B is for Broadway and Betty Buckley, and that may be no coincidence. One of the grande dames of the Great White Way, Miss Buckley has played Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, Margaret White in Carrie (she also appeared in the Brian de Palma film version), Edwin Drood in Drood, and famously won a Tony for playing Grizabella in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats. She was last seen on Broadway in Triumph of Love, which earned her a Tony nomination for Best Actress in a Musical, and for the last years has been concentrating on making albums (she has released eight albums since 1997) and exploring her dramatic skills in plays (White’s Lies and The Old Friends). As Miss Buckley prepares to headline a series of intimate shows at Joe’s Pub, she took some time to talk to us about her legendary career and connecting to her audience online.
Dark Blue-Eyed Blues is such an ominous title, shall we prepare ourselves for a Norma Desmond-like show at Joe’s Pub?
(Laughs) I don’t know, I don’t think it’s ominous...maybe.
What songs will you be doing?
Songs that your basic chanteuse might sing (laughs)...it’s so funny, ominous. They’ll be kinda torchy songs, standards...musings of a chanteuse I would say.
Will you be doing songs from Ghostlight?
Yes I will be doing some songs from the album, thanks for asking.
T. Bone Burnett was the first person to record your voice professionally…
That’s true. He did the first recording of my voice when we were both 19 and they were released in 2007, it was the first album I never had called Betty Buckley 1967.
What was it like to reunite with him for Ghostlight? Was it like coming down full circle?
It really was, we’ve been friends all these years and we socialized, he always told me we should make a record, but I always thought his schedule wouldn’t open up between Elton John and The Rolling Stones, so he’d never be able to work me in. But then one day he called me out of the blue and said “we really should make that record”. He had some free time in his schedule so I was like “yeah, alright!” I flew to LA and we started working on it, we selected the material, he hired the musicians and it was all very exciting. It was such a wonderful gift of him.
Your albums have displayed such an eclectic taste in music from country, to pop, to oldies, to theatre, is there any genre you haven’t played with that you’re excited to explore? A Betty Buckley rap album maybe?
Yeah, I actually did rap before rap became popular (laughs) I wrote these songs where I was just talking. One of them was called “Gaviola”, it’s a poem about a princess from another planet, and it’s actually on my first record from 1983. Back then I said the new trend would be people just talking to music, and people were like “yeah sure”, and then when it happened I said “I predicted rap!” There’s still a lot of beautiful music I’d love to sing, so I hope I get the opportunity to do so.
Were you ever intimidated when you began performing on Broadway that no one sounded like you? Seth Rudetsky called you “Broadway’s first Beltress”, and it might seem unusual today because everyone on Broadway is belting now but could you tell us a bit about starting off at the time and how it felt.
That’s nice of Seth to say, I like that according to him I have a position in the history of Broadway, it makes me very happy, I love him. I don’t think I knew my voice sounded unique, I just knew I wanted to sing on Broadway, I wanted to be a leading lady. I had this vision when I was 13 that this would become true and I just believed in that. I had wonderful teachers in Texas, my aunt, my dance teacher, my mother who was a former singer/dancer and exposed me to all the great lady singers. She had a very extensive record collection of all these wonderful lady singers and I learned to sing in church, my da played the guitar. I was a very good mimic, I had a good ear and I would sing along with Judy Garland in her Carnegie Hall album, I could sing note by note with her. I was always in the church choir and they’d ask me to blend in and it made me nervous because I didn’t understand why I wasn’t blending in. When I was 11 my mother took me to see my first musical which was The Pajama Game and I was smitten, I knew that’s what I would be doing for the rest of my life. I learned numbers with the original Fosse choreography, and my dance teachers had worked with Fosse on the road, their names were Larry Howard and Ed Holloman, and Larry recently passed away. They both trained me so well and when I was 15 I started performing professionally, by the time I got to New York I’d been well trained.
Is it true that you got your first Broadway role the day you arrived to New York?
That’s true! It was in 1776. It was pretty exciting, I played Martha Jefferson.
You’re always engaging with your fans on Twitter and talking about art, politics, the news. What do you like most about the medium?
