RP – You have an illustrious career as a lyricist.  There are dozens and dozens of citations about your work on the internet.

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – I guess you can say that.

RP – Have you ever written music along with the lyrics, or just music alone?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – Well, I have, but not in years.  But really, I allied myself with composers.  I am a musically oriented person, so I’ve certainly have had my input over the years with some of the music, but I don’t think of myself as a composer.  I haven’t done that in a long time.

RP – I was listening to Dèjá Vu just before our conversation.  It’s a very poignant, very beautiful piece –

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – Thank you.

RP -  How did you get the inspiration for those lyrics?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – Well, actually I think someone had come up with that title.  I was a huge Crosby, Stills and Nash fan at the time, and they had a wonderful recording called Dèjá Vu, so I said to the people involved, “ I don’t think we can use that title – it’s already been used”.  But they all said it would not be a problem, so what I ended up doing with those lyrics was a pretty technical job.  I decided if I was going to go on with that title, I had to spend most of the lyrics defining what Dèjá Vu meant.

RP – I see –

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – And at the time, I was recently falling in love with my husband, meeting his family and so I was inspired out of personal experience, I guess.

RP – I guess that helps a little bit –

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – Absolutely. (laughing) But my instinct told me my job was to sort of state what Dèjá Vu was.

RP – Having Dionne Warwick sing it was, as we now know, an inspired choice.  Did she select the song – or did you select her?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON -  She was doing a record, and she was a very close friend of Isaac Hayes, and this melody had been lying around for years. There was some impatience about it – they kept saying, “when are we going to do this?”  So I was selected to write the lyrics for this melody that had been around awhile.  Dionne and Isaac were particularly anxious to get it done, and so the timing was just right.

RP -  It certainly was, definitely.

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – And for me it was incredible, because I had grown up as a serious follower of Dionne Warwick, so it was one of those special signals in life – having her singing one of my songs.

RP -  I’m sure, but you’ve had several of those.  There was Peter Allen in the Rio number.

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – Absolutely.  Peter and I actually wrote quite a few songs together.  I  Go To Rio was one of those, because we had met each other over the years in a  rather casual way, at parties and what not in New York.  We were acquaintances, but we certainly weren’t friends.  I had a strong relationship with his publisher at the time, and so we were basically set up together.  I had a meeting with him and I had prepared what I thought would be a good direction for him to take, and I don’t remember what that direction was at this point, but he said no. “It we start something, I want to do something altogether different, so he got the music for Rio and we wrote that song in about an hour.

RP -  One hour? You’re kidding!

ADRIENNE ANDERSON -  No!  One hour.  There was not a note change, there was not a word change – it just worked.

RP – That seems incredible!

ADRIENNE ANDERSON -  I know – it was great!

RP - What’s amazing is that it enjoyed such wonderful success after that.

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – Yeah.  It really did become a great copyright.  It’s one of those songs that was a much bigger hit abroad than it was in the U.S.  For some reason, everybody seems to know that song.

RP – Well, it’s a very contagious song.  The lyrics are easy – they seem to fall into place- It’s almost as if you know them before you hear them.

ADRIENNE ANDERSON -   Yes – that’s amazing.  We had never written anything together before – in fact we never really spent a long time together. It literally took us an hour to write the whole song and when we finished, we were over at A & M, (which is the publishing company), nobody was there!  Everyone had gone to lunch – so we kinda looked at each other and said – “You wanna go get a cup of coffee?”  So we had some coffee and waited for everyone to get back from lunch, and then we just sang it for them.  Everyone heard it and went –“whoppee!”

RP- That’s amazing!  That’s a great story!”

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – It is a great story.  You, know it’s one of those stories where things just happen.  Like with Daybreak, a hit that I had with Barry (Manilow).

RP- Yes –

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – I had written that lyric, just on my own, thinking it could be some kind of an R&B number for some group, or whatever. And Barry literally found that lyric in a stack on the floor.  I never imagined that it would be right for him, but he was the one that picked it up off the floor and said, “What’s this?” and I said, “It’s just a lyric.”  That was one of those that didn’t take me very long to write – it didn’t take him very long to write either, as with Rio,  and I was thinking by then – “Wow – this is just too easy!”

RP – One could get used to that, I suppose.

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – Well, things have a way of balancing out because there’s been some great stuff that’s never seen the light of day.

RP – Have you ever worked on a piece that was very difficult to come by?  Maybe something agonizing?  I’ve heard that sometimes people spend hours working on one word or one phrase – has that ever happened to you working on one of your lyrics?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – Well- - - it has, but not all that often.  For me, if that happens it’s usually a sign that something is amiss.

RP – I see.

