In the spring of 1998, I was visiting my parents in the States when I caught one of Oprah’s shows on the box. She was spotlighting people who ‘pay it forward’ in their community, using their wealth or their talent to give something back. Bev Holt and I had talked for years off and on about organizing a series of classes or a camp of sorts, where students could come and learn from professionals about acting, singing and performing. I called Bev before Oprah’s show was over, and that very afternoon, Dreamers Workshop was born.
Bev and I conducted the first Dreamers Workshop the following summer at my old stomping ground, Joliet West High School. The week consisted of lessons in performing, voice training, acting activities and practice, practice, practice. The event culminated in a performance from all the students, with Bev and I doing a couple of numbers too. Whatever profits the workshop generated after Bev and I had covered our expenses, we put into a scholarship fund that supported the following year’s students who couldn’t afford the cost. We successfully conducted the classes at Joliet for three years in a row.
We were planning a fourth workshop when the administration for the school at the time made a decision that, in all honesty, hurt me, and that I felt was a serious slap in the face from an establishment I’d tried hard to repay in my promotion of its arts programmes by bringing Dreamers Workshop to it in the first place. After all, this was the school that had turned me on to musical theatre. However, when Bev began her planning for the fourth year, the administrators insisted the workshop pay for the rental of the facilities, the hiring of janitorial and security staff, and a number of other costs that Bev and I thought were unreasonable and just too much.
Instead, Bev and I held a successful workshop at the University of St Francis in Joliet and, the following year, at my old Forensic rivals’ lair, Plainfield High School. Both institutions kindly gave their facilities and support for free. Since Bev and I only ever had our expenses covered, this meant we were able to give more students scholarships, and even cover lunches for participants who needed the extra help.
Application to the workshop was always via a letter describing why the student wanted to take part. As far as I can recall, however, we never once turned down an applicant. During those five years, we gave back to well over a hundred students, many of whom returned in the following years to help out with the new crop of participants. A few have even remained in touch. One is now pursuing her dream to be an actor in New York.
Before my work demands made continuing Dreamers Workshop impossible, Bev and I took it on the road to Dallas, Texas, where a fan and a friend, Barbara Thomas, generously helped support the workshop for her school district. Our final road trip was to the northwest to the Spotlight Theatre for Children in Eugene, Oregon. I cherish the memories of those workshops and some day I’d like to organize one or two more, perhaps even bring the seminar to the UK.
The ‘pay it forward’ ideology that led to me starting the Dreamers Workshop in the first place was also part of my motivation to become a judge on Any Dream Will Do and How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? Although I have to admit, both shows were also the most fun I’d had doing live television for a long time. I love live television because it’s a lot like theatre. The energy from the audience coupled with the eagerness and enthusiasm from the contestants creates an adrenalin rush that’s intoxicating. I revelled in the opportunities to improvise with the other judges and Graham Norton – and who could turn down the chance to mock a peer of the realm?7 Add to all of this the chance to kick-start the career of a young talented performer and I couldn’t resist.
Any Dream Will Do and How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? were my Dreamers Workshop writ large on the small screen. I’d do another show along those lines in a minute, because whether you’re a fifteen-year-old trying to come out of your shell, or a nineteen-year-old desperate for a break, in the words of lyricist Christopher Adler, ‘to dreamers, the real world can be unreal.’ Everyone needs a boost up the ladder sometimes – and I’m always happy to extend my hand.
‘The First Man You Remember’
In 1985, after my graduation from Joliet West High School, I went to the University of Iowa in Des Moines to study drama and music. The landscape of Iowa is a lot like Paris Hilton: incredibly flat with no visible curves. In fact, Iowa is the one state in the United States that even Alabama taunts. But Iowa doesn’t seem to care. It’s firm in its Midwestern values and strong in its resolve that if it wasn’t for the Hawkeye State,1 there’d have been no John Wayne, no Field of Dreams, and a lot less corn in the world. The University of Iowa had a strong music department, and they created a financial package that was hard for my parents and me to turn down. Consequently, I accepted a place to study there.
