Sunday Post 16th September 2001 Gerard's love song to his home town had the audience in tears.
By Kevin Bridges'Isn't it a pity, what they're doing to New York City'NEW YORK has inspired countless performers and aitists over the years.One whose career is forever linked with the city is American singer-songwriter Gerard Kenny, who penned one of the most famous songs ever written about the the Big Apple. New York, New York (So Good They Named It Twice) was a hit in 1978 and has become a classic covered by many other artists, including Shirley Bassey. ResonanceFor Gerard the events of last week had a particularly powerful resonance. These days he's based in London with his British wife Jenny, but still returns to his home town regularly and has many family and friends there. "I spent the whole afternoon until about 7 .15 pm on Tuesday trying to get through on the phone. My brother Pete is a lawyer there, my two nephews work on Wall Street and my niece Christine's fiance worked in the World Trade Centre. "Unknown to her, his boss had called the night before and asked him to join a business meeting on the golf course at a country club. "She spent the whole day hying to contact him but all the phones were down. She finally found out he was safe at 5pm." On Tuesday night Gerard was due to play his one-man show at e upmarket Pizza On The Park in Knightsbridge. "I didn't know what to do," he say "My show is called An American In London and in pat of it I talk about how when I first came to Britain I couldn't understand the British obsession with World War 2 and how America had never been bombed! Incredible"I didn't want to disappoint people, so I turned up. changed the show a little bit but told the audience we shouldn't let anyone stop us from going about our business. "When it was time to sing New York, New Yolk it was incredible. I hadn't realised as I started singing it just how resonant it would be. "There's a line 'Isn't it a pity what they're doing to New York City and when I got to that bit people stood up and cheered. "They were joining in the chorus whew it goes 'New York, I Love It', and people were crying. "1 think the song win have even more meaning for me now.' Gerard wrote it when the city he loved was going through a tough time financially and was riddled with crime. "It had been run into the ground and the budget was a mess, but it's been turned around since then. I think Mayor Giuliani is a magician ˜ he's been brilliant. "The seedy areas of 42nd Street are like Disneyland now and the safety factor has improved so much you can walk around midtown at midnight now." Gerard reckons his fellow New Yorkers will bounce back from this week's trauma "I think their attitude will be, 'You've picked on the wrong city, pal'. "At the moment people are stunned and there's a sense of disbelief. "But I think them win be huge repercussions ˜ these terrorists have really stepped over the line." Gerard knew the Twin Towers well "I took my wife Jenny up there last year. We went to the revolving restaurant at the top of one of them. Proud"I just wanted her to see the view. We go back to New York a lot and the last time was just a few months ago. "I'm very proud to be an American right now and I have this urge to get back there." Gerard knows that he, like millions of others, will never forget the day the world changed. It was also the day his love song to New York City took on a whole new meaning. Caberet ReviewsStranded, following the World Trade Center tragedy, for many days in a notably subdued London, this reviewer headed for Pizza on the Park to try to offset the recent events' resulting melancholy. Gerard Kenny, a highly valued composer and performer in the UK, and himself an expatriate New Yorker, opened An American in London expressing to his British audience a hope that, "in the next couple of hours, perhaps we can cheer each other up." As good as his word, he handily achieved that ambition with a series of his own up tempo numbers, even to the point of unsolicited audience sing-alongs. The evening, thanks to Kenny's ebullience, was a successful palliative te this New. Yorker's sense of gloom. Kenny has an engaging manner and makes the kind of easy, personal contact with his audience that recalls Barry Manilow's appearances at the recent MAC Awards and New York's Cabaret Convention. A versatile pianist as well as an appealing singer, Kenny submerged himself into the spirit of his compositions and jauntily swayed, swung and bounced through each of his numbers. Speaking of Manilow; Kenny appeared as Barry's "special guest" at a concert before an audience of 40,000 at Blenheim Palace as well as being the composer, with Drey Sheppard, of one of Barry's biggest hits, I Made It Through the Rain. Several of Kenny's other songs have also graced the British charts and been included in recordings by Johnny Mathis, Shirley Bassey, Jack Jones and others, as well as a handful of his own albums. And, while Beach Radio, a musical written with Drey Sheppard, swept awards at the Vivian Ellis New Musical Showcase a couple of years ago, Kenny is especially proud to have collaborated with Alan Jay Lerner on a musical version of My Man Godfrey, the 1930's film comedy starring Carole Lombard and William Powell. Lerner was enthusiastic about the pairing. "Gerard's songs," he said, "are written to be sung. But even more, the strain that runs through his music is that most endangered of all species ˜- joy." Sadly, Lerner died with the project not yet completed, although many of the songs endure. While American in London described the player rather than a theme, there was a focus in many of his songs: a dancers' reality, characterized neatly in Kenny's autobiographical Son of a Song and Dance Man. Similarly, The Eight O‘clock Blues described a fortyish dancer unable to land a job, watching curtain time approach; I Danced with Marilyn Monroe, created a musical conversation between Marilyn and her movieland dance partner, Buzz Miller, which subtly captured the Monroe vulnerability; also, an exuberant Dancing My Blues Away, one of the songs from his Alan Jay Lerner collaboration; and the title song from an earlier "dancers' show," One More Turn. One song he didn't play was Brocades and Coronets, the lullaby written with Alan Jay Lerner for Princess Diana's personal charity, Birthright. That number was introduced by Elaine Paige with Kenny at the keyboard, at a Royal Gala for Princess Diana at the London Palladium. Adhering to Pizza on the Park's usual policy, the audience was invited to slay on for a second show without an additional cover charge and with only one exception (maybe they had a babysitter), the tables remained occupied. The later performance was a request show and illustrated Kenny's success in Britain ˜ more than half the requests were for his own numbers, including New York, New York, identically titled but different from, and predating the one made famous by Frank Sinatra. In London, at least, Kenny's New York, New York, is the standard. Following each chorus of "all the scandal and the vice," the entire audience enthusiastically called out the refrain, "I love it!" Kenny learned the ropes in his younger days as a New York piano bar player while performing at the legendary Reno Sweeney's and The Ballroom in its downtown, West Broadway days. A chance meeting in London on his way back to the States, after a gig in St. Tropez twenty four years ago, resulted in a UK recording contract. Resettling there, he saw his songs hit the charts and his persona metamorphosing into "An American in London." Perhaps most important of all, somewhere along the way he achieved that most extraordinary gift of his art the ability to transcend a crushing reality of the moment and lift the spirits of his audience for a wonderfully pleasurable few hours. ˜ Peter Leavy
The G K Club,
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