Robbie Rozelle: Welcome to Fynsworth Alley!

Betty Buckley: Thank you!

RR: We are thrilled to have you!

BB: I’m happy to be on the label.

RR: When I heard that they had signed you, I did a little jig around my apartment.

BB: Oh, that’s so nice.

RR: I hold your performances that I’ve seen as my most treasured.

BB: That’s so kind of you, thank you very much.

RR: You were born and raised in Forth Worth, Texas…

BB: Well, I was born in Big Spring, Texas, which is in West Texas. I pretty much grew up in Fort Worth. My dad was in the Air Force, and I started school in Morocco, North Africa. Then, my fourth grade, I lived in Maine, the air base in Loring, Maine. So I went to school in Morocco for the first and second grade, then Texas in the third grade, then Maine for the fourth grade. And then, from the fifth grade on, I lived in Fort Worth. My dad retired from the Air Force and we settled in Fort Worth.

RR: So you started out as a military brat…

RR: What was your first theatre experience? The first thing that made you say, “That is what I want to do with my life…”?

BB: My mom took me to see The Pajama Game-- the Bob Fosse Pajama Game, at a regional theatre in Fort Worth, which I still remember vividly.

RR: Everybody knows the big story that you basically got off a bus and walked into an audition and got the job for 1776...

BB: Right…

RR: Do you have any memories of 1776 that you care to share with us?

BB: Oh, it was a great job because there were thirty men and two women… and our standby. Well, actually, there were three women in our cast originally, but the part of the Doozy Lamb, played by Carole Prandis, was cut. It ended up that it was Virginia Vestoff, myself, and Gretchen Cryer was our standby, who wrote “Getting My Act Together…”

RR: And you later replaced her in that show, “Getting My Act Together…”

BB: Yes, I did. Years later. Well, I didn’t replace her, I was the third replacement. I did that one summer on my hiatus from Eight Is Enough, then I replaced Gretchen in the LA production and did the show for six months in Los Angeles.

RR: You followed “1776” with “Promises, Promises.” Ken Mandelbaum raves about the cast album, but it’s not in print. Are there any chances of that being issued on cd?

BB: I don’t know…

RR: And then you got to work with your childhood hero, Bob Fosse.

BB: After “Promises, Promises,” yes, I did the Broadway show, “Pippin” which was directed by Fosse. I was in it for a long time. And I went from that into the movie, “Carrie.” And then from “Carrie,” I did “Eight Is Enough.”

RR: Oh, we’re gonna talk about “Carrie.” Your first movie role was Brian DePalma’s “Carrie.”

BB: Correct.

RR: How did that experience come about?

BB: I had auditioned for him for the film “Phantom of the Paradise.” He didn’t cast me. He hired me after he made the film to loop several of the minor characters, to create voices for several of the minor characters in the film. He would go off on location and cast non-actors for their look and then he would hire me to create a performance with my voice. I did that for him for “Phantom” and “Obsession.” Finally I realized that any of these parts would be a nice little film debut for any of us studying acting in NYC, so I told him I wouldn’t do it anymore. He came to see me in “Pippin,” and he came to a class I was teaching at the time--I was teaching my first musical theatre class. I was in my mid-twenties. He then sent me the book “Carrie” and told me he wanted me to play the gym teacher in that. In the book, the gym teacher’s role is pretty small. Then, a few months later, he sent me the script, and he had basically taken the gym teacher and the principal and combined them into one part. It was a really nice film debut. I was very grateful, it was a really nice gift from him. So I was in my first movie.

RR: That’s fantastic. You also--I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I have a slight “Carrie” obsession.

BB: Mm-hmm…

RR: You also did the Broadway version of the show. Had you heard anything from London before you went into rehearsals?

BB: Dean Pitchford was a friend of mine, and Michael Gore and Larry Cohen. Larry had written the original “Carrie” screenplay. So, Dean called me after they had written the show and told me that they wanted me to play the mother. I had my doubts about “Carrie” as an idea for a musical. They then offered it to me, and we were in negotiation for three months and couldn’t come to terms. They then went to Barbara Cook, and opened at the RSC where the show got terrible reviews. And then Barbara decided she didn’t want to come in with the show, so they came back to me, and we stood firm at the deal we wanted. They went again, and offered it to two other actresses, who turned them down. So they came back to me the day before they began rehearsals in New York, and we came to terms, and I went into the show then.

RR: Are there any off-stage experiences that you hold with that show?

RR: They are exquisite. “Evening Prayers” is among the best stuff you have ever sung.

