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Lenny Interviews Gordie Brown

One of the hottest tickets in town that also happens to be one of my favorites is singer/impressionist Gordie Brown at the Golden Nugget. After a world tour as the opening act for Celine Dion, Brown has returned to the downtown resort better than ever and that’s saying a lot. His show is 90 minutes of pure entertainment as Brown pulls out all the stops. This guy has more energy than Robin Williams on speed.

Brown hails from Montreal and began his working career as a political cartoonist for an Ottawa newspaper. His fellow workers secretly entered him in a contest after listening to him do some impressions in the office. He reluctantly entered, but ended up winning. That, he says, “Got a lot of media attention and then everything snowballed from there.”

Brown says he always had aspirations to go into some form of show business. “I was in a school play, West Side Story when I was 15. I had the lead role and at the end of the performance, when people gave us a standing ovation, it was such an amazing feeling of adrenaline. I knew then that I wanted to be an entertainer. I didn’t know when it would happen, or where or when, or even what I would do, but I knew that I wanted to do it. That was the defining moment.”

He says that when he entered the contest, “That was a big move for me, because I was basically shy, so winning the contest gave me the self confidence to continue. Many entertainers, whether they be actors or singers, are shy, so they create an alter ego to perform. In my case, I’ve taken that alter ego to the max because I can step into so many different people’s heads with my impressions.”

Brown began by writing songs and joining a band. He says, “The impressions really didn’t take hold until after I’d seen Rich Little perform. Before that, I’d done a bit of Elvis and Michael Jackson, but that was it. When I went to see Rich Little, I was in the front row and he shook my hand and I was so awed by his performance, I went home that night thinking, ‘if I can do two impressions, why can’t I learn more?’

“Initially, I started out doing Rich’s material, but little by little started writing my own. I’ve always had a comic sense and my mind always thought that way. When I was on stage it was always easier for me to ad lib then to labor over writing a joke. So between the ad libbing and the writing, it all started to come together at the right time.”

As for his singing, Brown says he never did have a good singing voice. “In fact, when I did sing, people would tell me to shut up. But that spurred me on. It’s like when someone tells you that you can’t do something, you want to prove them wrong. I’ve been very fortunate in the fact that I didn’t listen to people.”

He realizes there’s a lot of competition in town, mainly from Danny Gans and now Terry Fator, both of whom get a lot of publicity from the media. This doesn’t worry Brown as he believes that “word of mouth is the most important part of selling my show, so my feeling is to get these seats full as soon as possible, whatever way possible, then let those folks go out and express their feelings about the show.”

Not one to stagnate, Brown says he “always keeps experimenting in terms of variety of the show and the writing. Although I’ve always had some younger material, I’ve added more and they’ve been going over very well. People like Usher and Eminem, done humorously, have been very popular.

“My thoughts about writing are that I have to go into people’s consciousness. They might not even know that Usher is in there, but if you bring it out, they’ll recognize it, whether they heard it driving their car or in a restaurant. That element is what I’ll go off of and I’ll write within that, something that we can all be familiar with.”

He writes all of the material himself and admits that some things come easier than others. “Writing is an amazing thing. If you’re writing parodies, or scripts, or monologues or drama, each one has their own specific needs and there’s a style to each one of them, so I think I’ve learned a lot by writing the many different styles for my show. By doing that, other stuff has come out allowing me to express comedy in a variety of ways I didn’t know I was able to do.”

When Brown writes something for a character, but isn’t really sold on it, he says he will put in in the show for the response. “The audience tells me what they think and by their reaction I might rewrite some of it or I might decide to bring the band into part of it. I might cut it back or find a better ending. It’s all part of the creative process and problem solving until you get to that point where it’s more entertaining than when you first started doing it.

“Some of these characters don’t take a lot of detail. Eminem–I don’t really know what he sounds like. I know he’s a rapper. I know I don’t want to spend much of my life trying to study what he’s like. I don’t care how he dresses. As opposed to Elvis, where I want that impression to be more dead-on. I want to get into his comic psyche and make that really funny through his persona. So you see, there are all different elements to look at.”

There is a lot of dialogue in Brown’s show and I asked him if at times he has to ad lib or does he pretty well remember it all?

“It’s become a lot tighter, but definitely I ad lib until the right stuff comes, but now a lot of my ideas, because I get to do it every day, have gotten a lot clearer and seems to really make the flow of the show right where it needs to be. So I’ve really improved over time as to polishing the material and not go off in 50 different ways.”
He says that his background as an editorial cartoonist had helped him in creating characters. “My background sure puts me in a deadline position to go to that creative room and that’s a great discipline. To keep going into that room and force yourself to come out with stuff is a challenge, but it’s what has to happen. You know, I loved being an editorial cartoonist. I did not like people coming up to me and telling me what they thought their ideas should be in the paper, and in five years doing it, I never took anybody’s idea. Not that they weren’t good, but you have to stand by your own creative mind and I think that kind of pride is what I stuck to and that led to the success of what I now do.”

