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Peter Allen describes himself as "fabulous" and
"sensitive" (the sarcastic quotation marks are his).
He's aware that those words have become show-biz cliches, but
when he likens himself to the "fabulous" (read
"tacky") Wayne Newton and the "sensitive"
(read "saccharine") John Denver, he's only
half-kidding. Las Vegas celebrity and million-selling records
are not beneath his dignity -- nor beyond his grasp.
For Peter Allen is a fabulous showman. He strides
onstage Cagney-tough in a smart white suit and flaming red
socks, shoes, and Hawaiian shirt, sweeps the crowd with an
imperious glare, twirls his sequined scarf with lip-licking
lewdness, and then plunges at the piano to pummel the keys
like a mad, manic leprechaun. Straddling the bench to play
face-front, he's a dazzling daredevil in perpetual motion, but
when he wants to settle down for ballad, you can hear a
pin drop. He speaks with an endearingly strange
Australian-American accent. He sings and plays keyboards with
nonchalant expertise. And his astonishingly uninhibited,
pansexual gyrations provide a revolutionary alternative to the
traditional macho stance of male pop singers By the end of his
set at the Paradise several weeks ago, he had stripped down to
a tiny T-shirt and red lame pants, giving "I Go to
Rio" all he had, waving maracas, pineapples and every
movable part of his body with unabashed abandon.
Allen is also a superb songwriter. His understated songs of
love and urban life (many co-written with Carole Bayer Sager)
have instantly infectious melodies and lyrics which balance
extreme cynicism with extreme sentimentality. Whether playing
the world-weary roue ("Just Ask Me I've Been There,"
"Taught by Experts"), carrying on a love/hate affair
with New York City ("6:30 Sunday Morning,"
"This Sideshow's Leaving Town"), or nursing romantic
wounds ("Harbour," "I'd Rather Leave While I'm
in Love"), Allen is always concerned with innocence --
and its loss. Like most cynics, he does not completely trust
his own cynicism: beneath the matter-of-fact constraint and
cool irony is an implicit regret for his own lack of feeling.
In "Don't Cry Out Loud" he both boasts and mourns
that "we keep it inside, we've learned how to hide our
feelings." Even in his most maudlin song, "I
Honestly Love You," he needs to reaffirm the validity of
his emotions ("This is coming from my heart and not my
head"). And when his laconic lyrics focus fully on
himself, the effect can be devastating. In the three short
verse of "Tenterfield Saddler," for examples, he
traces the connection between his late grandfather, Australian
saddlemaker George Woolnough ("He lived without
sin/They're building a library for him"), his father (an
alcoholic and apparent suicide), and himself. He has broken
away from the safety and the desperation of his ancestors only
to confront emptiness in his own life.
The grandson
of George has been all 'round the world
Lives no special place
He changed his last name and he married a girl
With an interesting face
He's almost forgotten them both
For in this life that he leads
There's nowhere for George and his library,
His son with his gun, to belong
Except in this song.
The ease with
which Allen plays the antic crowd-pleaser and the thoughtful
composer belies the many years he struggled to develop that
dual role. As a teenager, he began playing pubs in Australia,
alone at first and later with his partner Chris Bell. Their
act, called the Allen Brothers, toured the supper-club
circuits throughout Australia and the Far East. While playing
at the Hong Kong Hilton, they were discovered by Judy Garland,
who engaged them as her opening act, brought them to American
and introduced Allen to her daughter Liza (the "girl with
an interesting face"), whom he married in 1967. Except
for a string of Tonight Show appearances, he spent the
next few years partying, as he puts it, with
"semi-celebrities-to-be" until, in 1970, he left his
partner and his wife, started writing songs and playing
coffeehouses and recorded two albums (Peter Allen and Tenterfield
Saddler) on the now-defunct Metromedia label. When they
went nowhere, he gave up and went West.
