THE ALLEN BROTHERS / PETER ALLEN
There
are few stories in
Australian popular
music as remarkable as that of singer, songwriter and pianist Peter
Allen. Although his life ended tragically early, his amazing
career took him from a troubled
childhood in country New South Wales to international stardom and
worldwide success
as a recording artist and concert performer. Peter was also a
renowned composer and the songs he wrote -- many in
collaboration with
longtime collaborator Carole Bayer Sager -- became
international hits for Peter himself
and for other famous artists, and many are now rightly regarded as standards of modern popular
music. Peter Allen is also probably the only Australian performer to have won both a Grammy and an Oscar.
The Allen Brothers, 1960-1970
For his first decade as a professional musician, from 1960 to
1970, Peter Allen was half of a duo called The Allen Brothers.
Like many "brother" and "sister"
acts (e.g. The Walker Brothers) the two members were not
related.
Peter was born Peter Allen Woolnough on
10 February 1944 in the country town of Tenterfield,
NSW. He grew up in Armidale, and was raised mainly by his
mother, grandmother and three aunts. His
father and uncles were away at the war when he was born, but after they
returned his father Dick became a violent alcoholic, probably as a
result of his wartime experiences.
As he grew up Peter escaped from his troubled home life by
developing
a
passionate interest in music, helped and encouraged by his
mother Marion, who sent him for piano and dance lessons. He was a born
performer with a precocious talent and gave his
first public performance, aged 5, in a school variety show. In the 1983
biography Peter Allen,
his mother Marion recalled an incident that alerted the family to his
innate musical ability talent; they went
visit friends and after they arrived Peter wandered over to
their
piano and began tinkering quietly, with the adults taking little
notice. After about half an hour he began to play in earnest and amazed
the group by picking his way through a note-perfect
two-handed rendition of the Teresa Brewer hit "Music, Music, Music". He
soon learned to sing all the hits of the day and taught himself how to
play the accompaniment, and also spent many hours at the local cinema, devouring
Hollywood musicals.
Peter soon began competing in local talent
quests. It was common in those days for cinemas to also
present live entertainment and children's talent competitions -- The Bee Gees,
for instance, gained their first live experience as performing in children's talent quests at their
local theatre in Manchester -- but Peter won the
quest so so often that the theatre eventually hired him to perform
professionally on Sunday afternoons. He was playing regularly at the
local pub by the time he was ten, accompanying his dance teacher on
piano and entertaining the locals with his
spirited Fats Waller and Jerry Lee Lewis song-and-dance
performances.
Peter's world was shattered by tragedy when he was
13. First his beloved grandmother died, a loss that affected him
deeply, but
worse was to come. Soon after, Dick Allen shot
himself and the scandal of suicide saw the family ostracized, so Peter and
his mother left town and settled in Lismore, on the far north
coast of NSW. It was here that the teenager was captivated by the
piano-based music of
touring rock'n'roll stars Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. He left
school at 14 and and was soon playing at dances and clubs in beach
towns between Lismore and the Gold Coast, performing
an act loosely based on Little Richard. It was during a stint
on the Gold Coast that he met another aspiring young
performer, singer-guitarist Chris Bell, whose father
helped them get established as a folk-pop nightclub
duo.
They made their professional debut at the Grand Hotel in
Coolangatta and
scored their first TV appearance on ATN-7’s afternoon
'teenage' show Teen Time in
1959. They relocated to Sydney in early 1960 where they were
spotted by a friend of Brian
Henderson, host of the TV pop show Bandstand,
and they
became regulars on the show over the next two years and part of the
"Bandstand Family". This early live TV experience stood him in good stead when he became a solo
artist (not to mention making film clips) and it also brought
him
into contact with top stars and other
up-and-coming young performers like Olivia Newton-John, who
became
a lifelong friend.
Soon
after the Allen Brothers' song "First Kiss" was published, Johnny
O’Keefe signed them to the Leedon
label and produced their first recordings. Their
first Leedon single was "Bells Bells Bells" / "Summer Clouds"
(Apr. 1960), followed by "There's No Need" / "Busy Lips" (June). They
then moved to the shortlived Australian Pye label
for whom they recorded four singles -- "First Kiss" / "My Secret" (July
1960), "Pretty Keen Teen" / "There's No
Need" (Sept. 1960), "Too Much" / "Ever Since" (Oct. 1960) and "No
Hesitation" / "Knocking on the Right Front Door" (shared with The Barry
Sisters, Dec. 1960). They scored several hits on the Sydney charts -- "First Kiss" reached #11,
"Pretty Keen Teen" made #14 and "No Hesitation" reached #19.
