A Conversation with Rupert Holmes

Many Barbra Streisand fans discovered Rupert Holmes when he arranged, conducted, and co-produced Barbra's wonderful Lazy Afternoon album in 1975, which also contained some of his songs.  He continued working with Barbra off and on in succeeding years - A Star Is Born (1976) and the Back To Broadway sessions (1988).  Meanwhile, he continued to record his own music and hit #1 in 1979 with "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)."  Earning Tony Awards for The Mystery of Edwin Drood in 1986, writing musicals, plays, TV series (Remember WENN), and now his first novel Where The Truth Lies, at 56 the remarkably multi-talented Rupert Holmes is constantly challenging himself in his ever-changing art.  Always amenable to talking about his work with Barbra Streisand (we exchanged E-mails a few years back), Rupert agreed to this Q&A shortly after his book's publication. He graciously and generously gave me an unprecedented 90 minutes with him between production meetings and writing sessions for his second novel, which I greatly appreciate.  Perhaps never before speaking at such length about Barbra and their various projects, Rupert clearly cherishes his vivid memories of their creative collaborations and how she truly altered the course of his career.  As he explains, "It was really nothing short of a miracle in my life." - Mark Iskowitz

 

WHERE THE TRUTH LIES

MJI:   How does it feel seeing your very own novel Where The Truth Lies in stores as compared to seeing a new album or CD on the shelves? 

RH:    Groucho Marx said that with all the things he'd done in his career, there was nothing quite as exciting as seeing his name on the spine of a book. It's quite cool. It's yet another medium for me to enjoy working in. And it's a very different medium in that when you write a book, unlike all the other things I've done, they've always been aimed at a mass audience. You write a Broadway show, and you want to entertain 1500 people. You work on a Barbra Streisand album, and you hope that anywhere from 1.5 million to 15 million people will buy it and like it. You work on a TV show, you're talking again in the millions. But, a novel you really feel as you write it is for an audience of one. The reader is a very special person, and you are having a very unique kind of communion. Seeing the book on the shelves is exciting. It makes me smile a little when I think of how far I've come from writing three-minute stories in  rhyme with fade endings to a 300-page novel that spans decades...it's quite an adventure.

MJI:   Interesting too that today many stores stock both books and music, which was an exception to the rule back in the 1970s when your career first took off. People can go into a store and see your novel and CDs from shows and other collaborators you've worked with all in the same shop - the one-stop shopping deal. 

RH:    It's amazing.

MJI:   They could do a Rupert Holmes display with all your media together.

RH:    I was in Nashville a couple of weeks ago, and they did just that. I walked into the store, and the manager told me that for the last two weeks he'd been playing Rupert Holmes Greatest Hits over the speakers, Lazy Afternoon, and some of A Star Is Born. A lot of Borders stores have cafes now. They had a small stage with a piano. So there I am plugging my book but working to an audience of about 80 people gathered around to watch me. I talked about the book but I also played some songs, told some stories about my adventures on the west coast in the '70s. I was covering every base. I felt like I was working in a rock club in the '70s, and there I was in a bookstore. It was a fun evening. I did the whole show off the top of my head. I just winged it for 90 minutes.

MJI:   Speaking to an audience which has followed Barbra Streisand's career for years, would you summarize or describe your novel in a way we would especially appreciate.  First of all, it's a sexy suspense mystery which appears destined for the "widescreen."  Will we actually see a movie adaptation in the near future?

RH:    It's about a wildly popular comedy duo, two very handsome and dynamic men who at the peak of their success have an event happen in the vicinity of their lives that casts a shadow over their career, namely the death of a young woman. They have perfect alibis, as they were being seen live on national television when her death would have occurred, so no one can really blame them. Yet, somehow there is a shadow of doubt about whether they've been honest about everything. This young woman's death seems to have caused them to break up as a performing team, and they have no contact with each other for over a decade. Then, in the heart of the sordid '70s, a young, attractive, witty female journalist decides she's going to uncover where the truth lies in their story. In doing so she becomes much more involved with both men than she ever intended and learns far more than is healthy for her to know. It's a tale of dark suspense and dark comedy, and yet even though it is a novel of intrigue, I'm told and the critics insist that it's quite a funny novel as well. It is a tale of suspense, romance, sex, and show business. A lot of the settings in the novel are real places that no longer exist but that I encountered when I first started working with Barbra in the '70s. But, Barbra is not a part of the story, and no part of Barbra's world is part of the story. But, when I went out there, I was suddenly plunged into a Hollywood I had never known before, and I write about that as a backdrop for the murder mystery and the comedy of Where The Truth Lies.

MJI:   Well, that's a very complete summary. The movie adaptation? I understand that Atom Egoyan, who has done some wonderful films, is the man in charge, so tell us what's going on with the movie.

