Michael Kantor: So, tell me when you’re ready. Tell me about what I hope in rehearsal. It was the first time you heard.
Marvin Hamlisch: Well, you have to understand that my first job that I ever got for Broadway was being the assistant to the vocal arranger on Funny Girl. You can imagine what that was like, I mean, in terms of just thinking, my God, you’re actually going to meet Barbara Streisand. However, the thrill of hearing her sing had already happened for me in terms on television. She’d done a lot of television shows. I mean she was a star by then. But actually seeing her in the flesh walk in, you know, and there she was, was, you now, this side of spectacular. And everybody knew, there was not a question that this woman was a star and that she had a great voice. What I learned from that experience, though, was watching Julie Stein do things to that score to make sure that it was barbarized, you know what I mean? That, first of all, she has a great ear, So, therefore, sometimes she… Tends to make changes only because of the fact that in a show you’re rehearsing two three months you go out of town. After a while for her, holding her to everything exactly the same is very hard. So she would come up with new little different nuances, which basically she’s so good at that that Julie just loved it. But I also watched him concoct that score around her. So it was delicious. And it was an incredible experience for me because. The show had a lot of trouble. Show actually did not zoom into New York as a hit. We were in trouble out of town. I remember one specific occurrence that taught me a lot. You know, being the assistant to the vocal arranger, I was this gung-ho guy, you know, this kid who like, I was just so thrilled to be part of Broadway. It was like, wow. Well, in Boston, the show was very long. And believe it or not, at 11.45 p.m., we were still not finished. The show was still going on. And all of a sudden, half the audience just got up and left, and I thought. What was said, what happened that an entire half, you know. So the next day, all the major bosses of the show are trying desperately to figure out what was wrong with the scene, what was the wrong with song, what was. You learn a lot from the people who basically work the theater. You know, the people who sell the gum, the people sell orders now, the latte. You learn from those people. So I went up to one of them, I said, what happened? Why all of a sudden half the people left. They said, well, the MTA, which is the transit association there, closes at 12, and most people can’t get home, you know? So you learn a lot about that. You learn about what people are thinking through not always the bosses, if you know what I’m saying. You get a sense of what’s happening in the theater. I just knew that we were onto something very special, because she is very special. You know, she really is.
Michael Kantor: That in some way, well, how is Broadway the perfect launching ground for someone like Stratton? You think now, of course she would have evolved, but there were people like her with certain talents that came through Broadway.
Marvin Hamlisch: I think Broadway was the perfect vehicle for Barbra Streisand because this is not a rock artist basically. That’s not to say that she hasn’t done it and been very successful with the Bee Gees. But on her own to do it, I mean the woman really is at heart a director. Directors know stories. That’s what they do. She’s an actress. You know the part when you think about this part that you’re supposed to do a Fanny Brice. I mean I don’t think seven people come to mind. I really don’t. I think you go, we’ve got to get Barbara. So I think it was the perfect vehicle for her. It was also a time in which songs from Broadway were still crossing over into the mainstream. So even though there was a world of rock and roll out there, a song like People became a major hit. What was funny about the whole experience was there were many songs that were in one day and out the other. This show probably had more music taken out of it than most shows that I know of. I mean, if most shows have 13 or 14 songs, this show definitely probably used up another 14 or 15 that were out, whatever. One of the nicest things that happened for me, however, was Julie Stein was the best. I just love this man. I mean he was my mentor, really, he really was. And, um… There is this thing that happens when you’re out of town with a show, and I didn’t know this was the way it was because this was my first show. They tend to, as a show gets down to the point that it’s what we call frozen, meaning that’s it. We’ve done all the work. It’s ready to come to New York. At that point, you get rid of people that are getting salary but by now aren’t doing much. So the assistant to the vocal arranger is not exactly doing anything anymore. It’s done. And I’ll never forget… I was basically, in my opinion, fired from the show. I mean, I didn’t know this is what happens to save salaries. And I’m not kidding you. I went back to the hotel in Philadelphia, crying like a baby. I just thought, what did I do? What did I did? And I called up the man who was the vocal arranger, a great man by the name of Buster Davis, and I said, Buster, I’m just, what’d I do, what did do wrong? He said to me, you haven’t done anything wrong. This is the way it is. They just get rid of certain people. Obviously, he must have called Julie Stein because a half an hour later, Julie Stein on the phone treated me like it was his son and said to me, don’t worry, Marvin, we’re going to keep you on. I want you to have the joy. I’ll never forget. I want to have you to the joy of being with us opening night at the Wintergarten and being part of this, you know? And I’ll never forget. Show business people, you go through terrible lows, but you get terrible highs, you get wondrous highs, and he gave me one of the great wondrous highs of my life, which was to walk through the stage door on opening night with everybody looking, of course, for Barbra Streisand, but as far as I was concerned, I was this part of it, but at least I was still there. It’s something that I always treasure.