"First Kiss" was their only Melbourne chart entry, reaching
#32 in August 1960, but it didn't chart in other cities. This
was a common situation in the Fifties and early Sixties in Australia, because
of the
parochial nature of local radio and record companies at the
time -- there was no official national chart until Go-Set
began its national singles chart in 1966 and there were no
national commercial radio networks. Many
acts who scored major hits in Sydney would not chart at all (or even be
given airplay) in Melbourne, and vice versa.
The Allen Brothers
switched labels again in 1961, releasing three
more singles on EMI's HMV label: "No Fooling" / "Be An Angel
Darling" (December 1961), "Baby Loves Me" / "Firefly" (Feb. 1962)
and "There's Never Been a Girl Like You" / Ain't Misbehaving'"
(Aug. 1962). In January 1962
they played Tweedledum and Tweedledee in William
Orr’s
production of Alice in
Wonderland at the Phillip Theatre in Sydney, while at
night they worked at Chequers nightclub
as a support act for the veteran American performer Frances
Faye, whose flamboyant act was a strong influence on Allen.
They left Australia in April 1962 for what was supposed to be
a
three-week
engagement in Tokyo, performing a Las Vegas-style nightclub act
but they proved so popular that they toured around south-east Asia for
next two years, playing in
Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the
Philippines and Hong Kong.
While performing in
the
Starlight Room at
the Hong Kong Hilton, The Allen
Brothers were spotted by superstar Judy Garland, who was in Hong Kong on her way
back to London following her disastrous Australian tour
for promoter Harry M. Miller. Despite warnings from the producer of her
recently-cancelled CBS TV series, Miller brought
Garland to Australia for concerts in Melbourne and Sydney. She gave
triumphant
performances at the Sydney Stadium, but at her Melbourne show was a
disaster -- she
reportedly hadn't slept for two days before the show and arrived at the theatre an hour
late, apparently bombed on pills and booze. The hapless star lurched
through a
shambolic performance that provoked slow hand-claps, catcalls
and walk-outs, and she eventually walked off. On her
arrival in Hong Kong she took a near-fatal overdose of tranquillisers.
While she recovered, the indomitable Garland went to the Hong Kong
Hilton, where she spotted the Allen Brothers. She was so impressed that
she became their manager, promised to
arrange bookings for them and hired them as her opening act
for an upcoming concert at the
London Palladium, which must have been a dream come true for the
starstruck young Peter. Garland also introduced Peter to her daughter
Liza
Minnelli, and
they were subsequently engaged (despite his
reported earlier relationship
with Bell). In 1965 The Allen Bros premiered on American TV with
Garland on
CBS's On
Broadway Tonight,
and they supported her in concert in Canada and the USA. They made their
American club debut supporting Garland in
Miami in December 1964 and for the rest of the
1960s, they based themselves in
New York, performing in clubs around the US, notably at Hugh Hefner's
Playboy Clubs. They also recorded two singles and an album over the
next three years.
Peter and Liza married on 3 March 1967. Although such matters
were rarely discussed in the media in those days, Peter's sexuality was
no secret within the industry,
and he and Chris Bell were rumoured to have been an item for several
years. If
Liza was aware of this, it did not dissuade her from marrying.
Her father, acclaimed movie
director Vincente Minnelli, is reported to have been bisexual so
(assuming Liza knew this) it's unlikely that she would have been
shocked by Peter's sexuality.
It would be grossly unfair to characterize the union simply as
a marriage of convenience, and it must be remembered that homosexuality
was still illegal in most
western countries in those days. The legal penalties were extremely
severe -- up to and including imprisonment with hard labour -- and it
was common in
those days for gay men to marry a sympathetic female partner in order
to shield themselves from possible exposure. In career terms, the
marriage also undoubtedly
proved of immense help to Peter because it gave him permanent residence status.
In June 1968 Minnelli
made
her first visit to Australia, accompanied by The Allen
Brothers,
and they played
a hugely successful season at Sydney's Chequers nightclub. During the
3-week engagement PM John Gorton visited Minnelli in her
dressing room, and in March
1969 a British gossip tabloid claimed that Minnelli
and Gorton had
had
an affair in Bali and Canberra and that she had "told all" in an
article. Much was made of this and other events -- including
a controversial late night visit to the American
Embassy
in the company of 19-year old reporter Geraldine Willessee -- by
Gorton's opponents, notably by maverick NSW Liberal MP Edward St
John.
Meanwhile, The Allen Brothers career continued with moderate
success. A one-off single "Middle Of The Street" / "I Owe Everything
To You" was released on the Ampar
label in 1966. They signed an album deal with Mercury Records in 1968 and recorded
their debut LP Chris
& Peter Allen's Album #1. The single, "Ten Below" / "Just Friends", was lifted from the LP, and this was also released in Australia on the Philips label.
