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Special Episode: Betty Buckley on telling stories while avoiding nostalgia
00:36:12
On today’s episode, Matt Tamanini is in conversation with the legendary Tony Award-winning icon Betty Buckley. Ahead of a six-concert run at Joe’s Pub next month, Buckley discusses how she puts together the intricately curated collection of songs she s...
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- [00:00]
Betty Buckley
Foreign.
- [00:08]
Matt Timminini
To a very special Easter Monday interview episode of Broadway radio. My name is Matt Timminini. On today's episode, I'm in conversation with one of the brightest stars who has ever graced a Broadway stage, the Tony Award winning legend, Betty Buckley. Having originated the role of Grizabella, the glamour cat in Cats on Broadway, playing Norma Desmond in both London and New York in Sunset Boulevard around originating the title role in the Mystery of Edwin Drood and so many more, Betty has become known as one of the greatest singing storytellers in the history of musical theater. And next month she will return to her cabaret home of Joe's Pub at the public theater for six shows over three nights. On May 15th, 16th and 17th, she'll be joined by her Grammy nominated pianist and music director Christian Jacob and their band as she sings songs and tells stories the way that only she can. In our conversation, we talk about how she and Christian pick songs to include in a concert, why the songs of Bob Dylan and Paul Simon have been so resonant for her lately, and what it was like to get back into some semblance of the Grizabella makeup for a recent New York magazine shoot, along with 28 other Broadway icons. Of course, we will have information in the show notes on how you can see Betty at Joe's Pub next month. And with all of that out of the way, here's my conversation with the one and only Betty Buckley. Well, the first question I have to start with before we get into the concert is what was it like to get back into the Grizabella makeup for the first time in who knows, however many decades?
- [01:54]
Betty Buckley
Well, it was an honor that New York magazine invited me to be a part of it. I think there were 29 people that, you know, this Broadway legends tribute thing, I think they call it their nostalgia issue or something. And so they asked me if, you know, it was people being doing a modernized take on their kind of most known Broadway show, mine being Grizabella and Cats. And so Mark Seliger is this incredible portrait photographer who's photographed wonderful, wonderful world leaders and artists and he's amazing. And the photo editor was Jody Kwan. James Caliardos was the makeup artist and Peter Gray did the hair and Daniel Edley did the outfit, the styling. So we had a meeting on Zoom before the shoot and they told me what their thoughts were and I was like, yeah, let's go for it. Let's have fun. And so it was James redesigned the makeup, you know, and I thought what he did was so really beautiful. And Peter Gray did the hair, which was just wild. And Daniel Edley, the outfit he came up with, was really stunning. So I was really grateful to be in the hands of these amazing people, and I just let them do what they were inspired to do. And it was just a really wonderful afternoon at Mark Seliger's studio downtown in New York City. So, yeah, it was so fun. And I'm really excited that the magazine came out to see it all in.
- [03:43]
Matt Timminini
Print and everything, even though it wasn't, like, the same makeup and hair and costume and all that stuff. Did you feel like you just kind of slipped back into a version of yourself that you felt really comfortable and familiar with after all these years?
- [03:57]
Betty Buckley
Yeah, but then I always feel that when Grizabella is around, she's like one of my dearest friends, my soulmate, my teacher. It was through learning how to sing her song Memory that I really came through the doorway of my potential as a singer, Storyteller, actor. I was 35 years old, and it took everything I'd ever learned and everything I had yet to learn to be able to deliver that song the way it needed to be done. And it was a huge gift in my life. Working with Trevor Nunn and Andrew Lloyd Webber and Gillian Lynn and the whole team was. It was an amazing experience that I will always treasure.