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – I’m not a really overly technical writer. I’m more of an inspired writer. That’s kind of how it works for me.  If it’s not coming easily,  it’s definitely a signal to me that I’m not in the right frame of mind for writing or there’s something about the music that’s not working for me, but its something that’s wrong.  I’m not one of those that keeps sweating over a line for days at the keyboard.

RP – You know if it’s working or not?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON -  For me that comes when I am solely in control and just feeling in the moment of what I’m doing.  I’ve sort of crawled inside the music.

RP- You always have the music when you write lyrics?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – I’ve had plenty of talks over the years, particularly with Barry, where he wanted the lyrics first, so I’ve written lyrics to other tracks, just to kick-start myself, and then occasionally just out of my, head.  For the most part it’s the inspiration that carries me along.

RP – Do you get a feeling when you’re going in the right direction?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – I know that I’m in good shape when a lyric is writing itself, rather than me manipulating it. 

RP – Is that the way City Kid, your new play came about?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – With City Kid it’s been years of work on the show.  There’s been many rewrites – stuff that’s been thrown out – stuff that’s been put in.  And then there’s the fine tooth combing, where a pronoun needs to be changed from “you” to “me” or “them” to “us” or “you” to “I”.  You know, stuff like that, where you ask, “whose point of view is this?”

RP- Have you found anything different doing City Kid?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – The whole project has been different from writing pop-music in that the process for pop-music is much faster.  At least it was in my case, but in theatre is a completely different genre.  I think that’s one of the things I love about it so much,  Every production is a new opportunity.  It’s a never ending process of always re-examining, re-discovering, re-writing . . . it’s very, very different.  I asked my director (Steve Tompkins) with whom I’ve been working since 1990 – “when are we finished?”  And he said, “when the curtain comes down!”  (laughing) I’ll never forget that!

RP – I guess so.  Would you call City Kid an updated West Side Story?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  Oh, I might, but I hesitate to even compare what we’re doing to that masterpiece.

RP- Maybe along the same genre perhaps?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  I think the connection to West Side Story is that it’s about young people – kids living in the day and that was certainly my inspiration – absolutely.  I grew up in New York, and even though I was young, I was old enough to take in seriously all the masterpiece that was folded in the original stage production.  I loved all the Rodgers and Hammerstein stuff – Guys and Dolls – all of that.

RP – That’s great.

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – When West Side Story came out, I think I was in the eighth grade and I believe I saw it four times.  So yes, I can say that West Side Story was a huge inspiration for me.  I had no designs for writing musical theatre ever, however.  I wanted to be an actress – I wanted to be in the Lincoln Center repertory and that was my goal for the future. 

RP – Did you pursue it?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – I was thinking that musical theatre was irrelevant for me.  I thought, “I’m a performer, so I’ll sing” but my choices were much more of a jazz singer than anything else.  I wasn’t interested in doing musical theatre at all at that point.

RP- So how did the change come about?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  This is has been a huge detour.  City Kid came about as an accident.

RP – An accident?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  It came about with the fellows that I teamed up (because they were record producers and writers).  I was a lyricist and I knew that I wasn’t going to get very far unless I was writing with the producer or the artist of the record.  So we started writing and I had these lyrics for City Kid.  We thought we were just going to put together a concept album for somebody.  It was about a somewhat biographical track in the life of a young man somewhere between the ages of 14 and 20 or something like that. So we just started to set the music, and as we went along I started visualizing people on stage doing this stuff – dancing and singing. So I went to Rick and Peter my collaborators and said, “guess what guys! – Guess what we’re going to do now!”  So they followed me along, but they were not at all sure what I was talking about.

RP – You mean they were skeptical at first?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  Oh yeah!  It wasn’t something that they were particularly interested in doing.  They weren’t R&B record producers and they didn’t have any theatre experience at all, and it wasn’t what I had originally approached them with.

RP- So that started the project?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –   Well, we wrote for a year and then I started to put together some kind of a story where I had some synopsis.  Then later in the year we had a cassette and a story sequence presentation and I had no idea what to do next because I wasn’t in the theatre world and I didn’t know anyone in that world.  That’s one of the great things I’ve learned from City Kid – that any one can do anything.

RP- You just keep trying and making connections.

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  Yeah.  I was an outsider and I just started sending this package all over the country to any theater that claimed to be developmental for new musicals. 

RP – That’s quite a task

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –   Then I found I didn’t have enough for them.  They wanted a book, and they said if they liked the book and they liked the music they might put us some money for a workshop.  I wasn’t getting any help, and after a year and a half I got a call from some people in Washington (D.C.) and they said “We think you have something we’d like to develop”

RP – How about that?  That’s great!”

