Newspaper Page Text
November, 1979
Hoof, to a principal role in tiddler, to Ml-1
lage clubs to the gas male Continental !
Baths, to Johnny ('.arson, and to stardom
as •‘The Divine Miss M." Around the lime
of her triumphant three-week engage-
ment at New Ybfk's Palace Theater in the
fall of 1973 she was called “the latest
show business phenomenon" and was
nearly -everybody's cover girl. Newsweek,
in its cover story. was muved to remark. !
Ifs safe to say that even Garlands legen
dary appearances in the great old house
never aroiised so much anticipation as
Bette Midler's Palace debut."
It 's also safe to sav that Bette Midler has
never reached quite so high a plane since.
She’s hardly been inactive'or unsuccess
ful, recording six albums, taping fWo TV
specials, and putting together a grand
iose Broadway show. “Clams on the Half
Shell." On the other hand, after her sec
ond album hef record sales were onlv
modest, and she tended at times to sort of
disappear from public view. “I didn't do
that much." she admitted. “I did 'Clams.*'
I did little interviews, but I really wasn't !
doing anything. I was sort of in a period
of transition. Crowing up. I guess."
Perhaps the tremendous media hype of -
1973 had been hard on her. “Not really"
she replied. “I wasn't pav ing much atten
tion. I was pretty much living my life the
wav I'd always lived it. I was just trying to
make the music Work and the stage shows
interesting, and as they .get bigger thev
get harder."
What was especially hard, it seems, was
the failure to hnd a formula for hit re
cords after the popularity of her first two
albums. One easily remembers early
Midler songs like “Do Vim Wanna Dance”
or “Friends" or “Boogie W'oogie Bugle
Boy of Company B". But what can we,
hum from her other albums? “I liked my
third record very much." said Midler,
“hut it was not a big seller and it disap
pointed me- My record career has been
kind of checkered. I didn't have a lot of
communication w ith the label, didn't
know them very well even though I've
been w ith them a good long number of
years now.”
She also lost the serv ices of Barry
Manilow after her second album as he
caught a quick flight to superstardom,
and that left her without a musical di
rector. “I didn't have anvbody just to call
up in the middle of the night and sing
songs with. I like to'work with bands,
good musicians."
Midler's current upswing has a lot to
do with how she's remedied her nagging
musical direction and recording prob
lems. Of Thighs and W hispers she said. “It
has an energy to it which my last couple
of records haven't had. There's a lot of
stuff on it that's very personal, accessible,
andlt's played reil well and sung real well
too, which is nice for a change.”
Midler attributes the lack of energy to
frustration in the studio and a fearful
need to please critics, fans, and mana
gers. But. “I no.longer have that fear.” she
said. “I don't have anyone to please
but my self. I'm more w tiling to take
chances."
Thighs and Whjspers is slickly pro
duced and arranged by Arif Mardin and
features Midler’s typical mixture of up
beat songs and ballads. RirB and big
band, parody and poignancy. The biggest
change Is the disco Havor to many of the
songs. I like the album but feel that her
voice is rather burled, a problem with
most slick pop Record productions these
days. She completely disagreed. “Maybe
it's vour pressing." she suggested. “Vbu
should turn the treble up on ynrtur
machine. On my machine my voice is
really loud.”
Our talk turned to the band that's now
backing her. which includes talented 20-
year-old keyboard player. Kandy Kerber.
w ho co-w rote w ith Midler the song
“Hurricane" on the new album. “I like
this band very much,” she said. “I was
always more of an entertainer ty pe than a
person who had a band. The girl perfor
mers like the Chers and the Ann-
Margretv, they don't have bands. They
have someone who looks after them and
that fellow puts the band together. But I
don't want to do it that way and more. I've
gotten to the point w here there's a certain
kind of fommerical and financial com
mitment you have to make if you're going
to be a musician. You have to get that
group of people around you who can ex
press your ideas. It'-s taken me a long time
Midler dreamed o! being an actress
when she was grow ing up. but she saw
herself as the dowager type — Dame Mae
Whitty, Kdna Mae Oliver, aind most espe
cially F.thel Barrymore. Those great
ladies are a far cry from Janis Joplin, but
N(idler was quick to quash the Joplin
comparison.
“I*m alway s surprised whe.n people say.
‘She's portraying Janis Joplin.' I'm so
staggered that anyone would think I
would do a thing like that... I had seen
Janis a few times when she was working.'
and I did love her. But when I took that
role I made a conscious decision to cut off
w hatever there was in me that loved Janis,
because I didn't want to bring that to the
picture. I thought it would be unfair to
her memory.”
Interestingly enough, throughout her
career Midler has been compared or con
nected in some way w ith Joplin, espe
cially in the energy and intensity of their
stage performances. Mopsy Kennedy in
Ms. (August 1973) w rote. “She |Midler| I
fills the gap left in our hearts by the death |
of Janis Joplin. She fills the need for a I
combination of the cynical and the sen- !
timental...”
“That sounds right." said Midler.
“Absolutely. The brave face to the world.
