I Am What I Am

by John Barrowman

  The second-to-last performance of any show or concert, whether it’s in the West End, Broadway or on tour, is the performance where all the pranks and jokes are played, and this cast and crew made no exception. But instead of playing pranks with costumes, staging silliness with the sets, or even fooling with the music,15 they wrote, acted, directed and produced their own tour film. ‘Rhinestone Gayboy’ debuted after our penultimate show and, believe me, no one – and I mean no one – other than those watching and participating at the time will ever see this video. Let me just say that it made me blush at times. Feel free to let your imagination run wild here …

  For me, the most difficult aspect of touring was finding some down time with Scott. While I was on this most recent tour, Scott was in charge of renovating our London flat. Bye, bye, blue tarp.16 When it was possible, he travelled to a few of the venues and we’d grab a few hours together – with my parents as chaperones.

  On the other hand, the brilliant part of touring was seeing my fans and letting them know how much I appreciated them. The whole tour was done for them. I chose songs that allowed them to get to know me even better. When I created the playlists for my concerts, I took the opportunity to include songs that I hadn’t sung before; or that have a special meaning for me, but that I hadn’t necessarily recorded yet. For example, on this recent tour I dedicated ‘When You Tell Me That You Love Me’, a Diana Ross song, to all my fans. I’ve always imagined my albums as love letters to my supporters; I see my concerts as my chance to ‘read’ to them in person.

  When Sony BMG approached me a few years ago to record my album Another Side, I was ecstatic. Over the course of one month, I chose all the songs, and with the album’s producer, Graham Stack, recorded the album in London and Cardiff (while I was also filming the second series of Torchwood during the week, and being a talent-show judge on the BBC at the weekends).17

  Another Side was my first real studio album. Since it was my first major release, I didn’t have much scope for pushing or pulling away from what Sony or my producers wanted. I had to sit back a little18 and go with their melody because I was a newbie and I wanted to learn.

  Another Side sold well, going gold relatively fast. This album and Music Music Music, my second one, are full of songs with special meaning for me. And all my albums have thirteen tracks on them because my mum was born on Friday the 13th of July; in our family it’s a really lucky number for us.

  Here’s a related piece of trivia that might net you the big money if you’re ever on the game show How Geeky Are You? or the one I’d be a big winner on, Are You Smarter Than a Person Who Doesn’t Watch TV Endlessly? In the scene in ‘Children of Earth’ where Gwen is being directed through lines of covered bodies to identify Jack and Ianto, the officer in charge says, ‘Thirteen and fourteen.’ I requested that Jack’s body be number thirteen.

  When it came to making Another Side, it was important to me that this first studio album reflected who I was as a person. Happily, there was, as I’ve said, great personal significance behind the selection of many of the tracks. For example, I recorded ‘Time After Time’ for a friend in LA who had HIV. His family was incredibly supportive of him, but his dad couldn’t quite put his feelings into words, and so he quoted parts of this song to his son in a letter.

  The Police’s song ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’, meanwhile, was for Clare, whom I adore, but who did get a little less ‘magical’ between the ages of twelve and fourteen.19 I sang ‘Please Remember Me’ for Sandie, Scott’s sister, who died of brain cancer in 2005; and ‘Heaven’ was for Scott and me. ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’, which appears on Music Music Music, was picked because … well, like Frankie Valli, the Pet Shop Boys and Andy Williams, who have all recorded it before me,20 I just like the song.

  One of the first things I learned about Scott after we met21 was that he loves to sing along to an eclectic mix of music and to musical soundtracks while he works. He especially loves Dusty Springfield. Sometimes, when you’ve lived with someone for a long time, it’s easy to take that person for granted and not always say aloud the things you should. Believe me. ‘You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me’ was recorded for him, and captures a few of the things we don’t always say to each other.

  With ‘I Know Him So Well’, the tenth track on the second album, I had a bit of a fight on my hands with Sony BMG, who initially did not want to include the song the way I covered it. Originally from the musical Chess, it is a duet sung by two women – their characters a Russian chess champion’s estranged wife and his mistress (Elaine Paige played the mistress in the West End production). In the song, the women share their feelings for their mutual lover.