BB: I think their score is just outstanding, extremely operatic. I think it was just a mismatch of director and material. Although Terry Hands is a very talented guy, he just didn’t get the Americana aspect of the thing that the guys had hoped for. It’s just a thrilling score, and I’m very proud of the work we did.

RR: There are rumors that next year, you and Seth Rudetsky are teaming up to do a concert of the show.

BB: Well, I hope so. Seth has this vision, and I hope that he can pull it off. The guys have been reticent about letting it be done again because the reviews were so savage. Although we had just as many good reviews as we did bad, it’s just the bad were really, really bad.

RR: I’ve read them…

BB: Nobody was mediocre about that show… People really loved it or really hated it. But it was really one of the most exciting events I’ve ever been a part of.

RR: You later recreated part of it for your Carnegie Hall concert.

BB: Yes, Linzi Hateley came over as my special guest for Carnegie Hall and sang her “Carrie” song, and then we did “Eve Was Weak.”

RR: I remember clinging to the balcony almost dying… It was marvelous.

BB: Thank you.

RR: Always… I can’t thank YOU enough for that night.

BB: It was a pretty exciting night.

RR: So, let’s talk about Sunset Boulevard. You replaced Patti LuPone in London with much hub-bub because of her firing.

BB: She wasn’t really fired. Her contract was up in London, and Andrew closed the show to revise it to make all the changes in LA. Patti’s original contract included London, LA and New York. But the reviews were such that Andrew decided that he was going to go with Glenn Close for LA. The New York Times endorsed Glenn Close’s performance, and so they felt like they then had a formula of how it worked. So they came back, closed the show when Patti’s contract was up, revised it all, put a whole new cast in it, with me in it, with those changes from the LA production. Because the Times said that Glenn’s performance was what the show needed, he then cast her for the Broadway show, and that’s where all the upset was. She wasn’t really fired. Her contract for LA and NY were not upheld, so that’s why she sued Andrew.

RR: You made some changes of your own, make-up wise and what not.

BB: No, not really. They made those changes. But my interpretation of the show was different than Glenn Close’s…

RR: Thank goodness…

BB: The director, Trevor Nunn, when I first went into it, they thought they had a formula now of how it worked. I had a different notion of things. So gradually, over the first month of rehearsal, I slowly showed Trevor what I had in mind, and he liked it so he very generously and very graciously supported my interpretation. Although they were very nervous that it would work, because Glenn’s interpretation had worked. So they decided they would give me a shot at it, and fortunately it was completely embraced in London. And then they decided to have me come into New York, when Glenn’s run was up, and again he supported my interpretation, but everyone was pretty nervous. Again, it was well received.

RR: It was marvelous. I saw you with John Barrowman when he replaced Alan Campbell for a week.

BB: He’s great. He’s a lovely guy. They both are.

RR: It was so great! I was like, “Thank god, she doesn’t look like she stepped out of “Pacific Overtures“!” And that led to your Carnegie Hall concert.

BB: The Carnegie Hall concert I was asked to do by Broadway Cares as soon as I opened in “Sunset” in New York. Kevin Duncan, who is a brilliant young producer, came to me and said he wanted to produce me at Carnegie Hall on behalf of Broadway Cares with an orchestra. So we worked on that concert for about six months and presented it in June of 1996.

RR: I was there! All the way up, practically in Brooklyn. I remember when I saw the cd track listing, I was like, this is like half the concert.

BB: Yeah, it was a three hour concert, and our record company didn’t want to go to the extent of a two cd set. So he basically selected the tracks that I hadn’t really recorded, or maybe he left one or two that were on “The London Concert” CD.

RR: Your big aria’s from Sunset.

BB: Yeah, I never understood his thinking about that. Too expensive I guess. It should have been a two-cd set. It was just an outrageous night, it would be fun to have the whole thing on disc.

RR: You and Judy… you and Judy…

BB: Well thank you!

RR: I also remember vividly remember watching this beautiful gold curtain go up in the Royale Theatre…

BB: Wasn’t that a beautiful curtain?

RR: Oh my God, and a gorgeous costume on you… I don’t know who dressed you, but it was marvelous… for “Triumph Of Love.” You aren’t really as well known for your comic roles, you’re known for very serious intelligent roles. Hesione was kind of very different for you.

BB: It was fun. Catherine Zuber was the designer. Jim Nadeaux was my dresser.

RR: How did that leap come about?

BB: They had approached me about this show, and you know, it wasn’t much of a part, a little teeny song. I asked them if they were open to letting it grow a bit, and they said they were. The song kind of grew in proportion. I had no idea it would be a big, big number but it did.

