Free Colored Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz by Greg Lawrence, John Kander, Fred Ebb Page B

said, “Fellas.” We both turned around, and he said, “You will work with me again, won’t you?” Imagine what that meant coming from George Abbott.
    KANDER: Our work routine was established then and hasn’t changed to this day. I come to your house because you like staying home and I like going out, so it’s an ideal arrangement. We usually work in the mornings. When I go home, I may think about the work, but it doesn’t hang over me. You will worry over a piece and that may be because you stay in the same environment.
    EBB: Over the years we’ve written in a number of ways. But usually we go into a room together with an idea and then start improvising.
    KANDER: You have your large grand piano and a little piano. I’ve always much preferred working in a small room at the little piano.
    EBB: It gives us propinquity. I’m usually at the desk next to the piano.
    KANDER: We get up and walk around the room—
    EBB: And we improvise.
    KANDER: If we are working on a show, we talk about the moment that we’re going to musicalize. Then maybe you will have a lyrical phrase and maybe I’ll have a rhythmic idea. From then on, we improvise together. You never hand me a lyric and say, “Set this,” and I never hand you a finished melodic chart and say, “Write a lyric to this.” I would say that 90 percent of all the songs that we have written together we’ve written in the same
room at the same time. Unlike most composers, we usually write the first song in a show first. It’s not necessarily the most important song, but the opening of a show tells us something about what we’re going to do with the score. It gives us a sense of the style in which we will be working. The idea very often comes from you, and it might be the first line or a title.
    In those early days, working on Flora and Cabaret, we would basically improvise the scene before we would sit down to write, just to figure out the real emotions of the characters. Whenever we are writing for one or more characters in a show, we have to figure out what they are feeling, and we will sometimes even improvise in words to discover what they are really saying. I think we’ve always tried to be honest in our work, and if there is anything good about us, I hope it may be that we’re not fake. To this day I don’t think we write grandiose pieces to express something trite or frivolous, and we try not to be complicated just for the sake of being complicated. We have never really spoken about it, and I don’t know if you will agree with this, but I like us most when we’re most simple and direct.
    EBB: I’ve never thought about it, but I suppose I feel that way too. It’s the only way I know how to work. Just go right to it. I hope that our work is a little more than frivolous even when we set out to be frivolous. I like us when we can be funny and simple and touching.
    KANDER: I suspect our favorite songs of those that we have written are probably quite different.
    EBB: For performance, I think “And the World Goes ’Round” from the movie New York , New York is a very satisfactory song. In regard to special material, I think “Ring Them Bells” is very satisfactory.
    KANDER: I agree with that one.
    EBB: For a ballad, “Maybe This Time,” which was used in the movie of Cabaret and then went into the show. You know I like
belt songs, those where you just throw your head back and sing your ass off. You like more balladic pieces like “A Quiet Thing” in Flora and “My Own Space” from The Act . I like the ballads but they would never be my favorites.
    KANDER: The big belt songs that we have written, some of which have done well and which you are fondest of, I sometimes refer to as screamers. Somebody’s out there screaming, “God-dammit, world!”
    EBB: Those get to me. I like to hear other people sing them, and when I was equipped to sing them, I liked singing them myself.
    KANDER: Those songs are generally about Life has kicked the shit out of me,