IN CONVERSATION WITH... GLENN CARTER

Despite having a CV which combines West End muscials, Shakespeare, concerts, movies and songwriting success, Glenn Carter is still best remembered for his West End, Broadway and screen triumphs as Jesus in Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera masterpiece Jesus Christ Superstar.  Glenn kindly took some time out from a busy day boat building, to answer my questions on his impressive career...

RC: When did you realise your vocal abilities were greater than average?

Glenn Carter: The absolute truth is I have wanted to be a singer and musician all my life. Even as a child I wanted to learn to play the piano, be in a band and write music. I only ever wanted to play music and write music, not particularly perform it. Unfortunately my father wouldn’t allow me to have a piano. I was never allowed, and I didn’t touch music until I was nineteen years old. My mother played the piano but had had an accident which resulted in brain damage, and my father thought it would be too frustrating for her to be around somebody thumping away on the piano when she had been able to play exquisitely well herself, but now couldn’t play anymore. This was a source of great resentment for me with my Dad, we did sort it all out by the time he died, however I was very frustrated by that. Consequently I didn’t do any music, just sport and academic stuff. When I was eighteen I paid for my first singing lesson, I just wanted to see if I had a voice. So I paid a woman £150, which was a fortune in those days. She was apparently the best person in Britain for vocal coaching of big pop stars, so I contacted her and asked her to tell me if I could sing or would ever be able to sing. I paid my money, and waited for the first induction lesson. Then on the day travelled over to her house, and she said “Don’t waste your dreams. You will never be able to sing. You don’t have the facility or the voice. You just don’t have what I would expect somebody to have to then go on to work for several years to develop a style. You just don’t have it. You don’t have a voice.” That didn’t break me but it was obviously crushing. I then went on to turn my attention to writing music. 

All the time though I was using my voice to make sounds, pushing it further to see how my voice worked. I could sing, I don’t know why this woman said that at all. I was copying privately singers that I liked, Sting and Meatloaf. I liked the sounds Neil Diamond made, so was copying him. And also many female singers like Janis Joplin. Using my voice to make the noises, which gave it a little bit of character. I was touring with a band as a roadie and when we were in Blackpool contacted the singing teacher at the local college, and sang for him. He said “You’ve got a great voice! You absolutely can sing. Why did that woman ever tell you otherwise?” Have I? I had no idea. I didn’t come from a family of musicians so I had no real feedback to go on. I needed other people’s opinions, whereas now as a grown man I don’t, but back then I did. Even now I am angry to a degree at that woman and the way she behaved because nobody has any right to tell someone else they will never be able to sing. Maybe she was having a bad day, or I was being particularly terrible. But I can’t imagine I was so bad one year, then a couple of years later without any practice suddenly could sing. So, I never really knew I could sing. I also didn’t like the sound of my own voice. And I still don’t. I think singing along to albums like Bat Out Of Hell helped me greatly. I could sing it note for note with Meatloaf. He does an incredible top C, and full scream top C which is a throaty chest voice sound, and I would sing along with him. I didn’t know it was a top C, and I didn’t know he was particularly brilliant at that time, it was just an album I really liked and could afford when I was a kid. So I was copying singers, and although my voice doesn’t sound anything like the people I was singing along to, they helped me find where was voice sat among the sounds and stylist noises some of them made. So, it took me a long time. 