- [04:41]
Matt Timminini
It's so interesting that you mentioned that Kizabella is the one that kind of helped you become the storyteller that you are. And I think when it comes to when people talk about Betty Buckley, they talk about Storyteller. That's an amazing voice, an amazing actor. But combining those two things together makes you kind of the quintessential musical theater storyteller. And that brings us to the concert you're going to do at Joe's Pub. I imagine when you are sitting down to do a set list and you're trying to put together the run of songs that are going to be in a concert for you, I would imagine that you want to tell as many different stories as possible. Is it picking off little things that are little snapshots that you want to do, or is there an overall arc of the story that you want to tell in A Night of Songs?
- [05:22]
Betty Buckley
That's a great question, Matt. Thank you for that. You know, years ago, when I was first starting to do smaller rooms, the quote unquote cabaret thing, there were some really amazing cabaret artists on the scene at that point. And there was this critic at Backstage or something that had really defined what the notions of cabaret are all about. And it was about having a theme and putting your songs together with a theme. And that really bothered me, you know, like, I don't like having to do theme assignments. I was like, damn, you know, I'm out of college. I don't want to do that. And I work. I'm also not much. I was just sharing with a friend of mine who is, you know, big on sentimentality. I'm not really a nostalgist. I don't like to hearken back to the past or, you know, ride on the coattail of my laurels, so to speak. I'm always, like. I'm always interested in trying finding what's meaningful in the present moment. That's really, I think, the most. Like, I'm always on this quest to. And like songs, for example, that, you know, fit me beautifully. At age 35 or, you know, even in my. Into my late 30s, 40s, I don't feel the same connection to. Because my feelings about life have changed. Memory, interestingly enough, with Grizabella, is like this kind of returning experience. The landscape of memory, in my experience of. Of it musically and lyrically is. And as a character is always the same. But the character I discover keeps changing because I keep changing. So, for example, Grizabella, the versions of her that I've experienced in recent history, in concert work where people have asked me to sing the song, I discover new things each time I come to the material because I've changed. And so as I change and grow, Grizzabella continues to reveal more and more to me about life and most fundamentally, how to see life and how to experience life from that vantage point. And so I guess I'm always looking for material that I'll hear something. I'll be like, oh, wow, that's really interesting. And, like, I'm very touched by a certain story or an idea. And then I'll explore the song and discover it was only a fragment that I was responding to, not the whole thing. And so it doesn't work out of the context of that moment that I heard. At other times, you know, I'm hearing a song in passing, and I'm like, oh, wow. That says exactly what I need to say. So I kind of start grab. I mean, I pick material that is meaningful in the moment, and then as I start, I send them to my collaborator, my pianist, music director, arranger, Christian Jacob, who I've worked with for many years now. I send them to him, and if he doesn't like them, usually they get eliminated. But if. If I really like them and he's not sure I'll, like, you know, say, I need you to listen to that again. Let's. Let's listen to that again until finally we come up with, like, a working list. And then we also incorporate favorites from our past groupings of songs. I always like to call it a collection, and years ago, the critic Stephen Holden told me that that was like a pretentious angle to define what you were doing. But to me, it's like a series of paintings that I do. I think of myself as a kind of portrait painter or a painter of scenario storytelling in that sense. But it's my most recent take or experience of life and what I'm trying to learn in the moment, you know, Then what's fascinating to me in this process, because it takes many months, is looking back at the material and saying, oh, there is a theme to this. What is that theme? Right? And so I discover the thematic nature of whatever the collection. In spite of Stephen Holden's criticism of that word, I like that word better than grouping of songs. I only discovered that in retrospect. And then I'm like, wow, that's really interesting. So there's this intuition that I've learned that is accessible, that I really enjoy seeing how that will take me to the next place that I need to be to tell the next stories I need to tell. I find that a very interesting process.
- [10:25]
Matt Timminini
What. We are just about a month out from your return to Joe's Pub, which you have been at many, many times in the past. Are you set with your collection of songs now, or is this still a work in progress?
