Bob Dylan - "Sugar Baby"

Happy 25th anniversary to Love & Theft and this incredible closing track.

Review: Patti LuPone, 'Matters of the Heart,' at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

It was a few songs into her show Saturday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion when Patti LuPone stopped her pianist and musical director, Joseph Thalken, in the middle of "Where Love Resides." Turning 77 in April, one of America's most celebrated and notorious divas then told the crowd two things I never would have expected: "I'm nervous" and, a bit later, "I'm human."

This is not the sort of admission you normally get from LuPone. As The New Yorker's Michael Schulman put it in a very entertaining profile of her last year, "LuPone is Broadway’s reigning grande dame, with a big voice and an even bigger mouth. She’s one of the city’s last living broads: brassy, belty, and profane, with the ferocity of a bullet train coming right at you." Part of the fun of seeing LuPone live, I assumed, would be watching her steamroll through the evening, flexing her vocal gift while letting us Los Angeles residents know how lucky we were to be in the presence of greatness. Vulnerability was a surprise.

I grew up consuming a steady diet of pop, rock and hip-hop, largely avoiding musical theater and the sort of vocalists who belt, croon or soar. As I got older, Into the Woods and Frank Sinatra became part of my musical lexicon, but I remain more drawn to songwriters than singers. It's not as if Sinatra (or countless others) can't make a song their own -- make you feel that, for example, no one else has sung "I'll Be Around" before they breathed it into life. But I'll always take a Bob Dylan over a Michael Bublé, no matter how many octaves he's mastered.

I say all that to acknowledge that I can't always appreciate superhuman vocal technique. When it comes to singing, I go for emotion, feel and character over firepower and pizzazz. But even I sensed early on in Saturday's performance that LuPone seemed a bit off, not as confident as I imagined she would be as she flubbed a line or two. So when she stopped the show and offered her mea culpa, it got a huge, warm response from the adoring crowd, but it also confirmed what even my unsophisticated eyes and ears suspected. It also seemed to unlock something for LuPone, allowing her to fully embrace the fragility of the songs she was there to sing. Which helps enormously when you're singing about love.

The show was part of LuPone's 25th anniversary tour for Matters of the Heart, a collection of tunes that cover Broadway numbers and pop songs, happy reveries and sad ballads, and all manners of love, from parental to carnal. For this tour, which features piano and a four-person string section, she has been sticking to many of the tracks from the original album while adding some new selections, including "God Only Knows" and "The Last Time I Saw Richard," which depending on your mood might be the greatest song Joni Mitchell has ever written. But there was also "Being Alive," one of Company's show-stoppers now enjoying new life among filmgoers as "that song Adam Driver sings in Marriage Story." In the Noah Baumbach Oscar-winner, Driver's divorcing dad delivers it with the pain and regret of someone who understands the lyrics' bereft sentiments in his bones. On Saturday night, LuPone sang it like it was an aging rock band's guaranteed crowd-pleaser before they come back for the encore, her high-octane voice all showy guitar solos and flagrant smashing of instruments. I longed to hear the Driver version again.

Not unlike many Broadway albums, Matters of the Heart is a pristine rendition of familiar songs that lacks the electric spontaneity of a live performance. Plus, the record doesn't contain the bits of commentary LuPone sprinkled in on occasion during the show, helping to lay out the night's thematic through-lines. Before singing Randy Newman's "Real Emotional Girl," she told the crowd about meeting the love of her life, husband Matthew Johnston, while making the 1987 TV movie LBJ: The Early Years. She mentioned their son, calling him her greatest achievement, and then worked her way through "Real Emotional Girl," Judy Collins' "My Father" and Fascinating Aïda's "Look Mummy, No Hands," three different perspectives on childhood and the process of looking back at those strangers we call our parents. The mini-suite ended with one of her new additions to the show, Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time," which in this context was less about romance and more about the lost and regained connections between a mother and a child. LuPone never flexed, never tried to better the originals. If she wasn't in top form vocally, which my friend (a big LuPone fan) noted, she did what my favorite singers do, which is embody the song as if it's the only truth they know.

As someone who's long adored Dylan and Newman, I've been accustomed to more dazzling singers interpret their material, usually adding polish to the vocals or arrangements so that the songs become more pleasing to a wider audience. Too often, unfortunately, the very human essence of the original song gets swept aside in the name of making the tune "better." The phenomenon occasionally reared its ugly head Saturday night, most disappointingly during LuPone's performance of "The Last Time I Saw Richard," Mitchell's pained memory of a friend lost along the way. In LuPone's hands, it turned into a bit of an acted monologue, a Broadway ballad that abandoned Mitchell's direct, piercing treatment. 

That said, my reaction to LuPone's interpretations definitely depended on my affinity (or lack thereof) for the originals. Two covers she performed while seated, her voice just above a whisper, practically demanding the audience lean forward to listen, were among the night's highlights. I consider "The Air That I Breathe" perfectly fine, and I had no previous knowledge of Beth Nielsen Chapman's "Sand and Water." LuPone latched onto both songs' emotional essence by pruning away their easy-listening tendencies to get at something real about, respectively, romantic contentment and the mourning of a dead spouse. And then, later in the show, she gender-flipped Dan Fogelberg's "Same Old Lang Syne" to fairly devastating effect. Much to the chagrin of my own parents, I've always considered the song sappy. Revisiting Fogelberg's version the following day, it hit harder than it ever had before. LuPone revealed the song's poignant chasm between present and past for me.

