The Diva Returns

October 1998 i-D Magazine (UK)

After her top five hit with The Pet Shop Boys Liza Minnelli has rejuvenated her career. This month her album 'Results' is released. i-D gained an audience with a living legend... Interview by Glyn Brown. Photographs by Marc Lebon

When Liza Minnelli was two years old, her mother, Judy Garland - who later died from drug abuse - was sent on the first of many stays in a sanatorium in an effort to encourage her withdrawal from Valium and Benzedrine. "On Liza's first visit," said Garland, "she toddled into my bungalow and into my arms. I didn't know what to say to her. I just held her, and she kept kissing me and looking at me with those huge eyes. After a short while, they took her away. I lay down on the bed and began to cry."

When Liza was five, Judy locked herself in the bathroom and started smashing things. The film star's husband, Vincente Minnelli, broke the door down; he found his wife holding a piece of shattered glass from the mirror she'd cracked. Her throat was bleeding from a long, though not deep, wound.

At about the age of seven, Liza and a schoolfriend were watching TV when Judy Garland announced that she was going to kill herself, and bolted the bathroom door behind her. Liza began pounding on the door, shouting, "Mom, please don't..." When the door was eventually prised open, Judy was standing calmly by the toilet. She'd emptied a bottle of aspirin into it. "All she wanted was attention," Liza later said. Still, Minnelli junior never once assumed her mother was hoaxing. She kept garden shears in her bedroom, and used them more than once to cut through a window screen to get to Judy if there was no other way of access. She took the added precaution of getting hold of a stomach pump in case it should be needed. "Life with my mother," she has said, "was theatre of the absurd."

It's extremely difficult to prepare for an interview with Liza Minnelli. Initial awe about speaking to someone who is virtually blue-blooded, by American standards, is almost increased by what the research reveals. The usual questions don't apply - it's trite to ask the woman something like, "What makes you sad?" And then you meet her, and it's not at all the way you expected.

By way of reassurance, the weather undergoes a dramatic change on the day I'm to meet Ms Minnelli, breaking a spell of long, hot days with a torrential downpour. In addition, I've got bronchitis. The bus journey is a nightmare of coughing and wheezing - but the thought of cancelling a chance to meet Cabaret's Sally Bowles, or the daughter of Dorothy from The Wizard Of Oz, is out of the question. There is also a certain tune galumphing through my head. It is a version of a number from the stage musical Follies, adapted by The Pet Shop Boys for Minnelli to sing. 'Losing My Mind' is a significant change of pace and style for Minnelli, and, astonishingly, the pairing of the hi-NRG synthesizer magicians and the supper-club diva has produced not just the top five single, but an album released this month, 'Results', of irresistible chemistry. Neil Tennant, well known for his rescuing of languishing female stars whose first flush of youth is no longer upon them - he did for Dusty Springfield what Morrissey did for Sandie Shaw - has broken his rules and produced Minnelli's entire album. As well as giving her a selection of his own tracks to interpret - 'Rent', 'Tonight Is Forever' - he has advised her about the inclusion of things which, she later tells me, seem "avant-garde", things she doesn't necessarily feel familiar with, such as Tanita Tikaram's 'Twist In My Sobriety'. This will assuredly be Minnelli's biggest-selling album, or there is no justice. It's the galvanic, off-Broadway gush of 'Losing My Mind' that gets me to the sumptuous Savoy Hotel in The Strand, the place Minnelli invariably stays in London since her parents first used it when on tour.

The French concierge on reception may well be tiring of i-D. Only yesterday, when the weather was still hot and humid, he turned away i-D photographer Marc Lebon because he was wearing shorts. Today a woman in squelching DMs and a dripping Batman T-shirt, hacking into a Kleenex, says Liza Minnelli is expecting her. There is some delay. At last, I gain access to a suite of rooms on the fourth floor, decorated in soothing shades of sugared-almond pink and pistachio. There's a kerfuffle in the hallway and the door is flung open to herald assorted PR handmaidens and, in their midst, Minnelli - icon, goddess, mythical Tinseltown princess, ex-alcoholic, ex-drug addict, the woman with a voice which can shatter all the glass in the shopping mall at 20 paces.

