Interview of Maury Yeston (legendary composer of musicals Titanic, Phantom, Nice) by David Serero (2023)
Interview of Maury Yeston (legendary composer of musicals Titanic, Phantom, Nice) by David Serero (2023)
Transcript
00:00 Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Welcome to Culture News. My name is David Soriro and
00:12 I have the pleasure to have today over the phone a legend. He is absolutely amazing.
00:18 He's one of the greatest composers of all time. You name it, he was dominated in everything.
00:24 He won everything. He wrote one of the most beautiful musicals, most beautiful music of
00:30 all time. This is the one and only, the one and only, my dear friend, one person I love
00:35 very much, Mr. Maury Yeston. Maury, how are you?
00:41 I'm just fine. Oh, you really, that's too much overpraise. Thank you very much.
00:47 Well, you deserve every bit of it.
00:49 Thank you very much.
00:50 So the first question I would like to ask you, how did you start your career in music?
00:58 What brought you to become a musician in the first place?
01:02 You know, that's a very, very easy answer. Hindemith said that the greatest training
01:11 in music in the world is family singing. And from the very moment I was on this earth,
01:19 all I can remember is all of everybody in my family sang. My father was a Jewish family,
01:29 originally from Poland that emigrated to London. So my dad was raised in London. So he was
01:34 British Yiddish. And he sang English musicals, so don't go down to the mines, dad. You know,
01:43 don't jump off the roof, dad. You'll make a hole in the yard. Mothers planted petunias,
01:48 the weeding and seeding were hard. So you're hearing that from your dad, those songs. But
01:54 he also sang Yiddish songs. The verses go, "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." From the time I
02:01 was a little boy. My mother's father was a cantor in the synagogue. And so from the moment
02:08 I was sitting on my grandmother's lap in the ladies section of the Orthodox synagogue,
02:13 looking down, there would be my grandfather, Anyom Kittur, would be standing on a bima.
02:21 A bima is a raised platform. He's standing in front of a huge congregation. That's an
02:26 audience. He's staying on a raised platform. He's wearing a white robe. It's called a kittel,
02:32 right? He's in a costume. A man raised up in a costume, singing at the top of his lungs,
02:41 "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn,
02:48 vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz
02:52 nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh
02:55 duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk."
02:56 "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn,
03:22 vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz
03:29 nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh
03:34 duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk."
03:38 "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn,
03:41 iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk." "Vayn, vayn, iz nizh duk."
04:03 "Vayn, vayn, izh duk." "Vayn, vayn, izh duk." "Vayn, vayn, izh duk." "Vayn, vayn, izh duk."
04:11 "Vayn, vayn, izh duk." "Vayn, vayn, izh duk." "Vayn, vayn, izh duk." "Vayn, vayn, izh duk."
04:17 "Vayn, vayn, izh duk." "Vayn, vayn, izh duk." "Vayn, vayn, izh duk." "Vayn, vayn, izh duk."
04:21 You will say actually that musicals is perhaps the true language of freedom and the true language of
04:29 what America is because it's the melting pot of all these knowledges that are coming from all around the world
04:35 and throughout their cultures to create musicals. Is that what you think it is?
04:40 That's exactly right. That's where it comes from. Yeah, that's where it comes from.
04:44 As more and more immigrant populations come into America and all of their backgrounds,
04:50 they join the great, they're like rivulets coming into a great stream.
04:55 The great river of American music continues and we just keep adding to it.
05:00 So the question I have for you, Maurie, so fast forwarding, you wrote what I think is one of the most beautiful musicals of all time,
05:07 "Phantom," which is based on the novel of "Phantom of the Opera" and over a thousand productions have been told.
05:15 Yes, pretty much. Yeah.
05:17 In this musical, before we start to talk about "Titanic" that is playing now in movie theaters, please go to sit.
05:23 Actually, the whole Yiddish point makes sense to me because there is this cantorial in the song "Without Music."
05:31 This cantorial thing, resonance that perhaps you were even looking for from the singers,
05:37 but also these very sensitive notes that you go to search.