Brown says he has had to work hard to develop his craft, that it didn’t come easy. “I’ve really had to work hard, but I’ve had so much joy working at it that it wasn’t what you’d call hard labor. I always looked at it as my hobby, my passion and when I see an audience laughing at my time well spent creating my act, I get great pleasure from that. The hard work has led to some very positive results and that’s very gratifying.”

With so much music in his show, does he consider himself a songwriter as well?

“It’s something I love to do and I’ve written two albums within four months. I think God gives people gifts, not to just go in the drawer and be forgotten. I’m going to develop my drawings to the point where I’m going to have a book of caricatures. Then I’m going to do my pop/rock writing and my album will be out there and in my own voice.”

Because he has so many characters in his show, I asked if he cared that much that every character is dead-on?

“It depends on the character. Consciously, I’ve made decisions that I don’t need to sound right on or do a mannerism that no-one really cares about with certain characters. Definitely I make creative decisions like that. I’ve always felt that it’s about the comedy and I use my impressions as another vehicle to do comedy and make my presentation of my art.

“I never specifically set out to be an impressionist. I set out to learn impressions to do comedy, but also to lead to develop my acting skills. I can step into my characters’ heads and channel the dialogue through that character. In the meantime I fell in love with a live audience.”

And live audiences will fall in love with Gordie Brown when they see his show. He performs Tuesday thru Saturday, 7:30 p.m. at the Golden Nugget. This is a show you don’t want to miss. If you don’t come out feeling like you got much more than your money‘s worth, then I suggest you ask your doctor about a lobotomy.

Lenny Interviews Neil Sedaka

It is said that if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it, something that one of America’s most successful singer/songwriters has no intention of doing. Celebrating 50 years performing, Neil Sedaka will take the stage at The Orleans this Thursday thru Sunday (March 26-29) and the thought of retiring hasn’t even entered his mind.

I caught up to him recently following his tour of Australia, where he performed with all of that country’s symphony orchestras.
“I’m very excited,” Sedaka said. “As you know, I began playing classical music when I was eight, then graduated to a concert pianist at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, so classical music has always been a passion of mine.”

That passion led him to write his first classical symphonic piece for a symphony orchestra, which had its world premiere last year at the Kansas City Symphony. “ It’s a 12-minute piece, with four movements and it’s called Joie de Vivre (Joy of Life). It is written for 100 pieces and took me four months to write. I am very proud of it.” As he should be, along with all of the pop hits he has sung and written over his illustrious career.

Sedaka says he grew up in Brooklyn listening to the music of Rosemary Clooney, Johnny Ray, Patti Page and other singers of that ilk. His transition from classical music to pop occurred when he and Howard Greenfield, a poet who lived in the same apartment building, decided to collaborate. Sedaka was 13, Greenfield 16. “I’ll never forget the day we met,” he said. “October 11, 1952. That began the longest collaboration in pop music — 30 years — until Howie passed away.”

Sedaka admits he wanted to be a rock ‘n’roll star, so auditioned for RCA Victor in 1958. “Between 1958 and 1963, we sold 40 million records.”

As for the fame at such an early age, Sedaka said, “I had a close-knit family and a lot of love. Being a disciplined musician, fame never went to my head. I always remembered where I came from, plus the fact that I wasn’t an overnight success. I wrote for many other singers since I was a kid and it was a number of years before I had my first hit as a singer/songwriter, so it was a gradual process.
“My only indulgence was to buy a new car every year. I started with a Chevy Impala, then a T-Bird before buying Cadillacs for many years. After that, I graduated to Rolls Royces.”

He was one of the few singers who weathered the Beatles invasion without seeing a slump in his popularity, by becoming an international star. “For me, it was very easy to learn a foreign language and most were written phonetically, which made it easier, so I recorded in Spanish, Italian, German, and Japanese.

“But it was really Elton John, who was my mentor, who gave me a big boost when he signed me to his American record company. He was a big fan of mine and we became very good friends and remain so to this day.”

At the time of our interview, Sedaka was finishing a children’s album “where I changed the words to my original rock and roll songs, so it’s Waking Up Is Hard To Do, Lunch Will Keep Us Together, Where The Toys Are…things like that. My 5-year-old granddaughters are singing backup, so it’s a lot of fun. I like trying fresh things.”

One thing that remains fresh is his marriage of 46 years to his childhood sweetheart. “We grew up together, we respect each other, we would rather be with each other than with anyone else, we enjoy each other’s company, we’re friends and she’s also been my manager. She’s booked all my dates for the past 30 years.”