  I recorded the track as a duet between two men, singing with Danny Boys. In the end, Sony agreed to my version. I was really pleased I’d dug in my proverbial heels about keeping it as a male duet because I’ve always felt that the song crossed gender lines. When you’re in love, gay or not, the feelings are the same, the doubts as debilitating, and the hurt as painful. I felt redeemed about the arrangement of this track, as it has established itself as one of the signature songs of the album. Tim Rice, the song’s lyricist, loved the fact that the duet became a poignant ‘gay anthem’ – a point he made to me in a note he sent prior to a concert we both participated in at Truro Cathedral.

  My favourite accolade about this song, though, came in an email from a young Australian man, who was coming to terms with being gay. He wrote that when he heard this version of the song, it made him realize that he wanted some day to know what that kind of love and passion between two men feels like.

  When I hear from fans about how much a particular song has meant to them, I’m always moved and touched; and when I hear from the song’s writer, like Tim Rice, or more recently Barry Manilow, I’m very chuffed indeed. I’ve been a fan of Barry Manilow’s music for decades, and I’ve included his work in my concerts and cabaret for years. For Music Music Music, I recorded Barry’s song ‘I Made It Through the Rain’.

  One morning, when I was a guest on The Chris Moyles Show on BBC Radio 1, Chris, in his usual, slightly mocking, tongue-placed-firmly-in-cheek mode, encouraged all his listeners to download this particular track from iTunes. Guess what? The result was that the song zoomed into the charts, which was amazing, given that the album had been released eight whole months before. The song actually got as high as number five on iTunes downloads, and then settled at number fourteen for a couple of weeks.22

  If that wasn’t incredible enough, a few days later I heard from the man who wrote the song himself. Barry was so thrilled with my cover of this song, and the fact that it had leapt into the charts again, that he called me while I was in the US filming my segment of ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ for Children in Need. He invited me to lunch with him in Palm Springs, but unfortunately I wasn’t available.23 Instead, we had a long chat – and he invited me to join him onstage, to duet on the number, when he performed at the Proms in the Park concert in London’s Hyde Park.24

  Creating albums isn’t just about the individual songs, it’s also about the CD’s overall style and sound. With Another Side, I wanted glossy and showy, but with Music Music Music, I wanted a more down-to-earth and personal approach. I know a lot of people didn’t like the cover of Music Music Music – which shows me in profile, in a relaxed, informal pose, looking down and laughing – Sony especially. They wanted a full picture of the front of my face, and possibly they were right on that.

  Whether the look ultimately succeeded or failed, though, at least I had some say in what the cover looked like: that creative input is really important to me. The picture on the inside sleeve, with the ‘three Johns’25 on the theatre seats, was also my idea and I was really pleased that the image worked out so well.

  I recorded most of Music Music Music in London and LA. Occasionally, I’d lay down some tracks in a venue that happened to be next door to the studio where Britney Spears was recording her latest album, Circus. When she was there,
the studio and the surrounding streets were a circus themselves, with all kinds of characters and photographers crowding the pavements. Sometimes, I’d arrive to record and the facility would be in lockdown, with as many security guards and paparazzi as there were fans.

  When I’m singing in the studio, there’s a ‘click’ track going on in my cans,26 kind of like a metronome, helping me to keep time and hold my track line.27 I’m not really sure why, but I found that Music Music Music was a bit more emotional to record. When I’m recording, I’m trying to get across the feelings at the core of a song, and when I was recording ‘From a Distance’ and ‘Both Sides Now’, for example, there were times when I just couldn’t get through the songs without losing it. I’ve heard from other artists that this happens much more when you’re in a studio recording than it may ever happen when you’re singing the song live. I’ve wondered if it’s because you’re in such a confined space, often completely alone, and you’re exposing yourself in a way that can be pretty raw. A few times, I’d have to stop, and then start the ‘click’ track all over again.