05:43 What is going on in your mind, Maurie, when you are writing music?
05:48 First of all, do you sit and say, OK, I need to write a musical or how does it start for you?
05:54 What is your process of composing?
05:56 First of all, since I grew up and loving musicals, right, from everything from Alan Jay Lerner to Stephen Sondheim, right, I love the full.
06:05 And also I love not only writing a song all by itself, a pop tune or something like that, but I love telling stories in music.
06:17 And I love I love. In fact, my my musicals are really song cycles.
06:23 If you just listen to the Mutant, we could tell the whole story.
06:26 I can tell you a whole story in music.
06:28 You know, I mean, we just released the December song for Victoria Clark.
06:33 And that's a song cycle. Classical composers invented Beethoven, invented the song cycle.
06:40 My I'm a storyteller in music and I can do it just with a group of songs or we can take a group of songs and put it on the stage.
06:49 But a song happens in an onstage in a musical song happen in musicals where where exclamations happen in language.
07:00 In other words, you sing when you're so filled with emotion that you can no longer speak and you must sing.
07:08 Oh, what a beautiful morning right there. See, and that that's got to be a song.
07:13 I just feel a natural inclination to to have somebody, a character in a situation who who becomes so filled with emotion that he or she can no longer speak.
07:25 And they have to sing to express their feelings, whether they're happy, whether they're sad, whether they're angry, whether they have to tell you something.
07:34 And so I just have this natural inclination. It gets the best out of me.
07:39 A man who who just he's a genius and he's a film director, but he but he and he wants to have that person and that person and his wife and his mistress and this and that.
07:50 And he wants to do this, but he wants to do that. And he's just all over the place. So he's I want to be here. I want to be there.
07:55 I want to be everywhere at once. And that becomes Guido's song or or.
08:03 Well, the Phantom. So when I think about what would be a good story, what's a character, right?
08:11 Because because you can't put anything on a stage unless you have a person who you care about.
08:18 And of course, I always find that the center of a musical is on the basis of what I've seen in my life usually works out well if it's focused and centered on a literary character, a fictional character unique to literary fiction.
08:37 Henry Higgins would be a good example, right? He's just Henry Higgins.
08:42 And so and we got Tevye right. Who's like Tevye? He's. And so and so when I thought about Phantom and of course, first thing I thought was worst idea in the world.
08:54 Right. First of all, it's a horror story. Why? Why? Why? Why did you think it was the worst idea? Was there already that thing with Andrew Lloyd Webber?
09:02 No, no, no, no, no, no. He and I were completely independent of that. We both did that, right? You know, the question of who started writing it first and who had a quicker route to get on the stage.
09:12 Andrew's show got on first. All power, all glory to him.
09:17 You know, my show is done everywhere, which is two different people who wrote two different things. We're not the first two composers who ever sort of had the same idea.
09:26 So and so but for me, then I was all alone and thinking, well, do I really want to write this? And I thought, well, well, it's a ridiculous idea. It's a horror movie.
09:35 What am I going to do next? Mothra meets Godzilla, the musical? Makes no sense.
09:42 And then I thought, well, wait a minute. What is who is this man? All right. So he is a man who was born so misshapen, so ugly, so hideous, you couldn't even look at him.
09:57 It was horrible. And so he had to be hidden away. His mother could nobody could let him be seen. And as he grew up, he was simply surrounded by his own ugliness.
10:09 He couldn't look in a mirror. A little child. As he grew up, he realized that he was monstrous to look at.
10:17 And all he had in his life, he was growing up, he found one thing to love music. Only the beauty of music.
10:26 So here is the ugliest creature in the world who lives for only one thing.
10:32 The only thing that can enter his life that can bring him so far and beauty is the beauty of music.
10:40 And so he falls in love with opera and he finds an environment deep down below because he can't sit in the audience deep down below in the crypts of the opera, which is ugly underground caves with reptiles.
10:55 Who knows what's going on down there, but he can be down there.
