www.JohnWaters.info Glass Onion History

JOHN WATERS IMAGINE Sydney Morning Herald By TONY SQUIRES. 28th June 1993

A few years ago, John Waters imagined "a show in a suitcase". After carting Looking Through A Glass Onion, the music and musings of John Lennon, across the country, he is in need of slightly larger baggage. Waters and his co-writer and keyboard player, Stewart D' Arietta, return to Sydney tonight with the show that began at the Tilbury Hotel - a cabaret venue so intimate that the punters in the back row can count the beads of perspiration gathering on a performer's brow.

Glass Onion has put on some weight during the tour, with the addition of three more musicians, building to a show that should fill the larger environs of the Seymour Centre. But Waters, who wears his fame and 45 years with ease, maintains that the showcase for the fab former Beatle's contribution to the planet remains close to the original production. He has simply tinkered with the mechanics and fattened up the sound while traipsing about Australia. Waters was determined to give the bigger show a send-off in his home town before heading overseas. The British producer Michael White is taking Glass Onion to London's West End in September, with the approval of Yoko Ono.

It's not surprising then, that Waters seems a content man, folded into a canvas chair at his dining room table. He has just returned from short seasons in Brisbane, Melbourne and the capital of clubland, Twin Towns at Tweed Heads. Unlike his show, Waters has gained no weight on tour and looks horribly healthy. The only concession to age is a close-cropped skull cap of grey hair. "Twin Towns is absolutely ... well, it's a charming place," Waters offers, drawing a bit harder on the thinly-rolled cigarette. John Lennon sometimes misled the media, too. "It's clubland. It's not really geared for our show."

The experience did, however, convince Waters that the show could hold people, no matter how difficult the room. Directly in his line of vision from the stage at Twin Towns was a bar "lit up like Disneyland", with people hustling to and fro. But the noise died and the stage became the focus, with no-one yelling for Waters to do one of Ringo's tunes. If Waters had been heckled, he would have ignored what passes for audience wit. He devised the show with no concession to audience interaction. While the only negative critical responses during Glass Onion 's first Sydney season related to Waters not being open enough to his audience, he sees it as part of the style.

"It's odd, because the chat between songs is quite intimate and casual and is meant to be personal-sounding, but it's a detachment. When I envisaged the show, I imagined what I suppose is rather a stupid thing: a live show that actually looks like television. It cuts from one thing to another. Like you've turned on the telly and it's John Lennon in bits and pieces of interviews saying things. That's why I don't expect, encourage or need the audience to feel that they can come back at me at all. It's not like a stand-up act.

Lennon's introspection was very public."

While he could at times be completely closed off, Waters believes Lennon's self-image was of one who explored himself publicly through his songs and statements. "When journalists approached him, most of the time he would shock by being completely out there with everything he'd done: 'You want to know what drugs I've had so far today. Well, I had a line of coke at 10 this morning, shot up some heroin at lunchtime and I've just had a joint.' So journalists say, 'I can't dig up any dirt; he's just given it all'."

Waters isn't obsessed by Lennon and the show isn't one that "throws rose petals at his feet". It was a business decision by a man who has had almost constant work and who found himself in a quiet period. He wanted to take control.

After the Tilbury season, Waters began work in the concert version of Jesus Christ Superstar and D' Arrietta took the Glass Onion script to New York, the city the pair regard as Lennon's true home. While there was muted interest from off-Broadway producers, it was Michael White, visiting from London, who grabbed the script enthusiastically. Should the London season be a winner, it is likely Waters will have his wish of performing the show in New York. After years of working for other people, Waters is also revelling in the role of producer.

"In some ways, I'm getting to be a bit of a power junkie. Stewie and I own the production company, so we've made a few mistakes, learning by 'em as we go along, and I like this. I have a lot more respect for producers in general, because I know just how much it costs in blood and sweat and actual money to get something on."

Waters let go of the power to take on the lead role in a telemovie that may become a series. Singapore Sling, set in South-East Asia, is the story of an intelligent private investigator and sees Waters leaving the hunky action stuff to a handsome blond German actor 10 years his junior.

The Eastern connection crosses the Lennon path, however, with Waters learning some Mandarin and Oriental ways.

"I'd always been interested in things Oriental, ever since I was a professional hippie in Hair. Most of my influences of a philosophical nature have been of the Oriental type. I don't keep a statue of Buddha and burn incense in my own house, but I have read a lot and that's one of the things that attracted me to that character - also, it's a parallel with Lennon."

