Michael Kantor: Is whether it felt like a groundbreaking show.
John Kander: What are we speaking of West Side Story? Oh, it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Should I tell you this story? I was out of town. I happened to be out of town at the opening in Philadelphia. It was an overwhelming experience to see it. I was there because I had to do something professionally about another show with somebody else. Anyway, I went to see the show and was just bowled over by it. And I was at the party that night was given at the variety club in Philadelphia at the hotel. There was a bar in the center of the room, and there were about six or seven deep in front of the bar. And I kept sort of raising my hand to get a drink, and I was very unaggressive about it. I couldn’t get a drink, and finally this little short man standing in front of me, who was next in line, said, tell me what you want, when I order my drink I’ll order yours. So he got his beer, and he gave me mine, and we sat, talked for a little while, and became acquainted, and his name was Joe Lewis, he was the pianist with West Side Story in the pit. And we kept up a bit of a connection until some months later he was leaving, and needed to get a sub. And he asked me if I would would be interested in subbing in the pit for a few weeks. And I said, sure. I said sure a lot in those days. And he sent me the score. And for several weeks, I played in the Pit of West Side. And while I was in the Pitt, Ruth Mitchell, who was the stage manager for West Side Story, was rehearsing new people going into the cast. And that required my services. So I was playing those rehearsals and she was there. Consequently, when the time came for her to set up auditions for Gypsy, because she was the stage manager of that, she called me. And for weeks and weeks and week I played in the pit while Jerry Robbins had his auditions. And he got so used to me that at the end of it, at the end of the auditions, he said, hey, do you want to do this show with me? And I said, sure. I said no, I said do you want me to? And he said yeah. And I said. So that was how I became involved in Gypsy as a dance arranger. And from that, I did another musical as a Dance Ranger called Irma La Douce. And by that time, the Broadway community being very small, I was able with Jim and Bill Goldman to have a musical produced. Later on, I met Fred, and we did Floor the Red Menace and Cabaret and all the shows we’ve done since. And I am convinced to this day that if I had been more aggressive and had been able to order my own drink at the Variety Club at the opening of West Side Story, I would have had no career whatsoever.
Michael Kantor: Great. How was Julie Steinlein working on Gypsy? You must have been doing go back and forth doing dancing.
John Kander: Well, he was incredible. He was, we didn’t work directly together, but I was more of a fly on the wall in Gypsy than anything else. And Julie would come in suddenly in the middle of a rehearsal that Jerry was having. He would just, he would burst in. I remember one day. Rushing in while Jerry was working out something with some dancers and he was in a very bad mood, Jerry was. And Julie walked over to the piano and we all thought, there’s gonna be an explosion here. And Julie sat down at the piano and started to play and Jerry relaxed and folded his arms and just sort of smiled. And Julie played a new song or section of a song and sang it at the top of his lungs and Jerry was just delighted. Yeah
Michael Kantor: Let’s jump to Jared for a second. He was pretty brutal as a taskmaster, wasn’t he?
John Kander: Well, he could be, yes. It all depends, would depend, I think, on what was going on with him that day and what his feelings about that person. But yes, he could be very rough when the time came to it. But I also saw him be very gentle with people, not all that often, but he was a strange mixture of things.
Michael Kantor: Arthur Warren said Lennar Bernstein, he was the only man that Lennard Bernstein really feared. Did you fear, Jerry?
John Kander: I think I probably did for a while. I had an experience with him that changed all that. We were working at the New Amsterdam Theater roof, which was at a movie house downstairs. And on the roof were these wonderful rehearsal rooms with, were full of ghosts. And rehearsal was over, and he made me stay, and we worked on a new dance routine for some moment. And it got to be about 10, 10.30. And Jerry got tired, and he said. Let’s quit and let’s go downstairs and sneak into the movies. So we did. And the movie was called The House on Haunted Hill. And I was very sort of cheery of Jerry and his moods. Anyway, we were sitting at the movie and suddenly I saw, I looked over and there was Jerry with his hands up like this. I thought, oh God, he’s got a headache and he’s gonna be hell on wheels in a minute. And then I saw him go. And I realized that he was terrified by what was going on on the screen. And it was that moment of humanizing that changed my feelings toward him or made me stop being afraid. I’m sure there was. I was, I didn’t know Stephen at that time, but I was certainly awestruck by the, by the lyrics. I was awestuck by everything with West Side. And certainly his work and Bernstein’s work and the dancers and it was just not like anything I’d seen before ever. And it was very moving. Even playing in the pit night after night, I would get moved at the same moments always. Sure, I think there was a sense by all of us who work in the theater that this was a very special.