10:59 And the voices of the magnificent sopranos in the orchestra come wafting down through the bottom of the stage right below that all the way down into the crypt where he is and brings him beauty.
11:16 And so there he is right there. And so try to imagine one day when he's down there.
11:28 And oh, and excuse me, because he's living down below the opera house in this hideous horrible environment. He steals scenery from the beautiful scenery up above, and he decorates his cave with the most magnificent scenery in the world.
11:48 He's got the concert hall from Loewendrin. He's got the bedroom from Verdi. And so he lives surrounded by the beauty of scenery and the glory of the music down.
12:06 And one day, something happens in the opera and they want to fire the guy who's in charge of it. And all of a sudden, everything, the only thing that he has that he can live on becomes threatened.
12:22 And he has to do something about that. Hence, his violence that comes. And so I thought, that is a man you cry for.
12:32 He's a beautiful man on the inside and hideous on the outside. And as horrible that he looks, that's how beautiful is the music that sustains him. And I thought, that's a story.
12:47 How do you know, Marie, that when you have it, how do you know when you're like, okay, I have a musical with this. Do you do some tryouts?
12:56 No, no. How do I know? I write something. Way before tryouts, I write something. And if I write something and I go, wow, I love that. I've written something really meaningful to me.
13:13 Then I know that this subject matter and thinking about it and feeling about it is getting my best work out of me. And then I keep writing it. So I write it.
13:21 And then I have the score and the story and I find somebody to work with in terms of telling the story. And then now there's something that we can talk about putting on a stage.
13:32 So, but it always begins with my seducing myself, thinking about it deeply, and then being moved to write something. And if I can write something beautiful and something funny and something that tells the story, then what's going to intrigue people and bring them into the idea of putting this on a stage.
13:53 Right. Once I find a collaborator to work with. And so, but you see, it's all built from the beginning. From there. Here's another example. So now, I thought a great deal about some of the events that have always been one of the greatest events that are universally known all over the world.
14:14 For example, like the history of the Titanic.
14:17 And I was thinking, there's something about that story that's monumental.
14:23 Everybody knows about it. It's the most, it's the, it's the most well known word in all the world. Every language, everybody knows that word, Titanic.
14:32 It's the worst.
14:34 Worst disaster in history. Over a thousand people died, huge maritime disaster. And I kept thinking, why is it that I feel that somehow that story sings to me.
14:47 Very interesting what you said, that the story must sing?
14:51 Yes. If it doesn't, if it doesn't sing to me then I don't think of it as a musical. You know, I mean, I guess you can make a musical almost about almost anything.
15:02 But I think it's always great when you have an idea that people go, how could that possibly be a musical. And then if you pull it off, they go, oh my god, they made a musical out of that.
15:12 And by the way, that's me. I go, well that can't happen. And then I think about it, and if I come up with something I go, oh my god, maybe that can be a musical.
15:23 And so I started thinking about this story about the Titanic. And, you know, and people, oh that's the worst idea in the world. What, you want to do, you want to sing about the worst maritime disaster in history?
15:35 Are you out of your mind?
15:38 And I thought a lot about it during a specific period of time that will become obvious to you once I tell you the rest of the story.
15:47 And so I thought, well, look, why did they build that ship? Who built the ship? All right, so it was built at the apex of the British Empire.
15:59 England ruled the seas, right? Everything, you couldn't get anything anywhere, you couldn't go anywhere, send anything if you weren't on a British ship.
16:08 And they were the greatest ships in the world and the most advanced maritime technology in the world, right?
16:14 And they were not only at the end of the 19th century, they ruled the waves and one of the greatest empires on the earth, but they also had the best technology, the English Industrial Revolution, from the cotton gin all the way through to their machines.
16:32 They had the apex of world technology. So they thought the worst thing that can happen, the disaster can happen when a ship sinks and people die.
16:45 And so why don't we, at the apex of human technology, with the greatest empire in the world and the greatest maritime empire, can we build a ship that cannot sink?