His songs, however, had begun to circulate among performers on
the burgeoning cabaret circuit in New York. Before long, he
was lured back East for a hugely successful gig at Reno
Sweeney's and finally launched his career. "When I
started in cabarets," Allen says, "I sat down very
quietly at the piano and sang like Laura Nyro. But people kept
coming back again and again, so I constantly had to think of
new things to do. Eventually, I developed the person I am now
-- half serious and half 'up.' I wanted to see how far I could
go with that persona I'd created onstage. If I can be that
way-out and wild and then turn around and bring it down to
something very serious -- those are the things I set out to
do. It used to be a much more dangerous show. I'd walk out and
people would go, 'He's a bit weird,' and I'd follow that
weirdness out all the way. But it's hard to be that dramatic
all the time, to slink and slouch on and try to hypnotize your
audience into submission every night. It gets a little
affected. I used to love it like that, but I could only do it
if the audience was fascinated. They're not now -- they know
they'll have a fabulous time and see a fabulous show."
Allen even wrote a tribute to his devoted fans called
"Audience" ("If I can't see who I'm singing
to/How will you know I'm singing 'em all for you?"). But
when he gets to the line, "I don't wanna be famous, don't
wanna work in big halls," he rolls his eyes and his nose
grows two inches, because nothing could be further from the
truth. Although Olivia Newton-John made "I Honestly
Love You" an MOR classic and his "I Go to Rio"
hit number one in Brazil and Australia, he has yet to crack
the American charts. His two A&M LPs, Continental
American and Taught by Experts are excellent
showcases for his songs, but they pale compared to his live
performance. And though he has progressed from cabarets to
larger clubs like the Bottom Line and the Roxy in LA, his
following is still a cult. And cult fame is obviously not what
Allen wants. In fact, he has "taken steps" by
signing on with manager Dee Anthony, who engineered J. Geils's
and Peter Frampton's ascendancy to stardom and by recording a
live double-album hopefully entitled It Is Time for Peter
Allen.
Unfortunately, the record is a disappointment. The flaws --
lackluster accompaniment, inferior arrangements of older
songs, paucity of new ones -- wouldn't matter so much if it
weren't for one huge conceptual failing. The album, plainly
patterned after Frampton Comes Alive, consists almost
exclusively of music and audience and cannot convey the
physicality of his performance. That approach works fine for
Frampton: his singing, his playing and his pretty face on the
cover tell you everything you need to know about him. But like
Bette Midler (whose Live at Last should have been the
model for this project) Allen uses props, costume changes,
dishy ad libs, choice anecdotes and outrageous body language
to unify the broad range of his material. Whereas Midler's
live album compensates for what's lost by including the comic
raps and a handy photo layout, Allen's supplies nothing -- you
have no idea what he's doing to earn the tumultuous response.
The outbursts during "Love Crazy," for instance,
sounds like clacquish hysteria unless you happen to know that
Allen has just leapt to his feet for a swift, sexy
shimmy-shake. The most exciting numbers in concert are
invariably the record's worst. On his rave-ups, Allen is
likely to slur words, disregard lyrics, even drop crucial
verses; but onstage he makes up for it with maniacal mugging
or delirious dance routines; on the record, it simply sounds
like shitty singing followed by dead space.
Perhaps I'm being a little too hard on the album. As live
recordings go, It is Time... could be far worse. It's
certainly listenable, what you can hear of Allen's performance
is energetic, and with the exception of "Interesting
Changes" the otherwise unavailable cuts ("Don't Cry
Out Loud," "Tenterfield Saddler,"
"Audience" and the oldie "As Times Goes
By") are truly exquisite. But, damn it, Peter Allen
deserves to make it big and this record won't help. Maybe a
live album couldn't work under any circumstances. Maybe the
answer is constant touring and steady studio releases. Or
maybe Peter Allen is the best argument yet for a mass-market
Video-Disc.
Boston Phoenix, December 6, 1977
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