RH:    Atom Egoyan is a filmmaker whom I've admired so much. He wrote and directed a film called The Sweet Hereafter and received Academy Award nominations. He also did a very intriguing film called Exotica. Some brilliant person at CAA got this novel to him before it was even in galleys. They got it to him in a ring binder, and he read it. Then, long before I had even finished proofreading the novel, he had offered to buy the film rights. He views it as the next film he's going to make. He's at work on the script, so it's going to be his script based on my novel, and we're conferring on it. I am very excited to see what he's made of the story. All of his insights and comments that he's made to me have been right on the money and very deft. 

MJI:   Do you picture any particular actors or actresses? When you were writing the novel did you see anyone from real life in your mind as these characters?

RH:    I pictured in my mind --

MJI:   Combinations of people.

RH:    Exactly.

MJI:   That's more fun.

RH:    Yes.

MJI:   You can create a person who's the combination of five people. Now, who else can do that?

RH:     Right, exactly. Not Darwin. I saw one character, Lanny Morris, being a mix of the very soulful-looking Danny Kaye that you can see in movies like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. For Vince Collins, I sort of had in mind a generic, good-looking, suave Italian singer. For O'Connor, the woman who tells the story, I never really saw her face, because I was too close with her to take a step away and look at her. I was inhabiting her while I wrote the novel, because she's the narrator.

MJI:   What led you to write from the point of view of your novel's protagonist, the young female journalist K. O'Connor? 

RH:    I think what would be of interest to fans of Barbra's is that when I was conceiving the novel, I realized that the narrator had to be the woman. A tale of suspense works best when told in the first person, and the person who is telling the story is the one who is in danger and is also the one who doesn't know about the hidden secrets. It's not as gripping from another person's point of view. I called my editor and said I'm very concerned about pulling off the voice of a woman. He said, "Don't be ridiculous. Most of your best songs are sung by women. 'Lullaby For Myself' by Barbra Streisand is very much a woman's song." He said, "A lot of the things you've written, like for Barbra and for other female singers, are completely credible. And when you write plays, my favorite dialogue is the stuff that you write for the women, so you shouldn't have any problem with that." This reassured me. I think that writing "Lullaby For Myself" for Barbra (on the Superman album) did in fact start to prepare me for writing a novel with the central character being a woman. 

MJI:   What was the motivation to definitely make the jump to explore this different medium, to write the novel? 

RH:    Like the song "Everything," I've never accepted that there are things I want to do that I won't eventually do. When I was a songwriter, I knew I wanted to write for theater, I knew I wanted to write musicals. But, I also knew I wanted to write comedies and thrillers. I've always intended to write a novel. It's only been a matter of being able to get the time and in some cases the opportunity to be able to do that. The other thing that I do is when I feel I've worked in a certain medium for a certain amount of time, I'm always eager to get to a different storytelling form, because it makes it very fresh for me. I've managed to feel young because I'm always in a new arena, I'm always a novice, I'm always just starting out. I trick myself into thinking I'm still 23, 24 years old, or 19, because I'm new at this field. So, here I am a novelist, and I'm just learning how it feels to be a novelist, etc. Seeing someone on a train who's reading your book --

MJI:   That's got to be amazing.

RH:    It's amazing. You want to run up to them and say, that's great, but you don't. What you try to do is look very much like your photo on the back of the jacket and hope they'll notice. It's been a very exciting year in my life.

LAZY AFTERNOON

MJI:    Mainstream popular audiences may know you best for your huge 1979 #1 hit "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)," but we Streisand fans knew of you earlier for co-producing and arranging/conducting Barbra's 1975 Lazy Afternoon album, not to mention writing four of its songs.  Subsequently, you wrote "Everything," "Queen Bee," and "Lullaby For Myself" for A Star Is Born, the last of which wasn't released until Barbra's Superman album.  In 1988 you began an unfinished recording project with Barbra called Back To Broadway. How surprised were you when Barbra telephoned to praise your 1974 debut solo album Widescreen and ask you to arrange and produce some of these songs for her own album, and when exactly did this initial contact happen?  

RH:    It had such an impact on me that I'm not sure I can always remember all of the details leading up to the phone call. All I know is that it was as if someone flipped a switch, and suddenly my life was wired with electricity, and I saw what it was like to have light everywhere. It was really nothing short of a miracle in my life. To suddenly be on the phone with Barbra Streisand and to have Barbra talking about my work - obviously she had listened to it and liked it, she certainly didn't need to be talking to Rupert Holmes to make her day - standing in my small apartment and realizing that on the other end of the phone was a woman whose work I had admired, it never occurred to me I would ever even meet her. I was in New York and was soon sent a first-class ticket to fly to LA to meet Barbra, if you can imagine such a journey. To show you how unaffected she was - I didn't drive, I still don't drive, one of my quirkier traits - Barbra picked me up.

MJI:   She was behind the wheel?

RH:    Yes, she was behind the wheel. She picked me up, and I think the very first day we may have gone to look at a rough cut of Funny Lady. When we arrived at her Malibu home, she put on my album and started singing along with the songs without the lyric sheet in her hand most of the time. She had heard it obviously a lot and really liked it. I was sitting there thinking, "So this is what happens when your entire life changes."  [Listen to an excerpt from Rupert's 1974 recording of "Widescreen."]

