Crooner Michael Feinstein returns to his titular nightclub
for an program of holiday standards through Dec. 30. (Photo by Randee St. Nicholas)
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By TONY PHILLIPS
Friday, December 16, 2005
In a musical landscape littered with holiday discs by everyone from Faith Evans
to Regis Philbin, four-time Grammy nominee Michael Feinstein got a head start.
He’s been at it since Thanksgiving, singing Christmas carols on Broadway
with fellow holiday warbler SpongeBob SquarePants. But while SpongeBob floated
through the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Feinstein bounded straight
from Herald’s Square to his “Holiday Romance” show at the
Regency Hotel.
“The one with the drunken lady in front?” Feinstein asks when
I tell him I caught his late show the night before. “I wanted to kill
that bitch.”
Romantic? Hardly. Modest? Plenty. Feinstein could have pointed out that songwriters
Alan and Marilyn Bergman — a couple with three Oscars, two Grammys and
three Emmys between them — were in the house. Or described his effortless
riffing with a pre-teen audience member. But Feinstein’s not only the
entertainment: His name is on the door. As such, he can’t help his first
recollection being the one person who was ruining it for other guests.
Though he allows the Bergmans are “wonderful people” and wonders
if bringing an eight-year-old girl to a nightclub is “either lunacy or
extreme enlightenment,” it’s the drunken lady he sweats. But he
had her, along with the rest of the packed house, in the palm of his hand with
his mix of holiday standards and romantic ballads equal parts “Jingle
Bells” and “Great Balls of Fire.” A recent “Today”
appearance left him with a statistic he shared: 80 percent of Christmas music
is penned by Jews, so he threw in Tom Lehrer’s “Hannukah in Santa
Monica” as well.
Feinstein started playing piano at the age of five, which he says was before
he knew it was odd for a child to show such natural talents. He suggests that
playing piano by ear at such an early age followed him across the universe.
“I believe in reincarnation,” the Ohio native says. “I might
have come back in with some ability from another experience. One sensitive told
me I had many lives as a musician: A life in Italy as a singer, but more than
that I don’t feel I need to know.”
When pressed for a “coming to New York” story, Feinstein explains
it was Hollywood that beckoned when he was just 20 years old. “Clearly
I should have come to New York with my proclivities,” Feinstein laughs.
“But I had this strong urge to move to L.A. It turns out it was a wonderful
thing to do.” That mid-’70s move led to résumé highlights
as varied as six years cataloging music in Ira Gershwin’s Beverly Hills
home — in between visits to Gershwin’s Roxbury Drive next-door-neighbor
Rosemary Clooney — to being grabbed-assed at a party by handsy Udo Kier
at photographer Greg Gorman’s Hollywood Hills home.
The New York stories are no less outrageous, whether it’s clubbing with
Tallulah Bankhead or talking Elaine Stritch out of hitting on his dad.
“I have always had a curiosity about music and been interested in its
history,” Feinstein explains of his frequent “musician’s musician”
designation. “It’s also been important to me to meet the creators
of the music I love because of that curiosity. At an early age, I started cultivating
these relationships out of the desire to know these extraordinary people and
to witness the creative process.”
As Christmas trees hit the curb, his show becomes less holiday and more romantic,
but he’s not in love with New Year’s Eve. He calls the holiday “amateurish.”
“There’s pressure for people to have a good time and that can sometimes
backfire.” And the night’s other trappings? I don’t really
make New Year’s resolutions,” Feinstein continues. “But I
do have a New Year’s mantra.”
That mantra could be straight from his holiday comrade SpongeBob: three different
Petri dishes of mold were prayed over by a church, Feinstein explains. One dish
received prayers to grow; another received prayers to die, while the third was
turned over to the will of God. The first dish grew, the second died, but the
third startled everyone by growing more than anyone thought possible.
The story impressed Feinstein so much it became his New Year’s mantra:
“God’s will be done.”
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