One Singular Sensation ‘A Chorus Line’ composer Hamlisch speaks in Orono

Editor’s note Back Talk is a new series of live, public interviews conducted by Bangor Daily News arts writer Alicia Anstead in conjunction with the Maine Center for the Arts at the University of Maine. The informal conversations, which will take place before or after various performances at the MCA, will be followed by question-and-answer sessions with the audience. Segments of the occational interviews will appear in the NEWS style section and longer, audio versions will be available at www.bangordailynews.com

Marvin Hamlisch, the composer and pianist, performed Oct. 18 at the Maine Center for the Arts. He had previously agreed to do a Back Talk interview onstage after the concert. Knowing this, I was worried when Hamlisch began chatting extensively with the audience during the show. He spoke about his childhood friend Lorin Hollander, the pianist, who lives in Maine and attended the concert. He told of a Maine restaurant owner who delivered a blueberry pie earlier in the day to his dressing room backstage. At one point, he even raised the house lights and conducted a Q&A with the audience. As I listened, I wondered what was left for us to talk about. In the end, however, my fears were unnecessary. After the show, Hamlisch talked with me and with the audience for nearly an hour.

Alicia Anstead: Tell us about your earliest musical experiences at The Juilliard School.

Marvin Hamlisch: When I listened to the radio and heard the number one record of the day, I could hear that tune and play it in any key. So I walked into the Juilliard exam playing “I’m Yours” and that’s how I got into Juilliard – by playing “I’m Yours” in about four different keys. The Juilliard people were wise enough to know that I had this incredible talent that was just going all over the place. But I had this talent and they took a chance and said: “OK, we’ll go with this guy. He’s a little bit different from the rest, but we’ll go with this.”

I’m indebted to them because, at the age of 11 or 12, I said to my father there was no way I was going to become [violinist Vladimir] Horowitz. My father had a great answer. He said if you really want to write music you’re going to have to be able to play your music well. You can’t sit down for Barbra Streisand and play “The Way We Were” kind of good. You have to really play it. So you might as well be using your lessons at Juilliard to learn to play really well.

And those lessons, even though I never became Horowitz, helped me as a conductor. I go back to a sentence that I heard when they gave the lifetime Grammy to Leonard Bernstein. He said that as far as he was concerned, there [were] only two types of music: good music and bad music. There’s good Beatles; there’s bad Beatles. There’s good Bach; there’s bad Bach. When I heard that, I thought to myself maybe I shouldn’t walk with my head down as I pass the Juilliard building because the truth is that the beauty of music is that you can touch people with different types of music.

Anstead: Have you found yourself trying to justify being a popular musician rather than a classical musician?

Hamlisch: No more. I know this is going to sound pretentious, but I don’t mean for it to sound pretentious. I don’t have to come here. I really don’t. Thankfully, I could afford not to come here. The joy that I get [is] from hearing the people laugh and enjoy it, or come to me later and say, “I had a good time.” And I know that those people aren’t going to have such a good time at a rock ‘n’ roll concert. They are not going to be able to put on the radio and hear what I do. There is a real sense that I gave something and got something back. So no, I don’t worry about what I am doing anymore. I am very content with what I am doing.

Anstead: A lot of your music is very upbeat and rousing. Some of it is very sad and emotional. Where do you go inside yourself to find each of those responses musically?

Hamlisch: I think writing sad is easier than writing happy. We’ve all had that one romance somewhere back there and we always go: If only she had come back from Paris. There’s always something that’s left you with that if. To write something sad, you just go to the if, you go directly to if. Happy is a totally different thing. The distance between writing a happy tune and a banal tune is about the distance of one piece of hair. There are so many happy songs that to get one that somehow doesn’t step on the other ones or doesn’t make me say you really stole that from such and such, is, for me, much harder than it is to write sad. I can give you 13 hours of sad. Just look at my American Express bill.

Anstead: What is the outlook for musicals in the 21st century?

Hamlisch: As “Man of La Mancha” is about to open on Broadway, why don’t we get a sign that says “1952” and put it between 43rd Street and 50th Street? Now you have “Oklahoma!” “Man of LaMancha,” “Into the Woods,” and “My Fair Lady” coming from London. You have all these revivals, which as a composer and someone who tries to do new things, I find abhorrent – and yet probably they’ll do “A Chorus Line,” so what can I do? I think that the Broadway I grew up on is gone. That doesn’t mean it’s bad or worse. It just means there’s a new Broadway. And unfortunately, the new Broadway equals commerce.

Anstead: We hear your music everywhere – in the concert hall and in the dentist’s chair. Do you hear versions of your music that make you cringe?

Hamlisch: Not as long as they play it and spell the name right. I’m thrilled. I’m thrilled if I hear “The Way We Were” cha-cha. The only time I really get upset is – because I have a very good ear – if I hear someone singing it and they are out of tune. It really is like the [fingernails on a] blackboard.

Anstead: Can anybody play your music as well as you can?

Hamlisch: You have to pray that other people can play your music because, otherwise, what’s the point of writing it?

Anstead: How do the audiences you play for in New York differ from the audiences you play for in places such as Bangor?

Hamlisch: If you get a laugh in Bangor, you’re going to get the same laugh in New York. But here’s the difference. It’s not in the laugh. It’s not in the applause. It’s really in the attitude. The people in New York are sitting on their hands saying: “So show me what you can do for me. Show me. I am here in New York and I’ve been designated the correct, absolutely knowledgeable audience. Show me.”

If you make them laugh, they laugh. The people in other cities are thrilled you showed up. So it’s that first five minutes they give you. They give you five minutes. My applause tonight when I walked out was the only difference between here and New York. That applause will be bigger and louder here because I made it here and you’re like: “He’s here. Wow!” In New York, if I don’t show up, Peter Nero shows up. He doesn’t show up? Michele Legrand shows up. So they don’t have to grow crazy in the beginning. But that’s really the only difference.