A problem girl comes of age

1 March 1986 The Times (UK) newspaper

Liza Minnelli is returning to the London stage next week, after surviving a year of personal crisis. Interview by Henry Fenwick.

"I like this place a lot" says Liza Minnelli, looking round the "21" Club from a corner banquette in the most select area of the dining room. "I saw a movie about the Twenties, once, and during Prohibition the whole of that long bar swung round when the cops came, and all the bottles and glasses went down into the vaults. The cops could never get down into the vaults - they didn't have the right papers.

"Then during the depression this was one of the few places that would give credit, and when times got better people remembered that." Tradition and loyalty are two qualities that mean a great deal to her.

Her enthusiasm is reminiscent of the Liza Minnelli image of Cabaret and Sterile Cuckoo, but nowadays her almost childlike eagerness seem's calmed; only occasionally does it break,through a stronger, adult gusto and level-headedness, which in turn gives way from time to time to an almost maternal warmth.

Her lack of pretence, her direct, on-the-level approach seems like a matter of conscious, very deliberate choice.

Any Liza fan, looking forward to her next appearances at the London Palladium, must think of her legendary first appearance there, a guest on her mother's stage, when she first gave notice that she would be a performer to be reckoned with.

"It was exciting, it was wonderful to do, but I remember the Palladium even before that, from when I was little. As a child I can remember going to the Palladium and seeing all kinds of things: it was wonderful. It's always a high point, because there's a feeling of consistency to it: it's like the joke about the youngster asking directions of an old New Yorker. He says 'How do you get to Carnegie Hall?' and the old guy says 'Practise!' - it's the same thing."

She has always, in preparing her songs, worked on them as if for an acting part, developing backgrounds for the character behind the song. For the forthcoming British concerts she has gone one step further, writing with Fred Ebb, the songwriter she has worked with regularly since her first triumph in his Flora, The Red Menace.

"It's thematic in a way. it's about different women in different situations at different times in their life, but each song is almost a little playlet - it's about women I knew or made up and how they react in different circumstances and situations. It offers you an opportunity to play different roles without changing costumes, do it all with interior work, and that's my favourite thing to do. Then you're not just singing the song, there's a history to it, it makes the performance of one song complete.

"Aznavour has always done that; so, apparently did Piaf - never saw her, but I've read that each song was a little vignette and it's always interested me to do that. So this is the first show where I've really followed it through as much as I can."

According to reports in the American press, her voice is now better than it has ever been. "I know it has to do with health... I've found that since I've stopped drinking completely my voice is much stronger. I just feel so well and much calmer. People come of age in their voice at different times, and I guess this is my time."

How has she achieved this calmness? "The most helpful way I've found to do it is to stay current with your emotions every day. People have always said about me - and I'm very grateful - that I'm a good friend and I guess that I've finally made friends with myself for the first time and I'm treating myself like a real good friend as opposed to tormenting myself to keep going."

Judy Garland sang autobiographically that she was "born in a trunk. Her daughter, as she herself says, was "born in a fishblow" - from birth her life has been documented in the international press. So last year her retreat to the Betty Ford Clinic to break her dependency on valium and alcohol was well publicised indeed. She talks about it freely, not like a True Confessions magazine but more like a senior nurse lecturing junior nurses who are quite likely to encounter the same problems.

"I was feeling so ill, I was really sick - the disease of chemical dependency is a terrible thing, it's insidious, it's cunning, it's baffling, and you can't play with it because it's going to kill you. You don't know what's happening, you feel fine most of the time, but you've crossed an invisible line so you're really allergic to this stuff and it happens so slowly."

Because she was who she was, the whole world knew of her problems. But she doesn't resent that at all, she says. Her primary feeling is that of being lucky - lucky that she went through being famous so early, that she never experienced the shock of being unknown one minute and then subject to public scrutiny as soon as success arrived. "It's never bothered me - Ithink it's because I'm not frightened at all. People have never frignhtened me."

Liza Minnelli is lucky, too, that she is secure enough to choose what she is going to do: "I can sit here and say 'No' to things and know that they're not going to come and remove the furniture, or take away the apartment; I'm not going to be out on the street - it's a very priviledged position to be be in."

She will be celebrating her fortieth birthday in England, but it doesn't hold any threat for her. "I should have celebrated it two years ago, when I felt 40. Anyway, it's very in to be 40! All the big sex symbols now are between 40 and 50 - your own Joan Collins!" And there's plenty more to do. "I honestly feel I haven't scratched the surface yet!"

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