I then had an amazing teacher when I went to the Arts Educational school. I was working with, and tour managing, pop groups at this time. I managed the fantastic 1980s pop group Imagination. Their tour manager was taken ill and I was the only guy in the office who was kamikaze enough to take on a band without any experience. I went with them on tour and took on a number of responsibilities for about a year or so. I started to sing with them around the piano, and Leee John – who is still a very great friend of mine – did a Christmas tour with the band, and they had some great guests. Womack & Womack, Nick Heyward and lots of their friends, were all on their Christmas special show at Hammersmith Odeon. I was working backstage in those days but had always sung with Leee around the piano, and in hotel bars and on the tour coach. He called me on stage with all these people when they were singing one of their biggest hits ‘Body Talk’. He basically put the microphone in my hand and said, “Go on, your turn”, the band started the track from the beginning and I ended up singing a good three quarters of the song with Leee doing backing vocals. I was then offered a recording contract by their manager Brian Longley, and that was the moment I thought that maybe I could actually do something with my voice. It was a very slow burner. It was one of the backing dancers for a support act that encouraged me to try for Arts Educational school, in order to get a proper grounding. So I auditioned and got in. That’s where I met a singing teacher called Mary Hammond who just encouraged me to be myself, make some noises and I found that I had a range that was fairly rare. It is not that rare to actually be able to hit the notes but I could sustain them for eight shows a week, year after year. Mary, who is the best singing teacher in the world as far as I am concerned, helped me find a gentle side to my voice. I was singing a full belt chest voice but she helped me find a nicer part of my voice. It added more colour to my singing. It was a long journey for me.

You did your theatre apprenticeship in some very high profile West End shows – Chess, Les Miserables, Joseph. Was that a great learning curve for you?

 

Glenn in Grease (1993)  

Well, yes. In the sense that fortnightly repertory doesn’t happen any more. In rep they would do musicals, Shakespeare, modern contemporary plays - whatever. That training ground doesn’t happen now. There is no place that you can go and learn your stuff today. The best place I found to learn was actually to be an understudy. Covering different roles, If people were off saying to the management “I don’t mind doing that bit tonight.” The very first time I ever went on as an understudy was in Les Miserables. I understudied three different people in Les Miz, so it could have been standing in for any one of them at any given time. It was my third day on the job, we had had a months rehearsal during which we learned our own basic show. The new cast had opened on the Monday and this was the Thursday. We hadn’t had any understudy rehearsals at all. We were doing the Paris scene where the Thenardier gang and the students are introduced. The guy who was playing Marius stood at the back of the stage, pointed to his throat and made the signs which meant he couldn’t sing. I was already on as a character called Montparnasse. A cat burglar type with Thenardier. So then the guy playing Enjolras, who walks on with Marius, came on early and grabbed my arm just as the actor who was playing Marius disappeared off stage. He said “It’s you!” I hadn’t had a music call, or a note bashing session where you learn the piece. I just did the show that night. I don’t remember any of it. Luckily I had studied the part before hand but had not had any rehearsal. Once I had done that I was trapped understudying for a good ten years. I simply wasn’t considered as a principal because I was too useful as an understudy. Producers would say “Glenn is really good at understudying difficult people”. It wasn’t an ego thing for me either, I was happy not to go on because I considered that I was still learning my trade. I didn’t want to be a star, I never ever thought I would or could be a big name. I never thought I would be capable of that. I was understudying Craig MacLachlan, Shane Richie, Phillip Schofield – lots of stars who had come into the theatre and whom the producers thought would be difficult, but actually were lovely. I was the person they always called to understudy, I was just too reliable. Always calm. I had no great career ambitions to be the star, I was just happy to be working. 

 

Can you remember when you first heard or saw Jesus Christ Superstar?

I definitely remember the first time I saw it, and I was bored out of my head, watching the film in the 1970s. It was when it started doing the cinema rounds, and my school had a film club. I must have been nine or ten years old. All I remember was getting to ‘Hosana’ after the first thirty five or forty minutes and asking to go home. So that’s when I first saw Superstar. I came to know various songs from it but my taste veered more towards shows like Chess, I liked things that were big orchestral pieces. Superstar felt a little bit raw. I didn’t want to do that raw edged singing, I wanted to be more like the singer Tommy Körburg became. His voice became my dream to attain. His smooth, open throated, well trained sound. I was thinking my singing was a bit too rough in comparison. I didn’t sound like Michael Ball. I was a totally different style. Although I don’t like holding notes for no reason, I still sing now like a phrase of speech as best I can. So because of this Jesus Christ Superstar wasn’t on my radar. It was a throwback to where I was trying to get away from vocally. I never thought of myself as Jesus. I am Judas. My personality is fairly political, and fairly challenging. My vocal style is more akin to Judas than Jesus. I have always had long hair, so that is why I ended up playing Jesus.

When did you first play Jesus in the theatre?

