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[0:00] Paul Lazarus: Hi, this is Paul Lazarus. In the 1980s, I produced and hosted a radio series called Anything Goes, a celebration of the American musical theater. Now the Broadway Podcast Network is bringing back these shows. This is the conclusion of a three-part program featuring composer-lyricist Craig Carnelia. In 1983, Carnelia came to my New York apartment and discussed the writing of the score for Is There Life After High School? and his contributions to the Broadway show, Working.

[0:34] Craig Carnelia: Something I've noticed, and this is not an exclusive trend, it's just something that I've noticed you do really well, which is writing very emotional songs for women. I mean, you write emotional songs for men as well. I don't mean to imply...

[0:49] Craig Carnelia: Oh, no, don't kid yourself. I don't.

[0:51] Paul Lazarus: But there's something... I mean, I can... just off the bat, we can say the Housewives song, Working, and Last Forty Years, several songs in high school, and one could list them, but they're deeply felt emotional moments for women, and it's a real fort of yours.

[1:06] Craig Carnelia: I don't know what that is. I came across that a lot when I was writing high school, and Jeff Kindley, who wrote the book of high school, and I would often talk about it, that we were forever trying to find a song for a man who would come out and spill his guts, and I'm very careful when I write for men, and when I write for women, I somehow let it all come out, and I wish I'm going to do that for men. I have to. It's so stupid to be so protective of my own sex when the emotion that's coming out in those women's songs is my emotion anyhow.

[1:45] Craig Carnelia: To me, there's nothing more exciting in musical theater than someone standing on a stage, singing a song in which something happens. Something occurs in the song itself. The person finds something out while singing the song, or the audience finds something out about the person that the person doesn't even know.

[2:05] Craig Carnelia: November 30th, 1969. Today I was crowned the homecoming queen, and Jeff was the football king. I wore my floor-length formal from the junior prom last spring. Before the game was played, we led a big parade, and we had a 50-yard line coronation. All the kids were cheering as we walked out on the field, and there were people taking pictures everywhere.

[2:52] Craig Carnelia: The stands were full to bursting, and the seniors raised a banner, and Jeff pointed to our names up in the air. The marching band was playing, and the kids all threw confetti, and I feel like I still have some in my hair.

[3:21] Craig Carnelia: April 16th, 1973. The carpeting came, and so did the rug we bought for the bedroom floor. Jeff really got a bargain with his discount through the store. I loved the wall-to-wall. The baby had a ball when the men were here to do the installation.

[4:12] Craig Carnelia: The stands were full to bursting, and the seniors raised a banner, and Jeff pointed to our names up in the air. The marching band was playing, and the kids all threw confetti, and I feel like I still have some in my hair.

[4:43] Craig Carnelia: August 3rd, 1978. This morning I found a note on the bed. It said, you are getting fat. I quickly dressed Melinda, and we fed the stupid cat. We caught a show at noon, a feature-length cartoon. It's amazing what they do with animation.

[5:38] Craig Carnelia: The marching band was playing, and the kids all threw confetti, and I feel like I still have some in my hair.

[6:29] Craig Carnelia: I guess it always will be there.

[7:29] Craig Carnelia: I guess it always will be there.

[7:59] Craig Carnelia: Between the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and Broadway, I wrote Housewife and The Mason. Between Hartford and New York in high school, I wrote those three songs for the reunion, Fran and Janie among them, and I agree with you. I think it is the best song on the show. In fact, it's my favorite song I've ever written.

[8:16] Craig Carnelia: Part of how you come up with something that's better than what you've done before is in the fact that there were two productions, and you see what's there on the stage, and you have an instinct for what's missing. I can't believe that that show ever was seen by anyone, high school, without that song in it, and why it's there, what I was trying to do.

[8:45] Craig Carnelia: The show at once embraces and rejects the past. I mean, it goes back and forth every two seconds, rejects high school, embraces high school. What I wanted to do in those two songs, in Fran and Janie, and in I'm Glad You Didn't Know Me, was to have the evening culminate musically, those are the last two full songs in the show, with one last embrace, a more vivid one than we've ever had before, and one last rejection, a joyful one, which is more vivid than we've had before, because even though we'd made fun of the past, we'd regretted the past, we hadn't said, get out of here, I'm glad I'm me now.

[9:23] Craig Carnelia: But in terms of what makes it a good song, it probably goes back to my writing well for women, and it being something I feel very deeply. My work likes people. It's one of the things I like about it. I think my work likes people more than I do. And that song is about that. It's about love, and a pure kind of love, a love where you don't want anything from the person, you just love them.

[9:54] Craig Carnelia: We don't know where to start, and so we say, how long has it been? We joke about our age, and how the years just flew. We say we meant to write, as old friends always do.

[10:28] Craig Carnelia: And are you still too smart? And do you still mix bourbon with gin? And did you see the world? And did you meet a man? And did you fall in love the way we used to plan, before our lives began?

[10:54] Craig Carnelia: Remember?

[10:56] Craig Carnelia: Bren and Janie, sharing secrets, swapping daydreams, dropping by. Bren and Janie, sharing heartbreaks, shouting wishes at the sky. They're playing records, sleeping over, talking girl talk, you remember?

[11:24] Craig Carnelia: Bren and Janie, Bren and Janie, like a single word. So tell us how you are. So how's your life so far? So did you catch that star?