Solo Career, 1970-1992
By the late Sixties the duo were well-established as a cabaret act, but
Peter was growing disenchanted with the more conventional side of show
business, and the duo eventually broke up at the end of the decade.
Peter was
greatly attracted to the vibrant Greenwich Village music scene and
off-Broadway theatre. He was encouraged to write by Liza, and
during the early '70s, after an abortive theatrical debut, he
decided to concentrate on songwriting and worked on developing
his skills as a solo
performer, playing mostly in small clubs. He gradually picked a cult
following in New York, partly
because his flamboyant stage presence provided an interesting contrast
to the sensitive and introspective nature of many of his songs.
Beginning with a stint opening for rising star Bette Midler, Allen rose to prominence as a solo performer and became
a
leading figure in the cabaret revival in New York in the early 1970s.
The end of the Sixties brought dramatic changes in
Peter's life and career. On 22 June 1969 his mother-in-law Judy Garland
died in London, aged only 47. The official cause of death was
"accidental barbiturate overdose", but it came as no surprise -- Judy
had
long been trapped in a destructive
downward spiral of amphetamine, barbiturate and alcohol dependence,
which had begun during her early years as a movie star. It's been
claimed that, during her years as a teen star, studio doctors
would inject her with amphetamines to keep her 'perky' during the long
hours on-set, and her substance
abuse problems escalated in the 1950s. Her brilliant performance in the
1955 remake of A Star Is Born
proved to be her last
major movie role, and the studios then effectively
black-listed
her as being "too
difficult"; by the time of her disastrous Australian tour in
1964
the producer of her . Although Judy could still stage occasional returns
to form,
many appearances during her last
years -- including the disastrous 1964 Melbourne concert
-- were marred by her drug and drink problems.
Peter and Liza separated at the end of 1969 (they were
divorced in 1974) and the Allen Brothers broke up in early in the new
year; Chris Bell reportedly quit
show business and became an airline pilot. On 24 June 1970
Peter played his first
solo show as at the famous Bitter End nightclub in
Greenwich Village. During this
period he also wrote songs for productions at La Mama,
the famous off-Broadway theatre which was the inspiration for the
Melbourne theatre of the same name.
Peter studied acting with Uta
Hagen and made his less-than-auspicious Broadway
debut on 12 January 1971
in a rock opera called Soon, which featured Richard
Gere, Barry Bostwick (The
Rocky Horror Picture Show) and Nell Carter. The ill-fated
show struggled through 21 previews and closed after only three official
performances.
Peter's songwriting enabled him to get his foot in
the door
as a writer. He excelled at composing introspective ballads
and
bittersweet love songs, and he was
fortunate that his emergence as a composer coincided with the
singer-songwriter vogue of the early '70s, exemplified by artists like
Elton John, James Taylor and Carole
King, which in turn fuelled the popularity of these introspective
ballad-style songs, which were often performed by solo vocalists -- an
early version of the "power ballad" phenomenon of the '80s and '90s.
Peter began to write more commercially-oriented material and
scored a job as a staff writer at Metromedia Music. It was here that he
met and began working with
songwriter Carole Bayer-Sager, and they soon
developed into a successful and productive productive songwriting
partnership.
Carole Bayer Sager:
"It was in New York, 1970-ish. Somebody had mentioned that there was a
really good publisher who really understood songs ... (called)
Metromedia Music. I went up there, and they listened to some of my
songs. (They) liked me very much and said, 'We have a songwriter here
that it might be worthwhile for
you to hook up with and see what happens.' And that was Peter Allen. He
had done one record -- they had a record label as well -- just called Peter
Allen. We met
and we instantly hit it off. We started to write together on a very
regular basis, about the same time I met Melissa Manchester, maybe a
year later. For me the ’70s were
either writing with Peter or writing with Melissa. The early
’70s for sure. We had a great friendship as well. Peter was
funny; he was vastly talented. We hung out a lot. We
had a similar pace in terms of writing."
One of Peter and Carole's first collaborations was
"Jennifer", a song written for a telemovie called Getting
Together that starred popular singer-actor Bobby
Sherman, who performed the song in the show. Sherman recorded it for
Metromedia as a single and it became Peter's first hit for another
artist, making the US Top 40 in
the autumn of 1971.
On the strength of this success, Metromedia allowed Peter
to record his self-titled debut album, and during 1971 he Allen
returned to Australia for a Bandstand
reunion (the show would be cancelled the following year). It included
two
songs co-written with Bayer
Sager, "Don't Cry Out Loud" and "I'd Rather Leave While I'm In Love",
both of which would become big hits in later years for solo artists. It
was followed
by the album Tenterfield Saddler in 1972, which
included the title track, Peter's moving tribute to his grandfather
George Woolnough.