Michael Kantor: What about Hal Prince, was there any indication back then as a producer that he was going to step away from that role?
John Kander: Yes, not I can’t tell you that about at the time of West Side Story, but When I got to know how He did a purpose. It was a production of
Michael Kantor: you would concisely sort of reiterate your sense of, you saw a couple of things with Hal, he worked with you and you got a sense that that’s what turned him on, that he was gonna make an impact.
John Kander: Well, I knew that certainly with The Family Affair when it came in and in the last 10 days of it almost made the show work. I overheard a veteran actress in the cast turning to somebody else and said, did you ever work with George Abbott? And the guy said, no. And she said, he’s just like that. I recognize the signs. And, uh… Howell is a natural, I mean, when he took over that show, it was his, and it was, seemingly reluctantly, I was almost begging him to do it. And once he took it over, he was Howell Prince that we’ve come to know now.
Michael Kantor: What about working with George Abbott? What did you call him? What was he like?
John Kander: I called him Mr. Abbott, and he, I’ve said this before, he was worth four years of drama school in terms of learning how to work in the theater. Even though Florida Red Menace was not a success, and some of the decisions he made probably contributed to that, I had never seen anybody who was able to get what he wanted with such efficiency, and there’s a lot of things about him that I remember. Once he, at the first preview of Floor of the Red Menace out of town, Fred and Hal and I were standing at the back of the house nervously waiting for the lights to go up. Mr. Abbott came by and he said. You can’t learn about a show back here, you’ve got to sit in the audience. He said, who’s going to sit with me? And I was nearest to him and he grabbed me by the wrist and said you’ve got to be in the middle of the audience and we were. He was right. What you have to do is sit and feel what the audience is feeling. When you stand in the back of the house and try and take its temperature from back there, it’s rarely very accurate.
Michael Kantor: Just pick that up for the sake of the phone. You have to sit in the middle and.
John Kander: You have to sit in the middle of the house and take the temperature of the audience and feel what they feel at the time that they feel it. And I’ve remembered that always. And granted, once the show has been running for a while in previews, you may stand in the back, but for most of the time, if you want to learn something about your show, you have to be there. He also, one other thing about it, which I’ve… I have said before, which I think is sort of important, I never in rehearsal saw him hurt anybody’s feelings except on purpose. In other words, I never saw him do anything self-indulgent. If the only way he could get something was to be sharp, he would be sharp. But it was never an exercise. I never him exercise a sort of vulnerable ego. It was never about him.
Michael Kantor: What about, um, One Good Break? Did it feel like that was, I mean, were you, was that, were you investing yourself in that song because…
John Kander: I’m sure we felt that, sure. It’s hard to remember now what our conversation was about it, but it certainly was our one good break. I don’t tend to think too much in terms of, if I’m doing this now, this will lead to something else. Looking back on it and on our excitement then that was certainly the break of our lives and Hal had arranged it. For us to work for Mr. Abbott. One of the best things about that experience was that a week before we opened, Hal said, whatever the reviews for Flora are, I’d like to meet with you the day after it opens, and we’ll talk about a new project. And that project was Cabaret. Now Flora was not a success, and we had the meeting, and we wrote Cabaret, now I can’t having that sort of opportunity today, a young writer. It would be very unusual to think that a producer would take a chance. After the reviews weren’t good.
Michael Kantor: Let’s talk about Cabaret. I mean, wasn’t it, do you think of it as a huge step for Broadway musical theater?
John Kander: I don’t think in those terms. I think, I mean, it may be, or others may think so. I think in my head, everything we’ve ever done is really about itself. And it’s also about trying to have a good time writing something. How should I say this? Writing, composing is really a self-gratifying exercise, or at least it is for me. And the fun we had, and it is fun, no matter what anybody tells you. Sitting around with our collaborators, Hal was the captain of the collaboration, and Joe Mastroff and Fred and I playing what if. What if a rock comes through the window? What if she has an abortion? What if we take all of those Berlin songs we wrote and have them sung by one person? And what if we call him the emcee? That’s really fun. You don’t think at the time that you’re having those conversations that it has any significance beyond the piece itself.
Michael Kantor: But clearly you must have known, you know, Hello Dolly’s running, Fiddler’s running. A piece about abortion, Nazis. You were breaking, you were taking on tough subject matter.