Although I'm lost in the middle of safety-conscious security people, Minnelli strides over, shakes my hand and, saucer-like pools of eyes popping, says, "But you're soaked." I cough. "And you're coughing. Here, you can't sit around in these wet things." She turns to an assistant. "Karen, can you please go and get my bathrobe?" I make waving away actions with my hands, but she turns to me with a face of anxious concern. I realise with some surprise - after all, the woman is a legend - how young she is. "But it's a gorgeous robe, very fluffy - look." Karen has emerged from a bathroom bigger than my flat. She is holding an abrasively white bathrobe with pink embroidered initialling. Everyone is looking at me. When I laugh in embarrassment, Minnelli sees that her idea isn't working. She dispatches another helper to her bedroom, and a little later I'm changing into a Dogs D'Amour T-shirt that Dogs D'Amour gave Liza a few days ago. I don't personally care for the design, but Liza tells me I look "swell". Her assistants have strewn my sodden clothes around the room to dry. Liza smiles with grace.

Minnelli is about 40. By the time she was a year old, her mother was having neurotic psychotic nerve attacks on stage. Nevertheless, Liza began appearing in Garland's films from the age of two. Judy is said to have commented to her movie director husband when their daughter was about 16 months old, "That child has more drive than the two of us put together." At the age of four, remembers Sammy Davis Jnr, Liza would get up on the piano stool and sing at her parents' parties, entertaining dinner guests like Frank Sinatra, David Niven, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. Says Davis, "She had to sing. She'd get up and give us a version of the latest hit of the day, and she stole the show. I told her mother, she's just got to be a star." Apparently, Garland replied, "We've thrown her into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. She's either going to swim or drown."

To begin with, she swam. A series of early films culminated in the outrageous Oscar-winning Cabaret, where Minnelli played the exhibitionistic Sally Bowles in decadent, pre-war Berlin. After that, her movie career was chequered, the success of the brilliant New York, New York with Robert De Niro and later of Arthur with Dudley Moore wilting into this year's flop, Arthur 2 On The Rocks. Minnelli has been safest with her urgent and powerful cabaret performances, and very recently finished her Ultimate Event tour, singing alongside old friends Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jnr.

There have been times she almost drowned. A couple of years ago, Minnelli checked herself into the Betty Ford clinic, thereby admitting to the fact of her drink and drugs dependency. What prompted her action, it is said, was a party where she got up to speak and found herself slurring endlessly. From the back of the room someone shouted, "You're getting just like your mother." Having left the Ford clinic clean, she now reacts calmly when asked about that time. "Doctors are finding out that alcoholism is a disease in some people, and when you have it that way, it runs down through families." She shifts on the mint green sofa. "But responsibility of it has nothing to do with anybody else. My problem is my problem. It is nobody else's and it didn't happen because of anybody else. I take full responsibility for that."

Slight in a black cashmere sweater and French-cut pants, she lights one of the cigarettes she practically chain smokes. "But you're as sick as your secrets. We all have these awful things that we think nobody's gone through, but the great thing about any rehab(ilitation) programme is you find out everybody's the same." She seems to find this piece of news a great relief. "You are not gonna die of terminal uniqueness. Maybe our lives are different, but I guarantee you, we feel the same things. And we react the same way. And I like that."

At the moment, though, Liza is experiencing a phase of over-reaction. She's fairly twitching with excitement about her new pop career, and can't stop talking about being on Top Of The Pops last night. Did she meet anyone of interest?

"Are you kidding? I met everybody! Oh sure, I went up and talked to all the people on the show." I try to interrupt, but the diva's on a roll. "You know, I have a lot of friends in rock'n'roll in America. In fact, most of my friends are. Now, who did I talk to yesterday? Let's see, I met the kids who are in - uh - Shakespear's Sister. And I talked to Simon... what's his name?" She turns to the sit-in PR man, who fumbles cagily. "Simon? Simon, er..." He clicks his fingers, but it won't come. "The DJ?" he suggests helpfully. Liza thinks not, and is losing patience. "No, who is the guy? Who is the blond kid? Everybody's crazy about him! You know, from Australia?" The PR man stops sweating. "Oh, Jason? Jason Donovan." Liza smiles serenely. "Yeah, he was terrific. I talked to him for a long time, he was very nice." What did he say? "He came up to me and said, Gee, I'm nervous. And I said, I'm so glad, so am I." The subject of the album is broached. I mention having listened to it rather a lot. She sits forward on the sofa. "Have you? And don't you think it's mysterious?"

