April 6, 2003
LOS ANGELES -- I'm on the
phone with my friend Sharon. I'm taking her out for her birthday that afternoon
and for weeks she's been bugging me to find out what I've got planned. Brunch
at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena? Nope. A day cruise to Catalina? Guess again.
I finally give in and tell her: "We're seeing Steve Lawrence
and Eydie Gorme in
Cerritos." She laughs hysterically, waiting for the punch line. Eventually
she realizes there is no punch line. There's a long pause. Finally,
she cracks, "Are they still performing and why are they are still performing?"
Until recently I had consigned
Steve & Eydie to some retro part of my childhood, where they sang on "The
Ed Sullivan Show" whenever Alan King wasn't
complaining about crab grass.
Since then, they hadn't
figured much in my consciousness. Sharon had a point -- were they still performing?
Once in a while Steve would pop up on a Carol Burnett rerun. Occasionally I'd
hear a wild rumor that they couldn't get a recording contract anymore, that
they were so washed-up they were forced to sing under an
assumed name . . . in Spanish.
Fast forward to many years later. Thanks to the lamented and much-missed Audiogalaxy, I am able to discover or rediscover a whole generation of performers I normally would have overlooked. After all, what do you have to lose by downloading free music? My hard drive was soon busy storing "This Could Be the Start of Something Big" and "Tonight I'll Say A Prayer."
One more tour
So when it was announced
that Steve & Eydie will be playing in Cerritos, Calif., as part of their
"One More for the Road" final tour that will take them from
West Palm Beach to Boston to Westbury, Long Island (they're not retiring, just
cutting back on touring), I bought tickets, figuring I'd have my choice of seats.
I did. It was either the last row or the next to the last.
Obviously, I wasn't the
only one with a taste for the husband-and-wife singing duo. After all, Frank,
Dean and Sammy are show biz icons to us. Tony Bennett completely revitalized
his career and is now considered the essence of hip by the VH1 generation. However,
as we entered the theater lobby, Sharon kept
nudging me to look at the other members of the audience. How can I put this?
Basically, we were the only ones under 60.
As the house lights dimmed,
the huge orchestra played a brassy fanfare: first a drum roll, then trumpets
blaring out. Pure show business. Then they made their
entrances -- Eydie in a white beaded caftan and Steve in a classic tuxedo that
was stylish in 1975. If you didn't know it was two in the afternoon in Cerritos,
you'd swear it was Vegas on New Year's Eve.
Guess what? They killed.
They are unapologetically
doing the same kind of act they have been doing since they started performing
together in 1960 -- singing the great American songbook
from Gershwin to Porter in front of a large orchestra, the kind of act that
the real headliners used to do in the glory days of Vegas until they were replaced
by the
empty spectacle of the Siegfrieds and Roys of today.
It's a little eerie how
time has stood still for these two. They literally sound exactly the same way
they did 25 years ago, which is to say superb. Opening with
"Together Wherever We Go," they cruised into "This Could Be the
Start of Something Big," "If He Walked Into My Life," "I've
Got to Be Me," "New York, New York", and "Fly Me to the
Moon." The big set piece is the Sinatra medley during which, in 10-plus
minutes, they cover all of Blue Eyes' big hits from "Witchcraft" to
"All or Nothing at All" to "Angel Eyes" using some of the
classic arrangements Sinatra gave Lawrence as a Christmas gift a few years before
his death.
Unbeatable chemistry
Eventually, I worked up the courage to glance over at Sharon, expecting to either find her rolling her eyes or snoring. She was singing along.
Between songs, they tease
each other, kibbutz with the audience and tell jokes -- lawyer jokes, Viagra
jokes, Internet jokes. Steve on Eydie's weight gain:
"You're the only thing I ever invested in that doubled." Her comeback:
"Now you have to figure out how to make me split." Because their affection
for one
another is so genuine and their chemistry second to none, even the corniest
jokes get their laughs.
But why was I so hooked by these two?
Frank Sinatra, arguably
the greatest male singer of the last century, wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs;
to listen to recordings of the way he and Dean spoke to
Sammy is enough to make one cringe. Much as I would love to have seen him in
his heyday, I never would have wanted to share a meal with him; I'd be on edge
the entire time. But Steve and Eydie are about inviting you to their table.
It's so obvious that they absolutely love performing for you, their enthusiasm
is so infectious, that you wind up drunk with happiness.
Copyright © 2003,
CHICAGO TRIBUNE