The greatest show(man) on earth

Musical mastermind Hal Willner is known for his audacity and sense of adventure. His latest escapade is to assemble casts of the great, the good and the sublime and bring them together to pay tribute to the work of Leonard Cohen. As the show prepares to take to the stage in Dublin, he tells Jim Carroll about bringing Antony, Laurie Anderson, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Lou Reed, Gavin Friday and the Handsome Family along for the ride

THE circus is coming to town. Next month, an all-star cast of singers will roll into Dublin to pay their respects to the songs of Leonard Cohen. Came So Far for Beauty casts Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Antony, Nick Cave, Gavin Friday, Jarvis Cocker, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Beth Orton, the Handsome Family and many more as the interpreters of Lenny's songbook.

But every circus needs a ringmaster and, in this instance, the man in the metaphorical top-hat and waistcoat is Hal Willner. One of the most adventurous and audacious music men in the game, Willner is a producer who has been putting together albums and live shows since 1981.

No one else has done as much as Willner in the multi-artist bailiwick. Be it tribute shows to Harry Smith, Randy Newman and Tim Buckley or albums based on the work of Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Edgar Allan Poe, Kurt Weill, Nino Rota's scores for Frederico Fellini's films or the music from Walt Disney's classic animated flicks, Willner is the wizard who makes it all fit together.

He's also amassed plenty of other production credits (albums by Lou Reed, Marianne Faithful, William Burroughs and many others bear his touch), released a wonderful album, Whoops, I'm an Indian!, for Howie B's Pussyfoot label, and has had a long and fruitful relationship with film-maker Robert Altman.

What's so remarkable about Willner is both the ease with which he moves from one genre to the next and the empathy he has with the musicians he works with. Pop, jazz, folk and the avant-garde are all common currency in Willner's world. Very few producers are so sure-footed or as comfortable with so many changes of scenery.

Willner's love affair with music goes back to a radio station which enthralled him as a kid growing up in Philadelphia.

"In America," he recalls, "there was a magical period for radio in the early FM days where you had DJs along the lines of John Peel who operated with no playlists and this curiosity about music. During the day you'd hear all the commercial rock stuff which was doing well and, at night, it would really get adventurous with Hendrix moving into Captain Beefheart and blues and a little bit of Can at midnight. They'd also play all these great vintage radio shows like The Goon Show or Orson Welles. Then it would get really interesting with Ornette Coleman or John Coltrane or Sun Ra."

It wasn't just those nights spent listening to radio station WDAS which left a mark on the youngster. "All the icons of that time were experimenting. Hendrix was exploring all manner of stuff, The Beatles were messing about with avant-garde loops and tapes, the Stones were hanging out with some really wild cats, and you had people like the MC5 coming up.

"Rock acts would have non-rock acts opening for them. [ promoter] Bill Graham used to put on bills with Led Zeppelin with the Bonzo Dog Band or Patti LaBelle with The Who. Comedy and humour had a part to play, too. They even make films now about that period in the movie business when the studios handed control over to these lunatics. It was a great time."

It's a big contrast with how the music industry operates today.

"The music industry now is terrible," Willner says bluntly. "Music used to be a meal with starters, entrees and desserts, which would be the cool, fun stuff. You'd have some vegetables, which you would hate, but they were good for you. It was all about balance. Now, it's all about one type of music - nonstop ice-cream!"

When it comes to plotting his albums, Willner has always operated on instinct. "I would love to tell you that all these records are pre-conceived and are part of a big plan, but they're not. These records come from a moment of inspiration. Take the Nino Rota record. I loved his Fellini soundtracks, so I thought it would be so cool to take his movie music a step further. I thought that downtown New York at that time suited Rota's music, so I brought all these people like Debbie Harry to work on this weird concept."

Willner thought more production work would come his way as a result. "I mean, I had worked with all these artists." Instead, he kept getting asked for more ideas.

"I got really upset about how Thelonious Monk was being remembered after he passed away, so I wanted to make a record of his music. He never fitted right into the jazz world. I wasn't interested in the early punk stuff because the energy of people like Monk and Roland Kirk, to me, was punk, and they were exquisite musicians. So I did that record and, behold, I had a series!"

A tribute to Kurt Weill followed before Willner decided the time had come for some fun. "One day, I looked up on my shelf and I saw this Disney box-set. A-ha, I thought, this is what I will do next." What came to pass was Stay Awake, a Willner-helmed tribute to the music of Disney's classic animated films.