16:58 Imagine the idea of a ship that cannot sink will prevent the endless loss of life on the sea that we had historically.
17:09 And so they set about on a project that will save human life, a project that will advance technology, a project that will stretch our ability and our technology to go places.
17:28 And so they had a dream, a positive dream. And I thought, that's something to write about. We dream.
17:38 Jonas Salk dreamed of a vaccine that could prevent polio. And look at the lives that he saved because of it.
17:47 And how were these people dreaming about the Titanic any different? And I thought, that's a dream. That's something positive.
17:55 And so, yes, we failed, but we dreamed and we meant well. And as I was thinking about that, I swear to God, I would never make this up.
18:04 As I was sitting in my little apartment, thinking about that, the space shuttle Challenger blew up right above my head.
18:12 Those three astronauts lost their lives in one of the greatest manufactured objects of technology in the history of the human race.
18:24 Yeah. With the greatest engineering and brilliance and perfection on a great dream of a journey to explore space for the betterment of mankind.
18:34 But we dream and sometimes we fail. And I thought, aha, we've learned nothing yet or we keep having to relearn it.
18:43 And that's a story I want to tell. And I sat down and started writing.
18:49 And so you have that story that is kind of getting designed in your head.
18:55 But what is also your particularity is that inside the big, the large story, you create small stories, right?
19:04 You create and you bring so much data in the vocals, in the line, in the melody, like right away, you know, OK, that guy is the guy who is like this.
19:15 This is the shy guy. This is the funny guy. How do you do all of that?
19:19 Well, the first question I ask always is, who am I in this story?
19:24 You know, the first question I have for an interview, I forgot to ask it because I was so happy to see you is who are you?
19:31 OK, well, who am I? So I said to myself, OK, well, if I'm in this story, the Titanic, who am I?
19:36 Well, OK, since I'm the guy who makes it up, right, I'm the guy who puts it together.
19:39 I'm the guy who designs the music. I'm the guy who designs the show.
19:43 I would have I'd be the engineer of Titanic. I'm the guy who designed the ship. I'm Mr. Andrews.
19:48 And there was my first character. And and there is the person who can tell you, you know, how did they build Titanic?
19:56 Right. Forty thousand. And and I'm I'm now the expert.
20:02 And now I have a character who I understand and I understand what he what he's like trying to create something.
20:09 And I understand his enthusiasm. He creates it.
20:12 And then I understand the devastating consequence of his failure, his inability to realize his dream and then his guilt on top of everything else.
20:24 And so there he is. And then I see this. Well, he's got to be captain. Right.
20:28 And then I think about, well, who's on the ship? Who's on the ship?
20:32 Is everybody I come from my grandmother, my grandfather, my father. Right.
20:36 Everybody here in the United States. And and why did they come here for a better life?
20:42 Get me aboard to call out my name. It's to America. We aim to find a better life.
20:48 We prayed to be to be on this ship. And so I had my people.
20:52 And and that's how I see what people want, what they will. What are we?
20:58 What does a person wants? What will he or she do to get it?
21:02 And that itself is a story. It's we call it the one song in the language of musical theater.
21:09 And and then and then they interact. And then why do they overreach?
21:17 They overreach because they ask too much. Tom Sutherland directed the English production of Titanic, the musical.
21:25 It's extraordinary because the medium of film, you can really see the faces very big.
21:30 So you don't have to see some guy with a small mouth from the back of the theater.
21:35 And it's very immediate. And then it becomes it becomes very clear that if all they had wanted to do was build a ship that wouldn't sink, they could have done that.
21:47 But you see, there's also another element in psych in society and that's capitalism and greed and selfishness.
21:59 And so also on the ship was the owner of the ship and the owner of the ship thought, well, it's not only got to be completely safe,
22:09 but it's got to be for the sake of capitalism, for the sake of business. It's got to break the speed record.
22:17 It's why should you go on the Titanic? Well, because it's the fastest trip from one side of the ocean to the other.