Unfortunately, I hated the university, and ended up leaving after only one term. Unlike the host of good teachers and mentors who’d taken an interest in me up until then, the faculty at Iowa didn’t seem to give a shit about me. I was one of approximately 25,000 students, and instead of asking me what I wanted to do with my talent, the music faculty insisted they knew what I should do with it – and what they wanted was to train me as a classical opera singer. Even then, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and Noël Coward were more appealing to me as performers, but I think they were too déclassé for U of I’s music department.
Speaking of Ms Rogers, another special moment on the highlight reel of my life, which is up there with meeting George Lucas at Cannes, was meeting Ginger at an American Cinema Awards dinner in 1996. Sadly, I never got the opportunity to dance with her, since she was in a wheelchair that night, but she and I spent a few minutes chatting and the glow of the moment stayed with me for days.
The American Cinema Awards were an annual event designed to celebrate the work of older Hollywood stars. In 1996, I was in LA working on a project for David Gest, who was also producing the awards show. He asked me if I’d escort actress Angie Dickinson to a pre-awards dinner. Of course I agreed. I was staying at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and Angie picked me up in her Mercedes. I climbed into the car and because her skirt was split high on the side, I noticed her great legs immediately.
‘Wow!’ I gushed. ‘Your legs still look great. I remember when I was eight years old and watched you on Police Woman.‘
She stared at me for a moment and then she said, ‘Would you like to put your other foot in your mouth now or wait until later?’
I began to babble an apology, but she cut me off with a genuine smile and a flick of her wrist. We had a great time at dinner and the next day our ‘date’ was all over the tabloids, with headlines screaming that I was her ‘Boy Toy’ – which was just rubbish.
Notwithstanding my general disappointment with the University of Iowa, during my time there I did manage to get one musical gig. I performed with the Old Gold Singers, the university’s swing choir, which turned out to be the only memorable part of a mostly unmemorable semester.
But guess what? The ‘Dues and Don’t Syndrome’ struck again. I was the freshman, the newbie, and I was given the smaller singing parts in the choir. Merit be damned. It was all about seniority. I felt as if someone had hit rewind and I was back in high school. I really didn’t want to go through this again, but I craved the performance experience, and on the whole I enjoyed travelling with the group (though admittedly that could well have been because I had a crush on one of the other singers, Jim Brucher). I sucked up my pride and stuck it out. In the end, my merit kicked their seniority in the balls.
Many people believe that as individuals we’re the product of some preconceived plan, some grand design that God, whatever you may call Him or Her, has predetermined for us, but I’ve always believed that was rubbish. I am who I am firstly because of genetics, and, running a very close second, because of choices: ones my parents made, such as choosing to emigrate to America; ones their parents made, like my Papa Butler opting to ignore medical advice and instead warming my mum in the oven to keep her alive; and very conscious ones that I??
?ve made for myself.
I made the decision to get out of Iowa at the end of the term, but in a show of group loyalty, I agreed to go along with the university’s Old Gold Singers to Chicago, to audition to be a summer performer at Opryland, USA.
In the eighties, Opryland was a popular tourist attraction in Nashville, Tennessee, and the theme park was considered the ‘Home of American Music’. A company called Gaylord Entertainment – I kid you not – owned the park, and although it boasted a few roller coasters and other rides, it was best known for its fabulous musical shows. Sort of Broadway meets Blackpool, but bigger and with more twang.
The night before the auditions, the Old Gold Singers all stayed at my parents’ house in Joliet, which was roughly halfway to Chicago from Des Moines. Seriously, Cardiff is closer to Chicago than Des Moines in terms of its cultural cache and coolness. Until the wee hours of the morning, the house was alive with the sound of music. Singers practised in the living room at the piano, a few gathered in the dining room around a tape player, and the rest sang out from the rec room in the basement. But not one of the voices was mine.
At about 10 p.m., I came into the kitchen, poured myself a glass of milk, and kissed my mum goodnight.
‘John,’ she called after me, ‘shouldn’t you be practising with the rest of the group?’
