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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. Today, part one of a three-part look at the career of Broadway composer-lyricist Maury Yeston. Yeston is perhaps best known for his remarkable score for Nine, the musical version of Fellini's famous movie, Eight and a Half. This program was originally broadcast in 1982.

[10:20] ♪ Musical number: "Cloud Nine" — performed by Maury Yeston ♪

[12:39] Maury Yeston: Why aren't various versions of the same song used? What was the reasoning behind that? Well, this was the assignment or I should say the requirement for Cloud 9. There had to be, first of all, at the beginning of the second act there's a little girl in a pink dress—forget the fact that she's played by a grown man—in a park in modern London listening to the radio. And so rather than use some pre-existent song, I wrote a song that sounds like your typical pop tune played on the radio called Cloud 9. It's exciting rhythmically, and so we decided to use that to end the second act as well, the bow music, so to speak. But there's a very emotional moment at the end of the play when the modern Betty meets Betty from the past, and I used a slowed down gospel version of the song. I produced it and recorded it with a wonderful band called Time Vacuum, which includes, among other people, two brothers of Ritchie Havens.

[15:20] Maury Yeston: Incidental music is, uh, Layman Engle used to call it accidental music. Uh, incidental music has its own particular function. Um, it's, uh, it must be self-contained. Um, it's in a way meant to be heard with only one ear because you've got to pay attention to what else is going on while the music is going on. It's a form of underscoring. That's one of its functions. Another of its functions is to function as a transition or a diversion in the drama rather than the main event. So you have to take a back seat when you're writing incidental music. And it came as no surprise to me, for example, that when Cloud 9 was reviewed, no one mentioned the music at all.

[16:08] Paul Lazarus: Yeah, it's overlooked, isn't it, a lot in reviews?

[16:09] Maury Yeston: Well, it should. In a way, I guess it should be. If you've done your job well, it should become part of the wallpaper, so to speak, and part of the scenery and part of the lights and part of the general production. It should not turn what ordinarily is a straight play into a musical. It mustn't do that. The particular cue that we're going to play is African music. How was that used in the show? Well, the first act takes place in Africa 100 years ago. And one's required to create a mood, scenery. Music creates the scenery, in this case, of Africa. And I had a great deal of experience in studying African music and the history of American black music. And I thought a single alto flute, in this case, it's played by Anne Sheedy, could do it if I got the right sort of circular motif in the music.

And when we went in to record it, Anne simply played the musical motive on the alto flute, and I came in and played a bell tree and a cabasa, which is not a Polish sausage. It's a rhythmic instrument. And the result sounds like Africa.

[18:11] Maury Yeston: Why did it take 9 years to get 9 on Broadway? I started writing the piece in 1973. That's when I got the idea for it. And I was an unknown writer, living off by myself, working in a little room. I didn't have book collaborators. I didn't have a director. I didn't have producers. Nobody knew about me. And in order to create the piece, I had to create theater songs so that I could carry the character, the scenery, the story. In many ways I had to work as one might work in radio. It all had to work on the level of what you hear rather than what you see. And I knew I'd have to do that to convince people that they ought to try to put this show on. And it took a long time to break through. New writers aren't ordinarily given a $2.5 million production and 22 actresses and said, well, here it is on a silver platter. You have to pay a lot of dues and work very hard. And it simply took that long for the timing to be right, for me to be given an opportunity to show my work to the world.

[19:24] Paul Lazarus: You said in an interview that I read that even with all the changes over the 9-year period, that the show, for you, retains the spark of inspiration which you started with.

[19:35] Maury Yeston: Yes, absolutely. Describe that spark, could you? What is that spark? It's about the same thing that it was about when I started writing it. 9 is very much about growing up. If you need to say what is it about in two words, I think it's about growing up. The character is the same character that I created in my mind and in song. It's the same song. The Germans at the Spa was written in 1973. It's the same song. In other words, despite the fact that I've added so much, I've changed so much, we've had such a wonderful collaboration in our creative team, just about everything that was the central core, musically and lyrically and thematically, in what I had conceived in 1973 still remains the same, despite the fact that we've made a radical casting shift when we...

[21:09] Maury Yeston: Extraordinary woman after extraordinary woman, each one of which was right in one way or another for the show that we all planned to go into rehearsal with. But each time a man came to audition for us, either he didn't look right or he didn't sound right or something about it, something about him just wasn't right. And it began to be very, very frustrating. And at a certain point, I think it was Toome who rather brilliantly suggested, having understood, that if we had all women and one man, that that would not only raise the stakes for the central character, Guido, but it would make him instantly rather important on stage as the only man and give him some credibility as the great director he's supposed to be.

And I must say to his credit that his idea initially met resistance from Arthur Coppett, the book writer, and met resistance from me. It was kindly resistance. I had a problem. I had conceived a score for mixed chorus, men and women. And what would I do? And at his inspirational best, Toome said, well, this gives you an opportunity to find all kinds of new and varied sounds for a female chorus. And I said, right. I had about eight wine spritzers first. I said, right, let's go.

[22:38] ♪ Musical number: "Guido's Song" — performed by Maury Yeston ♪

[25:52] Paul Lazarus: What was the first song you wrote for the score?

[25:56] Maury Yeston: Guido's song.

[25:56] Paul Lazarus: How did that fit into the idea of growing up to you?

[26:03] Maury Yeston: Well, to tell you the truth, I didn't really understand or hone down the piece to the idea that that's what it was centrally about until 1978 during the O'Neill workshop when I wrote that song while we were in rehearsal for the workshop. I should say the last song called Getting Tall. I knew that the central character had an infantile aspect about him that was at once horrifying and yet endearing. And I knew that his situation mirrored the situation of so many of us that we'd like to have, we'd all like to have options that may nevertheless be mutually exclusive. I want to be here. I want to be there. I want to be young. I want to be old. How many people have I known who go on diets, for example, who lose too much weight and then worry, am I too thin?

Am I too fat? And that you want to have it every single way. And Guido is sort of an all-consuming personality who wants everything like any child. And I had ample evidence to observe a child's mentality at close hand. I have a young son who is now eight and a half. He'll be nine at the age in December. And I watch him. He wants everything too. But you can't have everything. And that's sort of the end of our show when the little boy, Guido's earlier nine-year-old self, explains it to him in a song called Getting Tall. And who else would know more about the difficulties of growing up and having to make certain compromises than a kid who has to do all the hard work of growing up?

[27:50] ♪ Musical number: "Getting Tall" — performed by Cameron Johan ♪

[29:57] Paul Lazarus: Cameron Johan singing Getting Tall from Nine. Music and lyrics by Maury Yeston.

[30:17] Paul Lazarus: You've been listening to part one of a three-part look at the career of talented composer-lyricist Maury Yeston. Associate producer Jeff London. 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.