Michael Kantor: Tell us a teeny bit more about Stein’s sort of Broadway horses.
Marvin Hamlisch: Melodies, that whole. Julie Stein was the kind of guy, literally, that he would play a song, someone said I didn’t like it, and he says, okay, I’ll do another one. I mean, there was no big deal with him. I mean this was a guy that gushed melodies and he was very fast. He was a short guy, very fast in terms of bum-ba-da-bum-ba. I mean I talk fast and stuff. Julie was faster than me. That’s why I think we got along together. And he would write these songs all the time. Thank you, bro. Julie’s doesn’t work for this. All right, I’ll do the next show next, you know, I mean, he was just always boom, but a boom But a boom He wrote some beautiful songs that we never could use in the show but what he taught me watching him is It’s not always about how great the melody is It’s it’s it. It’s usually not even that at all We were going through a transition period in that time in shows We were now in the world of shows where they were book oriented. They were about the book A show like Gypsy lives and dies on the book. It happens to have great music and lyrics, by the way. But truthfully, that book is what’s holding it together. Well, what I learned is sometimes it’s not how good the melody is, it’s how appropriate everything is. Because you can have the greatest, beautiful song in the world, but if it’s sitting there for three minutes and you find out, you know, I’m just not interested, and meanwhile you’re hearing, let’s say, right? Well, if that- doesn’t resonate just right for that moment, in that scene, you’re in trouble. Even though you could say it’s one of the most beautiful songs ever. It’s one the reasons I’ve always felt, and a lot of people don’t know this, but the song People has a verse. You never hear the verse, anyone singing the verse. But you needed it in the show to get you absolutely perfectly from what she’s talking about. To the word people. Julie was brilliant at that. He knew how to make sure, we call it, that there were no bumps. You know, you have to go from someone talking, when you think about this, you’re going from someone to talking to someone who’s singing. Now, we can’t be, and you go, oh my God, they’re singing, and we go, oh. We are now in that world where they have to be singing in the same character as they were talking, and then come out of it and go back talking, and it’s gotta be, quote, as one. That’s the gift of a real showwriter, not a songwriter, a showwriter. And what Julie Stein was, was a great songwriter. I mean, the guy had so many hits, it’s ridiculous, but he knew when something bumped and he knew when it was just right. And he just knew it. He just had it. He just has that gift. He was born in London. A lot of people think he had the most, in my opinion, New York Broadway sound I’ve ever heard in my life. Man’s born in London. And just a fantastic man, wild, fabulous, and loved life. And I loved him because I remember when he had a big bomb, big bomb that he did years later. And someone called him, I heard this story and someone called them about it. And he answered the phone and said, oh, I know, I know it’s closing, but I’m working on the next one. I mean, he just, that’s the way it was. It wasn’t Shturman drunk to write. It was, it just poured, it was like. Just keep pouring it out.
Michael Kantor: All right, let me just say, oh, we got plenty of time. Let’s jump to a chorus line. This is really perfect. Sure. Why did Michael Bennett, do you think, chose you to compose music for that song? I know you had a history. But musically, what was it that he was looking for?