It was the Lyceum production in 1996. I had had a bleed in my vocal chords and couldn’t audition for Jesus. I have a natural varicose vein in my vocal chords and it has bled twice in my life, one of which was twenty years ago when they were auditioning for that show. It hasn’t happened since thankfully. They didn’t want me to audition for Judas, because I was too like Jesus with my long hair. So, they offered me the understudy to Jesus and also the role of Simon Zealotes so I could be in the show, because that is what I did. That’s when I really got to know the show. When the auditions were coming up, I started to listen to an album with John Farnham. He sang the global hit ‘The Voice’ back in the 1980s. He’s like Australia’s Cliff Richard to a degree. His vocal ability is unbelievably phenomenal. I listened to his vocal on an Australian cast album of Superstar. He clearly was singing it and not acting it, feeling the pain of it, but I have never heard a voice like it. Even today nobody globally has that ability that John Farnham has, I don’t think. So I was enthralled by this recording. So when I started to look at the text of Gethsemane, and the structure of the song, I started to think that it was a phenomenon. Quite possibly the best emotional progression in a song I had ever seen. At that time I was very much into my acting, I wanted to be in plays and television drama, and I was also writing. So I was very much into the phrasing, how the words sat in the music. I was very much into that thought process. I thought Gethsemane was the greatest blend of top end singing with the deepest introspection in the lyric, passion, heartbreak, love, fear... I had never seen a song like it. Ever. I still haven’t. So from the moment I sat and bothered to listen, studied what Gethsemane is, I was desperate to play it.

 

A Broadway Playbill with Glenn as Jesus (2000)

You eventually took over from Steve Balsamo who was playing Jesus in that 1996 Lyceum production didn’t you?

Steve was fantastic in the role. A beautiful voice and a great guy. He was a joy to cover and to know, a lovely fella. He stayed for a year, then he got a record deal with Sony and left. But then the producers didn’t want to give me the role of Jesus permanently. I was too useful as the understudy, so they auditioned for weeks and weeks to find a replacement Jesus. But they struggled to find the right person. They reluctantly said would I go and audition for it. So even after playing the role at the Lyceum, getting good reviews for doing it too, they wouldn’t give it to me. A producer named Kevin Wallace had just taken over at the Really Useful theatre company, running it for Andrew Lloyd Webber. On the day he came over for his final interview for the job, Andrew Lloyd Webber was running late so they said to Kevin, go and see Jesus Christ Superstar because that has a performance this afternoon. I was playing Jesus at that matinee, and he thought I was the Jesus, not the understudy. So at the interview he apparently said, “I saw your Jesus today”. And they said “Oh yeah, Steve’s great!” So Kevin told him he hadn’t seen Steve, he saw a guy with curly hair. “Oh yeah you saw the understudy” came the reply. And from that moment on Kevin became my champion, he told them he could not imagine anybody else playing the role. And although he loved Steve’s performance, I was then his Jesus. That was it for Kevin. He started to push for me, and that is when everyone else at Really Useful started to consider that I could be Jesus in my own right in the show. Even so they made me go through a long audition process, there was no way they were comfortable giving it to me for some reason. But when they did, I didn’t miss a show for the nine months. I played it until the show closed. 

That season in London at the Lyceum then led to the television movie, and then a run on Broadway. You must have been super excited about these developments?

Well you say that. It’s hard to speak about that time without sounding like an ungrateful idiot. But I have to be honest and say how I was thinking and felt at that time. The truth is I desperately wanted to do the film, but I didn’t want to go to Broadway. I gladly auditioned for the movie. But then again so did everyone else. Steve auditioned for it, and so did anyone else who had ever played it or understudied it. Even some Hollywood people were interested, and some very well known singers in musical theatre. I got it - not because of my voice by a long way – but because the director Gale Edwards said I looked as though I was thinking what I was saying. I was not just singing it, I was thinking about what I was saying, playing the text. But when it came to the offer of going to Broadway I really didn’t want to do it in New York. It was for two reasons. The first was that I had already played it for nine months in London, then made the film. The second was that I was also getting recalls for roles in television dramas at the BBC. The phone was starting to ring with acting auditions. I was getting closer and closer in that world. Refining my style for television castings. I could feel I was getting very close to being cast for something major on television. And getting better at the audition process as well. Because acting it one thing, but auditions are a whole different ball game. It’s like an apple and an orange. The disciplines are so different. I have always been terrible at auditioning. I’ve never had any complaints about when I have worked, it has always been auditioning that has been my nemesis. But I could feel this television world getting closer. I got several recalls to play a bad guy in Coronation Street. The guy who eventually did it was a bit older than me. But that is what I wanted to do. Develop my screen acting career. 