If anything was going to give the Minnelli powerhouse the new lease of life it deserves, if anything was going to make Minnelli feel contemporary, it was the attentions of The Pet Shop Boys. The story of how the liaison got off the ground is a long one, involving Gene Simmons "who was from Kiss, yeah? That Gene Simmons. He said, Liza, you gotta start recording again, and you oughtta make a record that's really '90s. I said, I'd love to." Liza had heard a song called 'Rent'. "What a terrific idea! I love you, you pay the rent. Well, it's cynical, it's funny, it's truthful. I said, Who is that?" It was Neil and Chris.

A meeting was arranged. Tales about how the diva met the boys are already becoming legendary. She tells me now that the three of them took a hotel room and talked the deal out. "We giggled and we laughed and we carried on... he liked me," she bats her lashes, "he sure seemed to know all my work, which I was plenty impressed with, and he was impressed that I knew his work, too." The original plan was for the boys to work on a couple of tracks. "Neil said, What kind of stuff you wanna do? And I told him, It's up to you. You're the experts, and I trust you. Only thing I care about is the words, and sentiment of the songs. And Neil said, Mmm, I know."

There seems evidence of instant rapport. "Neil said, I saw this show called Follies and there's a terrific song in there, but I wanna do it with much more anger and I want the dance beat to be the heartbeat of this lady who's just going crazy." Liza sang 'Losing My Mind', she says, thinking, "Jesus! I can't stop thinking about the damn guy in the song!" She sang it like it was the next time she was going to see him, intent on smacking him about a bit. Neil liked this a lot. Days later, he called to say The Pet Shop Boys would like to produce the whole LP.

Liza has a few complimentary things to say about Neil and Chris, particularly Neil. She tells me she thinks he's a pop poet. That his voice sounds like a choirboy's. That she expected the pair to be "ethereal", but instead they were funny, "and when you're working this hard, one of the things that saves you is you get hysterical a lot, or you can't make it through." Neil is plainly a master of extracting the performance he wants from his artiste. "It was all a matter of how to get the point across the best. They put me in ranges I'd never sung in. It sounds richer. See, if you get on a stage and you say... [here, she stands up, arms slowly gesturing, throatily croons a few bluesy words. For me. I'm in a room being serenaded by Liza Minnelli]... like that, you can be visual and it helps you. But if all you've got is your voice, you can't sing the same way. I had to let go of the things I'd always depended on, those tricks to get me through. it was a little pure, a little scary."

Tennant is also, like Minnelli, something of a perfectionist. "I'd listen back to what I'd done and say, Uh, that's not quite what I meant right there, and he'd help. He and Chris were great with me because they'd say, Bend the note. And they'd get a nice bent note. Neil would say, Do it like you're putting a pair of stockings on. Because he knows I'm an actress - so I got it!"

And tell me Ms Minnelli, if it is true that you are so unfamiliar with present day recording techniques that you arrived for work expecting to see an orchestra. She looks down, lowering ranks of natural lashes like road sweepers, and murmurs hoarsely, "Yes." I think she's smiling, and I'm laughing. "Now, hey, just wait a minute, I don't think that's too outrageous." Here come the excuses. "If you get a kid on the street who looks at, let's say, Guns'N'Roses and she's gonna go to a recording session, don't you think she's gonna see all those guys? But all I saw was synthesizers." Her smile is considerable. "I mean, I did feel foolish and it was funny. I'd even put on a little skirt and everything, you know, I wanted to try and look nice for everybody. I ended up going home and putting shorts on."

Tennant, meanwhile, was concentrating on the job in hand. He is, on occasion, a firm taskmaster. "If I ever tried singing like somebody else, I'd hear tap tap tap over the mike - I'm in this little room with these headphones on and I would hear Neil saying, [assumes clipped Brit accent] Excuse me, what are you doing? Why are you pronouncing your words funny? And I'd say, Am I? He'd say, Yes, you're saying 'lurve' instead of 'love', and so on..."