RR: “Serenity?”

BB: Yeah, it was really an outstanding song.

RR: I remember reading somewhere that you were going to go into a studio and do a dance version of that song.

BB: Oh yeah, we were working on that. The guy I was working with just never finished the work and the show closed, so it was like, “Okay, whatever…”

RR: I was like, “That’s an interesting song to turn into a dance song.”

BB: Yeah it was just kind of a crazy idea at the time.

RR: That was your last Broadway role to date. But, lightning struck in New Jersey in when you played Rose in “Gypsy” at the Papermill.

BB: Thank you.

RR: There are all kinds of stories that have filtered back through the years from “Gypsy.”

BB: Yeah, let’s talk about those and put them to rest.

RR: There is a guy from the chorus doing a cabaret act…

BB: Yeah, I don’t know what his deal is. He was a really sweet kid, really nice to work with. I really don’t know anything about his show. It’s just a case of people telling stories out of school that aren’t real or are exaggerations of simpler realities and creating hub-bub where there wasn’t any really.

RR: You worked with Lenny Wolpe, the adorable Deborah Gibson, and “Hairspray”’s queen, Laura Bell Bundy.

BB: Yeah, I love Laura Bell and Lenny and Deb!

RR: The show was marvelous, and there was talk of it coming to Broadway.

BB: I know that the Mirvish’s of Toronto were very interested in taking it to Toronto. But Arthur Laurents didn’t want it to proceed because they had the plans for the new production…

RR: The Sam Mendes one?

BB: He didn’t want it to go further.

RR: That’s an interesting casting choice. Would you like to revisit that role again in the future?

BB: Not necessarily. I mean, I did it, and I had a good time, it would have been nice if Arthur had allowed it to have an extended life, but that took the wind out of the sails for me.

RR: There were also rumors that there was going to be a recording of the show.

BB: No, that was never… I mean if it had gone to Toronto, perhaps. People really worked hard to get Arthur to change his mind, because we would have been far enough away that it would not have competed with his Broadway vision of things, but it just couldn’t happen.

RR: Your name is attached to two upcoming projects. “Diner Stories.”

BB: Yeah, “Diner Stories” we have a lot of hope for. Nancy Shane wrote the book and the music and it’s just terrific. We’ve done two workshops of it, and we’re hoping to present it to producers this winter and it will hopefully have a life in the fall of 2003.

RR: Is it a big show, a small show?

BB: Small show…

RR: That would be done on Broadway?

BB: Yeah, we hope so. That’s our goal. You never know. These things, you know, have a life of their own when other people start coming into it. There’s just so many things.

RR: There’s also rumor of you in a William Finn revue.

BB: Yeah, we workshopped that this past summer and it was great, so there’s talk of that currently.

RR: That’s very exciting for me.

BB: Yeah, that would be fun! I hope it works out.

RR: So let’s talk about your cd’s! Your first recording was a concert at St. Bart’s. How did that come about?

BB: Well, after “Cats,” people were asking me to do concerts, and St. Bart’s approached me to do three nights as a benefit for the homeless. So, my assistant at that time, Amy Lanier, decided to produce this evening. So she pulled it all together, and pulled all the songs out of my files that I’d written in the days that I was on “Eight Is Enough” and thought I would never do music again. I was writing these songs for a possible children’s album, because I thought that was the only way people would let me do music was if it was somehow connected to this “Eight Is Enough” character I was playing. So she pulled these out of my files and said, “These are nice songs!” I was kind of too embarrassed to even listen to her, but she pulled the musicians together. My rhythm section were the guys from Cats that I had been working with. And so we did this concert, and it was my first big New York concert. We had some kids from the children’s choir, and Lyle Mays was my guest artist, and Susan Osbourne--who’s one of my favorite singers in the world--was also a guest artist. The concerts were sold out all three nights. It was just an amazing experience, because it was in the heat of the summer, and there was no air conditioning, and we were all like melting, but none of the audience left, so we decided to go ahead and try to get a live recording out of it. I had never heard myself recorded except on cast albums, and I knew, you know, my voice was not an easy one to record, because of its dynamic spread--it goes from real soft to real loud--so, they hired this great live recording engineer. And when I heard the recording, I was just astonished, because it really captured the energy of those evenings, which was just amazing. Charles Scribner, of Scribner & Sons, he’d been there, and John Brancati of the Rizzoli Art Book Stores, was interested, and so we played the demo for him, and they wanted to do it. So I went into a studio with the engineer Tom Lazarus, mixed it, and that was my first cd. And it was released by Rizzoli, which had a record company at the time. They later went out of business as a record company because they mainly only produced art books. So that was it, my first cd, and it was pretty cool.