Waters likes the fact that Lennon punched holes in pomposity, even taking some of the magic out of the mystic East. He drops into a Liverpudlian accent to deliver a Lennon line about how the Maharishi's desire to bed women had been a problem - although it meant he could relate to him a lot better. "It's always just bringing everything back down to a nice level we can all to relate to," Waters said. "So he (the Maharishi) is not Buddha in an earthly guise; he's just a guy who knows a lot about Oriental philosophy - but he's got a dick the same as the rest of us."

John Waters has been a feature of the Australian entertainment business for 25 years. The 19-year-old who arrived here hadn't planned a career, but had simply handed over Pound 10 for the trip, thinking he could return in a couple of years.

He stayed, growing with a film and television industry that was doing likewise in the '70s, taking the most of his opportunities.

"It's ironic, because we'll be considered a bunch of boys from Down Under bringing a show about John Lennon to London. I rather like that. I could say, 'well, actually, I'm English', but that won't be the perception. In a way, it takes an edge off our nervousness, because we expect a slightly cynical reaction. But I don't expect that to last long, because we're nice guys and, hey, we do a good show."

Playing together, staying together by: Ken Longworth 17th May 2001 Newcastle Herald

Stewart D'Arrietta and John Waters met when they were working in a show about John Lennon. And they were in accord about one thing: it wasn't a particularly good show. It certainly doesn't appear to have been memorable. D'Arrietta refers to it as Imagine, while Waters' CV lists it as A Day in the Death of John Lennon. Anyway, it was 1985 and D'Arrietta, an accomplished keyboards man, had been suggested for the Lennon show's band by a friend.

Waters was playing Lennon but he wasn't happy. `The problem was it was very theatre. There wasn't enough of the real John Lennon in it,' said D'Arrietta.

Waters and D'Arrietta became mates and exchanged thoughts about what a satisfying show on John Lennon should have: the songs, of course, and words which put the music in the context of his life and background. It was to be seven years, however, before they had the opportunity to put their ideas into practice. Late in 1992, John Waters had an offer from the Tilbury Hotel in Sydney's Woolloomooloo to stage a show in the pub's small cabaret room. The catch was that the show had to be ready to go on within eight weeks. Waters contacted D'Arrietta and they got together.

`John would be writing and I would be piecing the music together on a multitrack.' The show steadily progressed, as fragments of songs were interlaced with dialogue written by Waters but in the idiom of John Lennon. No attempt was made with the music to emulate the sound of original recordings. It was the exciting essence of Lennon they wanted, not a cut-and-paste biography.

In December 92 their show, Looking Through A Glass Onion, began a five-week run. Waters, playing guitar, was Lennon. D'Arrietta, on keyboards, provided back-up vocals.

Looking Through a Glass Onion was an instant success. The two men began planning a larger-scale production, after Waters fulfilled an obligation to appear in a touring Jesus Christ Superstar.

Waters also had a dream of winning a go-ahead from Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, to take Looking Through a Glass Onion to New York. So D'Arrietta headed to New York in the hope of making contact with Ono. `I spent a month trying to find who was the lawyer for Yoko,' he said. `In the end, she virtually gave us a no. However, while I was there I met British producer Michael White who knew Yoko and thought things could be worked out. In the meantime, he offered us a London season.'

In preparation for the London gig, the show was restaged at a larger Sydney venue, giving D'Arrietta the opportunity to add two electric guitar players and a drummer to the backing.

The London season was a disaster, with the tabloids hammering the audacity of a `couple of colonials' for daring to do a show about a British icon. `It was the same as the reception Mick Jagger got in Australia when he played Ned Kelly,' D'Arrietta said. So it was back to Australia and a 1994 tour which showed that, in their homeland at least, they were honoured for their achievement.

D'Arrietta toured with the show again in 1996, this time with Jeremy Stanford as Lennon, and now he and Waters have it on the road again. Since the last outing, Looking Through a Glass Onion has gained more musicians, a string group known as the Dr Winston O'Boogie Quartet. `I've always wanted to use strings in the show. You expand yourself musically working with strings,' D'Arrietta explains. `One problem was to find string players who can work with groove. In a typical Sydney Symphony Orchestra situation, there is no camaraderie between string players.' Asked whether he had any more plans for augmenting the show's music, D'Arrietta laughed. `Short of the King Family being the backing choir, this is its final version.'

