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Interview Podcast Audio Idina Menzel
I Stand

She's best known as the Wicked Witch of the West and as the self-absorbed performance artist Maureen in the Broadway runs of Wicked and Rent, respectively.

But while Idina Menzel is better known for her stage theatrics than her own music, she's been singing in a variety of mediums for years, including a career as a wedding singer that has had her dealing with inebriated and flirtatious grooms, bratty Bar Mitzvah attendees and even a wedding guest who hit the flooor after a heart attack.

Menzel, who is married to Rent co-star Taye Diggs, spoke to MP3.com about her new album, I Stand, seeing versatility as a gift instead of a curse, and her husband's days behind the deli counter.

Hi, Idina. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us. Thank you for doing this. I appreciate it. Absolutely. So most people know you as Elphaba in Wicked or Maureen in the Broadway and feature film versions of Rent, but you actually put out an album in '98, Still I Can't Be Still. Yeah. Is it safe to assume that that record and the new one, I Stand, are like night and day given all you've done in between those two? I'd love to say that but there's probably some common themes since I'm still the same person struggling with the same demons. Sure. But yes, there's a difference in the experiences that I've had in between. And the main difference in that when I was first doing that album--for my whole life I've always struggled with the fact that I've been versatile. And I was a wedding singer. I learned to sing jazz, Motown, Madonna songs, bossa novas, rock tunes, everything. I trained classically when I was a kid. And then I got Rent and all of a sudden I'm in Broadway.

And for a long time I think versatility was my curse and that it somehow intimidated people. They didn't know how to fuse it all together. And it's not 'til now in my life that I'm OK with all that and I'm, in essence, trying to say--I don't know if I can say "screw this," but this is who I am, these are all the experiences I have and as long as I have the right producer, which I do with Glen Ballard, you can take all those experiences and all those influences and come up with one cohesive sound for an album. And you just need the right guide and that's Glen for me.

So that's what's exciting about this is that I'm not ashamed or embarrassed about all the different places that I've come from. For the first time, I feel like I can just say, "I want to do it all," that I respect the path that Barbara Streisand and Bette Midler took where they were actresses, they starred on the stage, they made pop recordings, and then that's OK. It's just that we haven't had people like that in a while. Absolutely. But you're absolutely right that our culture very much wants to put people in boxes and say, "Well, this is what they do or this is what they sound like." But it's less and less like that now that we have technology and that we, as artists, have more control over the people that get acquainted with us. I feel like somehow the serendipity of the technology and the way the business is and the record business, having to sort of scramble to figure out their new identity, everyone's more open to breaking the rules a little bit. Right. And the exposure you've gotten through Rent and Wicked and all the other things gives you a different platform. It's an easier sales pitch when everyone knows who you are. Yeah, they want a story. And these two shows that I've been a part of, the two that most people know, they resonate so strongly with young audiences, which people usually interpret a person from the theater as having a very sort of old, mature audiences and my audiences have that as well as young sophisticated fans.

And I think it took the music business a little while to realize that. And I think what helps is that with the web sites and everything thing, they can actually see the demographics and they would say, "Oh, my God, you have all these 15-year old, 20-year old fans." So that's really exciting for me to be able to kind of promote myself in that way and to have their loyalty because they're just the best fans in the world. There you go. So were these songs incubating for a while waiting to get our or did they come together during the course of the work with Glen? Yeah, I have to say they pretty much came together in the course of working with Glen. I mean, they might have been incubating. So you've had more, like, concepts or ideas or stuff like that. Yeah, I was really in the moment and I got the record deal and I've had ideas in my journal sitting around, but a lot of these came from the freedom that Glen gives you in the studio and me just being more comfortable than I've ever been in collaborative experience.

And so you just walk into the studio and I had little nuggets of ideas, melodies, titles, chord progressions, but when I first met him and we started working together, I was so scared to kind of present an idea and then he would just put my whole mind at ease and then everything started flowing and I just was enjoying the process so much.