Courage in the face of inevitable doom.
And also a raspberry in the face of inevit
able doom."
Was it well-placed raspberries that have
kept Bette Midler from getting caught on
that cutaway railroad car that doomed so
many other star performers? We talked at
length about the reasons that performers
selbdestruct — an insatiable need for au
dience love, a romance w ith booze and
. drugs, a lack of the kind of discipline
Midler learned from the theatre.
,“Evervone wants to be Elvis Presley," she
said, “but no one wants to die like that.
Everyone wants to be Elvis when he was
| young, but no one realizes that if you're
going to be Elvis when you're young then
you're going to be Elvis when you’re old
too." It seems to be Midler’s
professionalism — and separation of her
private self from her stage persona — that
have protected her from burning out.
Janis Joplin was not all that different on
and off stage, but Bette Midler, who dres
ses outrageously and appears big and
bawdy onstage, is at home a petite, pretty
woman in her 30s who usually wears
jeans, a simple blouse, and glasses. She's
humorous, but not “on." earthy and
friendly but w ith an edge of reserve. The
great disparity in appearance and man
ner from stage to home made me wonder,
if the “Div ine Miss M" was a fantasy cit
ation.
“No," said Midler. “I'm like that. It de
pends on what I do w ith my hair." Midler
explained that she really enjoy s the sexy,
tacky, “tart” image she portrays in per
formance and on the cover of her new
album (where she pushes forward her
famous assets rather provocatively). “I
1 like being overly sexy. I like taking sex
t to get to that point.”
If Midler expresses a real “take
charge" attitude toward her career now. it
gibes with the fact that she is in charge.
She's been managing herself for about
seven months since she fired Russo, a
man who was sometimes portrayed by the
media as Midler's Svengali figure.
“I was his Svengali. give me a break."
she said with an edge of disdain. “I in
troduced him to the world, poor thing. Oh.
' 1 shouldn't be rude. He was a fairly
manipulative-type guy. There were-cer
tain kinds of withholding approbation-
; type games that went on between us that
were not really healthy. When I finally
came around to realizing I didn't want to
play the games any more I knew it was
time to go. and so I went."
Midler has an assistant, a law yer. and
business people to help her manage her
self. but she's about reads to hire another
full-charge manager. “Managing your
self," she found out, “means you lose your
sense of humor.”
“I didn't realize,"’she said ruefully,
“that once I was named as the one w ho had
the overview, then the voices would be
raised in the great hue and cry against me
and my taste. In'other words, anyone w ith
any kind of a bitch would come, to me. I
would be so busy worry ing about what
side of the stage people were going to
enter from and whether they were going
to gel per diem or not and w ho was going
to buy road cases that I didn't remember
my own name, literally. That was what it
was like in the first couple of weeks. Then
1 said. *()h hell with this, you go do this*
and I turned it over to the people who
really should have done it in the first
> place."
I Bette Midler, manager, is a role she’s
ready to relinquish. Bette Midler, movie
star, is a role she may soon have to em-
* brace. She seemed a little embarrassed at
the possibility, but obviously it* 5 * crossed
her mind.
i- I “I've been sort of trying not to think
I about it. And the day keeps getting closer
>• and closer and it's building up a bit. It's
; exciting just because everyone else is ex-
I cited.”
and slapping it in the lace a couple of
limes. I don't really in my personal life
'pay that much attention to h. I think of it
like food...”
Two nights later Midler gave her last
performance at the Greek, and her voice
often sounded like it was coming out of
speakers w ith bad wiring (she had
already been-quite hoarse during our
interview, no doubt affected by E.A.’s
worse smog siege in 24 years). But that
wasn't why I was disappointed. I was
unmoved by her familiar shtick — the sex
and booze and dope jokes, the overlong
parody of a bad night club entertainer, the
comedy monologue that would have been
better sprinkled throughout the show,
and the attempt at “serious" musical
drama in a mime-song segment where
Midler played an old woman on a park
bench. I wanted to be Bill Murray on
Saturday Sight Liir and tell her “Come off
it. Bette, drop all the fancy stuff and be
you. Now get outta here. I love ya."
The best part of the show at the Greek
was a medley of songs from The Hose — a
lovely ballad (“The Rose"), a straight
ahead rocker (“Midnight in Memphis”)
and a rather histrionic cover of Uirraine
Ellison's classic “Stay w ith Me." Midler
was magic on these numbers, so it’s ex
citing to hear that she might put together
a strictly rock and roll show. “I’d like the
chance just, to sing that kind of music
straight through and notlireak it up w ith
any other kind of music...see how much
there is to say in the framework of that."
I asked her if she thought she'd ever be
able to capture her terrific stage energy
on vinyl, “I think I got closer to it on
Thighs and Whispers than I ever have." she
said. “1 know you don't think so. But on
my machine it sounds action-packed. Vmj
must be playing it on a Victrola, for
Christ's sake. Turn up the treble!”
Michele Kort, a Los Angeles-based free lance
writer, is a rock trivialist, a vegetarian and
a leisure-lime jock.