RR: And also the hardest thing in the world to track down for the longest time…

BB: Yeah, because they went out of business, so then my record company with Kevin Duncan, KO, we decided to re-release it, I think, two years ago.

RR: Years flew by until you got yourself into a studio…

BB: I started doing concerts after that, infrequently. I was working with one ensemble of guys, and I had this vision of musicians I wanted to find. It took me about seven years to find them. I’ve been working with my band for about thirteen years. Kenny Werner being the pianist/musical director I’ve been working with all that time. We formed our ensemble about thirteen years ago, and Alan Pepper started kind of championing us with appearances at the Bottom Line. He would call his friends from record companies to come hear us. All of the major record companies kept passing on us, because they were like, “Well, she sings pretty good, but we don’t know what her bag of music is. It kind of falls between the cracks of pop…” Also the music business had changed pretty radically from the days of Barbra Streisand, where A&R guys would take a singer and really develop her repertoire. It was kind of the rock thing, and then pop music was just a different genre. Finally this small record company was going to form, Sterling Records, and I was going to be their debut artist. Mort Drosnes signed me based on our appearances at the Bottom Line. So I did five cd’s for them. Kenny kept telling me what we were doing with our arrangements needed to be heard on CD to be fully appreciated. Mort wanted us to stick with the Broadway material, even though I did all other kinds of stuff, because of my association with Broadway. But we did these very different interpretations of them, rather than just as they had been done in the shows. Basically, I’m a leider singer in the midst of a bunch of jazz musicians, telling stories. So when “Children Will Listen” came out, there was some controversy about it, because it wasn’t the basic Broadway thing. But after a few months, some of the reviewers who had been perplexed by it and hadn’t really liked what they heard, had sat with the album and re-reviewed to them a year later to say that they understood what we were doing and really liked it. And then, after that, there was kind of an acceptance. So we did our next CD, “With One Look.” We were ready to go into the studio about a month after that, and then “Sunset” happened. So I had to move up the recording date, pack up my life and get out of town and go to London within two weeks. So it happened really fast. We put in the two songs from “Sunset,” you know, I had yet to do them in a theatrical setting. So we did that album very quickly and I went off to London. In London, we were asked to do a big concert with the BBC Orchestra, towards the end of my year there. So I brought my musicians over there and we developed that repertoire and recorded this live radio broadcast which then Mort picked up as the third album. The fourth album was…

RR: Carnegie Hall.

BB: Carnegie Hall. And the fifth one was “Much More.” “Much More” was a really pretty album.

RR: I was at the first night at Maxim’s when you were trying all that material out. You sang a lot of Disney tunes.

BB: I did! They didn’t really make the album.

RR: They didn’t make the album at all, but I thought, “This is very interesting. This really works.” I thought it was interesting that you were visiting “Pocahontas” and “The Little Mermaid.”

BB: (laughing) I think that came out of Kenny’s inspiration because his daughter was playing those movies all the time. He said, “Listen to this material, it’s great!” So we tried these versions of it, and they seemed to translate out of context, so we used those. We recorded that “Much More” album…

RR: It was all torch.

BB: I didn’t know what repertoire to do, so I went to my friend Tom Shepard, the great producer of all these cast albums, and he produced our Carnegie Hall album. I took him to dinner and I asked, “What do you think I should sing?” He said, “You’ve got to sing all these great torch songs.” I was like, “Oh, man.” I’ve steered away from torch ever since I was in high school and college. I thought, “Torch, I’m a feminist I’m never gonna sing sad songs about longing for some dude!” Of course, I had to.

RR: You then formed your own label.

BB: My deal was up with Sterling. Kevin and I had a terrific working collaboration on Carnegie Hall so we decided we would form a record company, which we did, we got backing and we did those two projects. We did “Heart To Heart,” my duet album with Kenny, which I think is really, probably one of my favorite cd’s I’ve done. Although, “Much More” is really, really beautiful musically too. So we did that and we did the re-release of the 15th Anniversary album. Then we went to London to do the Donmar concert. Concord Records picked that record up, and the DVD was released by Image Entertainment.

RR: You also got a Grammy nomination for it.

BB: I know! Much to our shock. It was amazing.

RR: It wasn’t your first nomination, though. It was your first for music.

BB: I was nominated for a spoken word album of “The Diaries Of Adam And Eve,” which was Mandy Patinkin, Walter Cronkite and me.

RR: And now, “The Doorway.”