So then I wasn't afraid to kind of come in with no idea and realize that the two of us were going to just come up with something right then and there, which was really spontaneous and that was very exciting when that happened. So how did you connect with Glen? Did you know his work beforehand was he introduced to you or? Yeah, I mean, he wrote one of my most favorite songs, "Man in the Mirror," and he produced the Alanis album [Jagged Little Pill], which I've always been a huge fan of hers. But even more than that, I was a fan of how I had heard he worked with her in that she had this other sort of persona when she was younger in Canada and her music was more of a pop thing. And I remember hearing that he worked with her for a really long time and helped her to kind of explore a new direction and who she really was. And I felt that someone like that would... Help you do the same. Yeah, would help me do it and not hold me to these other genres that I'm associated with. And he's really not afraid to break rules and go against formulas and he just sticks that microphone in front of you just when you're dabbling and brainstorming and you don't even realize it and then he rewinds it and says, "Look, there's your title. There's the song." Right, there it is. And I said, "Oh, God, are you kidding?" And he said, "Yeah." Yeah, that's what you can hope for. Absolutely. Exactly. So is your sound a reflection of the kind of music you listen to personally? I guess it must be. That's funny. I mean, I guess it would be weird to listen to one thing and then do something entirely unrelated. Yes, I'm sure. Yeah, there's got to be some blend. I mean, I have influences that are more vocalist influences, and then I have more of songwriter influences. And I guess the one person that kind of kept me focused was sort of looking at Annie Lennox's career, because she has this huge range and she's the most emotional and expressive singer and yet she still has the integrity of being in the pop and the rock world and writing her own music. And nobody faults for her theatricality and the drama in her music, which is a struggle I had in the past when people assume you're coming from the theater, you're going to just drench the music. Theatricality over all else. Right. So this is my way of saying this can be done. I don't have to dumb-down my melodies, I don't have to under-sing. I can go in there and be myself and trust that Glen will make sure it doesn't cross the line. Find that balance between the integrity and that kind of thing and then the theatricality and the dramatic nature of things. Yeah. I got you. So you mentioned that you used to sing weddings and stuff like that in New York. I mean, do you have any horror stories or any encounters with Bridezilla or anything like that? Well one time I was--I sound like, "One time, in band camp"--I was doing--I think I was at a very famous wedding place called Leonard's on Long Island. It's got about, like, ten different weddings that go on all at one time. It's one of those deals. And it was, like, a daytime wedding and we were literally doing Stevie Wonder, "I Just Called to Say I Love You," actually as a cha-cha. You know how in the end it goes, "[Dunt, dunt, dunt]." Yeah, totally. It really--so people use it as a cha-cha. Anyway, we were doing that song. I was just doing some percussive playing with my cabasa. And this man dropped on the floor from a heart attack, and I looked at my bandleader and said we should stop playing. And he yelled at me as said, "No, the band has to keep playing on. A band always plays on." And I said, "OK."

And the next thing you know, the bride came up screaming at me for being so inconsiderate for playing while her uncle was lying on the floor. And then next thing you know the emergency people came. And I think he ended up being OK later on. Yeah, so that was always interesting. That's an awkward moment. I had a couple grooms get a little too drunk and come on to me in the middle of the wedding. OK. Yeah, I guess that could be expected, unfortunately. I've had Bar Mitzvah boys throw ice cream at me. Ah, those were the days, right? I've walked off. I've quit in the middle, just fed up, wanting to draw the line and say, "I'm out of here. I'm moving on to better things," and just quit in the middle of a Bar Mitzvah and all the kids were freaking out thinking the singer was leaving the party. The magic of time and hindsight makes it a little more funny now than it was then. Exactly. And I would like to say that in hindsight it's probably laid the groundwork for me being as good as interpreter and a performer as I can be because I started when I was 15-years old and I had to learn every kind of music, Motown, jazz, the pop tunes. So I really became very adept at singing all kinds of music and also in front of really bad audiences and knowing how to kind of deal with that. Right, not take it personally. Exactly. How you could win somebody over, how to handle myself with eight strange men that I just walked onto the bandstand and I didn't know, and had to just sing with out of nowhere. Good training. Yeah, it really built my character. Absolutely. So speaking of performing, do you have any intention of touring in support of I Stand? Yes. I would love to very much and hopefully that's being planned and will be worked out. I think it's all in the timing and they want me to do a bunch of promotional appearances and things like that in the first couple of weeks and then I really hope this summer or around then it should happen. Cool. OK. Yeah. And I assume you would go out with a full band and that whole business. Yeah. Right now I'm using the musicians that played on the album. They're incredible. They were handpicked by Glen and they have sort of become my friends and they feel a responsibility to kind of get me up a going. Great. And hopefully I'll keep most of them when I go on the road. I know some of them have babies and stuff so I might have work around schedules and things like that. Got you. Well thanks for doing this. I have one last thing if you could do me a favor and ask your husband if he remembers The Blinker. The what? The Blinker. The Blinker. He and I used to work at a deli in college called The Blinker. Really. And we had many a laugh over bagel sandwiches before class. Really? Yeah. Wait. Didn't he tell me about a deli? Did he have to work the register? He probably did. Yeah. Because he tells me register stories. He was so intimidated about having to make the drawer every night and he got fired once but I feel like that was from a pastry place. OK, The Blinker. Yeah. Yeah, it was called The Blinker. I'll see him tonight. It was on campus. Did you know his band, the Zoo Trip? Yeah, totally. We saw them all the time. We just saw these old videotapes, Shane Evans, his friend who he used to sing and play in that band, he brought out these old videotapes at Shane's wedding of them in their, what are they called, flattops, they used to have? Yeah, high tops, faded. Oh, those were good times for him. Very cool. Yeah. Well it was good talking to you. Great talking to you. I'll mention it to him tonight, He's flying in, in a couple hours, The Blinker. OK, cool. Thank you.