is in three-part harmony, so I knew I'd be joining for that.
The guitarist has a voice that's made for rock and roll. It's got a certain twanginess and bad intonation that you hear on the radio all the time. It wasn't what I'd envisioned for On the Willows, but
Godspell is, after all, a rock musical, and nobody else was singing like that.
The show had two stage directors and a choreographer who did more of the work than the two directors combined. At the rehearsal (Friday, I think it was) when the band first sang, both directors whispered in my ear that they thought we sounded awful. I said I'd need to find some rehearsal time to work with them. The time I found was Saturday after the run-through. So that meant that on Saturday, the directors heard the same thing - we'd not yet had a chance to work on it. Again, the whispering: Can't
you do it? The guitarist sounds awful. I said that I could do it, but that would be cheating. And let's see how they sound after a rehearsal.
The final dress, the band showed a marked improvement in their singing abilities. Their instrument playing abilities - what they'd been hired for - were beyond reporach, by the way. We didn't get a note. Sunday's opening went very well. People laughed at all the creative things: the Donald Trump bit I'd suggested, The Lord of the Rings (for the servant of two masters parable), our commedia Good Samaritan, etc. The next day, the director and choreographer said "We know you're the musical director and we know you want the guitarist to do it. But we're overruling you. You
must sing that song."
And so, the decision taken out of my hands, ten minutes before the show began, I told the guitarist I his solo was being taken away from him. I'd sing the first section, then the two of them would sing the second section. And the part for all three would be done by all three. At last, the audience could focus on the extremely moving on-stage action and not the caterwauling coming from the band.
