Interview with AI8 Finalist Adam LambertDon’t Call Him ‘Theater Guy’
Patricia Morris Buckley —Associate Staff Writer
pmb@thetwocentscorp.com
When Adam Lambert first auditioned in San Francisco, Simon called him “too theatrical.” Would he said the same thing if he hadn’t known that Adam was understudying the male lead in the LA production of Wicked?
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[photo: AmericanIdol.com]
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When Adam Lambert first auditioned in San Francisco, Simon called him “too theatrical.” Would he said the same thing if he hadn’t known that Adam was understudying the male lead in the LA production of “Wicked?”
ReplyDeleteAccording to Adam, he’s not even that much into theater, especially as a long-term career.
“I don’t listen to show tunes in my spare time I can assure you,” he said. “The show tune thing, the musical theater thing, was just kind of the way that I was paying the bills. I mean we all have to have a job, right? But I think that I take the theatrical comment as a compliment as opposed to a derogatory statement. Simon kind of makes it seem derogatory, but when you think about it, in the pop music scene right now a lot of the big artists are going a very theatrical route. There’s lots of camp and costumes—that’s kind of an angle right now in the scene. So I kind of think it’s time for something like that.”
But he doesn’t downplay the experience that being in theater has given him. He still remembers his first theater role as Linus in ‘You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” at San Diego’s Lyceum Theater.
“Obviously you have to, like, be on your game with the theater world,” he pointed out. “You have to be ready to go at any moment. This machine it’s turning real fast, so it’s kind of like you either hop on and hold on and you know how to own your stuff or you fall off. So I think with theater it’s definitely trained me to be able to sing under any condition and be able to just go with the drop of a hat.
“I think in certain ways there are certain elements of the theater training that could be detrimental to the Idol experience, because that’s not really the sound I’m going for. I’m not going for a Broadway sound. But the cool thing is that this is finally allowing me to be myself.”
In fact, when questioned about his fashion choices — if he’s going for a new look — it turns out that this is how he prefers to dress.
“When I started going into rehearsals for Wicked all the other kids looked at me like I was a freak because I was dressed like that in rehearsal,” he said. “That has always been my style. In the Broadway community, in the show, I’m costumed in that. So the stuff that you’ve been seeing me wear on Idol is really my daily street wear.
“For the other night, for the performance, that was my chance to kind of present myself, so of course I upped the fashion kick a little bit. I put on something a little dressier, a little funkier [than he wore to his audition].”
He knows that he got the prime sport — last of the evening — in the second semifinal and says he’s grateful for that. He put a lot of thought into selecting the song. He went with “Satisfaction” because it’s a favorite of his mother’s.
“I think strategy is, like, half of a competition,” he pointed out. “I think that when picking a song and figuring out your arrangement that’s when you should really be thinking hard and using your brain. But then when it comes time to actually get up there and perform it, you have to turn the brain off and just feel it and go with the moment.”
Adam mentioned that his style is hard to pigeonhole and he’s never seen a singer with his musical tastes on Idol before. In fact, the singer he most identifies with is David Bowie.”
“Obviously I’m a risk taker,” he said. “I kind of feel like I’m not easy listening. You know what I mean? I’m not going to be always the most digestible thing for everybody across the board; I’m specific, and I like to kind of blow it out of the box and either you like it or you don’t.
“My plan is that I’m not planning on wailing at the top of my lungs every week; I think the audience would grow tired of that. I intend on making it interesting by varying up the mood and the style of the song that I’m singing week-to-week.”
This guy is brilliant
ReplyDeleteDear sweet lord, not only is this guy drop dead gorgeous, but now he's a freaking genius? ;P
ReplyDeleteAdam Lambert is my life!
ReplyDelete