Bay Windows - December 11, 2003
Gregg Shapiro

Gregg Shapiro: I want to begin by acknowledging that you marked your 30th anniversary in show business during 2003. How does one celebrate such an auspicious occasion?

Maureen McGovern: (Laughs) It's been a very reflective and exciting year for me. What I'm doing this year is really getting my Works of Heart project for music and healing up and running in full force. I recorded an album called Works of Heart that's all life affirming and positive music for patients and caregivers. I'm most grateful to be doing, as my life's work, something that I absolutely love; singing and acting, traveling all over the world. I feel very fortunate, and most entertainers want to give back in some way. The Works of Heart project for music and healing is a permanent way of saying 'thank you' and giving back. I'm working with the American Music Therapy Association as one of their national spoke persons. Music therapists are the unsung heroes out there in the hospitals and clinics because they work one on one with patients. Music has a profound effect on people physically, emotionally and spiritually.

GS: In the liner notes for Works of Heart, which is a benefit disc for the American Music Therapy Association, you wrote about the letters you received from people who have found comfort, strength and healing in your music. Can you please describe what that means to you?

MM: People have written to me for years about how 'The Morning After' has gotten them through horrible times in their life of depression, loss, grieving, or confusion and how it was a beacon of light to them. Literally countless letters through the years. I thought, "If I have that gift, then that's what I've been put here for." I should focus that and used that for a greater good. That's really why I started the Works of Heart project. We all respond to music. I'll give you a couple of examples. A friend of mine's mother was in a coma, and he flew to her side. He read to her and talked to her, and sang hymns to her that she had sung with him while he was a child. For about three weeks there was no response. She did briefly come out of the coma before she died, and she didn't remember anything he had said but she corrected him on the wrong lyrics. As only a mother could do (laughs). The point being music reaches inside in a very profound way; we're all water, vibrations and energy basically. Music is a powerful energy vibration that really reaches inside. You couple the sound of music with an inspiring lyric and it's a very powerful tool. Obviously it's not the cure to cancer, but it enhances the body's ability to heal.

GS: In addition to the American Music Therapy Association, you are also known for your generosity to charitable organizations such as the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Best Friends Animal Sanctuary and AIDS organizations including Project Angel Food, Desert AIDS Project, The AIDS Memorial Quilt. Do you find yourself bombarded by requests from charities, and if so, how do you select the ones with which you want to be associated?

MM: I actually have only done a couple things for Project Angel Food, but I think they're an incredible organization. The Aids Quilt, I've done many things through the years for them and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. (AIDS) should still be at the forefront of everyone's mind. We've been doing this for twenty years now. We've been hoping for a cure and certainly the quality of lives for those living with AIDS or HIV have drastically improved, but there is still so much more that needs to be done.

GS: You are providing the soundtrack. Long before you became involved in AIDS activism, you had established a considerable gay following. What do you think it is that sets your gay fans apart from your other fans?

MM: I think they're very discerning listeners (laughs) People ask me that often times. I don't know. I think gay listeners particularly love great music and great singers and I love and embrace you all.

GS: For some people, your name is often associated with movie theme songs - from "The Morning After," "We May Never Love Like This Again" and "Can You Read My Mind?" through the songs of Marilyn & Alan Bergman. What is it about these songs that make them appealing to you?

MM: I was very fortunate in the beginning of my career to have the generic hope song. "The Morning After" was offered to me sight unseen by a record company who had signed me as the first thing to record because I was an unknown artist and they believed the movie would be huge and felt it would be the perfect vehicle for me to be attached to. But the song was dropped when it was released, but the movie took off. When the movie was nominated for an Oscar the following Spring, all of a sudden radio stations started playing it and huge phone requests came in and the record company was forced to re-release it. By August of 1973 it was a gold record. I became known as 'the disaster theme queen.' I followed that up with The Towering Inferno, which won the Oscar as well. "Can You Read My Mind?"- I had been dropped by record companies from 1976 until 1979 when I recorded "Can You Read My Mind" from Superman. They said, "We have another movie theme for you." I thought, Oh God, not another movie theme. I want to show the world I can do something else. But I loved the song, John Williams and Leslie Bricusse. Although it was not actually sung in the movie, Margot Kidder spoke the words in that lovely flying scene the first time she flies with Superman. Due to that technicality, it was not eligible to be nominated for an Oscar, which was a shame. So, I became the disaster theme queen, but I think some of the most enduring and endearing music has been from film.

GS: "The Music Never Ends," your album of Marilyn & Alan Bergman covers, has been reissued in an expanded version which includes three newly recorded songs. What attracts you to a Bergman song?

MM: There is somewhat of a poverty in today's music. It's hard to find prolific writers like the Bergmans who write in all genres with all different kinds of composers from great jazz (Dave Grusin and Dory Caymmi and Ivan Linz) to Marvin Hamlisch and of course the body of work with Michel LeGrand. They've written with the creme-de-la creme of composers for the last fifty years. I just scratched the surface the first go round with this CD. Fynswoth Alley graciously agreed to re-release it, because three of my most beloved albums were in limbo after September 11th (when) the (original) record company and their distributors went belly up. I (also) just finished two cuts for my Harold Arlen CD, Out of This World, so we have two new bonus cuts for that as well.

GS: With such a wealth of material from which to choose, what can a person expect to hear at a Maureen McGovern concert?

MM: I'm sort of an odd duck in today's world (laughs). My audience comes because they know they're going to be taken on a journey. They're going to laugh, they're going to cry, and they're going to hear some classical music, some jazz, some theater and pop. I was the disaster theme queen in the 70's and a schizophrenic singer in the 80's because of all the genres I love to explore. I'm not a jazz singer per se, but I inhabit the world of jazz. I love theater. I love light classical music, and certainly the great American songbook standards. I did an album of baby boomer favorites called Baby I'm Yours. I'm putting a show together of baby boomer classics. I'm going to be doing a jazz album with another artist that I'm a big fan of, which will be a thrill for me. A straight ahead jazz album is what I've always wanted to do. Whatever interests me at the moment, and challenges me, is what I tend to dive head first into.

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