MJI:   Did you already know from the phone call that your trip out there was because she had an album in the planning and particularly wanted you to do production?

RH:    Yeah, she basically was saying I want to record some of these songs, and maybe you might want to write some new ones for me as well. I think we just started talking about when we might go into a studio and which songs we might record. I came back and wrote "My Father's Song," and on my next trip out we wrote "By The Way" together in Malibu. The second trip out, I stayed in her guest house at her estate on Carolwood, because we were working quite a bit. This way, if she had an hour free, we could work at the piano. I wrote a lot of the charts in her home on Carolwood, the initial arrangements. It's a very nice place to be working, I can assure you.

MJI:   It's no longer there, but I assume it was beautiful, as you say.

RH:    She sold her house on Carolwood?

MJI:   It's gone. It was actually sold, and then according to my information, the structure was demolished.

RH:    Wow, I didn't know that. I'm sure you're right. It's amazing to think that's gone now. I'll have to put that in a setting in one of my novels. It was a beautiful, beautiful home. I remember Barbra had her 33rd birthday party there. She had a beautiful living room with a very small balcony that could be approached from her guest bedroom, so you could look down at the living room. I found a string quartet to sit up there on the balcony and play various selections from her own recordings. It was a beautiful party. 

MJI:   It must have been.

RH:    Ryan O'Neal was there, Roddy McDowall, Sue Mengers, a pretty interesting gathering.

MJI:   She had not had any concept for this album before she brought you on board, right? It was "let's figure it out together"?

RH:    I don't think she did. What I thought to myself was that we could make something that was more a traditional Barbra album using new songs by younger writers. I didn't think it had to be a rock and roll album. I didn't even think it had to be Stoney End or anything like that. I thought it could be a much more lush and classical pop LP in the tradition of the earliest Barbra albums I knew and loved. I was thinking a little bit of Sinatra's album Nice and Easy which allowed him to sing these warm, comfortable arrangements. The one cut on the album I think breaks that mood and sometimes think if I had the chance again I'd record something different was "Shake Me, Wake Me." But, other than that song, I think most of the album was an extremely traditional Barbra album. Just happens that the writers were young, and Barbra sounded young. It was pretty much the album that I hoped we would make. I know that Barbra has very high regards for it still.

MJI:   She really has.

RH:    That's a wonderful thing.

MJI:   And it was recorded with Barbra and a live orchestra in just three six-hour sessions in LA?

RH:    We did it in three sessions, and one of them may not even have been six hours. For some strange reason the very first session was at the Capitol Records recording studio, and I'm trying to remember why. That's the building that looks like a stack of 45s, very legendary building. I think we couldn't get any of the other big studios that were free. So we were recording a Columbia album at Capitol Records. That was the first session, and I believe on that session we did "Widescreen" and "Letters That Cross In The Mail" or "My Father's Song." 

MJI:   "Widescreen" you recorded first because that was Barbra's big favorite?

RH:    Yes, absolutely. I do remember that "Lazy Afternoon" was at Record Plant, because of the set-up that we had for that. "You and I" was also from that same session, I believe.

MJI:   Please tell me about the actual recording sessions, working with Barbra, and how you managed such efficiency and economy.  Feel free to mention specific songs, as we know them quite well. Which song posed the greatest recording challenge?

RH:    Well, the biggest challenge for me was not having a nervous breakdown. This was the biggest thing that had ever happened to me. I'd had a couple of minor hit records on the charts and had arranged my own album obviously and some other artists. But, I'd never worked with anyone on the level of Barbra, both in terms of the level of her celebrity and the level of her talent. You're talking about arguably at that time the best singer that was around and had ever been. You're talking about a woman who has the most unbelievable voice coupled with the most unbelievable ability to emote. She's the best actress and vocalist that you'll find, I mean --

MJI:   We know exactly what you mean.

RH:    (laughs) It would be enough that she had the voice that she has. But she is such a superb actress that she invests every lyric with the level of immediacy, presence, and depth that cuts through everything between the listener and Barbra. She makes every lyric real.

MJI:   And maybe that made you feel like you were under pressure --

RH:    I was under the pressure -- you will never have a more wonderful opportunity than this, and please dear God, may it all go smoothly. Barbra helped me so much. I talked with her the night before the very first recording session. She said, "You're not nervous, are you?" I said, "I'm terrified out of my mind." She said, "Why?" I answered, "Because it's you singing my songs, my arrangements with a huge orchestra, I'm conducting. It's the most spectacular thing that's ever happened in my life. I just hope I'm up to the challenge." So, on the first session that we did, she came up to me before we started work and handed me a little package wrapped in tissue paper. It was a deck of Rupert Bear playing cards. In England, Rupert Bear is sort of an iconic cartoon/comic strip character like Mickey Mouse. On the tissue paper it said, "Dear Rupert, don't be frightened. You're the best. Love and thanks, Barbra." As we speak, I'm looking across the room; it's framed on my wall. It's right next to the other most valued thing I have, a drawing by Orson Welles of Orson Welles that he made for me on the back of a matchbox (Rosebud matches), saying "Congratulations, Orson." So Barbra and Orson are side by side.