Carole Bayer Sager:
"When Melissa had the hit with "Don’t Cry Out Loud", clearly
we knew we had the ability to write a hit song. But we had been
writing so much. It’s interesting, because some of those
songs were not hits, and yet one of my favorite songs of anything
I’ve ever written is a song I wrote with Peter
called "I’d Rather Leave While I’m in Love" ... "
"... When we heard Frank Sinatra was going to record "You and Me, We
Wanted It All", I guess we felt we had
something going. Plus his albums were starting to have a following. The
thing with Peter was -- I always said that my lyrics with Peter had the
most sophistication
because Peter brought that into a room too. Since I knew he would
perform a lot of them, I tended to try to write things that he would
feel as well. The songs with Peter
had a sense of irony and fun, sometimes a little edge, as well as
heart. Clearly it was in that period of time that he wrote "I Honestly
Love You" which I didn't write with
him. Ours were from Continental American, about the
days of (the New York club and disco), 'Arthur', to "Quiet, Please,
There's a Lady Onstage"."
Peter returned to performing in 1973 with an appearance at the
popular New York nightclub Reno Sweeney's. He quickly built up a cult
following, partly because of his flamboyant stage antics, and it wasn't
long before other singers were picking up songs from his albums and
performing them -- among them, his old friends Olivia
Newton-John and Helen
Reddy, both of whom had recently become recording stars in
America.
Peter's major commercial breakthrough as a songwriter was
thanks to Olivia's cover of "I Honestly Love You", a song
co-written with Brill Building
legend Jeff Barry. Olivia's version became her
first #1 hit in the U.S.A. reached #2 in Australia and also
made
the Top 40 in Britain in October 1973. It
furnished Olivia with an historic win in both the 'Record of
the Year' and 'Best Pop Vocal
Performance' categories at the 1974 Grammy Awards, making her only the
second Australian performer (after Helen Reddy) to win a Grammy. Her
success it turn earned
Peter a contract with
A&M Records, for whom he recorded his third album, Continental
American, which included his own version of "I Honestly Love
You" and another classic
Allen-Bayer Sager collaboration, "Everything Old Is New Again".
After years away from home, Peter returned home
in September 1975, supporting Helen Reddy on her tour of Japan, Hong
Kong and Australia. To the Aussie public would have been remembered
mostly for his Bandstand
days, his much-publicised marriage to Minnelli, and the hit he had
written for Olivia; as a solo
performer he was an unknown quantity in his homeland. But the Reddy
tour marked a turning point for Australian audiences, with Peter
consistently outperforming his
better-known headliner and winning over audiences with his dynamic
showmanship and vivacious personality, earning him glowing reviews.
After he returned to the USA, A&M sent Peter
out on tour
with a rising rock rising group also singed to the label. Unfortunately
for Peter, it was one of the more spectacularly
mismatched double-bills in history -- he supported The
Tubes, the outrageous Los Angeles art-rock band. Not
surprisingly, Peter went over like a lead
balloon with the Tubes' hard-core audiences -- his material
and
style
were utterly out of place as a prelude to the notorious Tubes, whose
circus-like stage show
featured simulations of sex, S&M and drug-taking, performed to
a repertoire of songs like "Mondo Bondage" and "White
Punks
On
Dope".
Later in the year his career was given another significant boost when
he signed with
powerful artist manager Dee Anthony, who also
handled Peter Frampton, The J. Geils
Band and Gary Wright, three of the biggest American rock acts of the
period. In 1976 Peter recorded what proved to be his breakthrough
album, Taught By Experts, which included his
biggest hit, "I Go to Rio", and another classic
collaborations with Carole Bayer Sager, "Quiet Please, There's a Lady
on the
Stage", their poignant tribute to Judy Garland.
"I Go To Rio" was the most important single of Peter's career,
and
it was one of the classic 'sleeper' hits of the Seventies -- it was
ignored on its first release
in 1976, but became a major hit when re-released a year later. The key
factor was that the 1977 re-release was accompanied by
a vibrant
promotional video clip. The video
could hardly have been simpler -- it was just Peter (in his customary loud Hawaiian
shirt), playing his piano, singing and dancing around the studio with a
pair of marraccas -- but his
irrepressable personality and showmanship shone through. The
clip was picked up in Australia by the ABC's
TV pop show Countdown,
who
gave it strong support. Thanks
to the effectiveness of the video and Countdown's huge national
audience, "Rio" shot to the top of the Australian charts, reaching #1 in July
1977, and its infectious cha-cha feel made it a dance-floor
favourite at discos. It charted for 19 weeks and
became one of the biggest-selling singles of the year in
Australia.