  Music Music Music had a few hurdles to get over when it was released, and because of them the album did not sell as well as Another Side. One of the biggest was the recession, and Woolworth’s going under. Woolworth’s held a lot of CD stock in their warehouses that didn’t get distributed after they declared bankruptcy, and I wasn’t the only performer caught in this economic situation.

  The other hurdle I faced with this second Sony album was that Sony/Epic really wanted me to be a pop singer, and under no circumstances did I ever want to be one. I’ve always aspired to be a singer who puts out an album a year for a wide spectrum of listeners to enjoy. Don’t get me wrong, I can sing pop songs with the best of them, but that’s not the same as creating the persona along with the playlist.

  Before recording Music Music Music, I’d been moved from Sony BMG to Sony Epic. Epic produces more of Sony’s pop artists, whereas BMG covers a broader range of genres and artists. Epic decided to release Music Music Music on a day when there were about twenty-two other albums being released. Since I’m not primarily known as a recording artist – unless you were looking for my album specifically, you might not dig around for it – I think that decision also hurt my sales.

  For my part, I was lobbying for a Mother’s Day release, given the album’s style, and because I thought my fans would appreciate the opportunity to receive or give the album as a gift for Mother’s Day. In retrospect, I think Music Music Music lost its way.

  That’s not to say that there weren’t a lot of things I loved about this album. The idea for the title and the style of Music Music Music originated from one of my signature responses to contestants when I’m a talent-show judge,28 and the fact that I’m superstitious and do a lot of things in threes. The album also consisted of three distinct styles of music that I love: pop, country, and musical-theatre songs.

  The single ‘What About Us?’, which Gary Barlow penned, was terrific. I was particularly proud of how well my idea for the video was received, exploring the parallels in a relationship between a male/male couple and a male/female couple. The song and the video received a lot of airplay.29 On one memorable occasion, the video came on the big screen in a bar when I arrived at the Hub convention in 2008. Without any prompting,30 I climbed up onto one of the tables and lip-synched to myself.

  Another time, Clare and I snuck away from the Hippodrome in Birmingham, between my panto performances, to have a quiet meal at a local restaurant. We managed to remain relatively incognito through most of the meal – until the music channel broadcasting on the row of wall-mounted flat-screen TVs began showing ‘What About Us?’ I might as well have been dancing on those tables, too, we had so many people staring at us. So much for being sneaky.

  I did find out something later, though, about the Barlow song that bothered me a little. ‘What About Us?’ came to me not quite in the manner I’d originally thought. I was told that Gary Barlow had penned the track exclusively for me, when the truth was that he and Sony had intended the song to be a release for another artist, who didn’t want it. I love the song and I think I made it my own regardless of its provenance.31

  Given all of this, my next album for Sony will be an album of songs from musicals. A good friend at Sony, Daniel Hinchliffe, who worked on both of the earlier albums and was once a dancer – or a hoofer,32 as they are fondly called – in the West End, and who is now part of the Sony group responsible for Celine Dion and Barry Manilow, will be much more involved in the collaboration to make sure this next album is on track.

  And, I hope, in time for Mother’s Day.

  TABLE TALK #6

  ‘Was That Captain Jack Racing a Rickshaw?’

  ‘Stop the car!’ I yelled.

  Team Barrowman – my mum, dad, Carole, Scott, Clare and I – had just been escorted to our limo in the secure parking lot at the rear of the San Diego convention centre, where I’d spent the day at Comic-Con 2008, signing autographs and presenting on a lively panel with other Torchwood folks, including Naoko, Gareth, and the show’s executive producer, Julie Gardner. We’d answered questions from a packed house, and, on the request of a fan, Naoko and I had sung, a cappella, an excerpt from ‘The Last Night of the World’ from Miss Saigon (which, as you may know, was the West End show on which Coco and I first met).

  Comic-Con is the mother of all conventions for anything new, cool or will-soon-be-both in Popular Culture.1 Movies, television shows, video games, and – of course – comics, graphic novels and anything related to sci-fi, superheroes or animation are previewed at Comic-Con. For me, the appeal is all of those things, but I also love looking at and meeting the fans who attend conventions like this one.

