Post by Rike on Mar 15, 2010 23:19:35 GMT -6
web.me.com/writa1/tvsoundoff/Interviews/Entries/2010/3/15_A_conversation_with_David_Bryan_of_Bon_Jovi.html
A conversation with David Bryan of Bon Jovi
March 15, 2010
David Bryan is a founding member of Bon Jovi, the long-lived rock group that has sold over 130 million records and played to standing-room only audiences around the world. But the classically trained pianist soon may be known for a different accomplishment: Tony-winning composer.
“I don’t know,” he said about his award prospects. “It’s my first time. I really don’t know how the process works. We have a good show. We’re selling tickets. We’re in the black.”
Given the current economy, that last statement alone ought to be enough to earn him a trophy. But when it comes to his show, “Memphis” (see review), there is so much more. The play, widely considered the best new musical of the year, is about a white Tennessee disc jockey who introduces “race” music to white southern audiences. Bryan wrote the score, which ranges from plaintive love songs to rousing gospels to pulsating rock ‘n’ roll.
Bryan’s on the phone from California, where he is on tour with the band. He speaks freely about his 32-year “marriage” to the band that cost the world a physician as well as his near decade-long effort to take the musical from idea to opening.
A native of Edison, N.J., Bryan, 48, is the son of a jazz trumpeter who never got to live out his dream. His parents were immigrants from Poland and told him to “stop being a bum and get a job,” Bryan says.
So he went to work in a pocketbook factory and lived a conventional life. He taught David to play trumpet when he was just five and, two years later, took him to Emery Hack, a highly regarded pianist and teacher.
“He (Hack) sat at the piano and played Chopin,” Bryan recalls. It as like a magic trick. He sat me down and showed me a scale, just one octave, and said ‘Learn it for next week or don’t come back.’
“I came back. I wanted to do what he did. I went on to study with him for 13 years.” He was classically trained, but Hack permitted the introduction of more contemporary composers and songs -- from Gershwin to the Beatles.
“Jon” -- that being Bon Jovi of course -- “and I actually started way back when I was 16-½. I went to school with his cousin, and he told me that Jon was looking for a keyboardist.”
Bryan with a new driver’s license in his wallet and a used van in his driveway, loaded his Hammond keyboard and headed for Sayerville, where the Bongiovi clan lived.
“At the time it was a 10-piece band with a five-piece horn section,” he says “So we did a lot of Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, the Ventures.”
Though still minors, the group played a lot of Jersey Shore clubs and enjoyed a modicum of success. Meanwhile, Bryan entered Rutgers University and was running a 4.0 average in a tough pre-med program and coincidentally had just been accepted at Julliard when Bon Jovi called to say the group had been given a record deal.
It wasn’t exactly a no brainer. Bryan says, “I always wanted to be a surgeon.” But he recognized, too, that opportunities like this don’t always come along. And he could always go back to school.
The rest of course is unique musical history. With the exception of the Rolling Stones, no group has had the staying power of Bon Jovi. And quite frankly, when the Stones are together, it is more as a ‘60s revival act than musicians pertinent today.
The reason for Bon Jovi’s success is that they stay fresh, in part because they take hiatuses. And it was one such break in the early ‘90s that led to Bryan’s career on Broadway.
During one such break around 1990, Bryan took a serious run at composing. He’d written a couple of songs within the group, but now devoted his full energies to the task. He studied with several song writers and even secured a publishing deal.
“I was trying to get covers” -- that is, singers to record his songs -- “but it’s very difficult to get a cover in rock and roll” where many artists are also composers.
His publisher suggested he try musicals, claiming he could get covers of them. His first effort, with Francine Oscal, to turn her Sweet Valley High books into a musical, did not work out -- as of yet. “We put it together. It was a little too premature, its rock and roll songs were too loud. But I’ll never let that project die.”
Around eight years ago, he heard about the book for Memphis written by theater veteran Joe DiPietro (“All Shook Up,” “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change”). He got the script and it resonated immediately.
“The story ran true to me. I’m a white Jewish kid from Edison. I’ve seen racism and hate.”
“When I first got the script from Joe, there were some lyrics there. I heard everything. I heard (the music).”
He called DiPietro, who knew that Bryan wrote both music and lyrics. Jay told Bryan he wasn’t vested in the lyrics, that Bryan could play with them. “He said, ‘Do a song and send it to me.’ Right after I hung up, I went down to my studio and worked on ‘Music of My Soul” .”
He recorded the song, put it on a CD and sent it to Joe. “He called me the next day to say I got the gig.”
The duo is currently working on a kind of sequel to “Memphis,” set in the late 1950s, early ‘60s when “the song writers were Jewish kids from Brooklyn only one or two generations from Europe or African Americans from the South.