MJI:   Wonderful.

RH:    What I tried to do was say, look, she's the greatest musical talent I've ever worked with. Between her talent and my desire to do right by her, surely we can reason through everything. Her instincts are virtually infallible. If someone is that big a star, there's a reason for it, and they know what works for them. If something wasn't working for Barbra, all we would do is sit and talk about how we would make it work. It went great, just amazingly. At the end of the first session, I turned to her and said, "Thank you, because you've given me something that no one can ever take away from me."

MJI:   Ahh.

RH:    We continued and absolutely never had a problem, never had a fight. It was just two people trying to make a good record album. There was one song I wish she had recorded that we didn't record. It was "Tryin' To Get The Feeling Again," which I'd heard and fell in love with. It was before Barry Manilow recorded it.

MJI:   Oh!

RH:    I just thought it was a wonderful song. I think it would have been really good for her. David Pomerantz had written a beautiful song, and I would have loved to have done the arrangement on that. 

MJI:   Which of all the songs on Lazy Afternoon posed the greatest challenge, and how did you overcome it and produce what we hear today?

RH:    There are all different kinds of challenges. Some were technical challenges. Barbra's dynamic range - she can be singing softly and suddenly something will catch her emotion and it will get 30 decibels louder. I think "Moanin' Low" was very exciting but was difficult to do, because we were doing something that people had forgotten how to do, which was the big band with the strings, what Sinatra used to do. It was all very live, and she was live. Everyone had to just get it right. There was a trumpet player doing some ad lib soloing, and I knew if he hit a clinker, that would ruin Barbra's vocal take. Because of the live feel of it, we would not be able to just remove his track easily. His sound was bleeding into other mikes. This was not the very isolated form of recording that you did most of the time. This was just the opposite, almost as if we had a few mikes hung around the room and just let it happen. You're hearing very close to the way recordings were done in the early days of stereo in '59, '60, and '61 brought back in the mid-'70s to capture that kind of feeling of knowing this is one of the few artists who can stand next to a large orchestra and sing a take live. We know that we were going to get gold out of that. We don't have to piece together a vocal. None of it was overwhelmingly hard. It was just very ambitious, and we lived up to it. The cut that meant the most to me was "Letters That Cross In The Mail." I had done that song myself on my own album but only with a piano, and now I was finally going to get to orchestrate it. My story was now going to be told by the best storyteller I knew, which was Barbra. How could I make it feel like its own motion picture? I think in point of fact it did, and I think her vocal on that is pure cinematography.

MJI:   Two songs were recorded for the album but didn't make the final cut - "Better" (by Ed Kleban) and your first version of "Everything," which is not the song on A Star Is Born.  How far did you and Barbra get with these recordings, and do you think they merit eventual release?  "Better" wasn't recorded earlier by Barbra, was it? 

RH:    No, I don't think it was. I can't give you an authoritative answer on that, but I was under the impression that it was a new song that she was recording for the first time. I have a dear friend named Lonny Price who starred in a musical on Broadway a year ago called A Class Act, which was the life of Ed Kleban. He played Kleban and directed the musical. I went to see it, thinking I was just going to see this musical about Ed Kleban. During the show, suddenly, someone mentions that Ed's going to get a song recorded by Barbra Streisand, and I get a little interested. It turns out the song is "Better." Then, I hear a version of my chart that I did for that recording. I'm thinking, "Gee this is interesting, I kind of like it when a Broadway musical turns into something about me." Then, he gets all disappointed because the song is cut from the album. I thought, "Oh, I feel like the villain now." We recorded it. Barbra did a terrific job on it. It's a very clever lyric. The chart is sort of bubbly, perhaps like a Burt Bacharach chart.

MJI:   It's nice, very different from the rest of the music.

RH:     I think the reason we didn't use it is because it just didn't seem to fit the rest of the fabric of the album. Now, "Shake Me, Wake Me" we know is very different.

MJI:   You think "Better" could have replaced it?

RH:    Yes. But, "Shake Me, Wake Me" is just something we decided we would do. We thought it would be fun to do, and we kind of liked it. I think if were able to step back a bit, we might have been able to see that it didn't fit either. "Better" was a cute song with a nice lyric, very nice vocal by Barbra, especially the ad lib at the end on the fade. It didn't seem like it was from the same album. My first attempt at writing about "Everything" was a nice enough song. The chorus seemed a little bit like a Stylistics song. The verse was more like something that might have been in A Star Is Born. I think it was a good song. I don't think it was a great song. The way the chorus went was not the right kind of musical frame for Barbra. Some songs work best if the person is actually singing in what we call a pocket, if they get a lock on the feel of it, hitting each note precisely on the beat. And you don't need Barbra for that. A lesser singer can do that kind of stuff. You want to give Barbra the opportunity to express herself in every way that she can. So, of those songs, I think "Better" could resurface, perhaps if she wanted to do another Just For The Record compilation. She did a couple of takes. I haven't heard it since like 1975. Somewhere in this house, there is probably a 10-inch acetate disc with a mono mix. 