Waters and D'Arrietta still hanker to take Looking Through a Glass Onion to New York. `Half the reason for getting it up again was to make another approach to Yoko about doing it there,' D'Arrietta revealed.

While Looking Through a Glass Onion began the pair's artistic collaboration, it hasn't been their only project.

They followed it in 1995 with ReUnion, a musical about a '70s rock performer that won praise for D'Arrietta's songs but otherwise sank like a stone. Waters and D'Arrietta had put their own money into it in an attempt to maintain artistic control. They lost a mint. More successful was their next show, Cafe Brel, with John Waters singing the songs of Belgian performer Jacques Brel. While the intimate 1998 work was a hit, it caused problems for D'Arrietta in the rehearsal phase. `All the lyrics are in French and I can't speak the language for love or money, even though I once lived with a French girl for six months. So initially I found it difficult knowing where we were in the songs.'

Stewart D'Arrietta has rarely been at sea musically since he had his first piano lesson at St John's College, Campbelltown, a boarding school run by the Good Samaritan nuns (`A misnomer if ever there was one'). His piano teacher, Sister Anthony, though paralysed down one side as a result of a stroke, was nonetheless adept at bringing down a steel-edged ruler on her pupil's thumbs when he played a wrong note. D'Arrietta noted that, apart from that, `she was a very dear lady'.

It was the late 1960s and D'Arrietta soon found rock'n'roll. At age 14, he was threatened with expulsion when he was caught playing rock. But the storm blew over and he was soon playing, as a schoolboy, in a band. From school, he went to Sydney University to do an arts-law degree. But he never practised law, deciding he wanted to be a musician `and give myself a secure future', he laughs.

Bands, particularly Big Storm, backing groups and piano bars led to his meeting with John Waters.

Waters, though, hasn't been his only collaborator. He's written a ballet score, Intrusions, for the One Extra Dance Co, several film scores, notably Blood Oath, and he's working with playwright Justin Fleming on Devil's Tango, a musical about a love from hell.

A fan of singer-composer Tom Waits, he has developed a one-man show that uses Waits' songs. D'Arrietta is trying to persuade Newcastle Civic Theatre director Malcolm Calder to let him premiere the cleverly titled Tom Waits for No Man on the theatre's stage. He was `knocked out' by the atmosphere of the Civic stage when it was used to house performers and audience for a season of Cafe Brel in 1999. Looking Through a Glass Onion plays at the Civic Theatre from tonight until Sunday.

`Glass Onion' a bridge over troubled Waters By: Jason Steger. 16th April 1994. THE SUNDAY AGE

Performing his John Lennon show in Britain had a decisive impact on John Waters. A week after returning from a three-month London season, John Waters junked his previous reservations and became an Australian citizen.

He'd had a trying time. His John Lennon monologue with music, `Looking Through A Glass Onion', had copped a bucketing from some sections of the British press but had also garnered some fulsome praise. Waters is still puzzled by the reception the show received. On opening night his performance as Lennon had had the audience leaping out of their seats. The next day the appearance of the `Evening Standard' took the tint out of the rose-colored glasses. ``It said the show was a worthless pile of shit," said Waters.

Waters hung on for three months, playing to audiences that were ``dry and uptight" and battling to fill the unsuitable Criterion Theatre off the main theatre drag of Shaftesbury Avenue. And there was an unspecified umbrage against someone seen as an Australian actor doing Lennon. ``There was a resentment that I didn't write a play about the Beatles but that I had the gall to present myself in the persona of John Lennon ... The London press had this proprietorial thing about Lennon but they gave him such shit that he had to leave the country."

When Waters discovered that the oath of allegiance to the Queen was no longer a compulsory part of the citizenship ceremony he immediately signed on the dotted line - albeit 25 years after he came here. ``I'm quite happy to swear a form of allegiance to Australia and whatever the Australian values might be. I do feel this is a genuinely egalitarian country ... When I arrived in 1968 it was exciting for me but nevertheless a backward country in many respects. But going back to London you realise that not just Australia but other countries are leaving them behind."

With Waters it's a case of what you see is what you get; there's no affectation or pretence. He doesn't give a damn about the showbiz side of his profession; as one of the producers of `Glass Onion' he's as likely to be counting receipts for T-shirts after the show as sipping champagne. He wants to work and he wants to get involved. He's a strictly roll-your-own bloke rather than a Dunhill devotee. So he makes no bones about wanting to make some money from the show - as he's put almost two years of his life into it he reckons he deserves it.