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  So they did, and now their artistic director and the director of choreography of the original workshop are the ones doing it here.  We’ve worked together for 11 years now.  And it’s been a glorious – glorious experience and I’m totally hooked at this point.  There’s no going back.

RP – Well, that’s exciting.  You’re doing this at the Hudson Mainstage?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – The Backstage.

RP -  And is that space adequate or large enough for the type of show you do?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  Oh yes.  We have to adjust the visual aspect.  We don’t have the opportunity for set design that we had in previous shows.  One thing about working in a small theatre is that what you give up in space and technical design limitations you make up with electricity and immediacy you gain.  The audience is right there.

RP – You’re in previews right now until the 20th?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  Yes.  We had our first preview on the 12th – Barry Manilow was there and it was crazy.  I was surprised to see Entertainment Toniight covering the event.  You know, they usually only cover film events or movie stars, so to have them there really made us feel good.  It’s amazing to know that we’ll be getting national exposure for the show.

RP – Now, after seeing the preview do you think you’ll be doing any major or minor changes or tweaks to the show?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – We’ll be tightening the show, no doubt.  There’s been some discussion about some of the casting, but I don’t think there’ll be any changes.  I think if we were to do this all over we might rethink a couple of the cast members, but for the most part we’ve done very, very well.

RP –  Is there a goal you see, beyond having a successful run, that you would like to accomplish with this production?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – I think my greatest hope is to bridge the gap between kids and musical theatre.  There is such a huge division between them it seems like its forever.  There is such an exhilaration that these kids in the cast, and other casts that we’ve had is really indicative of their enthusiasm.  They come up to me and say, “We’re so happy to be doing this show – we love musical theatre, we love to sing and act, but we seldom have a chance to perform in a show that’s about us and our world”. And they’re so grateful to have this opportunity that that has become my goal.  I want to get into the high schools – the middle schools.  We may have to go through the theatre departments of the schools.  I’d like to fill the Hudson theatre with these kids from the schools, even if we have to drive them over and give them free seats!  The idea is to get them in.  I understand that for the most part, the theatre going public is middle aged and well-to-do, and that’s because the price of admission is often expensive.  I think that’s one of the problems!  My greatest goal is to expose kids to theatre – not just musical theatre.  I know that many young people have gone to Hairspray or Grease, but that is so retro.  What we want to do with City Kid is to give it timelessness where it could be a story that takes place anytime.

RP – Could it be a story that takes place anywhere also?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – Definitely.  It’s as relevant today as it was twenty years ago and hopefully will be in twenty years.  There’s something sort of mythic about what we are trying to do here in terms of city kids and their discovery that some kind of wisdom that has to be obtained in the process of growing up. 

RP- Are you trying to show in the play that the kids are attempting to discover who they are and what is their place at this point in their life?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – Well, it’s more about choices and peer pressure and taking some kind of responsibility for the life that they want to live.   One of the things that has been amazing for me is that the more that I work on this project, which has been like a Zen exercise for the past few years, I discover that it’s not so much telling somebody something, but there’s something more profound in these issues that we discuss.  May if these are issues that I’ve dealt with in my own life.  Having this cast is an experience where I’m seeing the actors starting to own these characters and I see the choices they make in portraying them.  That is a learning experience for me, where I have learned  that you think you have such control over it, and if has any truth to it, it sort of takes a life of its own.

RP – Is there a certain guideline or philosophy that you follow?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  I believe that as a writer or as a creative person in any art form, you get the project going and you can feel the energy – you can feel the momentum and the best thing you can do is to kind of let it go!  Not remove yourself, but rather, get out of the way so that the momentum in this life force can kind you tell you itself when its working.  You become more of a vessel to let it come through – something like “Oh yeah – wow!  I guess that is what I meant!”

RP – So as your actors work through it and begin to give it their own interpretation, it changes so that could become greater than the sum of its parts?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – That’s what I’m experiencing and it is an incredible experience.  Writing for theatre has been such a humbling and exhilarating challenge,  I feel so not on top of it but so inspired and excited to continue to learn how to do it.  It’s complicated and vast.  When I first started City Kid I was amazed to discover that I could actually talk from different points of view.  I had been writing songs for so many years and it was all “I” or “You” and it was all only one voice telling the story.  Now I all of a sudden I saying to myself – Wow – I  can have four people say this – or I can have six people!

RP- And in this cast you have 18 people saying things.

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  Yes, and I just love it!  On a personal level I love the community spirit. Every night these kids came early – waiting to start rehearsal.  They love what they do and there’s a certain kind of bonding that’s taken place.  It’s like its become the favorite part of their life.

RP – Perhaps this is not the time to ask, but are you thinking of your next project yet?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  Oh, I’ve already started on it.  It’s actually been a few years that I’ve been working on it.