MJI:   I would hope there is.

RH:    The other thing we did is a fully orchestrated version of "A Child Is Born." I actually wish that one had been on the album only for vanity's sake, because I did a very nice chart in the style of Erik Satie, kind of a French impressionist chart. I liked it a lot. But, Barbra loved the purity of the version that we did with just my piano. When we went to record that, my recollection is that we weren't recording it for inclusion on the album. I think we were recording it almost as a reference for her and also for myself to write the orchestration. I think she liked the clarity and simplicity of it and probably made the right choice. A part of me wishes that the orchestrated version of that with her different vocal would be released someday. 

MJI:   While extremely busy with your own multi-faceted career, have you kept up with Barbra's recent albums?  If so, what is your opinion of CDs like Higher Ground, A Love Like Ours, and Christmas Memories, and would you have any recommendations for Barbra's future recordings? 

RH:    I would love to hear Barbra do songbooks. I'd love to hear Barbra do the Rodgers & Hart songbook or just a Gershwin album. I'd love to hear a CD unified by one writer's talent. She's probably got a 4-CD set she could assemble of the Bergmans, thank goodness, because she's done so much of their stuff. They used to compile CDs like that, but they were not recordings all done at the same time. Ella Fitzgerald did do that, and I would love Barbra to do that. 

MJI:   Are you available?

RH:    (laughs) I'm available for Barbra 25 hours a day, yes. If Barbra needs her lawn mowed, I am available. To work with Barbra Streisand, I can hardly put it into words. There's no one better at anything she does. I have had a bumpy life, Mark. Some tough things have happened in my personal life.

MJI:    I know.

RH:     To sit at a piano, and to put a song in front of Barbra Streisand, and the first time she sings it, walking her way through it, it's Barbra Streisand singing you that song. You sit there, and a shiver literally goes up your spine. It's Barbra, and she's two feet away from you, singing something that you wrote in your kitchen. It's immediately different from anything else in the world.

MJI:    Yes.  [Visit The BSMG's Lazy Afternoon album page for release details and audio clips.]  

A STAR IS BORN

MJI:   For A Star Is Born you supposedly were on the original team writing the film songs and score but was subsequently replaced by Paul Williams. What actually happened to abbreviate your participation to just two songs?  

RH:    I was originally called the music director, a title which Paul Williams took. I did start to write more songs than the three you would know. "Lullaby For Myself" was really written for A Star Is Born, as you may or may not know.

MJI:   Yes.

RH:     The script for which I wrote the song --

MJI:    Changed.

RH:     Changed, yeah. I wrote other songs for the movie. My own take on the movie was that Barbra didn't need to be portraying someone who was a rock & roller. I felt that Barbra could be portraying someone who is like Barbra, the most amazing singer. It needn't need to have a rock score. Several of the songs that I wrote more than met with everyone's approval, but a couple didn't. Were they right or wrong? Was I right or wrong? I have no idea. I can barely remember a couple of them. My take on who the character was and what her music would sound like was different than that of the director or Jon Peters. I think Barbra liked them musically. I don't know whether she thought they were appropriate for the film either. At that point I was asked to stay on to continue to contribute songs but without certainty as to whether the songs would be used, and to definitely be the arranger of all the music. That would have been a year of my life. I thought that if it's not going to be my music (I don't mind arranging other songs on an album), and they're going to say, "No, we want a different song than the one you've written here and you arrange that one," I don't really want to make other people's work better when it's taking the place of my work.

MJI:   That's a legitimate concern.

RH:    Also, I had been working for Barbra now for over a year, and frankly, I didn't get along great with Jon Peters.

MJI:   We don't mind hearing that all these years later.

RH:    (laughs) He and I had a fight, and it was a very funny fight. We didn't come to blows, but we were kind of --

MJI:   Physically challenging each other?