Marvin Hamlisch: I have to be very honest about the relationship that I had with Michael Bennett and why I think he chose me. I would love to be able to look at you and say he chose because he knew I was this up-and-coming composer and that I really was really great stuff, and that would be a great answer. And maybe part of that, a small part is true. I think that Michael. Loved to control everything and believe me, I loved that he controlled everything. He’d been to Broadway, he was the master, he the guy who had co-directed and choreographed many shows. He put together a team of people, myself, who’d never been a Broadway writer yet, Ed Kleban, his songs, you know, he’s a lyricist, his song hadn’t gotten to Broadway. He put us together, I think, because yes, we were good. He knew that with us, he really could call the shots. I think, obviously, he could have certainly chosen Steve Sondheim, the best we have. Maybe, I’m just conjecturing, this was not a topic I spoke about a lot, but maybe he felt that Steve was already a major star, and maybe he didn’t want to have that kind of, when you have two titans come at you. Maybe he liked the idea of, I can tell these guys whatever I want. And if I want him to do 27 songs for the same spot, what are they going to say? No. What are they gonna say to me? I revered Michael. I had worked with him before as a dance arranger and I knew he was brilliant. And I always say if you’re going to have to go through a tough experience, let it be with someone brilliant. Because it’s worth it. It’s worth. It’s like to be with Jerry Robbins. Jerry Robins came in on Funny Girl and really whipped it into shape at the end. Fine with me. I’m happy. He wanted changes in certain things, I’m ready. Because when it’s coming from someone who you really respect as brilliant, you do it, you know, easily. So that’s what I think happened. I also think that Michael took advantage of the fact that I had just gotten some notoriety with my Oscars that I have won. And I think he liked all that. And we were young guys and we were all just desperate to put on something very special, very new. We never talked about if it’s going to be a hit. We never talked about what it was going to gross. All we talked about was let’s do something on Broadway like they’ve never seen before. Let’s just do that. And so I think that’s probably the reason we all got together.
Michael Kantor: So let’s, you know, dive into sort of the opening of the show and what were you after musically? You know, George F. Kaufman, everyone says, oh, you’ve got to get him in the first few minutes. So tell us what the opening tells you about the show. And musically, you sort of go through this ballet thing. It was different. You’re introducing a lot.
Marvin Hamlisch: The interesting thing about the shows that I’ve written is that I always write an opening number for the heck of it, but usually you have to almost go through the whole show and then come back to the opening because a show like Chorus Line was being invented as we were working on it. You know, this was the first time there was such a thing as a workshop, which really meant that we all got together and just… Felt about certain scenes a certain way and you know things just were kind of moving you know slowly but surely but this was really two steps forward one step back all the time so we went into rehearsal with only three songs and about four hours worth of dialog you know or four hours’ worth of pages of stuff you know so in the original opening number all i had from the original number Well, it was called Resume. And the whole idea of the number was that everyone was showing their resume and talking about what was on their resume. And it ended with them holding their faces, you know, the pictures of their faces. The 8x10s. And a big chord. And that was it. Now months and years go by, and we figure out what the show’s about, because it took me really about seven or eight months working on that show to figure out, what are we really talking about? And the reason it took so long was, in the beginning, there was a very hard, difficult balance between making this about dancers, but not making this is about dancers. At what point can you get away from the dancer? Metaphor and get into the world of we’re all on a line. We’re all in this together That did not happen until one day in rehearsal that Michael Bennett took a chalk and Went wham and drew a line on the floor that didn’t start on day one that started eight months later And that meant we’ve done a we’ve gone a workshop. We’ve gone home. We’d written some more stuff We’ve come back with another and all of a sudden in one of these workshops Wham a line gets literally put down on the Floor And he said, that’s the line that we’re all behind. That’s the one. That’s it. We’re all on the line. That was to me like someone had said the mantra. You know, all of a sudden, I went, aha, I got it. Well, now, with us all on line, it becomes, oh, God, I need this job. I really need this. I mean, everything now changes. It’s not just about dancers and their resumes and showing off. I’m desperate. I am desperate for this thing in my life. So the opening number in a way got conceived of an opening number as if you were doing a very quick amalgam of auditions. And out of all those people, whether they’re dancing rock, whether dancing ballet, whether they’re doing a tap combination, finally the common denominator of all these people is, God I hope I get it, I hope get it. That becomes the mantra and the killer is, oh God, the desperation. I need this job. To me, one of the successes of chorus line. Early on in the show, people in the audience could identify with those people even though the people in audience weren’t dancers. That to me was the absolute brilliance of the show. That you’re doing a show ostensibly about dancers getting a job and what you’re really doing a job about is that we’re all on the line and that somehow or other