Colored Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz (5 page)

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Authors: Greg Lawrence,John Kander,Fred Ebb

BOOK: Colored Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz
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EBB: I never thought of us as being anything but extraordinarily lucky
KANDER: The really lucky thing—and I cannot tell you how this happened—is that when we first began to work together we fell into a way of working that allowed us to enjoy what we were doing. We never made an intellectual decision about that. We just fell into a way of writing that was pleasurable. But it was just luck that we established that kind of rapport because if it weren’t fun for the two of us we wouldn’t be working together. Writing is never really difficult for us even if it takes a long time. We never
don’t
have a good time when we’re writing. We may write junk, tear it up, and then write it again, but the process of writing is never agonizing or depressing. Even writing badly is fun while we’re doing it. Everything afterward is hard as hell. But even when there’s trouble out of town and concepts change or songs change, the act of writing is never unpleasant for either of us.
EBB: You never challenged me in any threatening way. There was a safety in being with you that I hadn’t often felt with other
people, and a lack of desire to ingratiate. I always felt confident in your affection for me, and that was sustaining. I don’t remember my ever questioning that or going to sleep worried about whether or not you would like me in the morning. There is a freedom, a total lack of anxiety when we work.
KANDER: Which is surprising because both of us are filled with anxiety about many things in life. We carry on even when we don’t get it quite right on a particular piece or we get it entirely wrong. Musically, my crutch is my hands. If we’ve talked through an idea or if you have a lyrical phrase, I have this idiotic belief or faith that if I put my hands down they will come up with something, whether good or bad. Both of us give ourselves permission to be rotten. We may try something and out comes a quatrain or in comes something from the keyboard, and so what if it’s no good? I think that is what we give each other that has prevented us from ever becoming paralyzed. When we go into that room, something gets written. It could be pure shit, but that’s acceptable.
EBB: We may get stuck occasionally but neither of us ever suffers from writer’s block.
KANDER: I don’t know about you but certainly for me, particularly after all these years we have been together, contemplating working with somebody else would be like moving to another country where I didn’t speak the language. You’ve often been sought after—
EBB: I would be terrified. I had an offer some years ago, I think I told you, from Richard Rodgers. It was a show called
Rex,
I think. But I just couldn’t do it for those personal reasons.
KANDER: I would think without having been inside your head that your first reaction would have been how flattering, how great this offer is. Then all of the sudden the reality of it would set in.
EBB: That was a nail-biter. I could never have been in the
same room with Richard Rodgers, much less have what I have with you where I have the freedom to say, “What do you think of this?” or “Look at what I’ve just written.” I’ve always been very secure in our collaboration. That has never been threatened, and when something came along like that offer that might have afforded me another way of expressing myself with somebody else, I was not interested.
KANDER: Other people have approached you over the years to work like that.
EBB: I wrote a couple of pieces with Charles Aznavour, but they were already set. The music was already written and I just lyricized it. Otherwise that would seem like cheating to me. I found in you the ideal companion for what I do lyrically, and I don’t know if that exists anywhere else. I can’t even imagine what I might be doing if we had not become partners. I might have found a soul mate in Cy Coleman, but I don’t think that would have been very likely.
KANDER: The truth is that neither of us ever contemplates doing a real project, a whole piece, with somebody else. Of course, we’ve each done other kinds of projects on the side in television and movies. But it’s like a marriage in which the wife says, “You can go have dinner with this girl but you better not sleep with her.”
EBB: The friendship triumphs. I wonder why that seems so incredible to some people. Why would we not want to hang on to that relationship?
KANDER: It seems to me that you’re dealing with what is most comfortable in your life. It depends on what your ambitions are.
EBB: I don’t understand what could be so troubling that anyone could not go on with a successful collaboration. I’m thinking of Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock. They were so great together as a partnership.
KANDER: Jerry and Sheldon were always my idols, and now that they have been separated for so long, perhaps some people tend to forget who they were. I thought their work was breathtaking.