The couple have two children, Dara and Mark. “Dara’s a singer who performed with me once, but had stage fright so that was our only appearance together. Mark is a screenwriter in California and he has three children. He helped me with my children’s project and he has a children’s TV program in mind called Papa Neil’s Penthouse, like a Mr. Rogers, so we are pitching that. So life is good.”

Lenny interviews David Copperfield

When it was time to walk on the set for his role in a movie, actor Jack Lemmon would always say, “It‘s magic time.” And so it is every night that David Copperfield steps onto the stage of the Hollywood Theater in the MGM Grand. The difference is that Copperfield really does create magic — improbable and seemingly impossible illusions that have audience members staring in disbelief before erupting in wild applause.
His show is 90 minutes of sheer escapism. “We need to escape and God knows we have to get away from our troubles and problems, especially at a time like this and magic is a wonderful form of transportation to take you on that journey. It pleases and challenges the mind.”
So what can his audiences expect when he performs in Las Vegas? In a recent interview I did with him he told me that he has some 20 hours of material “which is unheard of in my world. For instance, Houdini had about an hour and a half of  material in his whole life.
“Because of my television specials, it forced me to come up with an hour of new material every year, which I first tested on the road. What’s cool about having that many hours of material is that I can pull out my greatest hits moments and keep alternating them in the show, as well as changing and tweaking them a bit. So audiences are always getting a fresh look at my material. It’s like magical repertory theater for me.”
It is also exciting for the crew, which totals 30 in Las Vegas and increases to 50 when he tours. He brings up the fact that some of his crew weren’t even born when he first created some of the illusions on which they work.
His ideas for illusions depends on a number of factors, but says he went through many different periods over his career. “Because of my passion for musicals and Broadway, I combined my magic with stories like an MGM musical or Broadway show. And that defined who I was at the beginning of my career.
“Then I went to a period where I vanished an airplane and everybody went ‘Wow!’ so big objects became my signature. I walked through the Great Wall of China and walked through Statue of Liberty and floated over the Grand Canyon.
“Then when MTV took hold, it introduced very sexy, erotic videos that inspired film and music and it affected what I was doing, so my magic then went to a period where I included very sexy dance numbers and sensual MTV-kind of video magic onstage.
“When that went away I collaborated with director Francis Ford Coppolla. His idea for a Broadway show was called Dreams and Nightmares, to take my dreams and nightmares and base all my magic on that, so I did that show. I dreamed of flying and I would fly. My nightmare was of an escape gone wrong.
“Years later I took that idea and made it about other people’s dreams, and realizing them onstage. For instance, I would take audience members who  dreamed of going to Hawaii to meet their father and I would vanish them to Hawaii.”
One element that has had a profound effect on Copperfield’s magic today is Musha Cay and the Islands of Copperfield Bay, an island chain in the Exumas in the Bahamas that he purchased a number of years ago and which he calls “arguably the most perfect place in the world.” (You can take a look for yourselves by going to www.IslandsofCopperfieldBay.com.) “There’s a lot of synergy between what’s happening on the islands and my show. A passion of mine for many years was to have the perfect place in the world and share it with people. So much of my magic today is based upon discoveries I’ve made on the island and it provides a new pallette for me.
“I believe that the audience senses that they are getting something very personal from my heart and from the essence of who I am because all the magic I do comes from an emotional spot for me, whether it’s from my dreams and nightmares, or my love of movies, or whatever I may be performing.”
Copperfield says that despite the appetite of people today to want bigger, better, riskier, “I don’t approach my work that way. I look at what I’ve created and ask myself if I have gotten the most out of this idea. Have I shared this concept in a challenging and unique way. Can I make it more emotional?  I’m always looking for a unique voice to share my work and it usually involves an emotional thread, a spectacle, but always comes from a very real place.”
The difference between being good and great, says Copperfield, is that “I think the people, no matter what they do, who become great as opposed to just good, are those that are still achieving, but still trying to figure it out. In other words — and I’m not trying to be humble here — but I’m still trying to get it right. I think some of the work I’ve done is good and I’m proud of it, but I still feel the need to constantly improve and grow.
“Once you get really satisfied, it’s pretty much over, in my opinion. The people that I admire are still on the journey and I’m not talking about illusionists only. When you saw Sinatra onstage, the wrinkles on his face told the story. He wasn’t just singing the song, it was about way more than that. If I can do that with my magic, the audience knows they’re seeing something different, something special and that they’re in good hands.”
Without giving anything away, I highly recommend Copperfield’s show. Over the years he has become a polished entertainer, a man who is very comfortable with his audiences and who possesses a wry sense of humor that adds to his performance. And for me, the most important part other than his exceptional talent, is that he is a true gentleman.