| THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers | |
| Posted by: | GrumpyMorningBoy 03:56 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Looking at Sting's attempts to save THE LAST SHIP naturally has me thinking about the examples we've got from the last few decades when successful pop composers have tried to break into Broadway. While songwriters like Sting, Paul Simon, Pete Townshend, Bjorn & Benny, etc. seemed to churn out pop songs with prolific ease, they took years and years and years -- decades even -- saving up for their ONE BIG SPLASH at trying to create a hit Broadway musical. (or, with the ABBA dudes, two.) The pressure's clearly high. But it seems to me like more often than not, our most successful pop songwriters don't usually succeed on the Great White Way. Am I right about that? It's a little heart-wrenching to see Sting -- an insanely talented guy -- struggle as much as he is. THE LAST SHIP is clearly something he worked on for a very, very long time, trying to churn out something original. Huge points for effort. But yes, I can scoff as much as the next guy... Silly Pop Composers! Don't you know how hard this genre is?!? Go take some Lehman Engel classes for a few years and try again! You're doomed to fail! And I'd love the ATC's chatters to round out the list of pop flops, beyond THE CAPEMAN, CARRIE, CHESS, DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES and others that immediately pop into my mind. I'm sure there are far more failed Broadway shows written by pop composers than I possibly than think of off the top of my head. (For the sake of this discussion, let's discuss musicals from the 70's going forward... we all know that Broadway composers essentially *were* pop composers in the Golden Era and beforehand...) But there are most definitely exceptions to those flops, right? Wasn't Rupert Holmes known exclusively as a pop composer before DROOD? I mean, my god, what a ridiculously talented person that man is. The sonic distance between "Moonfall" and "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" couldn't be further. I can only wonder why he hasn't written more musicals. CURTAINS wasn't my thing. You have to admire someone like Elton John, who seemed to really learn as he went along. BILLY ELLIOT is much more organic than THE LION KING (which relies heavily on a handful of other composers, truth be told). The way that Disney developed AIDA certainly must have taught him an awful lot about how a musical is constructed from the ground-up. Some pop composers really seem to have a gift at letting go of their particular pop sound when they're writing for the stage. I look at something like THE SECRET GARDEN, which really sounds NOTHING like Lucy Simon's pop songs. I look forward to hearing her DOCTOR ZHIVAGO some day soon. In the last few seasons, it's seemed like the pop composers who have tried their hand -- Dolly Parton, Cyndi Lauper, Trey Anastasio, Duncan Sheik for example -- have come at the process very organically. They worked with established theater people... book writers and lyricists who absolutely know what they're doing. The hubris of the previous decades seems to be gone. And so, if NINE TO FIVE, KINKY BOOTS HANDS ON A HARDBODY and SPRING AWAKENING are shows to be admired, is it because these pop composers knew how to adapt their songwriting to the quote-unquote 'rules' of the musical theatre genre, and collaborated along the way with smart book writers and lyricists to keep them on track? Was that their recipe for (qualified) success? What are we to make of shows like THE CAPEMAN, TABOO, CHESS, every awful thing Frank Wildhorn has subjected us to, Randy Newman's FAUST, the Scissor Sisters' disappointing TALES OF THE CITY... etc? Was the fact that these shows' composers came from the pop music world something that worked against them? And... for those of you who know more about the gestation process for THE LAST SHIP than I do, is there something that Sting should have done differently in the development of this show to make sure it landed on Broadway in better shape than it's in? - GMB | |
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| re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers | |
| Posted by: | ileen 11:25 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers - GrumpyMorningBoy 03:56 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| I've often thought Elvis Costello has at least one great musical in him. His lyrics are fantastic and tunes are often complex. Pity he hasn't ever tried his hand at it (that I know of, anyway). | |
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| re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers | |
| Posted by: | MarcoBarco 05:18 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers - GrumpyMorningBoy 03:56 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| The factor you're not addressing is the book, which is usually the reason a show works or doesn't, and by book, I mean not just the dialogue but, more significantly, the story, the idea, the theme, the "why we should give a damn." The failure of the shows you mentioned above has much more to do with the books of those shows than the scores. I'm not saying that pop songwriters are particularly great at writing theatre songs... most of them don't know there's a difference. But look at KINKY BOOTS - it has a good story, a good theme, a reason to give a damn, and an experienced bookwriter at the helm. And I really like Cyndi Lauper's score, but if she were writing a different project with a less effective collaborator, she might not have fared so well, and that wouldn't say anything about her ability to write a good theatre score. | |
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| re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers | |
| Posted by: | Circlevet 09:08 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers - MarcoBarco 05:18 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Kinky Boots is a cliche from beginning to end, I didn't give a damn and the score, for me, failed on every level. I found it a painful evening in the theater. Sting has written true theater songs and, despite a book that demands you get on the allegorical train, I found it superior to Boots on every possible level. | |