Nevertheless, as recording progressed, Liza took to playing tapes of each new number to her best friends. These were principally Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jnr. "And Frank loved the songs." Was he jealous? "No but he got what we were doing immediately. And Sammy said, Well this is terrific you idiot, you should've been doing this years ago." Liza almost sings the praises of The Pet Shop Boys until anyone at all is good and sick of it. "You know what, there was one time we were sitting round the studio, and Neil had his feet up and his nose in a book of Shakespeare's sonnets, because a friend of his had passed away and he had to read something at the funeral. And 'If There Was Love' from the LP was playing, which is anyway full of strange dialogue, it sounds like you're in a newsroom on the moon... And Neil said, Oh, this sonnet is lovely, Liza, go in and read it over the song. I read it kinda like I was Sir John Gielgud. I can tell you, it freaked Chris out. And they just put it on the LP like that." She is, despite herself, astounded, even reverential. "And they do that all the time, they go out with a tape recorder, you'll be talking and Neil's leaning out the car window, sampling. Now isn't that marvellous?"

Minnelli is at a stage where she knows herself, and knows she doesn't really have to worry - though that's been done in the past. It's been said that, as a rather awkward adolescent, she called herself "the Queen of Ugly". Although she denies this, her celebrity status made her expect things of herself. "I wasn't blonde and pink and perfect, that California look. I never thought I was ugly, because my parents were too... pretty. I thought I was interesting-looking, that I was not normal-looking. I'm kind of a cartoon - my eyes are so big, my nose is big. But somehow, I know now it all goes together alright."

She goes on: "One of the things that's difficult about being in the public eye - in fact, the only thing, because the rest of it is wonderful - is that people get a perception of you that you're different than you are. And you're not. But you can become isolated, and that's when you can't talk to anybody." For possibly the first time since we began our conversation, Minnelli stops gesturing and fluttering and registering several facial expressions at the same time. There is an infelicitous point to be got across, hopefully without sentiment. "I'm not supposed to show I have any feelings, I've gotta be a good girl all the time, and I've gotta behave a certain way. But you don't have to do any of that stuff. People make you think you do."

Is it hard for you to feel like a normal person, Liza? Like the rest of us?

"It wasn't at first, because everybody, every kid I knew..." She sits forward again, teetering on the edge of the couch. "Look, we lived in a town that was like a factory, and everyone's parents worked in the factory. The factory just happened to be MGM. It was only when we started to travel, and I'd go to a new school. And kids look at you funny, you think [touches hair, thighs, uncertainly] maybe I'm not wearing the right things. They say, Hey, your parents are in the movies. And, right away, you're starting to be dictated to by other people's thoughts."

When Liza loses her temper, she swears. But, she says, she can't stay angry. First of all, it hurts her stomach - "it does, I get such a stomach ache!" And being cross tires her out. "Oh, I can't stand it. So what I do is, I don't get mad at people. I'll wait, and think, now do I really need to get angry right this minute? And then a coathanger won't work, and I'll get furious with the coathanger. I often want to break things." She lights yet another cigarette, coughs hard. "But I can never find anything that I want to give up enough to break it."

What do you dream about, if I might ask?

"Oh, dreams. They've saved my life." This is a touchy subject, riddled as it is with memories of Garland's 'somewhere over the rainbow' fantasies of happiness. To give her her due, Liza throws aside worries about slush and heedlessly, perhaps surprisingly, delivers: "I guess I love going off into my own world, you know, where it's peaceful and it's happy and it's always filled with laughter." I watch her face. I don't think sarcasm is involved here.

Minnelli has a title for her earliest memory: "Dancing on the lawn for the car-sick woman."

Elucidate.

"Well, I was dancing in front of the house with a girlfriend - to see if anyone would stop and give us any money." And did they? "No, it was actually quite disastrous. We'd got all dressed up in long scarves and bits and pieces - I guess we were about six - and nobody stopped for at least a half hour. That's a long time to a kid. And finally a car slowed down, and we twirled furiously, and the car pulled over to the side, and a lady leaned out and threw up. She was carsick." She laughs, a great roaring cackle, and the PR man, realising that it's okay and that this is not a story that requires commiseration, joins in, slapping his thigh. Liza is still spluttering. "That was my first review."

And what immediate plans have you - if any - for the new, rather younger fans your chart career might make you?

"I'm gonna sing for 'em. And keep singing for 'em. And entertain the hell out of 'em, if I can." Minnelli's trouper spirit dwarfs the room, the very Savoy itself. And her eyes, I tell you. They sparkle. "Wait'll those kids hear 'New York, New York'.

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