Peter became a major star virtually overnight, and
the
impact of the "Rio" film-clip also conclusively demonstrated both the
enormous influence that
Countdown now exerted over the Australian pop market
and the rapidly growing importance of music video as a means of
marketing new songs and acts. Like
many other songs that Countdown
championed, the success of "Rio" in
Australia led to the single being picked up and becoming a hit in other
countries.
Peter returned to Australia in
September 1977 for a wildly successful headlining tour promoted by Kevin Jacobsen,
which ended
with a free concert in the Brisbane
Botanical Gardens, and he was also celebrated in a episode of Nine's This Is Your Life.
His next single, a cover of the popular standard "The
More I See You" b/w "I Honestly Love You" reached #11 in Australia in
October, and the Taught by
Experts album made the Top 10. Peter's next LP was the appropriately titled live double album
It Is Time for Peter Allen (October 1977). Culled
from performances on his successful 1977 US
tour, it is perhaps his strongest all-round recording, capturing him at
the peak of his performing career, showcasing the cream of his
material, and also highlighting what
an excellent pianist he was.
Peter made his London cabaret debut in 1978 and his newfound
fame led to his first and only film role in
1978. Unfortunately, he could scarcely have chosen a more ill-fated
vehicle, but luckily his part was a brief
cameo and he escaped the odium that attached to the film and tainted
the careers of its stars. It was of course the infamous fantasy film
musical Sgt Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band, starring The Bee Gees, Peter Frampton and
George Burns. On paper, the project looked like it couldn't miss. It was
being produced by Robert
Stigwood, who was riding high on the
success of two consecutive movie mega-hits (Saturday Night
Fever and Grease); it was to be directed
by Michael Schultz, who'd scored a cult hit in 1976
with the disco musical Car Wash. The soundtrack,
produced by George Martin, consisted of new versions of
classic
Beatles songs, performed by an
all-star lineup including The Bee Gees and Frampton, Aerosmith, Earth
Wind & Fire, Alice Cooper and Billy Preston. The
film featured cameos galore by movie and
music stars including Frankie Valli, Frankie Howerd, Steve Martin,
Barry Humphries (as Dame Edna), Paul Nicholas, Donald Pleasance, Keith
Carradine, Carol
Channing, Bonnie Raitt, Anita Pointer, Helen Reddy, Johnny Rivers, Tina
Turner, Wolfman Jack, Gary Wright and of course Peter himself.
What happened next became the stuff of film legend. Even
before shooting had begun, original director Chris Bearde (of
Laugh-In fame) was sacked. The Bee Gees, seeing what
was coming, begged Stigwood to be taken off the project to no avail,
and Barry Gibb reportedly spent the
rest of the shoot in a marijuana-induced haze. Despite the wealth of
talent involved, the film turned out to be a chaotic, embarrassing,
self-indulgent mess. Released in
the middle of 1978, it was universally derided by critics and proved a
catastrophic failure at the box office. Still widely considered to be
one of the worst musical films ever
made, it effectively wrecked Frampton's career for years and severely
dented the credibility of the Bee Gees, who only two years before had
recorded the biggest-selling
soundtrack album in history. They later described it as the worst thing
they were ever involved in and even publicly apologized for being in it!
Luckily for Peter Allen, the movie's failure had little
significant effect on his career. Later in 1978 singer Melissa
Manchester (an old friend and colleague of
Carole Bayer Sager) scored a US Top Ten hit with her cover of "Don't
Cry Out Loud", the song Peter had originally recorded on his 1971 debut
album. Peter subsequently
recorded a new version of the song for his fourth A&M album,
the cheekily titled I Could Have Been a Sailor,
released in February 1979.
Peter's success continued through 1979-80 -- I
Could Have Been a Sailor became
his first LP to make the American album
charts, soft-rock group Pablo Cruise scored a hit
with their version of "I Go to Rio" and at the end of the year Rita
Coolidge made the American Top 40
with her rendition of "I'd Rather Leave While I'm in Love", another
Allen-Bayer Sager ballad from Peter's first LP, and the song Carole
nominates as her favourite among
their collaborations.
In 1980 Peter fulfilled a long-held ambition when he devised
and headlined in his own hit stage show, "Up in One: More Than
a Concert", an ambitious
presentation which won rave reviews and toured extensively including
seasons in New York and Los Angeles. Later in
the year he toured Australia with the show for Pat Condon,
Garry Van Egmond and Kenn
Brodziak, to universal acclaim. This visit also led to the
creation of one of the best-known of all his songs -- "I Still Call
Australia Home".