we’re all in it together. And that was a getting that right But we all knew, and this is the joy, when a show works, one of the reasons it works is because the four or five people that are at the helm, the director, the choreographer, the book writer, the lyricist, the composer, are all doing the same show. You will find, I’m sure, in interviews, that when shows don’t work, somebody thought they were doing King Lear, another person thought they we’re doing Hello Dolly, and another person, you know, like they had different thoughts of where they’re going. Nothing wrong with that except you can’t go anywhere unless we all agree we’re going there. You take a train and you tell the second and fourth car we’re so and so, and the third and fifth car we are so and, there’s going to be a major pile up. The beauty of working on a course line was we had this brilliant guy who was leading us in one direction and slowly but surely we were opening up our eyes to that direction, going that way. Only because of the workshop process did that show really work. I think had we done that with the old rules, which was basically you rehearse for five or six weeks, go to Boston, go Chicago, go wherever, probably we would have never had the kind of time that you needed to figure this out because this was brand new. I mean this was all new. Book was being written as we went. I mean it was a whole new concept which I must say I loved every moment. Every moment, even the moment when I was fired from the show. A lot of people don’t know I was fire from the show because after I wrote At the Ballet, which was, I thought, a terrific song, Michael wanted me to write another song with the word dance in it. And I refused. I said, Michael, we’ve now had the opening number. We’ve seen them dance. We had, I can do that about person going to dance class. We’ve had At the ballet. I said any more and we might, we might. Alienate some of the people in the audience saying well for this we should have gone to the ballet and just seen a show You know I said I cannot in good conscience write a song another song about Dance we can hem and whore around it, but can’t be you know and To prove something or other Michael fired me for a while Thankfully I got back back into business and all worked out
Michael Kantor: That’s great. What about what I did for love? How did you come up with that song and speak in your answer to the idea of an 11 o’clock?
Marvin Hamlisch: I was sitting with Joe Papp and Michael Bennett and I said, you know, I love this show. I said I love the show, I mean we haven’t tried in any way to have a hit song or anything like that, we’re just doing our job and I have no problem with that because what I was trying to do musically was to make the show sound as if it was all coming out for the first time. Like the kind of thing that happens if you’re in with a shrink, you’re on, they ask you a real interesting question and all of a sudden you’re just pouring your guts out. So I didn’t try hard to make too many what I call memorable songs, hummable songs. I wasn’t going for that. I was going for things that were just out of the sky and you went, oh. I said, but you know, I said it would be nice to have a song that at least they could say, and now from Chorus Line I said we can’t do Tits and Ass on Ed Sullivan, we’re going to be in trouble there. You can’t always do the song one because it needs like 16 people. I said, couldn’t we have a song, which they normally call the 11 o’clock song, that’s liftable meaning out of context this song can still work. Now let me tell you what one of the problems was. One of the problems was that this show didn’t have anything like that. So you knew that whatever you did that was going to be liftable was also going to be slightly let’s say cheating because it was out of the style of the show. All of a sudden there was going be this 32 bar song that was somehow going to talk about love and um you You know, we’re not, we are in trouble here. So we wrote this song, What I Did For Love, and again, masterful lyric by Ed Clebram. I don’t know how it became that finally, I think after begging and stealing and whatever, Joe Papp and, of course, Michael being the final decision said, okay. It’s not that it’s the greatest song in the world, but it truly does take care of this one element, which is, hey, play me a tune from Chorus Line, and you can play it, you know, so it had to, I had no idea that the song One was going to actually, in a way, outlast it in a strange way, because One was a much more complicated song. But that’s one of the reasons that the song was there, just to have this little niche. And the way Michael staged it was very simple. We did not try to go for the big ending. We have a very small ending on it. We did try to get the big applause. But 11 o’clock songs are notoriously, you know, the song that you walk out humming or the song that gets repeated 14 times or the son that at least you can say, ah, you, we’ve got this this little pearl. So that was really a, I would say, what would you call it, we all kind of, we took a position, we all negotiated that song, that song was a negotiable, and in the long run I don’t think it hurt us, I don t think it heard us having a song like that, but is it as as pure as it should be? No. You know, so that’s just how it turned out. A vamp is a very important thing because it’s something that your ear goes to. It’s usually a beginning of something. And you keep doing it until finally you’re ready to sing and you go in, you know. And vamps are wonderful because they’re very contagious. I mean they’re only like two or three bars, so it’s very small, and you keep doing it over. So to me, when we started writing one, the first thing I thought about was, you gotta have a vamp. Gotta have a VAMP. And it does keep coming back and forth and back and forth, and it can be, it’s a very good tool to use actually. It’s a good thing to use, people, their ear goes right to it.
