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Chapter 1: How did Michael Feinstein's childhood shape his musical career?
I can't tell you how excited I am. This week I met a man in Middlesbrough who has tattooed Rosebud on his arm. I think we've arrived. Cue the music.
Cue the music.
Yes, this is Rosebud and I'm Giles Brandreth, but I'm not in London's Park Lane. I'm actually in New York's Central Park, or overlooking Central Park. It's a beautiful view. It's a lovely day for meeting somebody, to me, who feels like an old friend. I've not actually met him face to face before, but I first saw him when I was in New York in the 1980s as a cabaret performer.
He was singing at a piano in a room at the famous Algonquin Hotel. And I was taken to see him because I was told this is a musical sensation. He's called Michael Feinstein. You must see him. You'll be blown away. Nobody seems to know and understand him. the great American songbook like he does. And they told me, you know, he knew Oscar Levant, he knew Ira Gershwin.
And I went into the room and there was this very young man at a piano and it was magical. So I've admired him for many years. And he's obviously a musicologist. He is a collector of music. He's an interpreter of music. He did indeed work for Ira Gershwin, the lyricist brother of George Gershwin. But he's also well known as being a friend of some great composers.
musical interpreters themselves Rosemary Clooney I think was like a second mother to him and he's known for his long friendship with Liza Minnelli in fact recently he and Liza Minnelli had a series of conversations which were recorded in the basis of a new book and I've always been fascinated by Liza Minnelli
and I've been lucky enough to meet her a couple of times, but I've not met this guy before. So this, for me, is a very special day, meeting a very special man who has brought to life, well, some of the music that has been the backdrop to my life. So, would you please welcome to Rosebud, the great Michael Feinstein. This is very exciting, Michael. I hope I'm getting the name right.
Michael J. Feinstein?
Yes.
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Chapter 2: What impact did Michael's relationship with Ira Gershwin have on his life?
And he always was trying to become a better person and to learn how to speak to people and to look at the things in himself that needed attention. And my mother was the opposite. So I guess it's comparing the two of them.
So you're saying he was ready to evolve and change and develop and learn, but she was what she was and remained that always. Yes. With both the strengths of that and the weaknesses of that, I assume. Yes. And did their marriage consequently come asunder at the end?
My father spent more time at my house than home with my mom in the later years.
But they stayed together as a couple because of the generation they belonged to?
Yes, they both had affairs. And my father met a woman that he was, I think, in love with. And I said, why don't you be with her? And he started crying. And he said, I'm afraid that if I get sick, she won't take care of me.
Oh, so when you were younger, were there brothers and sisters? I have an older brother and an older sister. And were you as a family aware of these tensions between your parents, the different types that they were?
I didn't know as much as I learned later, but yes, there were tensions. And my father would shut down, and my mom would always say, don't give me the silent treatment. It was a whole thing that would go on.
The very fact that when I asked you to describe the first word that came out, where she was narcissistic, suggests that you feel that you maybe paid a price for that, but at the same time, you clearly adored her. Is that right?
There were things I adored about her because she could be very funny and she had a big heart. And if she weren't my mother, I probably would have adored her more because everybody, all of her friends loved her deeply. I saw her do things that I felt were very cruel. Give me an example of that.
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Chapter 3: How did Rosemary Clooney influence Michael Feinstein personally and professionally?
It was a release. It was a release.
And how did you get a teacher then? And did you learn to play other people's piece of music? Because this is stuff you're improvising yourself. Yes. So did you then have formal teaching?
They then think, we better get him a teacher. They took me to a teacher at Capital University, which was nearby. And she was a very nice lady who would put this little book, children's music book, in front of me. And then she would demonstrate the tune. And then I would play it. Well, I wasn't looking at the music. I was just copying what she was doing.
And then after about four weeks or five weeks, she put the book down in front of me and said, play this. And I said, I can't. I said, play it for me. And she said, well, you've been reading this. I've taught you to read. I said, no, I can't. And then my mother was waiting in the hall. And she went out to the hall and said, Mrs. Feinstein, do you know that your child is playing by ear?