RH:    Yeah. Actually, he was chasing me around a table. (laughs) I think at one point he may have even picked up a letter opener. The executive producer of the film [the fellow in charge of the budget, not Barbra] said, "Jon, you're the producer of a multimillion dollar musical, you can't kill him." I thought, wow, I'm glad it's a multimillion dollar musical. If it had only been a one million dollar musical, maybe there would be the loss of one arm, one leg, that kind of thing. We traded some insulting words, and I said, "I don't want this job as arranger, and I think it's time for me to go home. I've been in LA a little too long." I then took the next flight home. I don't think it would have worked out any better if I had toughed it out. I had done the thing that I most wanted to do in life, which was make an album with Barbra Streisand. It was going to be very hard for me to top that. I liked the idea of A Star Is Born, but I didn't love it. I remember when I saw the Judy Garland version, I thought it would be really tough to top that. I felt Barbra was not a rock & roller but a great pop singer and great vocalist. We didn't have to work so hard to make it a rock & roll story. I had made the music that I wanted to make with Barbra, and part of me wanted to continue doing more things that sounded like that. I do think that "Everything" is a song that she does wonderfully. "Queen Bee" is kind of a novelty number, and I wrote it after Barbra talked to me on the phone about a really interesting conversation she'd had with a beekeeper, learning about habits of bees, their queens, etc. I immediately starting a doing a riff on just that.  

MJI:   The song is very feminist and a little bit male-bashing. Did you know it would be a nightclub song for The Oreos?  

RH:     I don't think I knew it would be for The Oreos. I was just writing a song for her. I didn't have anything to do with the arrangements on that record, as I had left the project by then. It looks as if I co-wrote "Everything" with Paul Williams, but what happened was that after I left, they wanted to extend the song. Paul had been encouraged to write a verse without me. The publisher called, saying Paul Williams has written an additional verse for the song. Do you mind sharing credit with him? I thought to myself, 80% of something is better than 100% of nothing. And I love Paul, who's a terrific writer. But, I do believe he wrote the line, "If there were floods, I'd give a dam." I've always wished that one line weren't in the song.

BACK TO BROADWAY 1988

MJI:   Speaking of worthy unreleased recordings, for at least three days in April 1988, you produced, arranged and conducted a group of wonderful songs for Barbra intended as her follow-up to 1985's The Broadway Album.  "Warm All Over" and "You'll Never Know" were released three years later on Just For The Record..., but remaining unreleased are "Make Our Garden Grow" (from Candide), "How Are Things In Glocca Mora?"/"Heather On The Hill" (from Finian's Rainbow and Brigadoon), "A Funny Thing Happened" (from I Can Get It For You Wholesale), "On My Own" (from Les Miserables), your "Moonfall" (from your Mystery of Edwin Drood), and "All I Ask Of You" (from The Phantom of the Opera, different than the Phil Ramone-produced recording later that year).  These Streisand performances are phenomenal and priceless; I've heard them.  Were there additional songs recorded or intended for the album?  

RH:    I can think of one other song that we planned to record. We were going to do "The Man I Love." At the very last minute, two days before the session, Barbra got interested in doing it. We talked via the phone as to what the arrangement might be like. If we were going to fit it into this huge session we were doing, which already had many songs, I would have to do the chart starting in the next 15 minutes after we decided this, because it would have to get to a copyist in time for delivery to the session. We talked how it might go over the phone, which is always a mistake, and we didn't do it at the piano. I thought that she wanted it to be a little bit like "Moanin' Low" that we had done on Lazy Afternoon. I must have misunderstood her. When we got to the session, we got to this song, and I began to run it for her. And she said it was not what she meant at all. This is the danger of trying to do something via the phone. We were talking abstracts on the telephone. I actually went without sleep for about 30 hours, writing the chart in a day and working straight through from midnight until about 8 am to get it to the copyist. It actually robbed me of some sleep for the next day's session. So, we had "The Man I Love" on the music stand, but we did not record it.

MJI:   Did you feel at the time like this may have been a bad omen or warning sign?

RH:     I don't know quite what happened. The things that we recorded I believe were wonderful, and I believe her voice was sublime, not just on the ones that have made it out there. I am aware that a lot of these recordings have found their way to the Internet, and I have nothing to do with that. You can't tell how good this stuff was. What happened was we did this session, and we were on such a high, because we recorded like six or seven songs. I realized that we were like one session away from Barbra being able to say I've just finished a new album. What she might not have realized was that there was a lot of work that we would do in the studio to mix these. Her engineer was not a fellow I had worked with before, and he did some rough mixes. When we were at the studio, we were all glowing and thrilled. It looked like we were sitting pretty. After that, which was on a Friday, I don't know exactly what happened. All I know is that on Monday Barbra was beginning to have second thoughts about doing a Back To Broadway album right then. I think she had some genuine trepidation, because I don't think Barbra likes to do sequels. I don't know that she felt wholeheartedly enthused about Funny Lady. Her idea was The Broadway Album was such a remarkable success, why try to repeat that. Maybe she was also concerned that people would expect her to do a Broadway 3 and a Broadway 4. To start with, there was some concern about whether this was the time to be doing this. Secondly, no aspersions on the engineer, but I think the rough mixes were really drab. I've always wondered if Barbra heard them, and they didn't sound as exhilarating as we had been feeling they were in the studio. I listened to them, and it's very frustrating. Some of these recordings could be remixed properly and would be as good as some of the best Streisand recordings ever. Her "Make Your Garden Grow" is absolutely astounding.

MJI:   It really is.