It must be both blessing and curse to have an incredible singing voice. At some point, age intercedes, diminishing your gift either incrementally or all at once. As Robert Christgau once wrote of Sinatra's 1993 Duets album, in which the Chairman of the Board struggled to prove he still had it, "He who lives by the larynx shall die by the larynx." I thought of that quote a few times Saturday night, despite LuPone remaining a far superior interpretive singer to most anyone who's ever walked the earth. Besides, I can roll with a diminished voice: Paul Simon's "A Quiet Celebration" tour from last year taught me that. If anything, the occasional lyrical lapse and false start only made LuPone's performance that much stronger and braver. 

LuPone doesn't like being called a diva. In last year's New Yorker profile, she said, “I know what I’m worth to a production. I know that I’m box-office. Don’t nickel-and-dime me before you put me onstage. Don’t treat me like a piece of shit. Because, at this point, if you don’t value me, why am I there?” To be sure, LuPone has had her share of jerk moments that go beyond "Oh, she's such a delightful diva." Still, I also am wary of that sexist term since "diva" tends to be applied to powerhouse female singers who don't suffer fools. 

Nonetheless, I was imagining Saturday's show to be a masterclass in grande-dame behavior, all of us mere mortals gladly paying our respects to a world-class vocalist stunning us with her instrument. Instead, I got a display of touching humanity that made songs like her evening-closing "Hello, Young Lovers" (from The King and I) and the 1940s' hit "My Best to You" feel like gentle prayers, to herself and us, to find love in a world growing darker by the day. I didn't write down what she said at the end of the night, but it was a plea that, despite the terrible country we're currently living in, that we remember that love is still a greater force than hate. It was a beautiful sentiment, almost as beautiful as these lines from "My Best to You" which she made hers:

So here's to you, may your dreams come true 
May old Father Time never be unkind 
And through the years, save your smiles and your tears 
They're just souvenirs, they'll make music in your heart

Remember this, each new day is a kiss 
Sent from up above with an angel's love 
So here's to you, may your skies be blue 
And your love blessed, that's my best to you 

Some of the best love songs have a brittleness to them, because they know that love is delicate, always at risk of breaking if not properly handled. But maybe that's not always true -- maybe love is strong enough to outlive all of life's hard things. Even a diva's nerves. 

(Photo by Jacob Earl.) 

'Breakfast All Day': 'A Complete Unknown' Doesn't 'Walk Hard' Bob Dylan's Story

Very happy to be back with my buddy Christy Lemire to go deep on A Complete Unknown. One thing I definitely wanted to get into here: I love Walk Hard, but I'm tired of it being used as a de-facto way to critique every music biopic released in its wake. Check out our conversation below.

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It's become an annual tradition I really enjoy: On the podcast right before we record our "Best of the Year" episode, we do a lightning round in which we review a bunch of end-of-the-year films in quick succession. This year, that meant rapid reactions to A Complete Unknown, Nosferatu, Nickel Boys, Babygirl, The Seed of the Sacred Fig and The Order. Check it all out down below.

'A Complete Unknown' Review

I loved it. I explain why over at Screen International.

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There's a wide range of characters in the three films we discuss on this week's podcast. You've got a reluctant superhero, a troubled reggae star, a conflicted sheriff and a brash outlaw. (Also, Bob Dylan.) Check out the full episode down below.

What to Watch After 'The Greatest Night in Pop'

The "We Are the World" documentary has been a hit on Netflix. So which music documentaries should you check out next? I'm the man with the answers.

My Interview With Penn Jillette

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My Interview With Larry Charles

He won an Emmy as a writer on Seinfeld. He directed Borat and Bruno (and also Masked and Anonymous). And now he's back with Dicks: The Musical. I spoke to Larry Charles for Cracked.

Why I Love Bob Dylan's Singing Voice

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The Grierson & Leitch Podcast: Pandemic Horror, Bob Dylan and the Oscars

On this week's episode, we enter the warped mind of Ben Wheatley to review In the Earth. Also, we make our predictions for who's going to win the big awards during Sunday's Oscars. Plus, we look back at Don't Look Back. Lots of good stuff, and you can hear it all below.

The Endless Resonance of "This Land Is Your Land"

Every once in a while, someone online proposes that Woody Guthrie's most famous song should be our new national anthem. For MEL, I wrote about why we can't get enough of "This Land Is Your Land."

The Best Albums From Artists in Their 70s (or Older)

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The Live Albums You Need Right Now

You can't go to concerts right now. So check out these concert albums instead.

The Grierson & Leitch Podcast: 'Blue,' 'I'm Not There' and Looking Back at 1994

On this week's podcast, we introduce a new feature, in which we look back at a specific movie year. This week: 1994. Hoop Dreams! Pulp Fiction! Forrest Gump! The Shawshank Redemption!

We also have two Reboots. First is Krzysztof Kieślowski's Blue, the first installment in his Three Colors trilogy. Then, we dig into Todd Haynes' sorta-biopic I'm Not There. Hope you enjoy.

A Brief History of Songs About Work

For MEL, I did a deep dive into songs about the workingman, including a certain classic by Mr. Merle Haggard. It's an interesting subset of music, reaching across all genres, and it's evolved over the years as blue-collar jobs have shifted. Hope you enjoy.

D.A. Pennebaker, 1925-2019

The man who brought us The War Room and Don't Look Back is gone. For Rolling Stone, I eulogized D.A. Pennebaker.

The Grierson & Leitch Podcast: The Best Movies of 2019 (So Far)

We've reached the halfway point of 2019, so it's time to look back at the first six months of the year. Will and I each select our six favorite films -- there's only one overlap -- and then we debate the relative merits of Yesterday. Finally, we look back at That Thing You Do! A very fun episode: You can hear the whole thing down below.

The Grierson & Leitch Podcast: Aliens, Zombies, Bob Dylan and 'Shaft'

One really good movie, one really terrible movie, one that I think is slightly underrated, and one that's not good but isn't quite as horrible as others have said. Welcome to the summer doldrums, ladies and gentlemen. You can hear this week's podcast down below.