Chapter 4: What unique qualities make Liza Minnelli an electrifying performer?
as if it was the worst thing. My mother said, yes. And she hadn't realized that I was playing by ear. And at that point, I said, I don't like lessons. I want to play myself. And my mom said, OK. So that was the end of the lessons. Later, I did take some other lessons. But the only substantive thing that I learned from piano lessons was
a wonderful teacher, Miss Cook, who taught me chord substitutions. She taught me how to play a G7 or an A9 augmented, those sorts of things. So I could read chord symbols and I could sort of figure out a lead sheet of something. But that was about it.
Have you explored this and how this phenomenon occurs? Because it's most unusual.
I believe in reincarnation, and I'm certain that I came back in with something from another time, because I do have flashes of experiences in other times, and I'm certain I just came back in with it.
So in your explanation of it, in an early incarnation, you were somebody who could play the piano, and that gift returned as part and parcel of your time this time around.
Yes. I believe that we are given certain things from other experiences that are purposeful for our evolution in this life.
And this phenomenon of being able to play, did it make you a strange child where you put on show because you could do this? Did it become the thing? Oh, Michael can play the piano by ear. We haven't had any lessons from...
There was some of that. And then I started to feel the pressure of it. And then I started to feel uncomfortable playing in front of my family because it was like, oh, here's Michael. Play, Michael. And then I was like, I don't want to do that. So later reading about Judy Garland and how she would make people wait before she went on stage, I understood because...
One is treated as a commodity, and her only power was to say, you can't make me perform. I only go out there because I want to. So it made perfect sense to me that one time when Garland came off stage and her managers, Fields and Beigelman, were standing there, and she had just finished a spectacular concert, and they said, now, Judy, when we do this show next week, she said, wait a minute.
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Chapter 5: What role did spirituality play in Michael's life and career?
Do you have close friends at school? No, not really. But, you know. I had one. I had one and we're still friends. Good. And he, she?
She. And what age is this that she becomes your friend? We met when I was five, when we were five, and she had an interesting family life too, so we tended to spend a lot of time together. We both, I think, felt like outcasts.
You bonded over that.
Yes.
What's her name? Celia. Celia. Well done. So you're still friends with Celia? Yes. And then when you became a teenager, can you remember your first crush? Or maybe Celia was your first crush, or she's really just a friend?
No.
She was just a friend because I knew I was gay from the age of five.
But I don't think in 1961 the concept of being gay was really known among five-year-olds.
The word didn't exist. I just knew I was attracted to the same sex, not the opposite.
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Chapter 6: How did Michael Feinstein navigate his early career in music?
as a teenager, delightful. But eventually you leave school. Yes. And you grow up. And did you have your destiny in your head?
I knew I wanted to do something with music, but I was playing piano bars. So I thought, how am I possibly going to have a career other than playing piano bars for the rest of my life? So I did that until I could figure out what else I would do.
And then what happened? How did something else come along?
From the time I was very young, I had this insistent voice telling me to move to Los Angeles. And I finally listened to it.
I remember... And is this a voice that speaks to you? We've already talked about the idea of reincarnation and your spiritual awareness. Is this a voice actually talking in your head, or is it just a mood and a feeling?
It can be both or either. it it's it really is a visceral feeling of you have to do this it's just it was like a pull something you know like this beckoning finger saying come come yes and so you followed i did you followed your dream yes and what happened how did the dream become a reality I moved to LA and that was October of 1976, I think.
I had just turned 20 and I was playing in a restaurant And a waitress there told me she'd gone to a psychic. $20, you could get a psychic reading. And I thought, oh, that sounds interesting. And I went to this psychic named Carol Costa, who was giving me, saying this and that. Nothing was making much of an impression. She was nice.
Then I said something about music, and I love the music of George Gershwin. And she said, you know, he's very strong around you. He's very strong around you. And I thought, okay. And I said, you know, his brother's still alive. She says, you're going to be working for him. You're going to meet him. And less than a year later, I did. It is truly bizarre. After that, I was collecting old records.
I was collecting 78 RPM records from the time I was five. And in... The time you were five? Yes.
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