  The massive convention centre is set up with rows and rows of kiosk-like areas, where collectible companies, television networks and movie studios pay celebrities to sit and sign; in some booths, it’s even possible to watch artists creating their illustrations. As I sat behind my table at Mary Lee Holzheimer’s booth, and signed autographs for hours on end, I loved to watch as the cavalcade of characters crossed my path. Someone2 made the mistake of giving Gareth, who was signing at the same booth as me, a soft-tipped dart gun, and pretty soon he and I had a contest going to see how far we could fire the darts – and who we could hit as they passed in front of us.

  ‘See that Stormtrooper over there?’ Gareth would taunt. ‘I can hit him in three darts.’

  ‘I can hit him in two.’

  And so it would go. One of the workers from the booth then dashed out into the crowd, quickly gathered up our missiles and rushed back with them. If people noticed who had nailed them, then we’d call them over and chat with them, but most of the time, they had no clue that they’d just been tagged.

  After a couple of hours of this, I noticed that a distinct pattern had begun to emerge as to the nature of our respective targets. I was picking fans dressed as recognizable characters that I found to be intriguing or really impressively created, like a Lando Calrissian or a stunningly detailed Boba Fett, whereas Gareth was hitting on3 scantily clad women in sexy leather costumes, like Batgirl or Elektra, or young women dressed in erotic chain mail – like an amazing Barbarella who strutted past.

  The entire spectrum of sci-fi characters from TV, movies and games crossed my path in those couple of days. And I thought I was a geek. I couldn’t have named half of them for you. I did, though, love the Star Wars characters I saw, including a few I’d completely forgotten about and a handful of droids I’d never even heard of. There were also lots of elaborately costumed superheroes, villains and aliens, some already real in the world of a particular television show or movie, and others imagined by the fan him or herself,4 from planets even the Doctor has never visited.

  Whenever I took a break from the booth, I needed an escort in order to make my way through the throngs to get to the bathroom. The same applied when I did a little retail therapy at the collector booths, where I bought a few figures for
my ever-evolving collections: a ‘Captain Jack Sparrow’ doll that was brilliant in its execution, and a Superman figure that was equally remarkable. At the T-shirt stalls, I bought up all my favourite vintage Ts, from Spider-Man to Aquaman to the Green Hornet. On these buying trips, I had to have a posse with me because this crowd knew their Captain Jack from their Captain America.

  I enjoyed and appreciated everything about Comic-Con, including the intensity and the imagination of the fans. So did Carole, who disappeared for a long time one afternoon. Just as I was thinking that I might need to send a security detail to find her – she was meant to be signing Anything Goes part of the time with me – she came dashing back to the booth, as excited as a twelve-year-old, clutching a bag full of Emily the Strange paraphernalia. Emily the Strange is a comic character I introduced her to many years ago, because Carole – middle name Emily – is Emily the Strange.5 She had also waited in line to have her photo taken standing in front of a full-scale model of a ‘stargate’ from Stargate Atlantis. She’s almost as geeky as I am.6

  Scott, on the other hand … hmm, not loving the whole Comic-Con vibe nearly as much. After he and Clare walked the entire circuit of the main floor of the convention centre and made it back to the booth safely, they both looked more than a bit stunned. Scott had the look he sometimes has when I’m about five minutes into telling him something that involves a chore he really doesn’t want to do. He looked as if his brain had completely shut down. I had to send him out into the streets of San Diego with a map of the museums and historic sites just so he could get back his equilibrium.

  Clare, meanwhile, recovered more quickly, especially after she managed to work in a little shoe shopping. My parents – the troupers that they are7 – sat behind me in the booth all day and took everything in their stride, loving the craziness and the exuberant theatre of it all. In fact, my dad even did a spot of modelling. Mary Lee was selling T-shirts with my name and image on them, and my dad happily volunteered to wear samples of them. Of course, it helped everyone’s energy level that Mary Lee had a steady stream of chocolate and sweets in supply for all of us, including Gareth.