BB: “The Doorway” is a collection of songs from the two nights we did to open the Lincoln Center American Songbook Series last fall. Our dates, which were previously scheduled, came on the heels--were one week following September 11. I thought the concerts would be cancelled, but instead, Mayor Guiliani had phoned Lincoln Center to continue and offer music that was uplifting and soothing. So we did that, and it was a very moving experience for all of us, to have been in service of the community of that time. So we went in a week after that and recorded twelve of the songs from the concert. The concert was a two hour concert, but we just recorded the core songs from it. The recording studio, Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, my friend Joe Castellon who engineered my “Stars & The Moon” cd, and I’d done some Broadway cast albums as well. He’s a great guy, and he let me come in between his other sessions for a few hours at a time over the past eleven months. I wasn’t able to work on it consistently, because at that time it was just kind of a freebie. In June, Bill Meade from Fynsworth Alley called and said, “We’d like to pick up the distribution on your KO product.” Which was cool, because our distribution deal was up with the small distributor. So that was easy to arrange. He said, “What else do you have?” And I told him I was working on this 9/11 tribute cd, and I told him what the repertoire was, and he told me he was interested in picking up the cost to finish that so we could get it out. I said, “Great!”, because the distribution would be vaster with Fynsworth then it would be on my website.

RR: I know that you are all over the country and the world doing concerts. Were you in town for 9/11?

BB: I was, yes. I had an early appointment or something so I was getting ready to go. I have my office in my apartment, and my assistant Cathy’s brother called to say we should turn on the TV. The first plane had just hit. So we were just glued to the TV for the rest of the day.

RR: You wrote title song for “The Doorway.” Did you write that in the aftermath of 9/11?

BB: No, actually, it was odd. In August, one night I was just home, doing this and that, and I sat down at my desk, and this just came out. I called my friend Allan Farnham and we set it to music the following week. I thought it was pretty, but I didn’t really know where it fit in my repertoire, because words like, “Let me sing you past your despair,” it was like what is this? I didn’t know where there was a spot for it. But I was glad that I was writing again. When all these events happened, and we were asked to offer this soothing concert, I showed it to Kenny the weekend before the concert, and I said, “I think maybe this would be a nice thing to open the concert with.” He did the arrangement, and that’s what we did.

RR: Kenny Werner has been your musical soul mate for FOREVER. How did you meet him?

BB: For thirteen years. Well, let’s see. I was looking for this new band, and I had run into David Sanborn, the saxophonist at a social event, and I asked him for his recommendation for a sax player. I told him I was looking for new musicians, and he told me to call this guy who would know who to recommend. So I called him, and he recommended a list of percussionists, a list of bass players, and I called Jamey Haddad and I called Tony Marino. I had this other pianist I was working with, and I had maintained a great loyalty to for a number of years, Keith Herrmann, who wrote “Romance/Romance.” He was the pianist in “Cats,” we worked on “Memory” together. He did my initial concerts, he was my pianist for seven years. He was getting more and more into his own writing, and he didn’t want to tour with me. So I was trying other pianists out, and nothing was really working out. So Jamey recommended Kenny and Bill Mays, who’s a great pianist as well. So I called both of them, and Kenny called me back first, came over and played for me and made me cry so I asked him to be my pianist. Bill eventually called me back too, I also worked with Bill for a number of years. He’s a great pianist, and has done a number of arrangements for me as well.

RR: You just finished up a run at Feinstein’s…

BB: Yes, I have this new collection of songs called “Deep In The Heart,” and I’m shopping for a home for a recording of that right now.

RR: There’s also talk of a Christmas album?

BB: Yeah, we did this beautiful Christmas concert a year ago, and it’s really a sumptuous concert, with arrangements by David Cullen, Kenny Werner, Larry Hochman, Don Sebesky, just beautiful orchestrations. Concord was interested in that, momentarily, but last year after September 11, they had a hard time with their Christmas product, so they decided not to pick up their option. So I need to find a home for that as well. But it’s an expensive album, because it involves an orchestra.

RR: You are also in the cast of “Oz” on HBO…

BB: Right, we shot our last season this past spring and summer, and it starts airing in January.

RR: Which means that “Eight Is Enough” did not kill television for you. Do we have anything else to look forward to from you?

BB: I’m teaching a scene study class and a song interpretation class at the Schreiber Studios beginning January 13. You can call 212-741-0209 and auditors are welcome.

RR: Crazy schedule. I’d like to thank you for taking the time to talk to me.

BB: Thank you, it’s been nice to talk to you.

© 2004 Ghostlight Design