Michael Kantor: What’s the big number in a chorus line? How is it a throwback? And also, you didn’t have a Streisand or a lead, so what were you working with musically that way?
Marvin Hamlisch: A chorus line has two types of songs in it. One, the book songs, the songs that are the score that I wrote hoping that it would feel like something that’s just coming out of people’s heads. And then an occasional song song, a real song, and one of the real songs that they’re learning is a song called One, which is a son that they are learning which is like the Hello Dolly number, you know, for whatever show they’re going to get into. The nice thing about the song was that prior to writing it Ed Kleben had come up with the title One and Michael said he desperately needed a moment to go bang with the hats. So I’m going home and I’m already going one bang, one bang. I mean, people always say, where do these ideas come from? They don’t just start off blank. I’m very lucky in respect that when I’m writing, I’m running from, there’s an idea somewhere around, whether it’s the name of the song or what the song has to function as, you know, the show. So I’m now doing… And then I’m doing… And then, I don’t know how… All I remember was that I wanted it to sound eventually, and I don’t know that I totally made this clear, but in my head, in writing it, I wanted to sound a little bit Germanic, a little Kurt Weillian. So we get some… And it’s interesting because there is this one moment in the show where they’re learning that song, where it goes into the real… …Courtois, which is actually the way I actually wrote the song. I mean, I knew I was going to eventually use it as the razzmatazz song. It was written as a kind of a little bit of a Germanic thing and tough and just very metered. And what was interesting about it is I’ve seen this song staged and done just alone, no show. Just, you know, sometimes, you were at some sort of a thing and now the bow is from a chorus line. And wow. I mean, Michael, again, brilliant. I mean he just knew how to stage. This is what he could do. He could stage and make sure you had a home run when he needed it. And so those songs, what I call the song songs, were songs like At the Ballet and Nothing, I Can Do That, What I Did for Love, and One. The other songs were really the plot songs, the songs that we have to really think about. So there were two things going on at the same time.
Michael Kantor: What about being a Broadway composer who made the pop charts in the 70s? Speak of the shift in, you know, our episode that this is in is called Tradition. It’s ironically used. Speak to what it felt like to be writing, what the sound you were after in the midst of a rock kind of time.
