Chapter 14. Marilyn
But that is not quite the end of the story...
I began this memoir with an account of how Chris and I met and how we first began writing songs and later whole shows together, such as 'The Tall Tree' and 'To See The Six Points', long before Metropolitan or Genesis were ever thought of. And so it seems fitting to end this account with another show that we collaborated on – 'Marilyn'. Although this was, as has been mentioned, to celebrate Altrincham Garrick's 50th Anniversary and was not therefore technically a Genesis production, it bore many of the hallmarks of one and several ex-Genesis members were in the cast – Alison Davis, Allan Taylor, Norman Partington, Andrew Pastor and, in his last amateur role, Louis Grant.
Ironically we began rehearsals in earnest on the very next day following the debacle of 'Shakespeare's Greatest Hit', which I guess served as the perfect antidote – to get thoroughly stuck into a new project, and one which we were confident from the start would be a success.
The idea for 'Marilyn' came to me while we were recording the 2nd 'Stag' sessions at Pennine. One day around that time Mike Mansfield and Andy took me out to lunch and asked if Chris and I had any plans for a new show. I had only sketched the beginnings of the idea to Chris at that time, but I found myself, over that lunch, laying out the story before them and, encouraged by their response, I began to start fleshing it out that same afternoon.
Rather than do a conventional biopic of Monroe, what I thought might be more interesting was to present a contemporary story in which a cynical film producer decides to cash in on the Marilyn legend by making a film about her rise and fall. To play the part of Marilyn he will hold a nationwide contest on TV – anticipating the X Factor and the various Lloyd Webber Searches for Stars (eg: 'How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?') by several decades! In this way he will manufacture a new celebrity whom he will market and exploit, though she will have different ideas of her own and will try to rebel and become recognised for who she really is, rather than for impersonating Monroe, but the more she tries to distance herself from Marilyn, the more she will suffer the same fate.
Chris too liked the idea and we began to write the songs and the script. For the script I wanted to be as minimal as possible, using, instead of dialogue, press conferences, TV appearances, interview, and telephone conversations to impart any information that couldn't be covered in a song, and for the songs we placed them all in contexts where songs would quite naturally be sung (recording studios, night clubs, music videos, television programmes etc) so that by the time the piece was finished it was more of a song cycle than a conventional musical and avoided, we hoped, the awkward falseness of real characters suddenly bursting into song unbelievably. Chris once again produced some outstanding melodies – 'Isn't Love Crazy?', 'Replays', and the haunting 'Big Apple', the show's central theme, being for me the most memorable, but I thought all the songs were simply fantastic, and still do, for they have not dated one bit. I believe Chris produced with 'Marilyn' songs to match Gershwin or Cole Porter.
Before agreeing to do it at The Garrick, Chris and I did a mini-try-out, gathering together a small group of friends to present a kind of rehearsed reading of it. Over two days in Prestwich we went through everything and then showed it to an invited audience at PADOS House, with just Chris on the piano, and a cast of about half a dozen singing with scripts in their hands and with minimal action. That try-out convinced us that it worked as a piece of theatre and we set about preparing for a full scale production.
Chris had produced a fantastic score, altogether different from anything he had written before, reflecting the context of the piece with more of a jazz-inspired atmosphere than any of his previous work. I think he realised very quickly that he would need very different musicians to play these songs than we had been accustomed to working with in Genesis, musicians that Chris did not feel he had ready access to. I don't remember now who first approached Paul Mitchell-Davidson, a highly regarded jazz guitarist in the Manchester scene that we both knew, but he came on board and agreed not only to recruit the necessary musicians, but also to arrange the music and write out all the parts. We were incredibly lucky to have secured the services of someone as experienced and gifted as Paul. Chris was still MD, of course, taking rehearsals and teaching the songs to the cast, and then he played keyboards in the band that Paul put together for the performances. They were simply stunning and quite simply blew the cast, the audiences – and Chris and me too – blissfully away.
Another key collaborator was the photographer Malcolm Stone. Once again I wanted to incorporate slides as a backdrop for the production's design. Not only could the images reinforce the show's narrative, but they could underline its theme of Lee (the name of the actress who is chosen to play Marilyn) being mass marketed across the world's media. Malcolm took hundreds of photographs. Stevie, who played Lee, was in every one of these slides, some of which were recreations of iconic Monroe images, and she, Malcolm and I held photo-shoots for weeks to get what we required, often going on late into the night after evening rehearsals. We used twin-dissolve projectors to display these onto a huge screen at the back of the set (which was filled with mirrors, cameras, TV monitors, telephones and computers) to great effect, I felt.
But the show would stand or fall on the quality of the actress we got to play Lee, and we were so fortunate that Stevie Holt was available. I had worked with Stevie a number of times before at The Garrick – most notably in the part of Maggie (a thinly disguised Monroe) in Arthur Miller's semi-autobiographical play 'After The Fall', in which she was magnificent – and I always enjoyed working with her. As well as being hugely talented, she was hard-working, had no kind of temperament, rolled her sleeves up and got on with it, was reliable, quick, willing to take risks, and an excellent team player. She also had a wicked sense of humour and an extremely dirty laugh! As Maggie she had demonstrated that she could not only impersonate Marilyn most effectively, but she could get under the skin of her and produce the right blend of sexiness and vulnerability. I knew that she would bring these to Lee, as well as that character's street-smart toughness. It is a hugely challenging role, physically, emotionally, dramatically and musically, and she was completely unfazed by it – in one number ('Cover Girl') not only does she have to sing a fast, somewhat tongue-twisting lyric, she has to change her costume three times while doing so, finally switching from 'Lee' to 'Marilyn' for the final verse. She managed it effortlessly.
And so 'Marilyn' was a great success, playing to 500 people per night over its 6 night run at The Garrick, and it feels much better to end this account of the productions that Chris and I worked on together with this, than with the disappointment of 'Shakespeare's Greatest Hit'. There was once again talk of wondering whether it might have a longer life via a possible London transfer, as there had been with 'Stag' and, to a lesser extent, with 'Tommy', and it is here where Harvey Lisberg once again enters the story. I had remained in contact with him sporadically since the 10cc episode and he came along to see a dress rehearsal of 'Marilyn'. Briefly he was interested in working with us to develop it further for the West End, only to learn that another production – a more conventional biopic of Monroe's life – was already in preparation with the same title. That 'Marilyn' duly opened with Stephanie Lawrence in the lead, but although she herself received highly favourable reviews, the show didn't, and it closed in a matter of weeks. (Later, about 10 years ago, I was drawn back to our version and did some further revisions to the script, making it more appropriate for a smaller cast version for more intimate settings, which I think would suit it better than a large scale production, and gave it a new title – 'Replays', after one of the songs, which is much more appropriate to its theme – but did not then do anything with it).
After the production finished in Altrincham, there was then a most unpleasant episode during which The Garrick for a while refused to pay Paul Mitchell-Davidson his full fee for arranging the music, claiming it had not been authorised in the original budget, and things got quite nasty for a time. Quite rightly Paul was furious and the Musicians' Union was brought in, lawyers were consulted and sues were threatened. Eventually it was all settled and Paul was paid, but it certainly soured what had been such an enjoyable and successful show to have worked on hitherto, and Paul and I have not seen one another since. Happily, The Garrick accepted their responsibility, the confusion was cleared up, and then some years later, as Chris describes in greater detail in his entry, they asked him to prepare a song from the show to be performed at Gala Event they were holding which aimed to present an extract from one show from each decade that they had been operating. 'Marilyn' was their choice for the 80's and Chris accompanied Christine Adams, a replacement for Stevie who had herself moved away by that time, in a one-off performance of the song 'Who Am I?'