The story of how the song came to be written is fascinating.
During the Up In One Australian tour, Peter often
finished the show by telling the audience "I still call Australia
home". According to Peter Cox's book on Festival Records, Peter had no
intention of writing a song by that title, but during the tour he was
approached by a Festival Records executive, who had picked up on the remark. He
suggested that it would make good 'hook' for a song, one which would
have an evocative appeal to expatriate Australians.
Peter thought this was a good idea, and he dashed the song off
in a few minutes during an intermission. He sang it for the first time
on the tour's closing night in
Melbourne. It was so well received that he recorded it for Festival
before he left Australia. Later in the year, Peter returned to appear
in the Royal Variety Command
Performance at the Sydney Opera House. Backed by the SSO and a
400-voice choir, Peter performed the song with his old friends Helen
Reddy and Olivia Newton-John
as the concert's rousing finale, and from this point on its success was
assured. No doubt helped by its resemblance to "Waltzing Matilda", it
caught on immediately and
has since become an unofficial Australian anthem, with its popularity
boosted even further through its use in a QANTAS advertising campaign.
In early 1980, along with I Could Have Been a Sailor
LP and the title-track single (backed by "Tenterfield Saddler"),
A&M issued Peter's Tenterfield
Saddler
album, which had not previously been released here, and he returned to
Sydney for a Royal Command Performance at the Opera House on 27 May,
attended by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip.
Peter's fifth A&M album Bi-Coastal
came out
in late 1980 and it too made the American album charts. Although his
high-camp theatricality left little room for doubt about his
sexuality, Peter wittily explained away questions about the
title
as
a reference to the fact that he divided his time between New York and
his home in San Diego.
Three singles were lifted from the Bi-Coastal album
—
"Bi-Coastal" / "Simon" (September 1980), "Fly Away /
Planes" (January 1981) and "One Step Over The
Borderline" / "I Could Really Show You Around" (May 1981); only "Fly
Away"
made the US pop charts but "One Step Over The Borderline" later became
a big hit for. By this time Peter was drawing full houses at major US
venues like the
Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, New York's Copacabana Club and the
legendary Radio City Music Hall, where he headlined during 1981,
dancing with the Rockettes and
riding a camel across the stage during "I Go to Rio".
One of Peter's biggest career achievements came in 1981,
although it happened more or less by accident. Legendary composer Burt
Bacharach -- to whom
Carole Bayer Sager was married at the time -- had been hired to write
the score for a new comedy film, Arthur, starring
Dudley Moore and John Gielgud. As Carole
recounts (see below) she and Burt collaborated with singer Christopher
Cross on the theme song for the film, but during the writing sessions,
Carole remembered a
phrase from one of Peter's old songs, and they ended up using it as the
tag line for the chorus. Arthur of course went on
to become one of biggest films of the year
and the theme-song, performed by Cross, was a huge international hit
single in late 1981, a success capped in early 1982 when it earned the
four composers the
Academy Award for 'Best Original Song'.
Carole Bayer Sager:
"We had a misunderstanding over :Arthur's Theme" ... I always felt torn
-- not torn. I felt Peter was absolutely entitled to be a writer on
"Arthur's Theme". I just felt it was a difficult thing, because I was
married to Burt, and the misunderstanding was that years ago in the
'70s Peter and I had written a song called "The Moon and New York
City". And it was a terrible song. But the title was Peter's. It came
about because he was stuck in a holding pattern flying into New York,
and when we got
together, he said, 'I was stuck in this holding pattern, and I wrote
down, "When you get caught between the moon and New York City". Do you
think that's a good title?' I
said, 'I like it, let's write it.' So we wrote "When you get caught
between the moon and New York City, you might as well fall in love", or
something like that.
(Years later) Burt had been hired to score the film Arthur.
And he kept looking at the opening sequence over and over again. And
I'm trying to come up with a lyric,
and the only thing that I keep hearing, as I'm watching Dudley Moore
driving around New York, is this line from this song of Peter's and
mine. So I said to Burt, 'You like
this line?' He said, 'Yeah, I think it’s great.' And he got
the melody off of that. So I called Peter and I said, 'Hey, listen.
We’re writing this song, and I keep hearing this line,
do you want to write this song with us?' He said, 'Sure!' He was living
down near San Diego at the time. He had a wonderful little house on a
cliff that looked over the
water, and it was actually his favorite place for years. He lived there
with (his longtime partner) Gregg, and it was his very favorite place
to be when he wasn’t performing
or in Australia or in New York or running around. I think it was a
place he could be peaceful. And it was the place where he spent the end
of his life. But anyway, Peter said
he couldn’t come up that week, but he'd come up the following
week and write the song with us. And then Christopher Cross, who had
the hit with the song, wanted to
hear it. He came over to our home, and the song wasn’t
finished but we had the chorus, and he proceeded to fill in the rest.
