Merel:    I hope it works now (Talking about the minidisc recorder)!

Michael:   Testing, one, two.  That's recording.  Yep, you got it, it's recording!

Merel:  Eeeh, well.  Normally we don't do interviews for the magazine but the people who do it are in Germany now to see the show Jekyll and Hyde.

Michael:  Seen it, oh yes.

Merel:  So they thought well, you like Michael Ball so you can do the interview.

Michael:  OK, so are you far away?

Mark and Merel: ?????

Michael laughing

Mark:   OK, my first question.  You are here in Amsterdam and this is your first concert, foreign concert.  And I am very happy with it of course.  I don't mind going to London or whatever but Amsterdam is around the corner for me.  But why did you choose Amsterdam?

Michael:  Because I spent some time here, I guess.  There seems to be a lot of interest from the Dutch fans.  People coming over to see the shows in London and other parts of the country.  And it seems that the musical theatre scene is quite strong here.  And people have got to know about me and I've spent some time coming over here.  I did a few TV shows so ... you've got to start somewhere when you have to go to other countries, other territories and it seems like this was the most sympathetical with what I was trying to do.

Mark:  To start with ... perhaps this is the first one of a lot of foreign concerts?

Michael:  Yeah, that's what I'm hoping, that's what I'm hoping, yeah.  And also to go to a theatre like the Carre Theatre which is, I mean it's ... you know, you obviously know the place.

Mark:  Yeah

Michael:  I mean it's beautiful.  And it's absolutely suited to the kind of shows that I do so ... Have you seen any of my concerts?

Mark:  Yes, I saw it in London last month.

Michael:  The one at the Albert Hall?

Mark:  In April, yes.

Michael:  Yeah, yeah.  So it will work, I think.

Mark:  Yes, I can imagine it here at the theatre in Amsterdam.  Is it going to be the same show?

Michael:  Exactly the same, exactly the same.

Mark:  So with the Bread of Heaven song?

Michael:  Bread of Heaven?

Mark:  Yeah ...

Michael:  That I wasn't going to do.

Mark:  Oh no ...

Michael:  Do you think I should do it?

Merel:  YES, of course

Mark:  We want to win the competition!

Michael:  I didn't think that anyone would know it

Mark:  No, I don't think so.

Michael:  You do, only you two know it.

Merel:  But there are a lot of English people going to the concert, so they know it

Michael:  Yeah, well what I was going to do instead was em, eeh, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Mark:  That is much better

Michael:  Because they sing in there you know, and you can sing that one

Mark and Merel:  Yes

Michael:  You know, and you can do the hairy Israelites.  So I am just going to change it so I think that is much better, don't you?

Mark and Merel:  Yes, that's right.

Michael (singing):  I close my eyes ....  That's what I'll do, I'm doing that.  But that's the only difference

Mark:  OK

Merel:  That's great ... Now that you have a solo career do you have time for others things, for hobbies or other interests?

Michael:  Yes, not as ... I make time!  My love is my family and home life.  I like looking after them, I like cooking, I like ...  We just got a new baby in the family so I spent yesterday going around buying baby clothes ... and how weird is that?  Never done it before, I was like, Hell, how do I do it!  It's hard.  We've just done the tour, five weeks on the road, I finished in Manchester and came straight here.  Didn't even manage to get home!  We literally finished at 11.00 o'clock at night and I was on a 6 o'clock flight so the time you DO have is very precious and I think because of the nature of the business it's so transitory, you are so all over the place.  When you do have time off you like to sort of re-group and calm down so ...  I don't have that much time but when I do have it, I'm trying to make the most of it.

Merel:  You like cooking, but when you are on the road, you always eat in restaurants, don't you?

Michael:  We have caterers, yeah.  I hate it!  I HATE IT!!!  So I think that is probably why I like cooking so much ... because I'm always having to, you know, they've always got catering doing it, you're eating at odd hours, so when I go back ... I have a great big range, you understand?

Mark and Merel:  Yes

Michael:  OK, a really old fashioned one.  And eh, not gas or electric or anything.  It's all coal fire.  And I just stay in there, and I am horrible.  I am a nasty terrifying Michael thing.  GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN YOU CAN CLEAN UP!!!!

Merel:  I don't want to be there ...