Marvin Hamlisch: I have my own thoughts about Broadway and quote the Broadway sound and there’s been a lot of discussion about you know rent and shows like that with the quote rock sound. I could be really wrong on this but I think that in the same way that a blue suit is a blue suits is a blue suite meaning in 1930 I’m sure they had slightly different buttons, slightly different material, but a blue suit was a blue I know I’ll go to see those wonderful movies, you know, with Fred Astaire, and I mean, nobody looks better in tails than he does, but they’re tails, I mean you can buy those. This is really going out on a fence here, but I think to a degree, Broadway has its own blue suits that people are used to, that somehow work on Broadway, and you can only change it a certain amount. And if you go too far off Somehow or other, it doesn’t feel like Broadway, you know? So, yes, I think Rock and Roll is wonderful and is here to stay and we’ll have those kind of shows. But there are rock shows, you now what I mean? And then there’s the Hello Dolly show and then there is the funny show. I mean, I don’t think that it is an accident that the two biggest hits right now in 2003 that we have on Broadway in musicals As the producers. And Hairspray. And those shows are throwbacks to, you know, the fun shows of the 50s. I mean, they really are. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but I’m saying I think there’s something about, you now, there’s certainly something about going into something that’s just a good coat. You know, sometimes a good coat that’s been there a long time is better than the brand new one that you have to kind of work in. So I don’t know how far Broadway can… Take it, how far we can move the envelope. I know that when it comes to someone like, you know, Sondheim, because of his brilliant lyrics and his wonderful music, we certainly have that lane. That’s the man who takes that lane, whether or not that’s a lane that’s going to be followed by others, I’m not sure. What worries me in terms of the time that I was coming out of was that songs that We’re coming out of those shows originally. Were songs that you could see on Ed Sullivan, that you couldn’t see on Andy Williams’ show. We don’t have those outlets anymore for those songs. So when I was writing A Chorus Line, I was just trying to give Broadway hopefully something slightly different in terms of those song songs, but also I was being very comfortable in the Broadway songs. And I think there’s some sort of a comfort level. To those kind of songs. I think there is something that happens when you hear a You just go, ah, you know, you just, you just settle in and, um. And we’re in a period now, I think it’s a very strange period for Broadway, because we’re at a period where there’s, in my opinion, way too many revivals, way to many, which scare me because I wonder if in some horrible way, some, you know, kind of adverse way of thinking that producers are saying, you now, we really don’t trust the writers anymore. We might as well go with the tried and true. Nothing wrong with the try and true, Says to you, well, if you don’t give me one of those, I’m not interested, you know? And of course, I think more than ever, Broadway has become a medium for entertainment, which I never thought of it as, funny enough. Growing up, I never though of it. I always thought of as a place where good work, unique, something that was moving. I mean, I still to this day remember how I felt about West Side Story, the end of West Side story, which at its peak ran 18 months. Best show I ever saw. Eighteen months. My Fair Lady, an absolutely just beautiful show. I mean, these things really got to your heart. I mean they really got you. I think after September 11th we are much more inclined to want to laugh a lot. We want to go out and have a quote good time. And I’m not against having a good time, but I think now some of the seriousness of what musicals were I think has been slightly diluted. And, um… I think it’s a pendulum. I think these things always swing back forth, back forth. But I think the first thing to do is to have less revivals, only because, you know, they take up theaters and, you only have so many shows that can come into New York, you On the other hand, I’m thrilled for the fact that people are coming back. They are seeing musicals. And if, in fact, we are to have this major amount of entertainment, then let’s Let’s do that, because I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Broadway. You know, going, because it’s the American art form. And my biggest wish for America, and I do this all the time in every show that I conduct, because, you know I conduct a lot of orchestras. Passionate about this. I’m not against the children of today, the kids today, the young adults hearing whoever they want to hear, the rock and roll, the hip hop, the whatever. But when I was growing up, we had Cousin Brucie, and then we had other stations that played shows that I never saw before. I never so most happy fella, but I know the score, because it was on WPAT in New York, New Jersey station. And then as I said, Enzio Pinza would come out after He was a hit. And he would sing Some Enchanted Evening and Ed Sullivan. I just want kids to know that Lerner and Lowe existed, Cole Porter existed, Richard Rodgers. I don’t wanna lose that. So on every one of my concerts that I do, I always do some of the show music. And that we should be so proud of. It is such great stuff that it’s important to keep that alive. Not just keep redoing it, you know. My favorite show in the world is Gypsy. Don’t get me wrong, the greatest overture of course. In order to have more Gypsies, we have to have more original shows. For me, the great thrill always is going to a show, which is brand new, and falling in love with it. I mean, when I saw the Fantasticks, I just cried like a baby for days. I just thought, oh wow. Those are moments that you never forget in your life. And I want, as much as I want everybody to see Gypsy, don’t get me wrong, I want them all to see that show because it’s… We should have something for our generation, we should have something for us to say, this is what we are doing. But unfortunately, shows now cost so much money. I can understand the reasoning that a producer is saying for $10 million, let me know what I have and let me not take a chance. Quite understandable. On the other hand, would that mean that we would never do another chorus line? You know, I mean, would you really take a chance these days without a star, without hardly a set, one act, can’t go to the bathroom, one act? That was a chorus line, you know, and you have to have certain things happening to have the ingredients for a chorusline.
