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September 12-18, 2002 theater David Zippel
Lyricist David Zippel has a way with words. Christina Aguilera, Stevie Wonder, Ricky Martin and Michael Bolton sold millions of records with his songs. The Tony Award for Best Lyrics and Best Musical went to him for City of Angels. He won an Oscar nomination for the Disney film Hercules. Now, a revue of Zippel’s work, It’s Better With a Band, will open at the Prince Music Theater on Sept. 18, containing songs Zippel wrote with collaborators Cy Coleman, Alan Menken, Marvin Hamlisch and others. City Paper: What exactly is this show? David Zippel: It's an expanded version of a little off-Broadway revue I did in 1983, before I had written anything with Cy and Marvin and I was just beginning to write with Alan. It's Better With a Band was a conceit, because all we used then was a piano. This time we have a five-piece band. You could say it's a plotless revue with an arc, a sense of continuity without actually having a story. CP: We hear this show, and you, have some strong Philly roots. DZ: I grew up in Easton, wrote parody lyrics making fun of my high school teachers, then went to Penn. When I was a senior there in 1975, Joe Leonardo, now head of theater at Temple, and I wrote a bizarre musical about politics called Rotunda. Joe and I have remained friends, and he's responsible for shaping It's Better With a Band. CP: Is it true you went to Harvard Law School? DZ: Yes, hoping to be a theatrical attorney. While I was there I went to see a Barbara Cook concert and went up and congratulated her pianist, Wally Harper, and discovered that he was looking for a songwriting partner. Two of the songs we wrote together were in Barbara's Carnegie Hall concert which was recorded, and that's when my name began to be noticed. CP: Do you have personal favorites among your songs? DZ: Choosing a favorite would be like choosing among your children. Nevertheless, I'll never forget the first time Randy Graff performed "You Can Always Count on Me" from City of Angels in front of an audience and stopped the show cold. It was particularly sweet for Cy Coleman and me because one of our producers had been pushing us to cut the number. At the production meeting the next morning he applauded our suggestion that we make the song longer. We added a verse. "Go the Distance" is another song for which I have a strong sentimental attachment. It was written to illuminate the emotional state of young Hercules, serve as the theme for the underscoring of the picture and to work as a pop single. Ultimately the song got me my first Oscar nomination [and Alan Menken's 11th] and became a No. 1 single. CP: What do you try to accomplish when you write a lyric? DZ: I am first and foremost a storyteller. My job is to marry the songs to the book. I try to make sure that the book and the lyrics sound like they have been written by one person. CP: It's ironic that the Prince recently presented a show where you were replaced as the lyricist. DZ: Robert Brustein hired Larry Gelbart, Alan Menken and me to write a musical version of Lysistrata. He sent us e-mails saying "I love the show so much I'm thinking of giving up sex myself." [The play is about women who refuse to have sex until their men renounce war.] Then Brustein fired us. He said our version was "too Disney-fied," then said Gelbart's script was "ferociously obscene," and he re-wrote it himself. He behaved horrendously. But our show is fun, and it will have a future life. CP: What else are you working on right now? DZ: Alan Menken, Larry Gelbart and I are doing a Busby Berkeley extravaganza called Buzz!!. Cy Coleman, Larry Gelbart and I have written The Private Lives of Napoleon and Josephine and Cy, Wendy Wasserstein and I are writing a show called Pamela's First Musical, based on Wendy's book. It’s Better With a Band, Sept. 18-Oct. 6, $25-$45, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700. 
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