22:22 Before they even tested everything out, he insisted he pushed on that maiden voyage.
22:27 It's not enough that we have the greatest ship in the world, the most technology, brilliant ship in the world.
22:32 It also has to be the fastest one. When I write a show like this, I do a tremendous amount of research.
22:37 And of course, I found out that we go too fast. I found out they ignored radio warnings when there had been reports of iceberg.
22:46 Oh, they became overconfident. And so you see, on the one hand, you have the dream.
22:53 And on the other hand, you have the greed. So greed and business. In that particular case, trumped care and scientific caution.
23:07 And that's why that happened. But it happened. And you know what? In the same way, something must have happened up there with the challenger that somebody didn't get right.
23:20 You know, because it happened. It was a worthy dream. It was a desire to create a ship that would save lives.
23:28 The challenger was a desire to make a perfect exploratory thing that would further human knowledge.
23:34 Right. Sometimes we dream. Sometimes we fail. And so and so we have those two things in both of those stories.
23:43 I just it just made it made me sing. Are you saying that they could have avoided the iceberg because they went faster?
23:53 All of you, all of you go see the show and you'll see you'll see they were going too fast.
23:58 They were too fast by the owner who said we have to beat the speed record.
24:02 Yeah, we see that in the movie. Yeah. So I had. OK, so now let's jump to your your wonderful news.
24:12 You know, is that this gorgeous production, which I forgot was almost 10 years ago or something, you know, absolutely beautiful.
24:20 He's playing in, I think you said, 750. It's absolutely extraordinary.
24:25 It's just I was shocked, really. It was just it. And it was simply a movie of the show.
24:32 But being able to see the faces that closely as they sing and as they emote and hearing everything.
24:38 Also having it having a, you know, a six camera shoot, you know, where instead of watching a bunch of people on the stage and, you know, where's where's the sound coming from?
24:47 You're getting close ups. You're getting it is it's just a wonderful film.
24:52 But it's more than that, because, you know, I really felt, to be honest with you, was kind of the first time.
24:57 Of course, I've said I've seen thousands of musicals, but it was the first time that I was watching a musical in a movie theater.
25:06 And really, you really feel immersed in the theater. You feel the audience supporting around you laughing.
25:14 It's not a Hollywood movie based on a musical. It's a musical filmed in an exquisitely unique way.
25:23 So moving and it's captivating. And then the performances are so brilliantly theatrical in the best way.
25:35 And sounds wonderful. I was just I confess, you know, I was really I was I was really surprised at the at the dimensions that film could bring to literally a stage show.
25:51 And I think we may I think it's and I think we may be seeing a lot of things like that now because whoever did it did a wonderful job.
26:00 And we need and of course, we give a big a big thank you to all the AMC theater and to Fathom Events.
26:08 All of that together. But we thank you most importantly for the music. I let you go because you've been already very generous with me.
26:18 What do you think is the future of musicals? Do you think that because we live in the era of Netflix, of YouTube, having a lot of entertainment at home and I see it even for my shows is harder and harder to bring audiences while the shows are getting better, actually.
26:37 And there are more efforts done on the shows. We have special effects. We have new backgrounds. You have news, new stuff to make it better for the audience. People can buy a ticket on their phone.
26:48 So everything is easier, but yet it's harder to bring audiences. So what do you think is the is the future of musicals? My dear, Marie?
26:56 I think that I think that the future of musicals is going to be explosion, an explosion that nobody could ever have anticipated.
27:05 And I can tell you that because when I when I started writing these things, there was a workshop created by this man named Lamin Angle.
27:13 He created the BMI Music Theater Workshop. And some of the earliest people who attended that workshop were me and Edward Kleban and Alan Menken.
27:22 And of course, Ed ended up writing the chorus line and I ended up with what I did. And Alan, of course, ended up writing everything else.
27:30 That's so funny.
27:33 But at the same time, when when dear Lamin passed away, I took over that that that workshop and sat up in front and moderated it.
