GODSPELL began at Carnegie-Mellon University as a directing project for John-Michael Tebelak, who was in the theatre department there. John-Michael, who had thoughts of becoming an Episcopal minister before he decided to become a theatre director, had recently attended an Easter service in Pittsburgh and was struck by the lack of joy and celebration in the service as well as by the personal hostility he felt from some of his fellow churchgoers because of his youth and long hair (it was during the height of the Vietnam War and its accompanying "Generation Gap".) The show was presented at Carnegie, where it included interpolated pop songs and Episcopal hymns set to music written by cast members, as well as the song "By My Side", written by CMU students Jay Hamburger and Peggy Gordon (a member of the cast). Being very well-received, it was presented the following year in New York City at an off-off-Broadway theatre called the Cafe la Mama. This was in February and March of 1971. There it was seen by producers Edgar Lansbury and Joseph Beruh (brought there by former CMU student Charles Haid, who became the associate producer of the show). They became interested in giving the show a commercial production at an off-Broadway theatre. At that time, I was contacted by the producers, who had heard me audition my score for PIPPIN, and I signed on to write music and new lyrics. We retained the song "By My Side" and the rest of the score was written in time for the start of rehearsals on April 11, 1971, except for the song "Learn Your Lessons Well" which was added during rehearsals. Theshow opened May 17, 1971.
"Day By Day" was written in March of 1971 as I hurried to come up with a new score for GODSPELL, the musical I had seen Off-Off-Broadway at Cafe La Mama a few weeks before. It was due to go into rehearsal in April for an Off-Broadway opening in May. Of course I was too young and stupid to know it couldn't be done that fast! The show of course was the brain child of John-Michael Tebelak of the Carnegie Drama Department and he had developed it at school with many of the same students who now comprised the cast. None of us anticipated the overwhelming response to the show and it's amazing success, nor that of "Day By Day," which was a re-setting of an Episcopal hymn first written in the Thirteenth century. I think the song probably caught on so strongly because of its simplicity and repetitiveness. (I remember the publishers telling me before it was recorded that I should write more lyrics to make it more commercial, and I just looked at them helplessly and said, "But that's all the words there are." In any case, "Day By Day" has remained, over a quarter of a century, one of my best known and most often performed songs.
Q: What were your first impressions of the show at the La Mama theater?
A: My first impression of GODSPELL when I saw it at LaMama on Sunday, March 7, 1971, was that it was messy but inspired.
Q: I've read that you wrote the score in five weeks. How did you get inspired to write fourteen songs in that short period of
time? Were there some songs that never made the show?
A: It was partly BECAUSE I had seen the show and therefore understood what it was and what the music needed to do that I
was able to write the score so quickly. The other reason is because so many of the lyrics were derived from the Episcopal
hymnal (and selected by John-Michael), and lyrics take me much longer to write than music. There were no songs written for
the show that were not used. "Learn Your Lessons Well" was written in rehearsal when we felt there was too long a time in Act One without music and because Gilmer didn't have a song.
Q: I also read somewhere that the Prologue was your idea. Is this true? How did you go about choosing which philosophers tobe represented?
A: The Prologue was in the show at LaMama. I simply musicalized it. The specific philosophers and what they said had been selected by John-Michael.
Q: There were some cast changes after La Mama and before Cherry Lane. Was this based on acting or singing ability (or something else)?
A: We made two cast changes, one male and one female, in order to get a slightly stronger singing ensemble. Lamar Alford and Joanne Jonas were added to boost the vocal sound.
Q: Also, even the Cherry Lane cast was not made up of professionals. Did you ever feel like some of them wouldn't be able to carry off the music?
A: It did not worry me at all that the cast was "non-professional" as I wasn't particularly professional myself at that point. Plus, having seen the LaMama show, I knew how good they were.
Q: This is a very broad question: What were your feelings about the musical as a whole? I read somewhere that you never saw
Godspell as a religious musical but more of a show about community.
A: Your information is correct. GODSPELL is essentially a show about the formation of a community, not about religion, at
least in my view, and it was always on that basis that we rehearsed it.
Q:What were your own feelings about the movie? (P.S. I like the old lyrics to "Beautiful City" better.)
A:I'm not a big fan of the movie. I think the director over-cutesified the show and the disciples came off looking like flower children. It lacked the edge and anarchic humor of the show. I don't agree with you about the old lyric for "Beautiful City". It's so sentimental it sort of makes my flesh crawl. I MUCH prefer the rewritten lyric.
I don't know much about Mr. Tebelak, but how would you describe him as a person? He seemed to back an impact on the
era at a very young age. Also in photos, he seems very shy. John-Michael was somewhat shy, as you imagine, but he could also be gregarious and occasionally even grand. Like any genius, he had his own particular and peculiar way of looking at things. He was quite a large man physically and so he could be somewhat overwhelming, but his basic soul was very gentle.
Q: I don't know if you can answer this, but the lyrics to Peggy Gordon's "By My Side" are different in the movie. She sings "By Your Side" in the show while Katie Hanley sings "By My Side". Did she change this and for what reason? Staging?
A: I don't know exactly when or why the "By My Side" lyrics got transposed for the movie. I think they were sung that way in
the show, at least eventually. I don't recall there being a conscious decision to change "my" to "your".
Q: Finally (this is just out of curiosity), my original cast album is dated 1974. It has the original cast from the Cherry Lane Theater, yet 1974, the cast was different and the show was playing at the Promenade. Is this just a release date for Arista
records? I know that Bell Records was publishing the album before them. Also, why isn't the Prologue placed on the original
album? Is it available with the original cast?
A: I have no idea why the date on the album is 1974, since it was recorded in 1971. '74 may be the date Bell Records was
taken over by Arista. The Prologue was not recorded because we wanted to make it an album with pop cross-over potential,
and I felt starting with the long piano-only and essentially theatrical Prologue would hurt that. Whether or not I was right, the album as you know did become a significant cross-over hit. The only recording of the Prologue I know of is on the recent London album on TER Records.
This is an interview conducted by Ashley Leach in 1998.