Robbie Rozelle: George! Welcome to the Fynsworth Alley family!

George Bugatti: Thank you!

RR: I love the new album.

GB: Oh, thank you!

RR: Let's start at the beginning... you grew up in Brooklyn?

GB: Mm-hmm... Brooklyn Heights! There's a big difference!

RR: Not to be confused with Brooklyn proper.

GB: That's right. Patty Duke town! Remember, she had that-- well, I don't remember it, but she had the old Patty Duke show that took place there.

RR: How did music enter your life? Were your parents playing records a lot?

GB: No! We were at Macy's. I was, I don't know, five years old or something. Six years old. I got lost in the department store. They couldn't find me, security was trying to find me. The found me in the piano department, banging on the pianos. When they found me, and wanted to take me away--I don't remember this, this is what my mother tells me. I didn't want to leave the piano department, so my dad said, "Well, it looks like he has an interest in playing piano. We should get him a piano." So, they did, and I started taking lessons. That's how it started.

RR: You went to the High School of the Performing Arts... what was that experience like?

GB: Until today, one of the most marvelous experiences of my life. It was just great. I didn't think I'd get in, because it's so competitive. You have to audition, and I did. Everyone was there with the same goal and the same focus. It's so funny, because when I went to school, you know, which was how many years ago, you talk today about blacks and Hispanics and whites having problems with each other. Everybody was there and they loved each other, and loved what they were into. A marvelous, marvelous experience.

RR: Were you studying music?

GB: I was a piano major. I wanted to be a classical pianist. That's what I was doing. I'd get into Broadway music, that was a little later on, in my third or fourth year. During the first two years, I was doing nothing but classical music. I always had a love for the theatre. As a matter of fact, I was torn... I always wanted to switch to the drama department after the first year. I mean, who doesn't? Everybody wants to be an actor.

RR: You studied acting with Stella Adler, and got a theatre degree from NYU.

GB: I was one of the last classes that Stella taught, actually. She didn't come in everyday. Just once or twice a week.

RR: But, to the best of my knowledge, you have never dabbled in serious acting. Why is that?

GB: Because I've always had the music behind me. Something would always come along, and knock it out of the playing field. I'd get involved in another musical project. As you know, if you're going to be involved with something, you can't do other things. You have to just focus on the project you're doing. So music always held the focus of my life. Although, I still would love to do theatre... or a musical. Not so much a musical, because I have two left feet. I remember taking movement and jazz classes, and I was just hopeless. When I was at the Sands in Atlantic City two years ago, I was in the Copa room. I had a big band show there. But I wanted to do more than that. So, I hired a choreographer, a marvelous choreographer, and I worked with him for about four months on tap routines and different movement things. It was some of the hardest work I've ever done in my life. But I did it! I just... I'll never be a dancer. I'd love to do some theatre. At some point in my life, I'd love to do that. I don't know when it's going to happen.

RR: So, you started out as a classical pianist. What made you move over to the great American songbook?

GB: I was knocking around in New York, and I was playing piano bars all over the place. In the Village, the East Side, the West Side, on Long Island... I forget what year, but I started getting into Broadway music, and jazz and standards. People in New York, you can't fool them, their palates are discerning. I started learning good stuff. Then I had an accident, I had an injury to my hand. That was the turning point in my life. I still play today, and when I did my big band show, I did a classical piece at the piano. I still have no feeling in my right hand. I thought, "What am I going to do?" So, I started singing a little bit. One night, I had a job in Beverly Hills, and I met Tony Bennett. A week after that, somebody asked me to sing "I Left My Heart In San Francisco." I had never sung it before, but I had a fake book with me, so I took it out. I started singing the song, and I thought, "Oh my God!" I was literally brought to tears, on the way home that night, because I had found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And then Tony went on to help me, so it was kind of ironic. It was eerie...

RR: Let's talk about the several legendary people who have crossed your path, helping you shape your career. Let's start with Steve Allen, and how he came into your life.

GB: I was at a bus stop... no! I was trickin'! [laughs] Did you turn off the tape?

RR: No, it's going right in! My first prostitute interview!