Michael Kantor: Opening of the show, opening of the series, why is the Broadway musical so American? What does it reveal about us as a country? Why is it our art?
Marvin Hamlisch: When you walk into a Broadway show, any Broadway show and you sit down, you have this expectancy, this sense of this is going to be something big. This is going be something terrific. I’m really going to get into this. That by itself is a very American trait, this feeling of we’re going to do it. We are, we’re gonna do it, we can, we, this is a, very optimistic, And that optimism is caught in most musicals. They really are. You know, somebody once said to me, he said, you know, even in a bad musical, there’s always one or two moments that are great, because those are the reasons that the people put the money in. There’s always one of two things you go, wow, that’s the thing that’s so American. And that’s what you want to bottle and keep and just have it. And that makes it so exciting. That’s why… That doesn’t just say obituary gypsy that says America that says we’re the ones that says go with us We know what we’re doing here. We come that’s what it’s about
Michael Kantor: You’ve done stuff on film and TV. Describe, you know, how the music in a theater hits you differently from, you now, essentially background.
Marvin Hamlisch: Well, when doing a movie score, the thing is, you’re basically, as people have said, you are basically carpet, which means the film has been shot. A lot of people don’t know this. I mean, the film is shot. Then they bring in the composers and they say, and now help me here, do this, do that. And it can be very exciting. I mean don’t get me wrong, it can wonderful. But it’s not the same thrill as when you do something live and then people laugh and then they applaud. And then God willing they stop the show. And you just go, thank you God, you know what I mean? Or you get a situation where it’s live, you do it, it doesn’t yet stop the shows, you want it to, and then a week later you start working on it and you do. Very different than film. Film is you do and you pray for the best. The other thing, which is a true thing, is in a film your name is not writing on it, your reputation is not right on it. No one is running to the film saying, I’ve got to see this movie because so and so did the score. When you’re doing a musical, your name is riding on it. You’re part of the creative team. You know, that’s a very important thing.
Michael Kantor: The mega musicals, Cats, Phantom, Les Mids, are they musically interesting?
Marvin Hamlisch: I have never bad-mouthed and will never bad mouth, whether it be Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber or any of those mega musicals, because the truth of the matter is, I think America took it for granted that we could do this better than anybody else, and all of a sudden we found out that the Brits are really good at this stuff. I mean, they’re really good. And I thought Evita from My Money’s Worth was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. I just loved it. This business about you know, going after certain composers, or is it musically interesting? Well, it depends to who. You know, what’s the word? You know 100 million people can’t be wrong. Now we can sit here all day and decide, does it sound like something, doesn’t it sound like something? But you know, these are good shows. I think what’s great about Andrew Lloyd Webber also is he’s more not just a composer, but he’s almost like a modern day Siegfeld. He knows how to put these things together. I had no trouble with those mega shows per se at all. You know, I really didn’t. A show, ideally, should not be dependent upon $12 million to become a hit or not. But by now, a small show costs $12,000,000. I mean, it’s unbelievable. I think maybe one of the lessons I learned from a chorus line is sometimes if you have a really smart show and you’re worried about producing it, go off Broadway and do a first-class version of it and let the world come to see it and then they will decide how it goes on to the next step. That’s how Chicago got reborn. I mean, it’s really funny because I love Evan Canter and Fred. Fred was one of my dearest friends. True genius, both of them. And, you know, people forget that A Course Line was a show that kind of usurped Chicago many, many years ago. And then, you now, our movie wasn’t very, very good. And all of a sudden, Chicago came back in this wonderful thing, you, know. Version, which was really done, not even off-road, it was done in a little thing called the encore, and now it’s making history. So sometimes that’s the way to go.
Michael Kantor: He’s Broadway. Are there any stars left on Broadway? I look at who you are, but why is this Charlie? Speak to it today. Are there those stars? And can Broadway still produce those stars.