The show had humble beginnings. Waters had committed himself to a five-week spot at the Tilbury Hotel in Sydney and then had to come up with something to perform. He wanted a show that made use of his showbiz experience: rock singer, screen actor and stage actor. The concept preceded the subject and after considering a piece on the Belgian singer Jaques Brel, he returned to an idea he'd had earlier about Lennon.

``I'd thought of the start, utilising some perfect lyrics that exist to the `Liverpool Lullaby' that not many people here have heard followed by the gunshot and into `I Read The News Today, Oh Boy' (`A Day In The Life'). All this sort of collage of things. I didn't know how it was going to go from there." Convinced that it should alternate between monologue and song, Waters and his partner Stewart D'Arrietta chose songs that they liked, that had some biographical pertinence, and that could be suitably linked.

Waters wrote the show in five days, started putting it together, changed a few things, conferred with D'Arrietta as he put down the backing tracks and finally, only four or five days before opening, started running through the show.

Waters now says he could manage only another six months in the role, which would take him to the end of the current tour. At the end of August, he'll be doing something different, possibly a reprise of his role in the telemovie `Singapore Sling'. But there is still the chance of a stint in New York, a prospect that would have him scampering back for his guitar. It all depends on Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, and whether she gives her permission. He's hopeful because he and D'Arrietta have the perfect man lobbying for them. Michael White, the theatrical impresario who put them on in London, just happens to be the man who took Lennon to the London gallery exhibitng Ono's work and introduced the two.

Waters knows that none of the Beatles has seen the show (``it would be a form of unstated endorsement") but says they all have listened to the CD and thinks it meets with a bit of tacit approval.

Whatever happens, Waters is keen that his days of only performing are over. In the middle of `Glass Onion' he did the national tour of `Jesus Christ Superstar', singing three songs as Pontius Pilate and getting paid handsomely for performing in front of 15,000 people a night. It was relaxing but not fulfilling. He says he has enjoyed producing this `Glass Onion' tour far more. It's the sense of total commitment and involvement. And now he wants to write another show, produce and direct it ... but not perform in it.

`Looking Through A Glass Onion' opens at the Comedy Theatre on Tuesday.

FROM TILBURY TO WEST END By PETER COCHRANE. 20th July 1993. Sydney Morning Herald

John Waters is looking through a glass onion at the West End. The Sydney actor will soon join Craig McLachlan (Grease ) and Roanne Monte (Miss Saigon)in London's theatreland. But unlike McLachlan and Monte, Waters is to star in his own vehicle, Looking Through a Glass Onion. It is expected to open at the 600-seat Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly Circus on or about October 19. Waters's evocation of John Lennon is currently playing to good houses at the Seymour Centre after a national tour that included two Melbourne seasons.

The show went on the road after a sell-out season at the tiny Tilbury Hotel, Woolloomooloo, in March last year. Along the way, Waters added a guitarist, bass player and drummer to the line-up.

Adam Spiegel, a representative of the London producer Michael White, arrived in Sydney on Monday to discuss with Waters a "plan of attack" for the show's West End premiere. He saw Glass Onion for the first time last night. Spiegel, son of the Hollywood producer Sam Spiegel (The African Queen, The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia), said that White would take the "whole package" - Waters and the band led by the co-author Stewart D'Arrietta - to London.

Waters describes it as a "show in a suitcase". "It is a cheap show - in terms of weekly overheads - to stage," Spiegel agreed.

He is hopeful that Waters will provide the hit that has so far eluded the Criterion, despite its prime position, since an art-deco refurbishment last year. The theatre is owned by Sally Green, who intended it to be a showcase for fringe productions on the West End. Coincidentally, she also runs the Richmond Theatre, where a struggling young actor and rock singer named John Waters trod the boards before migrating at the age of 19. The Criterion reopened with a transfer from Hampstead Theatre of a show called Making it Better - which didn't - followed by a season of Misery, and is now hosting something called Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens.

White has presented about 150 shows on the West End. His hits include The Rocky Horror Show, Sleuth, A Chorus Line and the Gershwin tribute Crazy for Love, now in its fourth month at the Prince Edward (and bound for Australia next year, with Cameron Mackintosh as producer). "Michael heard about Glass Onion from a friend in New York last year, and came out to see it," Spiegel said yesterday. "He saw something like four performances in the week he was here. When he returned to London and told me that he wanted to stage an Australian show about John Lennon, I thought, 'How good could it be?'"

Adam Spiegel now knows the answer to that question.