GB: Times were rough! What's a boy got to do? I was actually doing the 100th show for Forever Plaid, in Los Angeles. I guess it was the 100th show, and they had a party at the Peninsula Hotel. So I get hired to do the party and who was there, but Steve Allen. He hung out with me basically the entire evening by the piano. He played some songs, I played some songs. I sang, he sang a little bit. At the end of the evening, he took my name and number, and his office called me and said that he and Jayne Meadows wanted to come down and hear me perform. I was doing sort of a Bobby Short thing in their room, the Club Room. He came down with Jayne, and a week later I got an offer letter from him, saying that he'd like to produce a cd with me.

RR: And that ended up being your first cd, singing the Steve Allen songbook.

GB: That's right. But that wasn't the end of it. He gave me my first big band job. He had a stage version of the original Tonight Show. He would recreate skits and some famous episodes, with the original guys like Don Knotts and Louis Nye... He would bring me on as a guest singer. He would take me to cd signings at Borders, and Tower. The first time I sang with a big band was his, at the House of Blues in LA. So, he helped me in lots of ways.

RR: Tony Bennett...

GB: Whenever he would come into town, we'd get together. I'd ask him questions. I remember, I had done a show in an 18,000 seat arena. I was used to playing small, intimate venues and seeing my audience. When you're on an arena stage, those big lights are in your eyes. You're blinded, you can't see the audience. I remember, I couldn't ground on anyone, I couldn't give my music to anyone, I was just looking into the light. I asked Tony, "Do you just learn to live with that?" He said, "No, you get with the lighting guy before the show, and you tell him to gently light the first two rows of the audience, and you'll always have somebody to come back and ground with." Something simple like that! Nobody teaches you that in a music school. But he would come into town, three, four, five times a year... he'd ask me how things were going, and he'd give me advice. I guess about five years ago, he invited me to sing with him at one of his concerts in LA.

RR: That must have been a trip.

GB: Oh! It was amazing! I had no idea he was going to do it! I got there, and there were front row tickets waiting for me. It was literally front row, center. About halfway through the show, he looked down, and he said, "Come on up here." Like, right over the lip of the stage. He brought me on, and introduced me to the audience, and he said, "Here's my microphone. Show the people what you've got." It was great... it made Variety. Who does that for anybody anymore? No one! Everybody is so wrapped up in their own egos, and insecurities...

RR: And, of course, Frank Sinatra...

GB: Well, you know, it's funny. He's such a giant. Here it is, five years after his death, and he's opening at Radio City Music Hall, in eight days or something.

RR: That's bizarre to me.

GB: Isn't it weird? Yeah, he came in one evening, and he was sitting in the back. After they had given him his drinks and stuff, he yells out from the audience for... I don't remember what song it was. But they came up closer, and he came up and sang two songs with me... "But Not For Me" and "One For My Baby." It was classic, he had a cigarette in one hand, and a Jack Daniels in the other. If you were gonna spoof it, that's what you would do. It was like Joe Piscipo standing up there. It's the satire of him, and there’s a reason why! And even now, we're still getting mileage from him, with the song that Bono wrote for him that's on this album... I just found out that Nancy Sinatra sang the Bono song on the telethon. She has recorded it, but Bono found out about it, and sent her a note saying, "You don't have permission to record that song. Stop." She did it anyway. So his lawyers sent her a really stiff letter saying "Cease and desist. If not we're gonna take further action." She doesn't have the rights to the song. But I do...

RR: That song is "Two Shots of Happy, One Shot of Sad."

GB: Or as Nigel said, "Nine shots of happy, screw being sad!"

RR: How do you feel about the inevitable comparisons to Frank Sinatra?

GB: I think the people who compare are comparing a style. When you really listen to the voice, there is no comparison. It's two different things. The influences are there, of course. I think anyone who says they aren't influenced is full of beans. You've heard the album... you put two albums side by side, there's no comparison. I think good phrasing is good phrasing. If there's one thing I pride myself on, it's good phrasing. You can make comparisons with the phrasing, possibly, and the choice of material. The material... it's all great material. Anyone who knows anything about this material goes after the best, and that means their going after Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn and Irving Berlin and George Gershwin and Cole Porter...

RR: Speaking of great material, you wrote two songs on the album... do you write often?

GB: Yeah, I did... No, only when I'm under the gun.

RR: Was it a case of needing two songs to fill out the album?

GB: No, honestly? I'll tell you how I honestly feel. This is gonna sound like bullshit, but it's true. I have no desire to write, because first of all, who the hell am I to write, when I have the Great American Songbook staring me in the face? I could never come up with anything that is as masterful or creative or artful as these people, so why go there? The real reason I wrote "A Night For Romance" is... "Inside Edition," the TV show, was doing a Valentine’s special called "The Most Romantic Wedding IN THE WORLD!," (whatever the hell that means)... and they asked me to be on the show. So I thought, this is great! I'm gonna sing a song at the most romantic wedding in the world, and it's going to be seen by billions of people. So they said, just pick a song you want to sing, and we'll do that. Well, we're shooting the show at 1:00 on a Saturday afternoon. Friday, at 3:00, I get a call from the producer, saying that their legal department hadn't done the proper licensing for the songs I had to sing. I couldn't use them! You have to pay to use them. They said, "Could you sing something in public domain?" What the hell am I gonna sing in public domain? "Mary Had a Little Lamb?" So they said I had to come up with something or I couldn't be in the piece. I didn't want to lose the shot, right? So from about four in the afternoon to two in the morning, I wrote this song with Mary, my wife.

RR: Which makes it the most romantic wedding song IN THE WORLD!

GB: That's right. We did it.

RR: You also wrote another song, called "While I'm Away."

GB: "While I'm Away" came to me. I was in that writing mode. That will happen, once you clear the cobwebs. This melody came to me. I used to hear songwriters talking about how the melody just came. And it did. The music came just about immediately. I think I wrote the entire melody in about forty minutes. The words took a little longer, the words took some tooling. The title of the song came to me immediately, with the music. That's strange, that only has happened to me a couple times in my life.

RR: The new album is produced by Nigel Wright, who is a legend. How did he become involved in this project?

GB: We had kept in touch over the years; I've known him about ten years. But he lives across the Atlantic.

RR: And he's married to Andrew Lloyd Webber.

GB: That's right, absolutely! Whenever he's here, it's for a brief moment, and he's working on a project. I was at my club in LA, playing tennis, and my cell phone rings. I ignored it. I listened to the message, and he said, "Hey, it's Nigel. I'm in LA. Ring me up, let's get together for a drink." So I met him that night. He said, "Guess what I'm doing?" I said, "I don't know, what are you doing?" He showed me the contract, for "American Idol." He said, "I'm gonna be here for four, five months... let's do something!" I said, "That'll be fantastic!" So, we did it. He told me, "Choose a bunch of songs you think you would want to do, and then I'll chop them to hell..." Because we met, literally, dozens of times, and he would say, "No, don't do this one... don't do this one." He had a hand with shaping the album.

RR: What is being in the studio with him like?

GB: He is the ultimate professional. He works fast, he works quick, he knows what he wants to hear. He works the way I think everyone should work... I mean, I'm not dissing anyone else, I don't know why on earth it ever takes months to make an album. You know, we made this entire record in... I mean, granted, if we had a little more time, because he did a lot of work on "American Idol," so his days were filled... that's a lot of music...

RR: Lots of Clay Aiken.

GB: Yeah. He would squeeze me in, but we basically did this album in two days. The entire album. He knows how to get the best out of musicians. He knows how to get the best out of me. I will tell you something. I did not want to sing "While I'm Away." He insisted it be on the album. He liked the song, and one of the reason I didn't want to sing it--I liked the song that I wrote, for what it was. I couldn't sing it. I didn't think it was a song I could sing. Everyone can't sing every song. That's what makes a great song. It's easy to sing, and has great vowels and consonants where they should be. I really don't know about the craft of song writing. I just write from the heart. It was a hard song for me to sing, and I really didn't want to sing it. He forced me to sing it. He got the performance out of me that he wanted. It's just amazing how he got something out of me that I didn't even know was there. He's a musical genius. He really is. There's a reason he is who he is.