My agent at the time said about Broadway, “You have to go, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime.” I kept saying ‘It’s just another theatre in another town. It’s like going on tour.’. I know lots of people have their ultimate goal of singing on Broadway, but I didn’t have much respect for it. My ultimate ambition is to be a writer, it still is. That’s my dream. So I just turned down the offer of playing Jesus on Broadway. I wanted to get the television work, which would keep me in the UK and able to carry on working with the people I was working with. My agent simply said “I can’t represent you if you don’t go, because I think you are throwing away a great opportunity.” I thought the opposite. I thought I was missing a great opportunity here with the television castings. But eventually I listened to my agent and accepted the role on Broadway. I had had record deals writing for other artists, but was on the cusp of a better one, writing music that I really wanted to write, not focussed on getting into the charts. So I felt Broadway just got in the way of all this other stuff. Lo and behold, when I came back two and half years later, all the people who had understudied me before I left were on television, and I had missed that boat. At that time there was space in the industry for people to get their first shot on TV. Everything has a knock on effect. When there is a recession, Hollywood names come over here to work, which means our own actors are pushed further down the casting process and it’s harder to get a foot in that lucrative door. But right at that moment, things were good and young actors could get on that ladder. And I missed it. I could name ten names at least I worked with before America who were understudies or in the ensemble who made the step up into television whilst I was away. And I didn’t.

There must have been some joys in playing Broadway though?

Oh yes, when I eventually got there. I had an amazing time. It was a life changing experience. It was an incredible environment and an amazing industry. It just wasn’t what I wanted to do before I got there.

Superstar is bigger as a show in the US then it is here back at home I think.

I don’t quite know. It is a huge industry out there. For everything: film, TV and theatre. 

 

Glenn as The Man in Whistle Down The Wind

Did you worry about being typecast as ‘that Jesus guy’?

I did a bit. I did Whistle Down The Wind as the guy who is mistaken for Jesus. Then I did a character called Jesus in a film called Two Days, Nine Lives. A Simon Monjack film. He is actually a drug addict musician who looks like Jesus. He doesn’t speak so the other people in rehab call him Jesus. He gets a big speech at the end where he shakes everyone’s foundations, and their belief in life, right at the end of the movie. At the time I was incredibly grateful that people were saying “Is Glenn available?” rather than me having to audition for roles. So on that level I was just very grateful. But I was absolutely stuck in that mould. I couldn’t get out of it and probably am still not out of it either. Basically because I have always had long hair. I have it cut in an instant if the role demands it, like my time in Jersey Boys. But I have always naturally had long hair, and people would say I looked like a surfer dude. But after my time in Superstar, they would say “Why do you always look like Jesus?” They assumed I kept it long to remind people I had played Jesus but in fact I have kept my hair long all my life. It has been a bit of a pain in the neck the way I am perceived because of the hair.

Ted Neeley [the 1973 film Jesus) is 75 years old now and still playing Jesus on stage. Will there come a time for you when you say ‘no more Superstar’? 

There’s a thing. I did actually say that and it took a lot of persuasion to get me to do it again by Bill Kenwright about four years ago. Bill said to me “We start rehearsals on Monday and we still haven’t cast a Jesus. I want you to do it.” I had been saying no to Bill for six months. He threatened to cancel the tour, he also said he had already been advertising me to do it! That’s what made me do it for him. Also I have huge respect for Bill Kenwright. He is an amazing person who has huge loyalty. He employs more people than probably any other producer. I have absolute respect, admiration and loyalty to Bill. I’ve played Jesus for him twice now. Would I do it again for someone else? Yes. If they would allow me to do it the way I do it. I have no desire to re-define my singing style. I’ve tried various approaches and the way I do it sits best in the piece for me. I’m not bored of it in the slightest. There are twenty minutes of that show that are unsurpassable. From the beginning of Act Two with ‘The Last Supper’ to the end of ‘Gethsemane’ is by far and away the toughest singing and emotionally resonant writing I have ever found anywhere in the world of musical theatre. I would not be doing my job properly if I found boredom at that level of performing. 