- [10:37]
Betty Buckley
The working group? But yes, it's still a work in progress. Like, I eliminated one last week that we've been working on, that I've actually been trying to make work since my mid-20s. And every. So then I had to figure out why I was feeling like I had to sing that song. And I'll tell you why. It's because I. I've always worked with these very incredible. Thankfully, blessedly. So I work with these amazing jazz musicians. And in the olden days, they were a lovely, incredibly gifted group of music musicians that I worked with for 20 years, who were also pretty arrogant. And they made me feel like I was their little. They're kind of like their little sister who was tagging along to play a game with them, you know? And so one of said, you should sing this song, and I was like, okay. So I tried to sing it back then, and I didn't. I couldn't figure out how to do it. As successfully as it needed to be. So I revived that in my idiot, you know, in the ideas of. In recent history. And so I was trying to do it again and then I still. And then I suddenly are in the middle of it. One day I thought, this is boring and this has nothing to do with how I feel about life. Why am I still trying to do this song? And I real. It was because I'm still trying to live up to these like, jazz musicians standards for me that I felt like I could never, you know, reach. And I'm at a different place now. So I just, I told Kristen, I said, I'm not going to do that song. He's like, okay. You know, he's. Christian is a different, different breed of jazz musician. The guy is like, he, he's so amazing, he's brilliant. But he's so kind and so patient and he's not at all like. He's just so gentle. And we just, you know, we wrote a thing. A Covid project was this beautiful little film called the Mayfly. It's a seven minute animated short film that I originally wrote this story about an experience I had at the Cafe Carlisle watching the artist Judy Collins in concert of this Mayfly, flying over her head through the concert. And I was so touched by the experience that I was like, I have to write this. And so I thought I was writing a song. And Christian kept saying, it's not a song, it's not a song. And he wouldn't write anything, you know, for me. And so finally, a few months later, while we were in had, you know, we're four or five months into Covid the shutdown, I honed it down and honed it down until it was just its absolute most economical way of telling the story. And I was like, I wrote him. I said, I called him, I said Christian, because he lives in LA and I live in Texas on a ranch. And I said, score this like you would a movie. And so that he understood because he's a film composer. So he wrote this beautiful score to it and places in the score for me to sing as the Mayfly, you know, like her inner voice, so to speak. And then we made this beautiful track like they recorded out of his living room and the bass player was recording out of his living room and the percussionist recorded out of a funky studio in, in Cleveland. And then I recorded at a small studio in Fort Worth, Texas, near my place. And then we sent all the tracks to our mixing engineer who at that point was in Virginia. And we came up with this gorgeous track. And I was like, oh, my God, this is so beautiful. How do I get this out there? And I realized then, oh, it's an animated short film. And I was like, how do I make an animated short film? And I knew some big animating people, people in animation, like this man, Sam Levine, who's a big director in animation, who did Super Pets, among other wonderful films. And I reached out to him on what was then called Twitter in the old days, and he loved the track and hooked me up with one person, the next and next, and set me on my road to meeting my brilliant director, Sue Parrado, and the character designer, Eugene Solandra. And we got together and put together a budget, and I raised the money and we found our animation studio in Poland, Blue Blue, the animation studio. We made this incredible little movie over Covid. And it's been. Over the past year, it's been playing in the film festivals, and we won best animation, best director, best film in a big animation festival in the fall. We won several. Several awards this past year. Anyway, it's super fun. I hope we can do something else like that. But I. I just. I'm telling you that story to. Christian is a really wonderful person and a great blessing in my life because he facilitates what my musical dreams are, you know, what I want to accomplish musically, and he does it. I mean, there's not that. There's not a. You know, we question each other sometimes, but it's really a gift of a relationship. And so we've got a bunch of songs. There seems to be a theme. I'm trying to sort that out, but I only discover that stuff after the fact.
- [16:06]
Matt Timminini
Yeah. Well, it's interesting to me that you talk about. You started that, you know, that story about still learning things about songs that you tried to do many decades ago because someone else told you to do it. And then you are now kind of exploring new ways to tell stories in animation throughout your career, especially at this point in your career, especially with these concerts, are you still finding that you are learning things about yourself, about your performance? What are those things?