Michael:  You don't want to be there, I'm like Erich von Stroheim, that director; GET OUT, DO THIS DO THAT!!!  But eh, yeah.  And other hobbies, I mean I ... I don't do a lot.  I mean, my work is my hobby.  Much as anything.  I love my job.  I love singing.  I love music.  I like being around it all the time so my work is my hobby, much as anything, yeah  The new thing there is, is writing ... just started writing turn into my hobby in a ...

Mark:  I love that song!

Michael:  Oh good.

Mark:  It's amazing, it's really good.  The lyrics ... all, it is perfect

Michael:  It meant a lot to me that song.  Means a lot to me ...

Mark:  Why does it mean a lot to you?

There is a long silence from Michael.

Michael:  Because pffw ...

There is another long silence

Mark:  Because you wrote if yourself or ...?

Michael:  And what it's saying you know.  I think all of us have ... I don't want to analyse it too deeply because it is a song, I think the power, I think the beauty of a lot of the songs that I do, the lyrics can be interpreted by people in their own way.  There are subtle differences if you talk about Love Changes Everything and people associate with it ... as you saw in the concert, the link between music and memories I think is very strong so you don't need to all have the same memory.  You don't need to have the same emotion created from ... what I am trying to say ...  OK for example, Empty Chairs At Empty Tables, right.  That is about a young revolutionary student whose friends got killed.  An audience listening to that know that.  But they also sit there and think about friends of theirs, who are no longer with them, or think about Kosovo, things that are happening now, Northern Ireland.  It was used at an Aids benefit in San Francisco for people who died of aids.  Empty Chairs At Empty Tables - so it's up to the individual.
 
Merel:  You can put it wherever you want it

Michael:  Yeah, so the lyric for the song I wrote is semi-autobiographical at certain times of my life, you know, it's not always.  It's the same for all of us, we don't always ... you know, we all change, we all have insecurities.  So that's what I like about songs, that's why I'm so proud of it.  That I was able to try and sort of convey that thing that various people can take their own meaning for.

Mark:  Are you going to do more?

Michael:  Absolutely ... absolutely

Mark:  A CD or ...

Michael:  That's what I am ... well, I've already got an album ready for Christmas which has got one song that I wrote.  That's already made, so it is going to come out at Christmas.  It's a very sad, melancholic Christmas (Michael pretends he is crying) song.  I write sad things, I don't know why.  I'm really miserable.  I played it to Cathy and she just had ... (Imitating a crying Cathy)

Mark:  Crisis in the family?

Michael:  Yes ... you know it is about ... The song is called 'Light A Candle' and it was inspired because Cathy is Catholic and when she was talking about a friend of hers who had just died, they have this thing where you go to a mass and you light a candle to somebody and you keep it burning and ... you know it.  Wonderful image, so that was the spark for it all and candles are very Christmassy as well.  You think of candles at Christmas and so if a candle represents a person who isn't there you know it's ... you don't have to be lonely, you have a candle there too.

Merel:  Makes me think of 'Papa Can You Hear Me' by Barbra Streisand

Michael:  Oh yes, I've just been working with him ... Michel Legrand.  I'm with him on ... next week

Mark:  He sounds so familiar, the name

Michael:  Michel Legrand, he wrote it ... 'Papa Can You Hear Me'

Mark and Merel laughing but feeling very very very stupid.  Michael laughing at us.

Michael:  He wrote Yentil ... he wrote Bridges of Cherbourg.  You know that musical?

Mark:  NO!

Michael (singing):  If it takes forever, I will wait for you.  Da da die da da da, da da da da da

Mark:  I know that song ...

Merel:  Yes ...

Michael:  Wonderful musical. Bridges of Cherbourg, the film was made with Catherine Deneuve.  The summer of 42 ...?

Michael singing:  The summer smiles, the summer knows.  And unashamed, she shed her clothes.  Die die die die anyway

Michael:  Papa can you hear me, he wrote ...

We're all laughing

Michael:  He writes a lot with Bergman, Alan Maryan Bergman, who writes all Streisands music.  So ... I work with him next week.

Merel:  Do you want to keep this solo career or do you want to go back into musicals again.