27:42 Oh, I'm going to say probably for about 15, 16 years. And the people who came into that workshop at that time were Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty and Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson Lopez and and Jeff Marks.
27:58 And and so many of these brilliant geniuses who now have had musicals and they're still coming into that workshop and they're still writing their things.
28:07 And that's just one little workshop. And now, of course, it's become internationalized and we have new musicals from every country.
28:15 And, you know, my set my I there are more productions of my work in the country of Japan than any other country in the world.
28:22 Korea is a wonderful area all over the world. And so it's only a matter of time before they start writing their own shows.
28:30 And so I think we haven't even begun to see the explosion of new musical theater and even local theater and community theater.
28:39 So I think it's it I think it's an exciting and burgeoning form, because even better than the professional theater, we have amateur theaters.
28:50 We have schools that do it all over the world. So if you think about it, compared to opera, even compared to film, there are more people doing musicals in professional groups, amateur groups, school groups, university groups, countries all over the world than ever before.
29:08 What you did with Titanic is absolutely brilliant. And to bring it to movie theaters, because one thing that I started to get a little bit annoyed is that you're working so much to put a musical together.
29:20 And at the end of the last performance, it's like it's all over. There's no memory of it. So I think we should really film them.
29:28 I think it is true. And by the way, Encores! You know, well you know they're on 56th Street. In their next season, they're doing Titanic in June of 2024.
29:42 And I think it's quite wonderful, you know, because they do wonderful work.
29:46 Well, you're doing definitely wonderful work. You know, I will never forget I was talking, I was in Dubai and they wanted to do Fiddler on the Roof over there.
29:56 And they said, what do you think of, and they mentioned your musical, Phantom. And I said, oh yeah, we have to do Phantom.
30:05 I'd love to be big in Dubai.
30:10 But wait, what is funny is that, so you had the shake, you know, with the outfit, the Middle Eastern outfit. And he goes, is that story of the Phantom or Fiddler on the Roof very famous in America?
30:25 I said, it's like the most famous thing in America. And then he goes, because it is such a Middle Eastern story.
30:33 Yes, it is. Oh, that's so interesting.
30:36 Because what you write, my dear Maury, touches everybody. Because all you said, all these cultures that you have, they get to everybody.
30:47 It's like a friend of mine who is a stand-up comedian, he said when he does a show for this community, it's the same show. He just changes the names.
30:55 But we're all the same after all, right?
30:58 What's the human experience? And that's absolutely true. I used to be surprised when my stuff started being done in Japan 25 years ago.
31:08 I thought, gee, I know it's a different culture, but I was thrilled to see that.
31:12 You've been so generous with me, my dear Maury. I can't thank you enough. It really truly means the world to me.
31:18 Thank you for all the beautiful music that you are writing.
31:21 I love you.
31:22 I enjoy talking to you and having this conversation.
31:24 I love you from the bottom of my heart.
31:26 I love everybody who has been coming to see these shows. I love that you love musicals. Keep going to them and keep writing them.
31:35 You're the sweetest. Thank you so much.
31:38 To stage your work and to direct and to produce your work is one of the best.
31:42 I wish it to everybody because the audience is happy and you're sold out all the time.
31:48 When there's Maury Houston on the playbill.
31:50 So I recommend to all producers to do it.
31:53 Ladies and gentlemen, my name is David. So we write the pleasure, the honor, the privilege today to have over the phone, the very talented Mr.
32:02 Maury Houston, this legend. This is a special day on iHeartRadio, on the Culture News and many other platforms to host Mr.
32:11 Maury Houston go to run to movie theaters to see Titanic, the musicals.
32:17 We give a big shout out to AMC Theater for putting it and also Fathom Events and also my dear friends, Kel Sherman.
32:24 We say hello to all the team, Scott, Logan and everybody for putting these together.
32:29 Maury, a last word of goodbye.
32:33 Yes. Goodbye. I wish everybody good health and just keep on singing.
32:42 And we love you and we keep on singing your music. Have a lovely day.
32:45 Have a lovely day.
32:46 Thank you so much.