She Loves Me. Fiddler on the Roof
They inspired me.
EBB: But why would they stop? How terrible could it have been? I don’t think anyone really knows. When you hear their work today, it’s even more remarkable and you have to ask why either would let the other leave. How could you let a talent like Sheldon leave you? And Jerry is fantastic, so why wouldn’t Sheldon have said, “Nobody can write music better than this guy!”
KANDER: What went down between the two of them we may never know, and I wonder if they will ever really know either.
EBB: Sad.
KANDER: I think one of the blessings of our collaboration and one of the reasons we have survived is that our way of working has always precluded conflict. If we’re working and you make a suggestion, I really know what you mean, and it’s not so difficult to try to put my head there. We’re pretty good at switching into each other’s territory. If I have an enthusiasm for something or if you have a particular enthusiasm, even if we don’t share that inclination, both of us will usually jump in and say, “All right. Let’s try this!”
EBB: Or I’ll be stuck for a word and you will come up with it. I might write something and you may say, “My God, that’s really crappy.” If somebody else said that to me, I would feel hurt. But with you I understand what you mean and it’s acceptable because I know you have respect for my work and I don’t take your criticism as a personal attack. Nobody can talk me out of anything quicker than you. If you say that line or that lyric doesn’t seem right to you, I’m off it in a minute and I’ll change my direction.
KANDER: There is very little self-examination that goes on
in our work. We’re always focused on what we’re doing. I don’t think there has ever been much conversation between us until now about why we do anything.
EBB: We have known each other so long and never had this conversation. I remember once I saw an interview with Nancy Walker on a television show called
The Hot Seat
. It had a terrific impact on me. The interviewer read her Walter Kerr’s analysis of how she performed, and Kerr had called her a “Cassandra.” Nancy Walker sat there so bewildered by how the critic characterized her performance style and how he put it into words. She was confounded because she never started out intending to be a Cassandra or thinking of herself that way. I thought of Nancy sitting there and thinking,
Who the hell is Cassandra?
I don’t think we started out intending to be anything or with the intention of pursuing a particular style in our work.
KANDER: I have a similar story that I may have told you. It’s my favorite story about people who analyze the works of others. Years ago Stanley Kauffman was doing an interview with the director Michelangelo Antonioni for a program of film criticism. Kauffman obviously worshiped Antonioni and said words to that effect: “Tell me, Mr. Antonioni, can you sum up what the body of your work is pointing to? What has your message been in your movies?” Antonioni looked up sort of strangely and said, “Well, what do you think?” At which point a very pleased Stanley Kauffman pulled out a sheaf of papers and proceeded to read his analysis of the work of Antonioni. At the end, quite pleased with himself again, Kauffman turned to Antonioni and asked, “Now do you agree with any of that?” Antonioni looked horrified and said, “No!”
EBB: I think the songs that have become what people think of as Kander and Ebb songs are purely accidental.
KANDER: I wouldn’t recognize a Kander and Ebb song if it walked in the room and slapped me in the face. Even after writing
as many as we have, I really wouldn’t know what a Kander and Ebb song is.
EBB: I don’t think I would know either. People sometimes call me and say, “Wow, I heard a wonderful song of yours,” and it turns out to be someone else’s.
KANDER: Sometimes a writer or composer who I know will call when he’s working on a show and say, “I just wrote a real Kander and Ebb song, and I can’t wait for you to hear it.” Then the person plays it for me and I think,
What? Is that what we sound like?
EBB: We ask ourselves, “Why is that a Kander and Ebb song?” and we’re at a loss. I don’t think we consciously do almost anything that people have written about us when they try to characterize our music. They often point out things to us that we never had in mind. There’s an element of pretension there that drives me nuts even though they may be very complimentary.