[11:47] Craig Carnelia: Two old friends, all grown up, one is single and one has a couple of kids, and a husband named Bob, and a chance for this job. Taking courses at night, coming off a romance, a million facts and feelings to sort. Two old friends with much to report, who never did know how to make one story short.

[12:22] Craig Carnelia: So we talk till we laugh, and we laugh till we cry. And we go on and on, my girlfriend and I.

[12:42] Craig Carnelia: Bren and Janie, sharing secrets, passing time. Bren and Janie, shouting wishes at the sky. And behind us, Bren and Janie, calling boys up, painting posters, building snowmen, looking forward.

[13:13] Craig Carnelia: You and I, to the present day. We talk of what's in store, as we've talked before, until there's nothing more to say.

[13:54] Craig Carnelia: From the newly released original cast album of Is There Life After High School, you heard Sandy Faison and Maureen Silliman performing Craig Carnelia's song Fran and Janie.

[14:17] Paul Lazarus: I saw the show in Hartford and I saw what you accomplished in between the show being done at Hartford and going to Broadway. I guess what I'm incredibly intrigued by is the fact that you took a title, and the title was "I'm Glad You Didn't Know Me," and it was in the beginning of the second act at Hartford. You took the same exact title and you threw away a lot of the music and a lot of lyrics and wrote a whole new song.

[14:42] Craig Carnelia: Well, I threw away the entire tune, and actually the entire lyric is new, but what I did was I made a list, as I always do, of the three or four things about the song that I liked. The fact that she sang first, then he answered her saying, me too, essentially. Then they went back and forth, I did this, I did that, and got rather joyful about trading how terrible they were in high school. The basic summation is the same, which is that if we had been together then, we wouldn't be together now.

[15:17] Paul Lazarus: You had said at one point that you discovered a key to improving the song, that when it was done in Hartford, there was a quality pervading the song that you wanted to adjust. Can you describe that?

[15:31] Craig Carnelia: In Hartford, the song was about regretting or being embarrassed about what you had been in the past. In New York, it was about being joyful about what you are in the present.

[16:04] ♪ Musical number: "I'm Glad You Didn't Know Me" — performed by Maureen Silliman and Craig Carnelia ♪

[20:46] Paul Lazarus: Two versions of the same title from the Hartford production of "Is There Life After High School." You heard the original version of "I'm Glad You Didn't Know Me" performed by Maureen Silliman and songwriter Craig Carnelia. And then from the Broadway cast, Cynthia Carl and Philip Hoffman sang the song that now owns that title, "I'm Glad You Didn't Know Me." You're listening to Anything Goes, and my guest today is composer-lyricist Craig Carnelia.

[21:13] Paul Lazarus: Craig, what's coming up for you now? I know that you're at work on a new show.

[21:18] Craig Carnelia: Bob Fosse has written a script and is doing a musical. Stuart Ostro is producing it, and they've asked me to join a team of songwriters in contributing to it, and I may be doing that next. I'm working on some things now, and I think I'll be doing it.

[21:37] Paul Lazarus: We heard four of the five songs written by Craig Carnelia for the score to "Working," and I asked him about one of my favorites, "The Mason."

[21:49] Paul Lazarus: How did you keep this, because it is so positive, and it is so joyous in a way, I mean, this man really likes what he does. How do you keep a song like that from tipping the scale? I mean, you did it so successfully.

[22:01] Craig Carnelia: Well, there are two ways. One is my decision to make it a third-person song. So we see the man, and he's talking in his real words. He's telling us, in fact, I think there's a monologue that precedes the song that simply talks about, he remembers every house he's ever built, and when he drives through town, there's not one house that he's ever built that he doesn't stop and look at, and if there's a stone out of place, he knows where it is. And he's talking very simply, and then this magnificent voice, David Patrick Kelly, stands off to the side with a guitar and sings about him while he goes on with his work. That's one way you keep it. I mean, if the man were to sing, I love my work, I do this, you know, it's great, I'm happy, and it's going to be my monument, it wouldn't work.

The other thing I did that I like very much in that song is that the weight of the lines are very short and very concise. It's all very simple, particular neat, and structural. It builds something. In its simplicity, it keeps from being, I think, too flowery. I think the key is the third person quality of it.

[23:22] Paul Lazarus: I never thought of it that way.

[23:24] Craig Carnelia: Also, another problem in writing "Working" was that a lot of people come out and complain about their jobs. You don't care if they're right or wrong. You don't want to sit in a theater for three hours and hear people complaining. "The Mason" is a song I wrote between Chicago and New York. It wasn't in the show in Chicago. I wanted to write something totally positive, and I feel that way about my work. The way "The Mason" feels, it doesn't give me the joy it gives him, but I feel that it's worth doing, that it's important.

[24:31] ♪ Musical number: "The Mason" — performed by David Patrick Kelly ♪

[26:27] Paul Lazarus: David Patrick Kelly, leading the original company of "Is There Life After High School," and also the featured singer on "The Mason," from the score to "Working." And all the material today on Anything Goes was by composer-lyricist Craig Carnelia. And I hope you enjoyed this brief visit with an extremely talented young writer. And I'll see you next week, and have a good one, and talk to you soon.

[27:50] ♪ Musical number: "The Kid Inside" ♪

[27:54] Paul Lazarus: You've been listening to the conclusion of a three-part series devoted to talented songwriter Craig Carnelia. Associate producer Jeff Lunden. Anything Goes Backstage with Broadway's Best is produced and hosted by Paul Lazarus. For more information, visit anythinggoespl.com. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and follow us. Thanks for listening.