Hopefully their next project is to clear space on their mantle. -- Curt Schleier
A conversation with David Bryan of Bon Jovi
March 15, 2010
David Bryan is a founding member of Bon Jovi, the long-lived rock group that has sold over 130 million records and played to standing-room only audiences around the world. But the classically trained pianist soon may be known for a different accomplishment: Tony-winning composer.
“I don’t know,” he said about his award prospects. “It’s my first time. I really don’t know how the process works. We have a good show. We’re selling tickets. We’re in the black.”
Given the current economy, that last statement alone ought to be enough to earn him a trophy. But when it comes to his show, “Memphis” (see review), there is so much more. The play, widely considered the best new musical of the year, is about a white Tennessee disc jockey who introduces “race” music to white southern audiences. Bryan wrote the score, which ranges from plaintive love songs to rousing gospels to pulsating rock ‘n’ roll.
Bryan’s on the phone from California, where he is on tour with the band. He speaks freely about his 32-year “marriage” to the band that cost the world a physician as well as his near decade-long effort to take the musical from idea to opening.
A native of Edison, N.J., Bryan, 48, is the son of a jazz trumpeter who never got to live out his dream. His parents were immigrants from Poland and told him to “stop being a bum and get a job,” Bryan says.
So he went to work in a pocketbook factory and lived a conventional life. He taught David to play trumpet when he was just five and, two years later, took him to Emery Hack, a highly regarded pianist and teacher.
“He (Hack) sat at the piano and played Chopin,” Bryan recalls. It as like a magic trick. He sat me down and showed me a scale, just one octave, and said ‘Learn it for next week or don’t come back.’
“I came back. I wanted to do what he did. I went on to study with him for 13 years.” He was classically trained, but Hack permitted the introduction of more contemporary composers and songs -- from Gershwin to the Beatles.
“Jon” -- that being Bon Jovi of course -- “and I actually started way back when I was 16-½. I went to school with his cousin, and he told me that Jon was looking for a keyboardist.”
Bryan with a new driver’s license in his wallet and a used van in his driveway, loaded his Hammond keyboard and headed for Sayerville, where the Bongiovi clan lived.
“At the time it was a 10-piece band with a five-piece horn section,” he says “So we did a lot of Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, the Ventures.”
Though still minors, the group played a lot of Jersey Shore clubs and enjoyed a modicum of success. Meanwhile, Bryan entered Rutgers University and was running a 4.0 average in a tough pre-med program and coincidentally had just been accepted at Julliard when Bon Jovi called to say the group had been given a record deal.
It wasn’t exactly a no brainer. Bryan says, “I always wanted to be a surgeon.” But he recognized, too, that opportunities like this don’t always come along. And he could always go back to school.
The rest of course is unique musical history. With the exception of the Rolling Stones, no group has had the staying power of Bon Jovi. And quite frankly, when the Stones are together, it is more as a ‘60s revival act than musicians pertinent today.
The reason for Bon Jovi’s success is that they stay fresh, in part because they take hiatuses. And it was one such break in the early ‘90s that led to Bryan’s career on Broadway.
During one such break around 1990, Bryan took a serious run at composing. He’d written a couple of songs within the group, but now devoted his full energies to the task. He studied with several song writers and even secured a publishing deal.
“I was trying to get covers” -- that is, singers to record his songs -- “but it’s very difficult to get a cover in rock and roll” where many artists are also composers.
His publisher suggested he try musicals, claiming he could get covers of them. His first effort, with Francine Oscal, to turn her Sweet Valley High books into a musical, did not work out -- as of yet. “We put it together. It was a little too premature, its rock and roll songs were too loud. But I’ll never let that project die.”
Around eight years ago, he heard about the book for Memphis written by theater veteran Joe DiPietro (“All Shook Up,” “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change”). He got the script and it resonated immediately.
“The story ran true to me. I’m a white Jewish kid from Edison. I’ve seen racism and hate.”
“When I first got the script from Joe, there were some lyrics there. I heard everything. I heard (the music).”
He called DiPietro, who knew that Bryan wrote both music and lyrics. Jay told Bryan he wasn’t vested in the lyrics, that Bryan could play with them. “He said, ‘Do a song and send it to me.’ Right after I hung up, I went down to my studio and worked on ‘Music of My Soul” .”
He recorded the song, put it on a CD and sent it to Joe. “He called me the next day to say I got the gig.”
The duo is currently working on a kind of sequel to “Memphis,” set in the late 1950s, early ‘60s when “the song writers were Jewish kids from Brooklyn only one or two generations from Europe or African Americans from the South.
Hopefully their next project is to clear space on their mantle. -- Curt Schleier