I think it’s fun, when I have something to share I post it, whether it’s my own work, somebody else’s work or just things I find interesting. I follow some pretty interesting people, my brother Norman Buckley is a master of social media, he’s amazing, he’s a big TV director. He’s the person who first got me on social media, even though at first I didn’t want to do it (laughs) I started on Twitter, one Christmas vacation I was sitting here in my bathrobe, and I said to myself “OK, let’s try this Twitter thing”. I followed my brother and people he followed, which led me to other people, and then suddenly I was having fun. Two weeks later he said I needed to go on Facebook, so I did that, even though I didn’t know anything about it...I started meeting some pretty cool people there, and then about a month later Norman said “now we have to do an intervention, you’re there morning, noon and night! Get off the computer!” (Laughs)
One of the best Betty Buckley moments on Twitter was when you took the American Idol judging panel to task for using Broadway and theatre as a pejorative and you spoke very eloquently about the way they were misunderstanding the variety of voices on Broadway and the history of the form.
That whole thing just got to be too much for me, cause I was a real fan of the show. It started with Simon Cowell and then Randy Jackson, whenever they didn’t like a singer they’d say “oh, you’re just too theatrical, too Broadway”. It had nothing to do with the singer that they didn’t like, the singer just wasn’t a good singer (laughs) and it really made me mad. I thought they were nuts, because there are so many American Idol graduates and contestants who end up doing Broadway shows, and Broadway is a place, it’s not a form of music. There’s no definitive “Broadway thing”. It made me so angry, so one night after watching the show and Randy Jackson made a bitchy comment I started a rant on Twitter that went on and on and on...and then suddenly everyone jumped on it! The producer of the show ended up apologizing for Randy and I said there was no explanation, they needed to educate their judges. He said that in London there was a “theatre kind of voice” and I said there wasn’t, rock and roll concerts are theatrical too! When you start using sounds and lights and design and choreography...that is musical theatre regardless of the form of music that’s in that structure. There is no “pop voice”, there are good singers, interesting singers, personality singers...there’s all kinds of music presented in popular music. Eventually Randy Jackson apologized as well which was interesting. I knew I had made it when TMZ called me to interview me (laughs) The New York Times called me, so did The New York Post. All these magazines wanted my quotes, when TMZ called me I was on the road. I think they cleaned up the show a little bit, I love J.Lo and Harry Connick Jr. and Keith Urban, they’re cool.
One of your recent albums Ah Men: The Boys of Broadway was built on the theme of you singing a series of songs traditionally written for men. As a premier female performer of the stage, how do you feel Broadway has changed and/or improved for women since you began?
That’s a tough question. People say that women don’t get good parts but I don’t even think like that. I just love the musical theatre, and any attempt to do theatre, it’s so hard to get everything right. I just hope that someone writes something for me in the near future while I still can do it. It’s hard to do eight shows a week, but it’s so much fun.
You favorited a tweet about The Devil Wears Prada musical, maybe that could be your next role?
That would be nice, but there are so many girls who could do that well. When they’ve done polls about who should do this, and you see the list of actresses who are your contemporaries, you’re like wow, there’s just so much talent out there.
Your last New York appearance was in Horton Foote’s Old Friends. Is there any role from a non-musical play that you’d love to have the opportunity to do?
That was such a beautiful play, I did the world premiere at the Signature Theatre and then we repeated it in Houston. There’s all kinds of things I’d love to do, I’m waiting to hear about two TV shows, a film that I’m up for and a musical I may be doing this summer, the thing about it is that things come along, you’re in the mix for a while, people are interested in working things out...but things come and go. It’s an odd thing.
Is there any one song or performance or show that you want to be remembered for?
I’ve done ten Broadway shows, including some in London, so I don’t know. There are several...Cats, Sunset Boulevard, Triumph of Love, Carrie. I’ve just been very lucky to sing and act and tell stories in the musical theatre, because it’s one of my great loves.
Betty Buckley Dark Blue-Eyed Blues will take place at Joe's Pub on May 28-31. For tickets and more click here.