John Kander: Didn’t seem like it. I just don’t think in those terms, I guess.
Michael Kantor: What’s Camp Array really about?
John Kander: The first day of rehearsal, Hal brought a double-page spread from Life magazine of a black couple entering a white housing development in Chicago or outside of Chicago. And he put it up on the bulletin board. And I’m sorry, that you saw the couple walking through this jeering white crowd with such hatred on their faces. That you couldn’t believe it. He put it up on the bulletin board and said to everybody, that’s what our show is about. And that was as good an answer as I will ever be able to give.
Michael Kantor: Where did you find your musical sense for the show?
John Kander: I listened to lots and lots and lot and lots of German jazz and German vaudeville and I grown up listening, I’m a sick record collector and I had a lot of that music since I was a kid on old 78, 10 inch records but I listened a lot to it. Everything I could find. And then I put it away. Hoped that in that some of that style. Creep into my unconscious, and hopefully it did.
Michael Kantor: What about a lot of Lenya in the shot? What did she bring to it? And what was her most important summer?
John Kander: Well, Lenya was a lot of things. Lenya, she was a wonder. And we all loved her and still love her in memory. She, I think a lot of the time too she was our conscience. I can remember I think both Fred and I would check with her. And I suspect that Hal did too if something was accurate. She also did something for me, which… Saved it would save me. We were out of town the critics started talking about Kurt Weill, how this was some sort of watered-down Kurt Weills score. And I went to her and I said, when we get to New York, I think this is going to happen again. And I want you to know that Kurt Weil was not in my head and this was not my intention, but they’re liable to say that anyway. And she took my face in her hands and she said, no, no, darling, it’s not Kurt, it is Berlin. When I’m out on that stage singing those songs, it is Berlin. And I thought, well, if she feels that way, I don’t give a shit what anybody writes. And it helped me a lot.
Michael Kantor: And wasn’t it one of her numbers that sort of encapsulates the moral dilemma?
John Kander: What would you do? Yes, as a matter of fact, when, it could have been when we were writing that song or even before we started working with, when we, we didn’t know how she would feel about playing a role like this seeing as how she got out of Berlin just shortly before she would have been arrested and she said, something I’ll always remember, she said no, an entire country could not emigrate. Everybody could not just leave the country. People had to endure the best they could. Again, she was our conscience.
Michael Kantor: Let’s move to Chicago for a sec. Why is it called or billed as a vaudeville?
John Kander: There was a moment during conversations with Bobby and Fred and myself when we were sort of just talking about the show and moments to be musicalized. I can’t tell you exactly when it happened, but I can almost see the room that it happened We began to realize that the moments, that a lot of the musical moments were based on old vaudeville performers, Sophie Tucker, Eddie Cantor, Helen Morgan, all sorts of people. And somewhere in that moment came the phrase, a musical vaudeville, which really describes what the piece is.
Michael Kantor: Now, initially, you know, it’s a dark show, but it was dark times. You weren’t particularly enamored of it, were you? What was your feeling?
John Kander: It was not my favorite show. In terms of, I think when I approached doing it more than anything else. I can’t tell you how I felt, I certainly look at it now and feel that it’s really terrific. But I was probably the least enamored of the material.
Michael Kantor: What was Fosse’s name?
John Kander: I can’t tell you really why.
Michael Kantor: What was Posse like?
John Kander: He was, when we were writing it, he was terrific. He, it was a very up thing, and he was very supportive and fun. Then, when we started rehearsal, he had his heart attack and a very serious operation. After that when he came back into working with the show. At least in my observation of him, a darker fellow. And I think the show took a darker turn. I, when you say what sort of person was he, Bobby could be very warm and very sweet and he could be a very acerbic. And you couldn’t always predict when or why.
Michael Kantor: Because you see this young dancer officer, G-Shucks, kind of feeling when he was dancing, initially choreographing. But by this time, he’s got a dark side to him, doesn’t he? That’s coming out.
John Kander: Right, but I didn’t know him in a way to be able to tell you what the history of that was. I know that he always had doubts about his own ability, as Fred can elaborate on it, because Fred was closer to him than I. He, I think he said something to the effect once that pretty soon they’re going to find me out. What caused his rather sardonic view of society, I’m not quite sure. I think a lot of people closer to him than I would have to tell you about that.
Michael Kantor: What kind of music did he thrive on?
John Kander: From my observation, it was… Certainly heavily rhythmic stuff that appealed to him a lot, as it is with most choreographers. I remember we were writing a song called Razzle Dazzle. There was a little vamp in it which goes da-dum-da-dump da-da da da da dum da dum and Fred said while we were writing it He said put in two finger snaps da-dup-da dum da da-Dum-Da-Dump Da-da, and so I looked at him so funny. He said all right, but why he said Bobby’s gonna love that when we went to play it for him, we didn’t get past the finger snaps and Bobby started to beam and Fred was right.
Michael Kantor: What is the song, All I Care About, is Love About? How does that work within the show?
John Kander: Well, it’s a song which says one thing and really means the opposite. It’s a monumentally hypocritical statement. Sung by a very, very successful man who has who has taken advantage of everybody’s bad luck for his entire career. Lots of time. I think that’s something which is really contemporary in effect. Every time I read pretentious or soporifically tender quotes from people in great power. I always think of that moment.
Michael Kantor: How was Chicago received?
John Kander: Very mixed. You mean in 1975? Well, when Chicago opened in 75, it got very mixed reviews. And Chorus Line was a gigantic hit. And It was clear that Chorus Line was going to take all the awards, which indeed it did. I don’t know that Bobby even went to the Tony Awards. I can’t remember that exactly, but I know that we didn’t. It’s interesting what’s happened. Now the show is looked on as some sort of icon, And the fact is, it’s the same music, the same text. The same lyrics, the same orchestrations, it’s restaged, but the choreographic style is still bobby, and 20 years later, it’s as if, or 24 years later it’s as if it’s a brand new piece. I think almost the biggest satisfaction I got from that was having some of the same critics who didn’t like it before suddenly like it. And then watch them try to theorize about why. And it just supports every nasty feeling I have about critics’ credentials.
Michael Kantor: There’s music.
John Kander: There’s music going on in my head all the time. You can’t turn it off. And it’s not necessarily my music. It’s sometimes a phrase that somebody says, we’ll set off a Puccini moment from an opera or a song or something. But, and sometimes it’s my own music or things that I’m just thinking about, but it never stops and it can drive you nuts. The only thing that’s good about it for me is that when the time comes to write, there’s usually enough of a, somewhere in that river is something that I can pull up and make use of. It may be really lousy, and it doesn’t mean what’s going on in my head is any good, it’s just there. It doesn’t even mean that I like it. I could be listening in my had to a song that I despise. I wish I could shut it off sometimes.
Michael Kantor: You wrote Broadway my street, as you mentioned when I wrote the word, but what does Broadway mean to you? Like when you were young, for instance, when you first started out, what did Broadway represent?
John Kander: Well, when I was a kid and thought about New York Theater, that was synonymous with Broadway. I mean, I’ve been in love with the theater all my life, even though I was growing up in Kansas City. I would dream about it. And my parents would take my brother and me to New York at spring vacation, and we would go every night to theater and every matinee. And it was the most, it was our golden time. Now, when I think of Broadway, it’s different. Primarily because the word Broadway, I think, is now an artificial real estate term. When I think about the theater in New York, I think of something very rich and flourishing. There’s more activity going on now than there ever was. What’s distracting is trying to conceive of something as Broadway rather than just conceive of something as theater.
Michael Kantor: I think there’s a myth to Broadway that it’s a place where you can do one thing and then become a star. I think that’s a true myth. I mean, what happened to Liza Minnelli?
John Kander: Again, that’s not something I think about. If I think of Broadway in synonymous with theater, I think it is someplace where anything can happen. The theater is a magical place for me. And I’m not talking about in terms of how you become a star or how you became famous, just working in the theater and playing this childish game of what if that I referred to. Thrilling to me and it still is after all these years when we worked on Steel Pier for a year even though the show was not commercially successful it was a deeply satisfying experience because all because all of these people that we were really crazy about we got to play with and try things with and when you think of what we do all of us who work in the theater it’s a it’s like Child game. We’re all playing dress up, we’re all playing let’s tell a story.
Michael Kantor: I just want to go back to your idea that there’s a small group of you working in this very strange world where you do things that the rest of the world just doesn’t do on a daily basis.
John Kander: Well, I think it’s because what we do is it’s this child’s game that when you think about it, we’re playing let’s pretend. We’re playing dress up. We sit around and tell stories. We invent people just like children have their imaginary friends. We invent characters that we come to believe in more than we believe in real people. There’s sort of an eternal childhood that we labor in. It’s like we never got out of third grade.