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| re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers | |
| Posted by: | BestFriend 12:09 am EST 11/25/14 |
| In reply to: | re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers - Circlevet 09:08 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| The thread is about what works. That and your opinion clearly diverge. An allegory is a story that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning. To create one, a pop star has to create a story that stands on its own, not just serve as a vehicle for nice songs. That requires effective collaboration with a book writer. | |
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| re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers | |
| Posted by: | PizzaRoll 06:05 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers - MarcoBarco 05:18 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Isn't conduct also a big part of it? Like, Sting has worked on Last Ship for years with a top-flight team of theater names, and, on the whole, has played by their rules. Whereas, say, Paul Simon, if I remember correctly, got off on the wrong foot with a lot of people by not only brazenly pronouncing the boldness of his work, but denouncing the lack of it elsewhere. And then there's the likes of Elton John and Bono and The Edge, who couldn't - wouldn't? - be present at vital moments in their shows' respective developments. | |
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| On CHESS, SPIDER MAN, SPRING AWAKENING and TOMMY | |
| Posted by: | GrumpyMorningBoy 05:52 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers - MarcoBarco 05:18 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| I was looking forward to this part of the conversation. I think most all of us would agree with the classic truism that a great book is what makes for a great musical. But with a few of these, we're gonna have to look at the exceptions. Does TOMMY have a great book?!? I really don't know if we can say that it does. If you're not tripping on something, it's gotta seem downright bizarre. I suppose there's an interesting premise at the start, and a somewhat satisfying ending... but egads. The middle is nearly in Lewis Carroll territory. Thankfully, Des McAnuff took pop songs that go absolutely NOWHERE dramatically -- how many times can a person sing "Tommy can you hear me?" without it being repetitive -- and staged them so well that the plot kept propelling forward. Same for Michael Mayer on SPRING AWAKENING. By and large, those are pretty much pop songs with pop lyrics -- look at "My Junk" -- and yet things rarely felt static in the Bway production. The anachronistic microphones, profanity and dance probably helped a great deal, but... ... the actual story and setting was what kept us hooked. And you could subtract any number of songs and the show would have still worked. We can only wonder if Michael Bennett might have been able to pull a better plot out of the mishmash book for CHESS in London, via some brilliant staging, but I think CHESS is a perfect example of a beautiful score done in by its dumb book. But among all the post-mortem analysis on SPIDER MAN, I think many would agree that if the show had had a stronger script and story, the ho-hum score by Bono & the Edge might not have mattered so much. - GMB | |
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| re: On TOMMY | |
| Posted by: | jero 07:26 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | On CHESS, SPIDER MAN, SPRING AWAKENING and TOMMY - GrumpyMorningBoy 05:52 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| I disagree completely. My thought leaving Tommy was "one deaf, dumb and blind kid on stage was enough.' that christmas scene-the acid queen.. so boring to my eyes. I saw it before I deemed it acceptable to leave at intermission. I also missed the rawness of the Who.. the broadwayification of the singing didn't fit well with me. | |
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| re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers | |
| Posted by: | JohnPopa 04:59 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers - GrumpyMorningBoy 03:56 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Somewhere in the middle of this is Dave Bryan, from 'Memphis' and 'Toxic Avenger' who comes from Bon Jovi but was never the band's principal songwriter. I think with Jim Steinman, there's a big difference between writing theatrical music and writing for the theater. Yes, his songs are big and emotional and tell these long, romantic stories, but they also tend to be exhausting and two or three hours of them is relentless, even in a Meat Loaf concert, let alone in a theater where there is usually more of a series of big and small moments along the way. They can't ALL be seven minute epics. | |
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| re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers | |
| Posted by: | keikekaze 05:22 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers - JohnPopa 04:59 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Yes, his songs are big and emotional and tell these long, romantic stories, but they also tend to be exhausting and two or three hours of them is relentless, Plus, good theater songs aren't primarily about telling stories. The musical tells a story, of course, but the individual song usually doesn't. The individual song reveals character and provides emotional or ironic or some other form of commentary on the dramatic moment at hand. Yes, of course, you can get away with a narrative song now and then in a musical. Weill and Gershwin get away with "The Saga of Jenny" because there's a big, whopping production number to go along with it that's like a one-act musical in itself. Lerner and Loewe more or less get away with "Guenevere" in Camelot, even though it's a device to try to get around the fact that the climax of the show is too big (or maybe just too long) to stage. But for the most part, you're in trouble, or prone to trouble, any time you find yourself doing a lot of narrating in the theater, musically or verbally, rather than dramatizing. | |
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| re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers | |
| Posted by: | Chromolume 11:04 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers - keikekaze 05:22 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| I also think this tends to be the problem with a lot of the songs by some of the newer contemporary writers - JRB, Lowdermilk/Kerrigan, sometimes LaChiusa and Lippa, some of the more "cabaret" writers like Gealt, etc - the tendency to get wordy wordy wordy wordy, and to pen very literal lyrics rather than using words that try to convey a more oblique, emotional expression. Often we get story songs from them, created to drive home an eventual emotional point which could have been better expressed without the story to begin with. And pop-infused quasi-melodies that don't tend to soar, but just seem to be basic consequences of the chord changes - so the wordy lyrics dominate, and the music doesn't convey a real mood other than a basic pop/rock beat. (I'm honestly baffled by the popularity of songs like "A Way Back To Then" or Gealt's "Quiet" which just have no creative musical craft whatsoever, IMO. I'm sorry, I just don't think there's one truly interesting note of music in either of those songs, save the musical gesture of "kick-ass time" in the former song.) Looking back at the older "classic" writers (and I know I've posted about this before) you can see the wonderful sense of economy in the lyric, and the craft in building a tune that not only supports the words, but expresses something of its own. Look at a song like "The Party's Over" - the lyric is all recognizable metaphorical images that paint a vivid emotional picture of a breakup without ever literally saying so - and a melody that ingeniously keeps building on itself to bigger and bigger climaxes (and back down from them) as the song goes on. A mere 32 bars (plus the short verse) and we feel everything Ella feels, just through the contour of the melody and some universal images in the lyric. And we feel satisfied because we've just been on an identifiable journey of a full song - we might not be able to qualify exactly how the song affects us, but we know it does. If JRB (or a similar contemporary writer) had written the song, we might have been fed every needless detail about the literal party (or maybe several parties, in "Moon And The Stars" or "I Can Do Better Than That" fashion) over a melody that doesn't soar as much as it might just ramble over the chords, while the hip piano vamp repeats ad nauseum underneath. And we might enjoy the groove of the song, but emotionally, we wouldn't be getting the full-course meal that Styne, Comden, and Green were able to feed us in just one short refrain. | |
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| re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers | |
| Posted by: | ryhog 12:37 am EST 11/25/14 |
| In reply to: | re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers - Chromolume 11:04 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| I decided not to jump into this particular fray, as much as I am tempted, except to say that you have made thoughtful and incisive points that I appreciate. | |
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| re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers | |
| Posted by: | keikekaze 12:14 am EST 11/25/14 |
| In reply to: | re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers - Chromolume 11:04 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Chromolume--come and sit by me! : ) I agree with every word. "The Party's Over" is an example I might have chosen myself of a perfect theater song. (It may be Comden and Green's best lyric--and it is literally a lyric, not a narrative.) Ella doesn't go on and on telling us her life story--we already know the story, because we've been watching the musical. The few perfectly well-chosen words "The party's over . . . It's time to wind up/ The masquerade,/ Just make your mind up/ The piper must be paid" tell us everything we need to know about what Ella is feeling at this moment, and that, by this time, is what we in the audience are feeling, too. | |
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| "Lestat" Elton John | |
| Posted by: | Greg_M 04:34 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers - GrumpyMorningBoy 03:56 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| I guess it didn't last long enough to be remembered | |
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| In the meantime, 'The Lion King' Musical Becomes Most Successful Box Office Production Ever | |
| Posted by: | Neilfrombrooklyn 07:10 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | "Lestat" Elton John - Greg_M 04:34 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| From the Huffington Post | |
| Link | Details, details, details |
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| re: In the meantime, 'The Lion King' Musical Becomes Most Successful Box Office Production Ever | |
| Posted by: | JohnPopa 08:32 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | In the meantime, 'The Lion King' Musical Becomes Most Successful Box Office Production Ever - Neilfrombrooklyn 07:10 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| I can't imagine anyone really attributes the success of "The Lion King" to the score. | |
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| re: In the meantime, 'The Lion King' Musical Becomes Most Successful Box Office Production Ever | |
| Posted by: | Chromolume 11:52 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: In the meantime, 'The Lion King' Musical Becomes Most Successful Box Office Production Ever - JohnPopa 08:32 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| It's not a bad score on its own terms - there are catchy tunes, and the African music is evocative - but it's not an "active" score IMO. Most of the songs stop the show cold instead of propelling the drama (a song like "I Just Can't Wait To be King" even gets its own special set design, instead of being integrated in any conceivable way into the actual scene at hand), and much of the music acts more as a film soundtrack would - enhancing the visual element of the show, but not moving anything forward. Certainly not an unenjoyable listen, but it doesn't really do much to musicalize the (paper thin) story - it just adds atmosphere. | |
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