"That was the peak. I went completely over the top on that one. It was a pure Cecil B DeMille production. I decided to live out all my fantasies. I called in Yma Sumac, Sun Ra, Tom Waits, Los Lobos, The Replacements and Sinéad O'Connor. It was crazy, I just went for it."

Charles Mingus received the Willner treatment in 1992 (Weird Nightmare), but it was time to draw a line in the sand for a spell. "I stopped because the concept of the tribute record, which I never considered these to be, got out of control and I felt it was time to move on. I couldn't get artists because they were doing a Cliff Richard tribute."

But, inevitably, he returned to the multi-artist album game: Rogue's Gallery, a newly released collection of sea shanties and pirate ballads sung by Bono, Lou Reed, Antony, Bryan Ferry, Nick Cave, Gavin Friday and a couple of dozen other acts.

A chat on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest between director Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp about how cool it would be to do an album of sea shanties led to Willner getting a call to know if he wanted the gig. Willner was ready when this pirate ship came a-calling.

"One night on WDAS when I was 14 or 15, there was a whole show of sea shanties and I never forgot the version of Blood Red Roses that was played. When Anti Records approached me about this project, I could have sang that song to them. It was the first punk rock."

Willner recorded the album in Seattle, London, Dublin, Los Angeles and New York. "We'd arrive into town and just start making phone calls to see who was around. In New York, we did eight artists in one day and half of them only got a call that morning. Jim White from The Dirty Three was drumming and he suggested White Magic. We called them, gave them a song, they rehearsed it for an hour and it was great.

"We had certain ideas and songs and singers confirmed before we started. We knew Bryan Ferry and Nick Cave were on board. We knew we had Bill Frisell and Robin Holcomb were in Seattle, but it grew from that. We went there with two songs in mind and we left with eight. The Akron/Family just happened to be in town, Baby Gramps was off tour and it went on from there."

Bono was one of those who sailed with Willner on this pirate voyage.

"Everyone knows history is written by victors," says the U2 singer. "The same with music. Hal's cleverness is to use the victors to tell the story of the vanquished, the losers, the people who could've, should've. The songs taximen should've been humming, but they never even got on late night radio."

The singer calls Willner "a woodsman with a metal detector, a pop stowaway who survived years on unfriendly seas by clinging onto bits of wreckage. He's a pirate who became one of the great curators of lost treasure, a true gentleman with the voice of a crank caller."

Willner himself believes the record owes a lot to spontaneity in the studio. "The seat-of-your-pants approach suited this album because that's how so many of these songs were done originally. The songs were made up as the sailors sang them. We ended up with way more songs than we could use and there were loads of artists I just didn't get to so you can expect another volume."

When it comes to live shows, however, Willner has learned the value of planning. "The first shows I did, like the Harry Smith ones, were marathons and out of control. After many years of trial and error, I think I've finally figured out how to do it live. Before anyone is called, make a script. Go through every song that artist has written. Do the research. Know what can be done and what should be left out.

"Once you have two or three CDs of songs, you can start calling people. You'll know who is perfect for what song or who can bring what you need to another song. Sometimes, someone will just call me on the right day or I'll run into them on the street and you just know they're right."

Having a script means Willner can prepare for any eventuality. Came So Far for Beauty has been staged already in New York, Sydney and Brighton, but there have been cast changes along the way. "The script means the show can continue even when, like in Dublin, some of the artists can't join us, like the Wainwrights and McGarrigles and Linda Thompson. We can work around that by hiring other interesting people."

The live shows, he believes, are about the songs rather than the singers.

"The tribute thing goes out the window in an odd way. Whether it's respectful to the composer or not, we feel that it is the body of work which merits this kind of look. We try to do something really great with it. It's not about whether it is respectful or not, it's 'here's the body of work, let's do something cool with it'."

Nevertheless, Willner says that Leonard Cohen is happy with this particular show. "Leonard has been incredibly graceful. When we did the first one, he said we were keeping his music alive in a different way." But he has yet to see the show. "It's funny, but none of the living composers we have done have witnessed the shows in person," says Willner. "I think Leonard would love it. You have to see the whole three-hour extravaganza to get what we're doing. It's the ultimate vaudeville show."

Came So Far for Beauty is at the Point, Dublin on October 4th and 5th. The documentary Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man plays at the Stranger Than Fiction festival.