Michael Kantor: Now, how did, when you started going to see shows like Carousel, how was that linked to popular culture in a way that it’s not?
John Kander: Well, when I was growing up, and really up through my early days in New York, certainly half of the popular songs on the hit parade or in the public consciousness were from Broadway. In 1966, when we were out of town, I think it’s 66, we were our of town with Cabaret before it had even had its first performance. I was unpacking my suitcase and turned on the radio and there were already five songs that had been recorded and the song Cabaret itself was a kind of semi-hit. That was not at all unusual at that time. The next show we did was The Happy Time, and our publisher barely get a cover record. I think Bob Goulet made a recording of a song from it because he was a big star then. And other than that, there was nothing. The music business changed radically right in there. And whether it was the advent of groups, whether it was rock and roll performers and composers who owned their own publishing, I don’t know. But I think more and more From that time on, it was performers writing their own material. Then it became harder and harder for to get recordings of musical theater songs. I remember it stayed that way, and to a great extent, it’s still that way. Send in the Clowns was recorded and became a big hit. We were all really excited because we thought that, well, this is the beginning of a big change, but it wasn’t.
Michael Kantor: Who are the people whose work you feel is the most important?
John Kander: And whose work I like. Jerry Bach and Sheldon Harnick were my great heroes when they were writing together. Not only because I liked what they wrote so much, but because they were just both of them superb craftsmen. Sondheim, of course, I think is dazzling. I like, let’s see if I can say this right. I think all of us are carpenters. We’re all craftsmen. And when I listen to something that I think, where I think the craft is really there, I admire it. There was a moment in ragtime, a whole scene that I think is built around a song called New Music. And I thought, what wonderful craft those people had in enveloping that scene. In that music. So in terms of admiring people who work in musical theater, it’s that element which impresses me most.
Michael Kantor: You currently have two revivals running.
John Kander: Right?
Michael Kantor: What do you think of revivals? That’s a sore sub.
John Kander: I think a lot about those two revivals, I’ll tell you. I think revivals are fine, why shouldn’t musicals be revived as well as plays? Think that it started in the 50s really with where musicals began or maybe the late 40s, musicals were written which are revivable. Before that, for the most part, I mean things like Showboat of course are great works, but before that the books of most musicals not things that you could really perform today with great success. As sort of period pieces, but certainly from Rogers and Hammerstein on, I think musical theater has produced terrific pieces which should always be with us. Gosh, it’s hard for me to say. I’m a big opera buff and not a high C person, but the operatic form appeals to me a lot. And I think of opera and musical theater and arsuelas and opera at all as really kind of the same thing. And I guess. I’m turned on by a lot of things, but when music… And lyrics. A person or help me feel close to a character, then I get excited.
Michael Kantor: It’s a particular character or song.
John Kander: There was a song we wrote for Cliff in the revival of Cabaret in 1980-something which is not used in this current revival. It was called Don’t Go. And I really, I was very proud of that. That moment meant a lot to me because it told us so much about Cliff. And I was sorry to see it go. It would probably never be used again, but I thought it was some of our best work.
Michael Kantor: What do you get the biggest thrill out of? Opening night, or being there as a song, continually wows an audience, or when it makes it out of Broadway into the public.
John Kander: The biggest thrill I get is at the first orchestra rehearsal when the cast comes in. Most everything that happens after a show opens is sort of out of my… Ability to deal with. What goes on in rehearsal and in the final days of rehearsal and when you finally put it together or when you’re in a studio and you see the whole piece running for the first time, that’s exciting.
Michael Kantor: What do you love about Fred’s work?
John Kander: Oh, I love, there’s a lot of things I love about Fred’s work. I love its humor. I love its compassion. I love the fact that he can rhyme like a son of a bitch. I love that fact that can improvise in a way that absolutely astounds me. I think he sort of covers all the bases that a lyricist should ever have to cover in a way that nobody else can quite touch.
Michael Kantor: What do you think historically makes the lyricist-composer collaboration work, and in yours?
John Kander: I can only speak of ours, and I think that what’s kept our collaboration working all these years is because it’s really fun. Whatever project we’re working on, even when we’re writing badly, which is a lot of the time, and we have to throw it away the next day. The process of working together is always fun. It sounds very shallow, but it’s true. Thank you.
Michael Kantor: Thank you. Thanks so much.