RH:    The last note she holds -- you have to understand I'm standing there with this orchestra, and I'm saying well, I'm not gonna cut her off! I'm thinking it's possible she may just hold this note for the rest of eternity, and I don't mean that in a funny way. I thought, I don't know how she's still singing this note. She wasn't looking tired; she just let loose. We had not planned this, we had not discussed about holding this last note. And I'm doing this whole fanfare underneath her, and I'm so confident that she can hold this note that I'm not even trying to race it. Usually, when someone's holding a note, and the orchestra is playing something moving underneath it and they have to get to the end, the traditional thing to do is to accelerate the tempo so you don't leave the singer out on a limb. I just knew that I could go at this dramatic tempo, and that she would be right there. When I got to the last chord when we might cut off, I thought, "She's not gonna cut off!" One nightmare was I hope to God I cut off close enough to her that we end together. Luckily, I'd arranged to have a TV camera in the isolation booth where she was singing, so I could have a huge monitor right by my podium and could see her much more closely than any conductor usually sees a vocalist. I was able to tell from her expression when she was gonna cut off, and we made it together pretty close. That record deserves to be heard.

MJI:   Of course.

RH:    I think "A Funny Thing Happened On My Way To Love" deserves to be heard. One of the musicians on that whole session showed up in a state not fit for recording. He did some clumsy things that can easily be removed from the record. He was not in a sober state. It's nothing that interfered with the song, as if it were the drummer, bass player, or keyboardist. It was just a person playing some very extraneous stuff, which I'd love to clean out. "A Funny Thing Happened" is an amazing document, because when I hear it, I picture Barbra doing that show, being in the wings imagining how she would sing the song. It's another incredible Streisand circle for us like "You'll Never Know."

MJI:   Did you have these songs put in front of you, or were you involved with the selection process?

RH:    We chose all of these, and we loved what we were choosing, like "Warm All Over." Barbra said she'd like to do "Moonfall" from my show. When we recorded it, I think she was not feeling comfortable voicing these particular words that a character in the show, an aroused yet virginal 16-year-old, is singing. It's a very erotic song, but it's sung by someone who's looking forward to discovering what sex is. I think Barbra may have felt this wasn't appropriate for her, and maybe she was struggling with it a bit. She still managed to sing a beautiful rendition, but you'd have to do an edit or two to make that work.

MJI:   "How Are Things In Glocca Mora?"/"Heather On The Hill" is really something too, beautiful and interesting.

RH:    Oh, yes, that's gorgeous! It's an unusual medley, and I do think that's one of my better charts. The arrangement on that was very sweet. You listen to that song, and you're just in another world for the duration of the recording. You're with Barbra on the hillside. I hope someday I get the chance to say to Barbra, "You sang these things magnificently. They are diamonds in the rough, but they are luminous diamonds. It would be wonderful if I or anyone else (no ego here) could mix them properly to let the public hear them." 

MJI:   You know that a proper mix would certainly happen, because there is no way she would allow release in any official form of anything that isn't up to her high standards.

RH:    Yes, I know. I've always had this feeling that in that weekend someone (I'm saying this completely on instinct, I've no shred of evidence) may have talked to her, put some thoughts in her mind about whether it was the right thing to be doing, whether these were the right songs. Possibly someone who didn't really want the best for Barbra at the same time. It's been a mystery to me. She said, "I want to put this on hold for a while, because I'm not sure I want to pursue this."

MJI:   But because on Just For The Record three years later, she included two songs and with such prominence on the package--

RH:    Oh, yeah!

MJI:   Including them on samplers and the highlights disc, being the most recent new recordings and beautifully remixed - you kind of know that these 1988 sessions still mean something to her, that it's not some forgotten experience.

RH:    I think it was very good, but I don't know if she's heard any of this stuff. Obviously, all the Barbra Streisand fans in the world with the ability to swap files or whatever have probably heard these. But, I don't know if she's aware of how good some of it is. There are at least three, possibly five or six cuts that ought to be on CD someday. I pray that's going to happen. I'd love to finish the producing process. Usually, the way I work is for the first half or third of a project, I'm the arranger/conductor. I'm not thinking about what's going on in the control room. I'm only thinking about the vocalist, the orchestra, the material, tempos, colors, performances. I give no thought whatsoever to the post-production process till I get there. I left the Back To Broadway project without ever getting to roll up my sleeves and say, "Now let's play the multi-track master and let me get the balance that I need here." My arms and my back were on fire at the end of the session, because I had been conducting this huge orchestra, a bigger orchestra than on Lazy Afternoon. I had not conducted for like a year and a half. You know how much material we recorded, almost an entire album, in a day or two. I've never gotten to go back in the control room and assemble it, as I did on Lazy Afternoon with Jeff Lesser, and to put all the nice colors in their right places. Instead, we have just a dull, drab mix that I didn't supervise which was done direct to cassette. If it's not me, I would be fine with whomever works with Barbra to release these recordings, primarily because these are classic Barbra Streisand recordings with her in masterful form. It's just criminal that people are either not hearing it at all or are hearing very deficient versions of them. They're so good. Hopefully, it's time will come, and we'll do something with it.