Having seen you in both the Really Useful production and Bill Kenwright’s tour, I think you are quite brilliant in the role.

Thank you, it means a lot. Sometimes I come off stage and I literally can’t speak. It is so all encompassing, and taxing at every level. I have never paced myself worrying about the next show. I have been blessed with many good people in my life who have taught me good technique so I sustain my performance.

 

Glenn appeared in the London production of Chess 

On that subject, how do you go about sustaining your voice for what is a marathon of a singing part as Jesus.

I am incredibly focussed on looking after my voice. There was a guy I met years and years ago called Philip Griffiths, who is the longest serving person in a show in theatre history in The Phantom of the Opera. He is a singer, a tenor. I did Chess with him in London. At the time I was understudying Anthony Head, the brother of Murray Head who had originated the role of the American, Frederick Trumper. An incredibly hard role to sing. Very raucous, very throaty. Lots of top C's, D’s and E’s. I was in the rock choir on stage and Philip was in the classical choir. Then one day Philip just turned to me as said “Glenn, do you ever find that when you get home at night your voice feels free-er. You are able to do things much more easily vocally at night than you do in the show?” I said yes, quite often. Philip said “It’s because you are not warm enough, or hydrated enough.” He then told me a little technique to give myself strength, longevity and ease. If I hadn’t met Philip Griffiths I would never have done what I have subsequently done sustaining wise. The tour I did a few years ago for Bill was a nine month tour and I didn’t have a day off, didn’t miss a show. I actually did miss two shows but that was because I had a cyst in my kneecaps and couldn’t straiten my legs. But I never missed a show because of any vocal problems. That is down to Philip. For him to turn around to me and have the courage to say that to me, and I was only 23 at the time, and the kindness to pass on that wisdom was such a lovely thing. Philip is a hugely popular man. I doubt he has ever missed a performance of Phantom of the Opera because of vocal issues in all those years he has been in it either. His advice was wake up in the morning and don’t do anything for two hours. Drink tea, drink water and warm your body up naturally. Just potter about. Then after hydrating yourself, hum for about twenty or thirty minutes. To be properly hydrated you have to pee completely pure, your urine has to be completely clear. That is the only time your voice is hydrated. Because your vocal chords are the least useful thing in your body, all they can do is make a sound, so they are the first thing your body dehydrates if you have dehydration and they last thing that they hydrate. So when you are completely hydrated, you have to warm up for two hours. Basic scales, octave leaps, humming. Then shut up for the rest of the day. Do a personal warm up before the show, then your show warm up. Keep your voice warm until your start your performance. That is a full days work to prepare vocally for an evening show. I do that every time that I sing. By the time I open my mouth on stage I have been warming up for about four or five hours. My voice is stronger and younger sounding now than when I started out. My voice hasn’t aged. People say to me ‘It’s such a blessing’ but it isn’t. It is the combined wisdom of Mary Hammond and Philip Griffiths. Listening and learning from them and soaking up their experience. Most people warm up for fifteen minutes before a show. I warm up during the morning, the afternoon and before the show. Then do the actual show. It becomes a lifestyle and by the end of a job I am very happy not to have to do it.

 

Glenn (third from left) as one of Thew Jersey Boys 

 

Glenn as Che in Evita 

 The Case of the Frightened Lady

Looking ahead instead of back, what ambitions do you still have for your career?

Again I find it difficult not to be honest, I don’t get the kind of work I used to get. I did a political campaign in 2002 to legalise stem cell therapies, and that made me unpopular within my industry among producers. I became a political activist, I became someone with an opinion. As a result my work pretty much dried up quite considerably. It was only producers of great character like Bill Kenwright who said “I agree with you, I want you working for me.” Everything I said in those cloning debates in 2002 was correct. I still stand by it. I had a book coming out and I had to stop the book being published because I went into Jersey Boys and I couldn’t do the both at the same time. I probably won’t ever publish the book now. It shows the truth that was spoken and all of the lies. Who lied, how they lied and why they lied. It is though something I am incredibly proud of. We in this country legalised stem cell therapy research and reproductive human cloning, which are the same thing. It’s just what you decide to do when you have cloned an embryo. Either let it grow into a human being or end that development and harvest the cells. It is still the same technology that does it, the cloning is still the same. Although I took a lot of negative press about it, we as a country at Imperial College get hundreds of millions of pounds worth of Euro grants to develop the research. So do many other colleges, universities and institutes, we lead the world in some of this cloning technology. People are being treated and cured today because the campaign I was vilified for, forced the British government to do exactly as I wanted it to at the beginning when we started the campaign. That was to address the licensing process. They had said they would not repeal the ban and set up a licensing process for three to five years. They felt it was too early in the technology. That campaign succeeded because of aurguments put forward by me and others around the world, but primarily here by me because I was the only person who was speaking positively for it because it was so controversial. It caused them to set up the licensing process just eight months later. That campaign brought forward the research into stem cell therapies, an avenue we now lead the world in and that cures people. We brought it all forward by three to five years. I’m incredibly proud of that. But it has caused no end of trouble for my acting career. I love the job and do have ambitions to work more, but I am just not seen for jobs any more. One day these producers who don’t work with me will look back at what I did, what I said and the benefits that have come from it, and maybe they will have a pang of ‘We were a little too harsh on him’. But they don’t work with me anymore and that is the truth of it. My ambition is in writing as it was when I first started. 

I wrote a musical, a piece of music with a story, which had a producer very interested in putting it on. He had an option on it for a couple of years and we were going to do a workshop of it. He just thought it was too controversial, just because of the subject matter that was addressed in it. So he said, “It’s just not the right time to put it on, do you have anything else? Would you change the story perhaps?” I said no, I wasn’t changing the story but I’ll write something else. At the end of last year I finished another piece which is an historic British story, which relates to two other countries. It’s a lovely story with some great music and the story has never been done before. It’s something that happened in history which is hardly known. I’m just about to start to play that to some producers to see if something can happen with it.  I will work as an actor, and I want to work as an actor. I can never be accused of not doing my best work. Even if people don’t think I am very good, I always do the absolute best work I can do. You will never find me messing around, or having a joke upstage. I work as hard as I possibly can because that it what I enjoy doing. I don’t enjoy working half heartedly and taking the mickey out of something because I remember how hard it was when I first started. My parents were very poor, we couldn’t go to the theatre when I was growing up. I went to a couple of pantomimes and that was it. Going to see West End shows was not an option for us, we just didn’t have the money for the tickets and to travel down to London. So you will never find me messing about on the stage because I know there is somebody who has saved all year to see a show. There is nothing that makes me more frustrated with companies than people who don’t appreciate what they do, that right of entitlement shall we say. Performers who think they won’t put in the effort because they think they are too talented and better than the job they are doing. That aspect of my industry is like a cancer.

I’m going to finish with a random question Glenn. If you could take one album to a desert island, which one would it be and why?

Now there’s a question. Just one? Music has been the mainstay of my entire life. There are two albums I could survive with if I had to. One is Bat Out Of Hell by Meatloaf, because it started me singing and would keep me singing. The second would have to be either of the albums by London Grammar. They are just an incredible band. I love to listen to female singers because I am not in any way in competition with them like I might be with a male voice. The woman from London Grammar, Hannah Reid, has one of the most beautiful voices and the band are so understated, the music so exquisite. So an album by London Grammar would be perfect. Preferably everything they have ever written really. 

Glenn thank you for taking the time to talk to me. You are a class act and I hope we see you back on stage or screen very soon. 

So do I. Thanks Rob, it means a lot.

The official Glenn Carter website can be found at www.glenn-carter.com