Michael:  Yeah, I never consciously choose the path of my career like that.  I just ... I go on instinct.  After Aspects on Broadway it was seven years before I did a musical and now everyone thinks of me as doing musicals.  I haven't done that many, but I have been involved with the biggest ones that there have been.  And I've always been involved with other projects.  Cameron Mackintosh and Andrew Lloyd Webber.  So rather than committing a year, six months, whatever in a musical I've gone in and done workshops with them, or recorded songs with them or been involved in big events.  So it wasn't until Passion came along that I found the incentive to go back, cause it is such hard work, it's such a commitment and there has to be more ... there has to be a really good reason for me to want to do it, and the chance of working with Stephen Sondheim and having him write for me and getting a friendship and a bond going, that was what inspired me to go back in to it and many, many scripts and things came through before but they didn't interest me.  Since then, lot's of things, lot's of ideas come along and you look into them but nothing yet has actually made me go ... RIGHT THAT'S IT, I'm going to commit that amount of time and even make this show happen.  But I hope it will, I'm always looking.  It's such a powerful medium and it's a ... when you got a musical that works, when it's right, when it's new, when it's fresh - it sets records.  Best example - Les Miserables - when we first started with that, people thought that ... we had terrible reviews.  People didn't have a clue what it was about.  They thought, you know ... it was rubbish!

Mark:  That's crazy

Michael:  I know, exactly.  That's what they thought.  And so we didn't know.  You create this thing.  Then you start a reaction in the audience and they tell people.  And the people come and they go out and then finally this big explosion, broke all the records so far.  It opens in America, it opens in Australia, it opens here, it opens around the world.  The video has got made, it's on telly and it's all starting from this tiny little journey, as an idea.  And that's the exciting thing so if I can find something that I think, yes, this is going to go on and on, you know it all.  It's bigger than all of us.

Merel:  Do you know Whistle Down The Wind?

Michael:  Yes I do, very well.

Merel:  It's the same.  I mean ...

Michael:    Same as ...?

Merel:  Everyone said it is a bad show, but I saw it and it's great.

Michael:  Well, it's not a bad show.  It's sort of a great show.

Merel:  Sometimes I think the critics are not very nice to Mr Lloyd Webber

Michael:  Oh, they are not very nice to anyone who is successful.  But on the other hand you can't be sycophantic either.  You understand?  You can't be ... just because it's Andrew Lloyd Webber.  You don't say it's good, you don't say it's bad.  You look at it through it's own merit and I have my own thoughts about Whistle.  I think it was ... there are some moments that are brilliant, absolutely brilliant and some that are flout.  Some that aren't so good so if it wasn't written by Andrew Lloyd Webber, you probably wouldn't have gone to see it.

Merel:  Probably not, no.  But I'm glad that I've seen it.

Michael:  Of course.  The reason it's working and it's successful is because it has that whole team behind it, the marketing team to get people in, the best musicians, best performers.  It has everything going for it.  Now, if it had been done somewhere else, less money, less hype it probably wouldn't have survived.

Merel:  That's right

Michael:  And it earns that right ... to be able to do that.  Martin Guerre ... for example.  They can try whatever they like, it will never be a hit.  It will never be a hit.

Mark:  I don't like that show but Merel does ...

Merel:  Oh, I do.  I really like it.  I saw it once and ...

Michael:  It's changed now ...

Merel:  I didn't like it really that much but when I heard the music afterwards a few times I thought - wow, this is great.  But you have to get used to it

Michael:  I go to Paris, after here.  I'm going to record with Alain and Claude Michel.  And Alain's wife Mary. You know Mary?  She sang in the Hey Mr Producer, she did Cossette.  I'm doing a couple of tracks with them, one of them is a song from Martin Guerre and they have redone it again and it's on tour around England you know, a new version.  It will never be a hit.  EVER EVER EVER!!!  People will like it and like certain aspects of it and find something out of it but it won't appeal to everyone, won't have the effect that Phantom has had or Les Miserables.

Merel:  It won't stay long

Michael:  It will never have that kind of excitement attached to it.  No one will ever go like:  I'VE GOT A TICKET FOR MARTIN GUERRE!!!  You know what I mean?

Merel:  Yeah, but I don't know why ....

Michael:  Because it's not as good a show.  It's quite a good show but it's not Les Miserables

Merel:  I'm thinking of Blood Brothers.  It's very small but it's great

Michael:  Oh, that's beautiful, it's so terrific

Merel:  I think it's great but I also think Martin Guerre can stay as well.

Phil comes in to interrupt the interview.  "Five more minutes ...

Michael:  I have to go to Antwerp ... and go to another country

Mark:  Please come back tomorrow

Michael:  Yes, I have to go back tonight.  I'm talking away.  You ask me the questions you want to ask ...

At this point we stopped the interview to hand over some presents to Michael.
 

Transcribed by Mark Kempenaar