So the three of us finished the song without
Peter."
"I said to Peter, 'Hey, I don't know how to tell you this, but we
finished the song. But do you want a credit on it?' And he said,
'Yeah.' And I said, 'OK, you're a
fourth writer, then' which I felt was more than fair. (But) I think
Burt felt a little like, Hey, people give people lines all the time.
Maybe he didn’t quite realize that it was Peter's line, not
my line. If it were my line from a song that Peter and I wrote, I think
I wouldn't have felt that I needed to give Peter a credit. But it was
the key line of the song.
... "When Bette Midler read the nominees that year for the Oscar, right
before we won, she was very funny. When she got to our song , she
called it "Arthur’s Theme",
also known as "The Best That You Can Do", also known as "that song
about the moon in New York City", also known as "Four on a song". We
won, and it was great.
What's the difference how many people it takes to get something great?"
In August 1982, The Very Best of Peter Allen
reached #9 on the Australian charts. Its success was in no small
measure due to the presence of "I Still Call Australia Home" -- a track
which A&M had resisted including on the album.
Meanwhile
Peter toured North America before returning to headline again at Radio
City in September. He also travelled to the UK to play the Pirate King
in a British television
production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance,
which starred expatriate Australian actor-singer Keith Michell. At the
end of 1982 he appeared with the Alvin Alley Dance Company in a one-off
fundraising gala, winning a rave review from The New York Times,
who hailed him as a "superb communicator".
When his A&M contract expired, Peter to moved to Clive
Davis' Arista Records, for whom he released his ninth album Not
The Boy Next Door
in March
1983 to coincide with another Australian tour for Dee Anthony and
Dennis Smith, which included a performance at the gala opening concert
at Sydney’s new Entertainment Centre on 1 May 1983.
Resplendent
in an Australian flag vest, Allen stopped the show with his
rendition of "I Still Call Australia Home", backed by a
400-voice choir.
Not
The Boy Next Door reached #24 on the
Australian album charts and yielded the singles "Not the Boy Next Door"
and "You Haven't Heard the
Last of Me". In America, the singles "You Haven't Heard the Last of
Me", "Once Before I Go", and "You And Me (We Wanted It All)" all made
the adult-contemporary charts.
Peter continued to tour extensively, and also released his next LP Making
Every Moment Count and he returned to New York for a run of
seven
sold-out performances at Carnegie Hall
in September, which were recorded and later released on the 1985 Arista
album Captured
Live at Carnegie Hall. During this period he also made his
first appearances in dramatic TV roles in The First Olympics (1984)
and an episode of the popular cop show Miami Vice (1985).
During his 1984 concerts, Peter performed several numbers from
a musical he was writing. Titled Legs Diamond, it
was based on the 1960 Warner Brothers
gangster flm The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond,
which itself was loosely based on the life of Depression-era New York
gangster John "Legs Diamond, who was
gunned down in 1931. It would be four years before Peter achieved the
long-cherished dream of having his musical produced on Broadway but
sadly it turned out to be
one of the few major flops of his career.
It was reportedly around this time that Peter was infected
with HIV. After he was diagnosed, he told a few close
friends including Carole Bayer Sager, but he decided not to make the
news public and asked his friends to do the same. This was not because
he was ashamed, but
because, as Bayer Sager told interviewer Anne Stockwell:
"... he didn’t want people
thinking about the fact that he had AIDS when he’s standing
on a piano singing "I Go to Rio". (He thought) that people would be
feeling sorry for him as opposed to letting him enjoy entertaining them
..."
After completing another stint at Radio City and another
Australian tour in August 1988, Peter
threw himself into preparations for the opening of his musical. Legs
Diamond premiered at the
Mark Hellinger Theatre in New York on 26 December 1988. The lyrics and
music were by Peter, from a book by Harvey Fierstein and Charles
Suppon. Peter starred in the
lead role, with Julie Wilson, Joe Silver, Brenda Braxton, Randall
Edwards, Jim Fyfe, Christian Kauffmann, Pat McNamara and Raymond Serra.
Unfortunately, Legs
Diamond was not well-received -- it went through 72
previews but it was slammed by the
critics and ran for only 64 performances, losing US$7 million although
a cast album was
recorded and released on RCA.