- [16:40]
Betty Buckley
Well, first and foremost is how to keep going, because it gets harder and harder. It's like, I've always been a hard worker when I had a goal, When I don't have a goal, I'm kind of a couch potato. But when I have a goal, I work pretty hard. But, yeah, it gets harder and harder as time goes by. So just the voice lessons and keeping yourself in shape and working out and being strong. I could sing Like I sang back in the day because I was a, you know, nigh onto a world class athlete. I worked out all the time. You know, I was super strong and, you know, I was a runner and I lifted weights and I did Pilates and all that stuff. So, so there's that. There's the challenge of being in the kind of shape to do a run of six shows over three days at Joe's Pub, which I always look forward to basically because I feel like I'm throwing a party in New York City and I get to, you know, see all my old friends and my new friends. That's super fun to do. And to be on a stage surrounded by wonderful musicians. In the case of the current show would be Christian Jacob, Tony Marino, who's been played bass for me for like, gosh, I think more than 40 years, and Jordan Peters, who's a brilliant guitar player, and Kita Ogawa is our percussionist. So I'm always fascinated to see how the work Christian and I've been doing comes together. We go to New York about 10 days in advance of the shows and we have three full day rehearsals or several five hour rehearsals a day for three days and then we do a sound check and then we do our first show that Thursday night. It's fascinating to stand on a stage with brilliant musicians and feel the coalition or the community of that musicianship and how a piece of material that you've been working on suddenly has its own life. That's so beautiful. That's one of my favorite things ever, is to work with great musicians. So it's a privilege that I really look forward to. And then seeing the people in the space like Joe's Pub, which is, you know, has a high ceiling, so there's a beautiful acoustic resonance there. My wonderful sound man, John Weston. Anyway, it's a wonderful kind of a reunion to see people and to share with them the stories that I think are meaningful of the moment that would maybe assist them to. I hopefully will assist them to feel better, you know, especially in this time period of every. All the upheaval we're going through in, in our country and its governance. It's, you know, we're. I'm trying to pick material that I feel like I need to hear and share with people. And a lot of it, a lot of my inspiration is coming out of, you know, the early music that I loved in the 60s, which was a, you know, a strong time of protest and resistance and insistence on cultural change. And there seems to be a big backlash happening. To that. Now that's about rich people who are scared and who have lost their sense of community and compassion. In fact, deliberately choosing not to abide by the compassion that's innate to their hearts or empathy that they feel for other human beings. I guess, you know, I'm picking material that allows me to express that in a kind of more universal way, you know, just to remind people of who we are, of who we are as human beings. You know, I think that's really important. So does that make sense?
- [20:58]
Matt Timminini
Absolutely. No. I think that's interesting because earlier when you were talking about picking songs, you weren't necessarily nostalgic for roles that you had done or songs that you had sung, but there is a little bit of nostalgia. It sounds like in picking songs from generations gone by that had a little bit of a different meaning. So there is a little bit of an overlap there where there is a nostalgia not necessarily for your career, but for a different time in society.
- [21:24]
Betty Buckley
Maybe. Yeah, I guess it depends on how you define nostalgia. But yeah, I don't. I'm more interested in the fact. Well, two, two poets, two great poets that had this far reaching impact are Paul Simon and Bob Dylan, you know, about how the universality of some of their songs have still, still resonate today. That blows my mind. But that's not a harkening back. Like I'm not. I don't feel that I need to replay the 60s. I just remember the lesson from the 60s is that great cultural change occurred and a lot of it had to do with the music in this. On the scene that I grew up with. Like I was very influenced by the music I was hearing as a, you know, a child of the 60s. Like the, the sense of we can do this, you know, like I'm. I am doing two songs, one by Paul Simon and one by Bob Dylan, maybe others, I don't know. But they are still very resonant today, you know, and it's not like I want things to return to the 60s by any means, not at all, you know, which to me that is nostalgia of, oh, the good old days. No, I feel like the values of these particular poet songwriters, you know, are. It's. That's astonishing to me the far reaching universality of their work and the application of it to this day. That's what's interesting to me. Does that make sense? Like it's a small difference?
- [23:00]
Matt Timminini
No, I think that's a huge difference. Absolutely. Well, it's sticking on a different theme of nostalgia. I'm always fascinated when people who have done these iconic shows and iconic roles. Go and have the opportunity to see completely rethought versions, whether it's the Cats. I don't know if you saw any of these, but the Cats or the sunset, or even the 1776 from a few seasons ago. When you have an opportunity to see or hear someone else doing a show show or a song that you are so closely connected to, is there any nerves going into seeing those things? Are you anxious about whether or not you're going to. You're going to like it or if it's going to live up to your memories, or. No pun intended, with memory there.
- [23:42]
Betty Buckley
But that was a good one. Yeah. No, I love that new Cats that they did downtown, the club thing. That was fun. Really fun. I went to one of their early previews. But let's just talk about nostalgia for a second. Nostalgia is a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition. The state of being homesick. Right. Like that. I don't. Yeah. When I remember when I went to see the new version of Cats, there was a new version of Cats in London, and Jillian had. Lynn had choreographed it and stuff, and it was fascinating. They. We went into the theater and they arranged everything, like this museum, you know, like artifacts and the original London run and the original Broadway run. And some of my stuff was there, and it was very moving. And when I walked into the theater, it was that same set that I had lived in for a year and a half at the Winter Garden in New York. And I was like, you know, very verklempt. You know, I was like, oh, my God. This is like. Because I love that show so much, and I loved the original cast so much. It was an amazing group of human beings that I just. I love them all very, very much. So that. That kind of like, oh, my God, you know, my heart was in my throat. And another time I went. Cameron McIntosh flew me to London for the eighth anniversary of the London Company of Cats. And I had never seen the show before. I mean, I'd seen it in bits and pieces, you know, previews, you know, being out in the house and stuff. But I never seen it as a whole. And this might interest you, but it's really silly. But I thought I had a really big part in the show. Right. Because I sing Memory and. And Trevor Nunn had told me, you need to always be lurking in the shadows. You need to always be there, because Grizabella is always there, always watching. So and trying to become a part of things, you know, because she was the pariah of the tribe, because she was once this very glamorous, the glamour cat. But she kind of wasted away her life with too much drug to excess, too many drugs, alcohol. You know, she made some wrong choices. And so now she's, like, aging and has lost her prowess as a cat, which cats really pride themselves on. This is how it was explained to me. But she was really a metaphor for that which we as a community or as a culture are afraid of, which is death and dying and, again, losing our prowess, so to speak. And she was the metaphor for Trevor Nunn's genuine, heartfelt concern about the unhoused people. And as a community. 1982, when Katz was coming to Broadway, we were only starting to be aware of the. Of the greater problem of homelessness, which now we call unhoused. Back then, it was referred to as homelessness. So I realized pretty quickly in the rehearsal process that that was my job was to represent that. But then the journey of how to. To encompass that in the time I had was a huge learning journey for me. Anyway. I thought Grizabella had this really. She. She has a very pertinent role in the play. It's like her job is kind of the linchpin of the. Of the reason for the story, right? But the story doesn't exist on the page. It's only in the consciousness of the tribe of cats, which is why the original direction was made. All of us, we were so clear about what needed to be told. And so I'm waiting and waiting for Grizabella to come on when I'm in the audience in London and I'm supposed to sing Memory in the curtain call for their eighth anniversary, right? And so I'm waiting and waiting. And first of all, the cats would come by, and I was like, oh, I want to touch them because they're so cute. And I never understood in the whole run of CA why people were always. People were always writing me letters about their cats and sending me cats memorabilia or cats toys or creatures of cats. And I was like, do they not understand this is a play and we're not really cats right now? But it was funny. And then when I saw the show, I was like, oh, I need to touch them. Oh, I want them to touch me. You know, I was like. I understood for the first time because they were running by me. I was like, you know, I was like a kid. How we made. Right? That's exactly what it was. And so I'm Waiting for Grizabella. Waiting for Grizzabella. And she appears, and then she disappears. I'm like, oh, there she is. Oh, she's gone. And, oh, there she is. Oh, she's gone. And so finally she comes out and sings Memory. And I realized that it's a tiny part, right? And I. All this time, for all these years, I thought it was this really big part because I was always there, right? Because Trevor told me to be. And so when she came out and she sang Memory and nailed it and went to the heavy side later, layer and stuff. But then I realized that the whole of my part was only 13 minutes long. Like, the whole play. The whole play. Grizabella only appears for 13 minutes on and off, right? And so that was very sobering experience of learning what the play was all about. And it wasn't until I could see it that I saw that. So then when I saw the. The downtown version, the. The dance club version that was most recently in New York, it was similar. I kept looking for her, looking for her. And they had staged it so she was down off the ramp, and you could barely see her in the space, you know. So when after the previous, I went to the director and I said, do you want any of my opinions about this? Because I really enjoyed it. And he goes, sure. And I said, well, I would let her, like, explore being up on that ramp so we can actually see her, you know, because, well, I thought it would be better to wait for the moment. I said, yeah, but we can't see her. And so I don't know if he incorporated any of that stuff or not. But, yeah, of course, you always have an opinion. And I remember going to some big anniversary performance at the Winter Garden, too, where everybody was back. And, you know, then I also saw the revival in New York that. Not that long ago. Yeah, yeah. Of course, you always have opinions about. Because, you know, since again, there's no script, so to speak, there's a series of songs and numbers about how important the through line of the consciousness in all the people. And I think not every director has the capacity to. Or if they. Maybe they don't know that you have to. It has to be so implanted into your ensemble that the cast carries that story in their thinking, you know.
- [31:05]
Matt Timminini
Yeah. I'll wrap it up with this. With the shows. The six shows over three days at Joe's Pub. I know you're still working on the set list and getting everything there, but you say they do kind of take on a theme. Where are you with what this kind of unexpected theme might be for this series of shows.
- [31:26]
Betty Buckley
Well, I think we're going through a really tough time, and I think it's our job as artists to be there in a way that assists. I've always felt this. It's my commitment to be an instrument of the consciousness of community, compassion, love, respect for all people. That's my job. I know there's a lot of heartbreak in the world, and my job is to share stories that let people experience. Like I used to say to my band, we're undercover artists and we're healers. And our job is to, like, assist people to feel their own broken heart, so to speak, or confusion or loss, the stress they might be under being parents or, you know, all the stress people go through in life. And our job is to help lift that stress off their hearts and minds so they can have a moment of reconnection with who they really are and what their own heart is about. That's our job. So it remains my job to be an instrument of that truth and compassion and light and love. And I don't mean to be all airy fairy about it, but. And, you know, if anything, hope, you know, and in this particular day and time, how to stand firm in your conviction of your own value and humanity. That's really important, you know. So that's my job.
- [33:06]
Matt Timminini
Yeah. Well, that's lovely. And I think that's exactly what everybody needs at this point. And I'm sure that the folks that are in the audience at Joe's Pub will appreciate that. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat about this. It is always fascinating to hear you talk about what you do, and I hope you have a wonderful. Not only in New York, but I know you've got a couple concerts in Fire island and at Bay street in June as well, so we'll make sure that everyone has information on those as well.
- [33:33]
Betty Buckley
June 28th in Fire island and June 30th at Bay street, again with Christian Jacob. And at Joe's Pub, it's May 15, 16 and 17. There's an early show and a late show, and the show times are 7 and 9:30pm and it's with a quartet of incredible musicians. So for sure it'll be a very musical evening and I hope my stories will be relevant and meaningful of the moment.