RR: Do you have a favorite track on this particular album?

GB: I've got two of them. The first two. "Girl Talk" and "The Very Thought of You."

RR: Was there anything recorded that did not make the album?

GB: Let me think...No, that was it. Sometimes you record a little extra, but... not here.

RR: How did you come to Fynsworth Alley?

GB: Well, you know... EVERYBODY wanted me... Sony, Arista... but I wanted Bill! No... Miller of Miller Wright suggested I send the project there.

RR: What is your favorite part of the recording process?

GB: When it's over! You know what's funny? I'm a live artist. I'm accustomed to working live, that's my favorite thing to do. To sing live, to real people. The recording process is still something that's new to me. I don't fear it as much as I used to. But to me, it's an artificial thing. Only, again, because I'm not accustomed to it. Because my whole idea is to get off myself when I'm singing a song, and truly be the vessel to deliver the song and the lyric and my interpretation of the song. When you do that, in my opinion, you have to give it to somebody, there has to be a recipient there. It's very difficult for me to get the concept that the recipient is a spool of tape. You know what I mean? Some inanimate object. It's taken me awhile to realize that it really isn't, because somebody eventually is gonna hear it, and hopefully be moved by it. So, it's becoming a little easier for me. But, my favorite part of it? I don't know if I have a favorite part. I love the work. I love working... I love singing. If it's in a bar or an arena or a studio, I love to sing.

RR: Do you think it's important for a singer to take an acting class to interpret their lyrics?

GB: I don't think it could hurt.

RR: I know you have played all over... Vegas, Carnegie Hall... what is your favorite place to play?

GB: Any place somebody's listening. It's true! They all hold special appeal. I don't think one is better than another. They all... you know, you can't compare New York and Chicago and LA and Atlanta... one's not better... well, New York is better, but we won't tell... you know what I mean? They all have their strengths and different characteristics that are appealing.

RR: Interesting to me, very early in your career, you were a musical director to some off-Broadway shows.

GB: Very off-Broadway. Hoboken. Is there an Equity waver now? Um... the things were church basement versions of musicals. In Brooklyn, they were a bit different than on Broadway. For example, on Broadway it was Annie Get Your Gun, the Brooklyn version was Vinnie Get Your Gun. On Broadway, it was A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. In Brooklyn, it became A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Indictment. Ok, I'm sorry.

RR: Do you walk around with cymbals behind you?

GB: [laughs] That's right!

RR: You are married and have two children. Do you find it difficult juggling a performing career with being a husband and father?

GB: No! Whenever I'm on the road, you know, screw the kids! [laughs] No... whenever I'm on the road, I try to take my kids with me. My kids are from my ex-marriage, so I see them the best that I can. They have really helped me understand my song more than ever before. I think there's been a definite change in my work since my kids came along. I took them to the Sands in Atlantic City with me. They watch from the wings. They've been to recording studios with me. It's what I have to offer them, it's my life. I like them to see the kind of person I am. I like the people who are close to me to be close. To see what's going on in my life, and what's going on. I think theatre, anything that has to do with the arts... it's such an exciting world. The kids find it exciting also. My daughter is ten now. I might be doing something in Hawaii with Kelly Clarkson. We're not sure yet. It's a corporate thing. My daughters like, "No way! Uh-uh!" She brags about me in school. "My daddy's being produced by the same guy who produces American Idol!" "Uh-uh! Uh-uh! Prove it!" You know?

RR: Well now, she can carry the cd in...

GB: She asked me! "Daddy, can I get a bunch of cd's for my friends, and for my teachers?"

RR: That's awesome!

GB: Yeah!

RR: My final question is, do you have any upcoming performances you want our readers to know about?

GB: [sighs] No, I'm not booked anywhere... [laughs] I'm kidding! I'm not booked anywhere for a long, long time!

RR: "Please hire me for your bat mitzvahs!"

GB: That's right! I may be doing something at Lake Las Vegas. A gorgeous concert under the stars. The best way to find out is to visit my website, www.GeorgeBugatti.com, for updated information.

RR: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. It's such a great album, I hope a lot of people pick it up!

GB: Well, thank you! Have a great day!