KANDER: I usually have no idea what they’re talking about. You can write an article about any playwright or composer and imply that the writer keeps looking for material that exemplifies a certain message, but that may not be the case at all. Steve Sondheim’s work has certain attitudes in it that you could identify, but if you asked him about it, I bet he wouldn’t know what they were. Steve works the same way everybody else does—he writes about what interests him. In a sense, I’m much more selfish than others may think. Deep down inside, I write to have a good time and to write things that will entertain me.
EBB: I’m more of an exhibitionist than that. I love performing and entertaining people with what we write. But I only sing when you accompany me—except that one time when somebody was running for office and we were asked to perform at a benefit.
KANDER: I can’t remember who the candidates were, but I remember the story very well and I still can’t believe that you did it.
EBB: It was at the Palace Theater. Samuels. He was my candidate—
KANDER: Howard Samuels. God damn! Let me tell this story because you remember it somewhat differently than I do. You were terribly excited because we had been asked to perform at this rally at the Palace for this gubernatorial candidate, Howard Samuels. But I said, “I’m not for him.” And you said, “What difference does it make? It’s the Palace!” Fred, if Hitler asked you to perform at the Palace, you would do it. You said yes to playing at the Palace, and I refused to do it.
EBB: I said, “Look at who’s performing, Alan J. Lerner and Yip Harburg. And Chita is going to introduce us!” It was kind of swanky Paul Trueblood accompanied me. I sang “Ring Them Bells” and I killed them. I just didn’t see how you could resist walking out onstage at the Palace.
KANDER: I was appalled.
EBB: I told the audience, “Imagine standing here where Sophie Tucker and Al Jolson once stood!” I had never sung before without you.
KANDER: I always hated performing, but you were terrific and people always wanted us to perform because of you.
EBB: I enjoyed those occasional benefits, the one-shot deals. I loved performing. I was very sick for a while, and my voice went. Then I realized I wasn’t good anymore. I became nasal and insecure. What you need is confidence, and I lost that. But even recently we received a couple offers to perform professionally.
KANDER: Four little words: “Not on your life.” You would have liked to, but I just couldn’t do it. I was terrified every time we performed together, mostly that I would forget how to play the piano. It’s absolutely true. I’ve had terrible stage fright ever since college. I was playing a show that I had written at Oberlin. I was all there was in the pit, just me and the piano. Between the matinee and evening performance, I had a drink. It was just one
glass of wine, but it did something to my concentration. When I came back and started the show, I began to think,
Why am I pushing down this white thing? What’s the next thing my hands are supposed to do?
It was as if I were a dancer and suddenly had to remember what muscles to use to lift my leg. I became totally involved in the mechanics of how the machine worked, and I froze. It was only a second or two, but I never got over it. It wasn’t a fear of forgetting how a song goes, it was a fear of forgetting how to make the machine work.
I never lost that stage fright, and that was the reason I stopped performing years ago. Even to this day, I actually think that I’m going to forget how to play the instrument. You and our friend Liza Minnelli used to tease me about that. I remember the three of us once got up and performed a tribute for George Abbott, and the two of you were going like gangbusters. At some point you looked over and saw my eyeballs rolling to the back of my head. During moments like that, I felt that if I took my hands off the keyboard I would never put them back down. You and Liza never teased me about it again after that because you knew it was real.
EBB: I’ve seen your hands shake.
KANDER: It’s never there when we’re working or when I’m playing something for myself. I think if you start to think about how you do something, you freeze. If we’re working on a scene in a rehearsal and suddenly the director says, “We need some music to get from this point to that point,” if I think about it, I can’t do it. If I just go to the piano and put my hands down, immediately my fingers will invent. It has nothing to do with my brain. It just happens, but I have to let myself do it. When I watch you working, I don’t think of it as an intellectual exercise. I think of it as an oral or verbal process. You get the rhyme scheme worked out, and there is suddenly a quatrain that didn’t exist before. It’s not because you sit down and think and take notes and examine
it. Sometimes that may be true, but most of the time it comes out in this effortless way like what I feel when I put my fingers on the piano.

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