MJI:   You certainly make a strong argument, Rupert.

RH:    I'm very proud of the two cuts released on Just For The Record, "You'll Never Know" and "Warm All Over," especially my contribution to "You'll Never Know." As best I can remember, I felt we should give that 13-year-old girl an orchestra.

MJI:   And then it became a duet with herself.

RH:    Absolutely, the idea of her singing along with herself. 

MJI:   She sang it a little different from the traditional duet format too, not perfectly in sync with her old recording. 

RH:    She did that intentionally. She could hear the other vocal, and she did it like a magic scene out of Pinocchio where the Blue Fairy appears, or where Glinda appears to save Dorothy. It's an amazing moment, and that was a thrill to do. To be conducting this 60-piece orchestra on an MGM soundstage accompanying this young girl alone at Nola Recording Studios in New York with an upright piano player next to her, to be able to channel this musical affection towards that girl was a very special feeling. "Warm All Over" is a good idea of how the rest of the CD was shaping up. The strings soar in it, very luxurious, I was really happy with it. I think there's more gold on those shelves wherever those tapes are stored. 

RUPERT HOLMES CDS, PLAYS, MUSICALS, AND NOVELS

MJI:   Tell us about some of your own albums recently reissued on CD, such as Widescreen: Collector's Edition and two different best-of packages on Universal. Should people interested in catching up with your own recordings pick up all three, or is there something particular about one of the three that you would recommend more.

RH:    The Greatest Hits CD has some of the pop tunes for which I'm known best. The nice thing about it for me is if you listen to that for the sake of hearing "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)," you'll also hear things like "The People That You Never Get To Love," "Town Square & The Old School," and other cuts like that which I think are quality cuts of mine. Widescreen: The Collector's Edition on Fynsworth Alley turned out to be an amazing thing. I would think that anyone who cares about Barbra would want to hear that, because that's the CD that got me to work with her. It isn't like I knew her or had friends who knew her, or had pull, or that the record label was pushing Barbra to work with me. The only reason that Barbra worked with me was what she heard on that CD. I think it's interesting to hear my version of "Widescreen" and her version of "Widescreen," because we were singing from opposite sides of the screen. I was singing the song as a person who's saying why can't life be like a movie; movies are larger than life, and that's where I want to be, I can't bear reality. She's saying, "I have been a movie, and that's not the most important thing to me." It's interesting to see two different sides of the same song. So, I'm very proud of the recordings.

MJI:   Do you miss writing music, and will you be returning to it in the near future?

RH:    I had a play on Broadway for the last year about the life of George Burns called Say Goodnight, Gracie. It was nominated for a Tony Award, and I wrote the script, but I also wrote the musical underscore for the show. On the TV series Remember WENN, I wrote 52 of the 56 episodes of this series that I created, but in addition I did most of the musical underscore and had some occasions to write songs for the show that were sung by people like Patti LuPone and Donna Murphy. I'm still writing for wonderful singers. In pop songs, I've said most of what I felt the need to say in three minutes with a fade ending. I like telling larger tales on bigger platforms. I loved writing a novel. I love writing Broadway shows. I have a musical that I'm almost finished writing based on The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is musically as good as anything I've ever written. It may be the best stuff I've ever written.

MJI:   You're writing a second novel, correct?  

RH:    Yeah, I'm writing my second novel, even as we speak. It will be published in September 2004. Where The Truth Lies will be issued in paperback in August 2004. The new novel (for which I do have a title that can't be revealed quite yet) is set largely in 1939 and 1940 at a world's fair that no one remembers, the west coast world's fair on Treasure Island, built for just this purpose in the San Francisco Bay. It will be set in Oakland and Berkeley and at a wonderful old hotel called the Claremont Hotel. A great deal of it will be on the island itself. It will be a novel of intrigue again, less of a mystery story, more of a romantic story than Where The Truth Lies. But, again, there will be some puzzles to be solved and dark deeds to be unearthed. Its narrator will be a jazz tenor saxophone player of that period. This is more than I've told anyone else about it, so it's pretty much an exclusive. My Broadway play Say Goodnight, Gracie starring Frank Gorshin is traveling all over the country. It's going to be in Wilmington, Delaware in November. It's coming to Hartford, Palm Beach, Boston, Dallas, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Green Bay.

MJI:   I'd like to hear more about the musical Marty starring the amazing John C. Reilly who received an Oscar nomination for Chicago. You wrote the book. Is that coming to Broadway?

RH:    We hope it will. We're slated to be doing it in Toronto in 2004 as a last stop before Broadway. 

MJI:   Well, Rupert, that concludes our interview this evening.

RH:    I had a great time talking with you, and I'm hoping and certain it won't be the last. It was a pleasure, I enjoyed it a lot. Thank you very much. You take care.

Follow Rupert Holmes's career at rupertholmes.com.