Marvin Hamlisch: Broadway can certainly produce a star. The problem is that the star needs a place for them to become a star to 49 other states. I mean, I’ll give you an example. I just did a concert in one of the states of America. Why did those people know me? They know me because 20 years ago, I did the Johnny Carson show. I did The Letterman Show. I did Mike Douglas. I did a lot of television. There’s some fantastic talent in things like Les Mis, in Phantom, these are great singers and everything. Now, they can get a standing ovation every night as they do in New York. To get them to the next step they need a show, they need something on television to say I’m here, here I am, you know. Without that, without that it’s very hard to have a star, I mean yes you can Bring a star in like a Banderas. And of course, someone spectacular like Bernadette Peters and things like that, Chita Rivera, of course. But they’re already stars. It’s not that we can’t make the star. We can make the start, but then they need the vehicle for the rest of the world to know them. And that right now is rough.
Michael Kantor: So it’s like the Hollywood musical was a medium, then TV, and now we sort of don’t have the right connection.
Marvin Hamlisch: We don’t have the place to take that star out of 45th Street and Broadway and get them into New Jersey, Connecticut, Boston, Cleveland. That’s the problem, you know. We’re going to show 30 second clip on one of the news networks. That’s not going to help. Right now, all I can think of is that that star would have to zoom to either Letterman or Leno. And even then, it’s difficult because you’d like to see them in the way they do it. That’s why really the only chance they get really is that one shot out of the Tonys, which is at least on television. Television is the medium that needs to help them. And that’s the toughest one to get back.
Michael Kantor: When it’s Stevenson, I’m starting with West Side Story and how did he change the musical?
Marvin Hamlisch: Stephen Sondheim is the most important composer that we have and he changed the musical because firstly, before he did his music, his lyrics, there are no doubt, are the best lyrics that you can have. They are smart, they’re literate, they are well planned, they’re well thought out. I mean he, you know, he loves puzzles and he works them out. And his music is very. Um… It’s very unique in a way because he’s not trying to make you love it on the first hearing. He’s trying to make sure that you listen to it again. You know, it’s not about the first-hearing. I don’t know how many people knew how great, you know, Sending the Clowns was the first time. You just knew you wanted to hear it again, then you hear it and you go, oh my God, very important. You know he’s the most important composer of our time and hopefully, as I say, I hope that there will be someone to continue in that way. It’s an incredible talent to be able to do music and lyrics. Cole Porter could do it, and he could do well. And Meredith Wilson, I thought, did it brilliantly. But it’s not a simple craft. I mean, these are two very, very different crafts, and he’s the best we have.
Michael Kantor: How do you encapsulate the impact of Rodgers and Hammerstone?
Marvin Hamlisch: I’ve done a lot of kind of checking into the musical for my own benefit. And what was great about Hammerstein was, you know, here’s a man who wrote the book, but all of a sudden the book became the real importance. It became the meat and potatoes of the show. Up until then it was boy meets girl, boy loses girl, and boy gets girl. And that was the book. You know, and he just kind of went around and it was the same book over and over just with 12. And those songs, by the way, because there was no book. Could be these songs that immediately were hits because you didn’t have to worry about what are they about. When you start going into Carousel, Oklahoma, these shows that became what we know as the Integrated Musical, all of a sudden you had these songs not supposed to be pulled out of these shows but actually it’s going to sit there and it’s gonna stay there and it is going to say something and it going to push the plot and Hammerstein That was the best. I think, because being a lyricist, he knew what he needed to say and he knew what he had to sing. And that to me is, you know, having that all in one man is wonderful. So they are the ones who really had the revolutionary moment in the world of shows. I don’t know that we’re ever going to have quite that big a revolution again. But I think what we’re looking for, what it seems to me where we’re going, is to try to hopefully work it out so that the new shows will satisfy the entertainment level that you want and that will have a couple of songs that are hummable because people, rightly or wrongly, want to come out of the show saying, I loved when they went blah, blah, they loved that. And hopefully what I’m hoping comes back in the musical, which I’m missing, is to be moved by it, to really be moved, to not be scared of doing something quote important and something that’s, you know, one of those. That, to me, is very important.