Carole Bayer Sager: "Way
before he got sick, he did Legs Diamond on
Broadway, and that was
one of the hardest things in the world, to tell him how bad it was. I
mean, I went backstage, and I didn’t know how to say -- I
first asked him how much time he had, cause
I thought I could help fix it, although it was almost unfixable. But he
didn’t have that much time. How much do you say when you know
that it’s unfixable? But I didn’t lie to
him. I said, 'You know, I think you just bit off an awful lot.' It was
misguided, which is such a shame, because he did belong on Broadway.
When he did Up in One
on Broadway he was spectacular -- when it was his own show. But (laughs
ruefully) so much was wrong with this show. But he recovered from that,
and a couple of good
songs came out of that show that he wrote."
Bitterly disappointed but undaunted, Peter went back to what
he did best. He recycled some of the Legs Diamond props for his
revamped concert act and then embarked on a three-month US
tour
with Bernadette Peters. He returned to Australia for a season at the
Sydney Hilton in January 1990, and in the Queens Birthday Honours in
June he was made a member of the Order of Australia. His next (and last) studio album was Making Every Moment Count, released later in 1990, and featuring Melissa Manchester and Harry Connick Jr.
Peter returned for another Hilton season in January 1992 but
it
was to be his last tour -- he fell seriously ill during the engagement and it had to be cut short. It
was at this time that it was
publicly revealed that Peter was suffering from AIDS-related throat
cancer. He received treatment in Sydney before returning to America,
but his conditions deteriorated rapidly
and he died at his home in San Diego, California on 19 June 1992, aged
48. His ashes were scattered at sea.
Peter was posthumously inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame at
the sixth annual
Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) Awards ceremony in 1993. In 1995 Stephen McLean's documentary on Peter, The Boy From Oz
was released and McLean's biography (with the same
title) was published the following year. Although Peter's own musical
was a failure, the story of Peter's own music and life became the
inspiration for Australia's most
successful musical. In 1998 The Boy From Oz (The
Peter Allen Story) opened in Sydney. Written by the late, great Nick
Enright, produced by Ben Gannon and Robert Fox and directed by Gale
Edwards, it
starred Todd McKenney in the title role, Angela Toohey as Liza Minnelli, the
legendary Jill
Perryman as Peter's mother Marion, Robyn Arthur, Murray Bartlett, Lisa Callaghan, Deb
Mitchelmore, Cherine
Peck, Garry Scale and Chrissie
Amphlett (Divinyls)
as Judy Garland.
The Boy From Oz was a runaway success -- it
played to packed houses for two years, and at the 1998 ARIA Awards the
soundtrack picked up the award for
Best Original Cast Recording. The show's ultimate triumph was one that
would surely have delighted Peter. It premiered on
Broadway in 2003
with Hugh Jackman in the title role, and became the first Australian
music to become a hit in the USA -- it was a sell-out success and
ran for a year and gained universal rave reviews, and
Jackman's bravura
performance earned him Broadway's highest accolade, the coveted 'Tony'
award for Best Actor in a Musical. A Japanese version was staged in
June 2005.
The production, with Hugh, returned to Australia in early 2006
and enjoyed another sell-out theatrical season, followed by several
'arena' presentations (this time with Colleen Hewett in the role of
Marion Allen) giving local
audiences the chance to see Jackman in his star turn and allowing them
to once again appreciate the huge and enduring musical talent of Peter
Allen.
In 2006 the executors of Peter's estate donated Peter's
extensive
collection of personal and musical memorabilia to the Performing Arts
Collection at the Victorian Arts Centre in Melbourne.
Discography
Coming soon ...
References / Links
Ian McFarlane
Encylopedia of Australian Rock & Pop
(Allen & Unwin, 1999)
Frank Van Straten
Peter Allen biography
Live Performance Australia Hall of Fame
http://www.binaryblue.com.au/LPA/peterallen1.html
Noel McGrath
Australian Encyclopedia of Rock (Outback Press, 1978)
Nicholas Patti
Peter Allen Biography
http://www.musicianguide.com/biographies/1608001230/Peter-Allen.html
Peter Cox
Spinning Around: 50 Years of Festival Records
(Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, 2001)
Vernon Joyson
Dreams, Fantasies & Nightmares Australia (Borderline
Books, 1999)
Harry M. Miller (with Dennis someone)
My Story (
William Ruhlmann
Peter Allen article on the All Music website
www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=B2bkvu3y5an2k~C
Chris Spencer, Zbig Nowara
& Paul McHenry
Who's Who of Australian Rock (Five Mile Press, 2002)
Anne Stockwell
"Remembering Peter Allen, the real boy from Oz"
Interview with Carole Bayer Sager
http://www.advocate.com/html/stories/899/899_sager.asp
Peter Allen on YouTube: