John Paul Young Joins Grease

John Paul Young Joins Grease

John Paul Young joins the cast of GREASE for its Perth, Adelaide, Hobart and return Melbourne seasons, replacing Anthony Callea in the role of Johnny Casino, but the 1970s pop icon is no stranger to musicals, as he explains to Neil Litchfield.

While best known as one of the most popular music stars of the 1970s, with hits including ‘Love Is In The Air’, ‘Yesterday’s Hero’ and ‘I Hate The Music’, a career recognised by induction into ARIA’s Hall of Fame, John Paul Young’s music theatre career also stretches back to the 1970s, notably as Annas in Jesus Christ Superstar between 1972 and 1974.

In a long career, JPY has crossed over between pop music and musical theatre several times.

“I had a long time away from it, but came back when I did Leader of the Pack and Shout a couple of years ago.”

Indeed, he was nominated for a Helpmann Award for Best Supporting Actor for Shout in 2008, for his 13 cameo roles.

What are the big differences for JPY between the two types of performance?

“The discipline in theatre is the big difference, which I learnt early, because I was in Jesus Christ Superstar in 1972. Coming from a rock‘n‘roll band where you did everything yourself, all of a sudden you’re involved in this thing that’s a bit like a real job. You’re surrounded by all these people who have certain jobs to do and you’ve got to toe the line; be where you’re supposed to be, at the right time. It was all a bit of an eye-opener for me back then.”

While JPY launches into our chat with Superstar, I can’t help shifting the focus back to Peggy Mortimer and Enzo Toppano’s lesser-known locally-written musical flop Jesus Christ Revolution; a rather less auspicious actual start to his stage career.

“That was my first foray into the professional business. Unfortunately it only lasted six weeks, but luckily Jim Sharman was in the audience and thought that my voice was worthy of an audition for Superstar.

“I was straight out of the sheet metal-working factory where I did my apprenticeship, and it was all so new to me – going to Melbourne and being part of a theatrical production at the Comedy Theatre. We had live doves, and every night they had to try and re-catch the bloody things. They’d do their business everywhere, every time you let them out of the cage.

“It’s all a bit of a blur. Before I knew it, it was finished. The biggest thing I remember was being back home at my mum and dad’s place at Fairfield West. Having left the factory in a big blaze of glory, hitting the big bright lights of showbiz, there I was not two months later, back where I started. My father, God bless him, didn’t say anything, but you could tell from the look on his face that he was less than impressed with my moves.”

Fortunately for JPY his performance in the ill-fated musical hadn’t gone un-noticed.

“A couple of weeks later a man turned up, as they used to in those days, on a little motorbike, with a telegram asking me to audition for Superstar, and I was saved. I remember to this day 15 cents was all the money that I had in the world, because Jesus Christ Revolution finished in debt, so I was owed money, which I never, ever saw. It was a very sobering lesson for me.”

Though his first biblical musical flopped, Jesus Christ Superstar was a massive hit.

“That was incredible. I was surrounded by not only musical theatre people, but people who’d come out from rock‘n‘roll the same as I did, so I didn’t feel alone in that way. There was so much talent, like Jon English. I was from Fairfield, out in the Western Suburbs, and John was from Cabramatta; we used to drive in to rehearsals together. Then we did the concert tour of every capital city. Harry M. Miller chartered this Ansett jet and we flew all around the country. It’s quite a special feeling having your own jet. You could do whatever you liked. In those days – you could smoke on board, and we used to have jam sessions.”

And favourite memories of Superstar?

“I did about a thousand performances and I think it was just the camaraderie.

“There were quite a few funny things when you get involved in a long-running show. You can get a little bit loose on the stage, where the audience is totally unaware of things that are going on. One of the guys way back then was understudying Jesus and it happened to be a matinee, but it was also AFL Grand Final day, so there he was, up on the cross, with a transistor radio tucked into his loin cloth, and an earpiece tucked into his ear, listening to the Grand Final.”

Did all that come before JPY’s big pop hits, and his incredibly successful collaboration with Vanda and Young, of Easybeats fame?

“It kind of all happened at once. I had ‘Pasadena’ at the same time as I started Superstar, so I was unable to go out there and push that, but the song kind of loped along quite happily by itself. When Superstar finished I was once again in that 15 cents position, where I had no work, but luckily for me George Young and Harry Vanda decided to relocate from London, and set up shop in Sydney. They had a mountain of songs to wade through and I was veryfortunate to be on the receiving end of all those hits.”

One of those hits, of course, was Love is in the Air, currently featuring in another musical, Strictly Ballroom.

“Yes, my saviour. There’s a lot of luck involved in show business and I’m a definite testament to that. We sent a song called ‘Keep on Smiling’ over to Germany and on the B Side of that was ‘Standing in the Rain’. The German record company guy didn’t fancy ‘Keep on Smiling’ at all, but luckily he flipped it over and played ‘Standing in the Rain’. It had a Latin beat, and he got it played in some of the discos in Berlin; it gravitated from there onto radio, and it was in the charts for quite some time. That spurred John and Harry on to come up with a follow-up, and thatwas ‘Love is in the Air’. Had there been no German guy to flip that song over, there may not have been a ‘Love is in the Air’.

Does JPY know anything of the story of how Baz Luhrmann came to choose the song for his film?

“Only that he knew Ted Albert, the patriarch of the Albert recording company, and when the time came to bankroll the movie, Ted actually gave him a double or triple CD of all of Albert’s works and said take your. And he liked ‘Yesterday’s Hero’, which made an appearance in the movie – a totally different version, and ‘Love is in the Air’, and even a little bit of ‘Standing in the Rain’.”

How important was that to your career at that stage?

“It was everything, because I was working in radio, in Newcastle. I was kind of enjoying it, but it was giving me the irrits at the same time. I was actually a non-believer. I thought they did a marvelous job on the song, but I couldn’t see that it was going to do it again; probably because I hadn’t seen the movie, I’d only seen the dream sequences which were incredibly garish. But the production guy at the radio station said, ‘no, I think this is going to be big.’ I went ‘whatever’, but he was right and I was wrong.”

So now now JPY has returned to the musicals with Leader of the Pack, Shout, and a bit of a combo of two sides of his career, doing a cameo as a rock ‘n ‘ roll singer in the musical Grease.

“The thing I’m most thankful about is that I’ve been able to eke out a career in this lovely country. The best thing about all of this is that I’ve managed to stay here, and I do love this country. We haven’t got a huge population so to be able to make a living out of it and not be popping up all the time, have a comfortable life, and be able to do all these different sides of show businesshas been great.”

In this current production, there’s a lot of Todd McKenney’s theatrical history on display in his Teen Angel. Are we likely to see John Paul Young peeking his way through in Johnny Casino?

“I don’t know. I hadn’t really considered that. I’m pretty good for directors. I do tend to do what I’m told. But if they suggest something and it doesn’t rub me up the wrong way, it’ll probably be fine.”

The Perth season ofGREASE commenced at the Crown Theatre on Saturday 21 June/ Seasons at Festival Theatre, Adelaide, from Sunday 3 August and Derwent Entertainment Centre, Hobart, from September 5, follow. After its sell-out Melbourne season, GREASE has announced a return Melbourne season, at the Regent Theatre from Thursday December 11.

Originally published in the May / June 2014 edition of Stage Whispers.

Image of John Paul Yound as Johnny Casino (C) Jeff Busby.

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