RP –  Really?  What is it?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  Are you familiar with The Pawnbroker?

RP -  You’re making a musical of The Pawnbroker?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  It’s going to be something completely different.  We’re almost finished with Act One, but for now I’m focusing totally on City Kid.  It’s going to be hard to let go of this – (laughing)

RP -  How long did you say you’ve been working on City Kid?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – I started working with Rick and Peter in 1989. 

RP – That’s an incredible amount of time to focus on one project!

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  Yes.  The kids in the cast were about three years old then and now they’re out of college.  I believe anyone will say that I have been sort of relentless and focused in bringing this project .  It’s been hard keeping the people interested, you know, with no money and all that.   So when there was a lull after the run in 1996 there was nothing more to do at that time, so that’s when I began the Pawnbroker.  There are parts of it that overlap with City Kid since I’m very focused in the urban conflicts on the street, which is one of the elements that drew me to the Pawnbroker.

RP- That sounds like its going to be quite a presentation.

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  This whole thing has opened up a whole new world for me.  I am so ecstatic.  So now I’m asking myself – what am I going to do after Pawnbroker?

RP – Let me ask you this.  If you were presenting this production in a school and one of the kids asked “What is required to become a lyricist?”  what advice would you give?

ADRIENNE ANDERSON – Well, honestly it’s a tough thing to be a lyricist, so I would say to team up with a composer . Marty Panzer teaches lyric writing at UCLA and he has some talented smart people that come into his class and write some very good lyrics, but a lyric by itself is pretty worthless, because what are you going to do with it?  I would say, either learn to write music or find a really composer to team up with.  Then, in terms of how to write a great lyric I would say there are two things.  Number one is try to write from your soul. Then two, if you want to write from your brain, that’s different.  When I first started, I wrote from the brain and I had some quirky and clever lyrics, because I felt that’s what I wanted to do.  Later on I had some wonderful influences – John Lennon, Stevie Wonder and such.  Their lyrics are incredibly honest and actually very simple.  I had to find my own identity and the kind of writer that I am is coming less from the brain and more from the soul.

RP – There’s a song I heard from your show where a guy gives a kid a business card and says, “Call me tomorrow – I can make a star out of you because you’ve got that look - - “ or something like that.

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  That’s not in the show anymore.

RP – It’s not?  That was a catchy song!

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  The music is in the show but the lyrics have changed.  The show is not about runaways.  We’ve gone back to the original story, so it’s no longer about runaway kids in Hollywood.  It’s more about middle class kids in America.  This could be Pacoima – Buffalo – it could be anywhere in the world.  I want this project to be about the kids and I would like as many as possible to see it.  I’m not in favor of the hundred dollar tickets.  I think it’s a turn off.  It puts musical theatre in the same category as opera, where you cater to middle age people with money and narrow your demographic because nobody else can afford to come.

I was sitting with Barry last night watching the show and he asked me how many people were in the show, so I said seventeen.  He shook his head and said – “It will never make it to Broadway – it’s too expensive!”

RP – Salaries, of course.

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  I don’t know how this is going to go, but last night I was talking to the person from Entertainment Tonight and he mentioned they will run the segment.  That means that people all over the United States  will see that equity waver theatre is in Los Angeles – and I mentioned that many productions have first started here in smaller theatres and eventually moved to New York.

RP –  I’ve covered a couple of shows locally, including one at a college theatre department that eventually made their way to   New York. Maybe that will be the case with City Kid.

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  Well, as they say, from your lips to God’s ears. In the meantime we’re going to do the best possible show we can.

RP – So the show opens officially on October 20 and will run weekends and Sundays.

ADRIENNE ANDERSON –  Yes, and I hope that you will be able to come and see the show and we can meet.

RP – I look forward to it.  Thanks for the time and I look forward to seeing the show.

With that we said our good-bys, and I was left with a distinct impression that Adrienne Anderson is not the type of theatre person who is concerned about having a hit show for the purpose of self advancement. Adrienne’s success as a lyric writer is well established and she could go on doing that for years.  So why take on the challenge of working on a project that takes her on an unknown path, creating a journey riddled with obstacles and incertitude?  Well, the answer is obvious.  There are many who embark on a journey hoping to find a reward at the end.  Then there are those for whom the journey and the discoveries made along the way are the reward itself.  Adrienne Anderson is the kind of person who finds the journey and what is learned along the way more than enough of a reward.  The good thing is that as she makes her discoveries, she shares the journey with the rest of us through her talent and inspiration, providing the opportunity to discover journeys and wonders of our own.

City Kid plays at the Hudson Backstage Theatre at 6539 Santa Monica Blvd starting October 20, 2007.  You can make reservations at (323) 960-7863.  Visit www.citykidthemusical.com

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