By Rikki Lee Travolta
Isn’t it interesting how many members of the rock community have crossed the aisle to share their composition talents with Broadway audiences. There was a time you wouldn’t think those two worlds would be so intimately connected.
While my musical theatre career started with child roles in traditional titles from Rodgers & Hammerstein and the like, as I grew up I found myself fascinated with rock operas like the amazing “Jesus Christ Superstar” by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.
By the time I was a young man I was living a dual life when it came to music. I was singing Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim at the theatre, and then rocking out in rock bands in my free time.
Not surprisingly my personal brushes with Broadway were all rock musicals. I was approached about playing Danny Zuko in Jeff Calhoun’s “Grease” revival, I flirted with replacing Adam Pascal in Michael Greif’s original Broadway staging of Jonathan Larson’s “Rent”, and I was actually supposed to do “Bye Bye Birdie” in 2005 before the revival got canceled.
I remember when David Bryan of Bon Jovi won the Tony Award for his musical “Memphis”. Knowing David outside of the theatre, I was familiar with “Memphis” during the development stages long before it was ever destined for Broadway, much less the smash success that it became. At that time, David as a rockstar who also composed for the theatre was an exception to the rule. Now though, everyone from The Flaming Lips to Alanis Morissette have penned for Broadway.
There are those like Bono and The Edge whose Broadway compositions for “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” sound like the songs they composed for their own rock careers. And then there are those like Bryan Adams whose compositions for” Pretty Woman” sound nothing like his signature rock songs.
When my first book, “My Fractured Life” came out, it was optioned to be made into a feature film. That’s actually how I met David Bryan. He was going to do the score. That story is actually detailed in another Tales from the Road entry: Backstage with David Bryan – Bon Jovi, Broadway, and Beyond.
When my memoir “Unbecoming Travolta” came out in 2013, we toyed with the idea of a film adaptation with Zac Efron’s name being tossed about. But then the idea struck that it could be a really interesting stage musical.
Given my intimate involvement in theatre throughout my life, a stage adaptation seemed somehow fitting. But it would need an untraditional composer, to capture the untraditional nature of my life experiences. It needed someone from the rock world.
One of my favorite songwriters of all time is Joshua Kadison. He had two major label albums, a few hit songs, and a few independent releases. Then he vanished. I guess he said musically all he wanted to say. At least for now. There’s always hope he’ll reemerge.
When we got the idea to adapt “Unbecoming Travolta” as a stage musical, I did try to search out Joshua Kadison. I’ve never heard a songwriter as gifted as him in terms of storytelling songs. Harry Chapin would be the closest rival. However, none of the many doors I knocked on trying to find him ever opened. So, back to the drawing board.
One of my first rock idols was Dan Reed, of the namesake band Dan Reed Network. I discovered them when I was still in school and they were a local band in Portland, OR. I was hooked the first time I saw them play. Musically they were brilliant, blending rock, metal, and funk is a nasty way. And, Dan Reed was the most electric frontman I’d ever seen outside of Prince.
I wasn’t the only one captivated by their look or their sound. They were quickly signed to Mercury Records by Derek Shulman, the same A&R guy who discovered Jon Bon Jovi.
The band earned a four-star review from Rolling Stone for its self-titled debut album, but was never as big in the U.S. as I felt they should have been. I would have marketed them differently. But, hindsight is 20/20.
The band broke up in 1993, with Dan reemerging a short time later in New York with his new band Adrenaline Sky. They put out one album, half recorded at a live event and half in the studio. It’s a pretty darn good album, and shows off a different aspect of Dan’s musical prowess.
After that, Dan worked primarily as a solo artist experimenting with various musical formats ranging from acoustic to electronica. Some of the music resonated with me more than others, but I was always impressed with the diversity of styles he was capable of creating.
While the Dan Reed Network was enjoying popularity as a musical act, Dan also began flirting with interests in theatre. In Portland while on hiatuses between DRN albums, Dan began to dabble in theatre – performing in three long-running dramas: “Beruit”, “Buried Child”, and “Tooth of the Crime”.
At some point after Adrenaline Sky disbanded, Dan got disenfranchised with North America and moved overseas – living for a time in France and Jerusalem before settling in Prague.
I knew that Dan wasn’t a conventional theatrical composer, however, the stage adaptation of “Unbecoming Travolta” was going to be anything but conventional. It’s an unconventional story so it was going to require unconventional storytelling.
I decided to reach out to see if Dan was still interested in theatre and if he’d be interested in collaborating on a Broadway adaptation of “Unbecoming Travolta.” After reading the reviews, he was really excited about the project and dived into reading the memoir. By the time he was done reading, he was adamant he wanted to be the one to compose the music for bringing the story to life on stage.
Dan raved about the honesty and insight in the book, calling it an important piece of art. With him in Prague and myself in Chicago we began collaborating on a treatment and discussing the various songs that the story would need.
We used the music styles from various existing Broadway modern masterpieces as the basis for our discussions of the different songs for the musical. Composers we focused on ranged from Jonathan Larson (“Rent”) to Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boubill (“Miss Saigon” and “Les Miserables”) to Frank Wildhorn (“Jekyll & Hyde.”)
It was an exciting time – figuring out how to translate the story to the stage. Instead of being a literal adaptation of the scenes in the book, to be successful as a musical we would have to focus on capturing the idea behind the scenes. We would also have to structure the adventures to have the classic literary points of beginning, middle, and end with a clear story arch.
At the same time we were working on “Unbecoming Travolta”, Dan was also working on a reunion with the Network. They would eventually release new material in 2016 with “Fight Another Day”, followed by “Origins” in 2018, and “Let’s Hear it for the King” in 2022.
Although I was a well-known actor and Dan was a member of the rock n’ roll elite, neither of us had ever written a Broadway show. In that kind of situation, you compose on spec. You write the music believing that it will sell, knowing that you will have to do revisions until each song clicks with the audience. It’s similar to how Dan would write and rework songs with his band – starting with a rough idea and then reimaging it over and over until he would get the audience response he envisioned.
Writing on spec is nothing new in entertainment no matter how famous you are. David Bryan wrote “Memphis” on spec. Bryan Adams wrote “Pretty Woman” on spec. It’s just the way the industry works.
Dan envisioned finding a financer who would pay a flat fee for us to compose the music. While this is not how the industry normally works, we did try to find a way to make it work under those guides – but ultimately, we couldn’t attract the right financial partner.
With “Fight Another Day” in the works and financing for the stage show not yet in place, ultimately our collaboration on “Unbecoming Travolta” got shelved. Although Dan might not have been the one to eventually do the musical adaptation of the book, it was a joy to collaborate with one of my idols.
I haven’t totally abandoned the idea of making the story into a musical with another composer. It just has to be the right person – someone who gets me in the same way Dan did; someone who can express themselves in different musical styles – preferably with a little bit of rock n’ roll in their soul.