‘I can practise in my head.’2
Later, I learned from Andy Barnicle, my acting teacher at United States International University in San Diego, that to practise in your head is a proven rehearsal technique. According to Andy, ‘If you can see yourself doing it, you can perform it.’ But, to be honest, it wasn’t just that. I really didn’t want to let the other members of the choir hear what I could do. In all the time I’d known them, they’d never been much interested in discovering my talent, so why give them a preview now? I went off to bed, letting my competition for Opryland serenade me to sleep.
For the first round of auditions, all of the Old Gold Singers performed in the same room. I was the last one to be called. Now, although I’d taken a couple of ballet lessons while in high school, Billy Elliot I was not. Most of my dancing experience at this time had been the few steps I’d picked up during performances and my own raw skills. I was, however, athletic, and could and still can flip, jump and kick with the best of them. For my Opryland audition, I did a number that would have made Gene Kelly proud. I included a couple of high kicks, some serious tap, a little soft-shoe and then my big finish. I closed with a standing back somersault, which I landed perfectly, never missing a beat or losing the final notes.
I looked up at the panel of judges and I knew I had them. I looked at the other Old Gold Singers, watched them readjust their jaws, and knew I’d got them, too.
At the close of this round, Jean Whitticker, one of the casting directors and choreographers for Opryland USA at that time, pulled me aside. ‘We’re not making the callback announcement yet, John, but we know right now that we want to hire you, so don’t go anywhere.’
I didn’t. I said goodbye to the Old Gold Singers and the following summer I went to Nashville.
My work at Opryland during the summers of ‘86 and ‘87 dominates my memories of this time in my life, even though the Nashville shows were not the only performing I did back then. After I left the University of Iowa, I took acting classes in Chicago and I auditioned for commercials and other small jobs to occupy my time in the months between my summer gigs at the theme park.
As it turned out, well into the 1990s I regularly received residual payments from one of those early jobs. It was probably the worst ice-cream commercial ever for Baskin-Robbins. A commercial shoot that was supposed to take a morning stretched into an entire day because I completely overacted and looked like I was having an orgasm instead of enjoying an ice-cream treat. Some day, I know the commercial’s going to show up; when it does, please remember I was very young and be kind.
While performing at Opryland, I met one of my best friends, Marilyn Rising. We hit it off instantly. For a start, she looked almost as cute in chaps as I did. She was small and bubbly, with a big voice and lots of charm and energy. We shared the same passion for the performing arts and a similar outrageous sense of humour. We once spent an entire road trip to Illinois with cockatiels, real ones, on our shoulders,3 wearing rubber masks that looked like old-age pensioners’ faces. A trucker followed us for miles trying to figure out if we were nuts or just, well, fucking nuts. Another time, as my mum and dad’s plane was leaving San Diego International Airport, Marilyn and I climbed out on to one of the observation decks (this was pre-9/11), and dropped our jeans in tribute. According to my mum and dad, the passengers cheered wildly when the pilot announced that ‘someone was getting a royal send-off.’
In my second summer at Opryland, Marilyn and I were assigned to a show called Way Out West. A number of the songs we performed were from Oklahoma! – and, trust me, after singing songs from that musical day after day, it’s easy to see why ‘poor Jud is dead.’
The summer before, after I’d finished my show, I’d walk across the park to watch another performer, Michael Clowers, dance in a different production. He was probably one of the best dancers at Opryland and he had an incredible smile. I thought he was sexy and for the longest time I never flirted or approached him in any way, I just watched him dance. Occasionally, I’d catch a glimpse of him at one of the gay clubs in Nashville – a place where many of the Opryland performers gathered to watch one of our wardrobe guys do his drag show, a wicked ‘Le Jazz Hot’ from Victor Victoria. The show was brilliant, but he had to perform in the worst area in Nashville in order to distance himself from any direct association with Opryland, which was a lovely slice of irony because it seemed to me that almost everyone who worked at Opryland was gay anyway.
Living in such a gay community was, in fact, a kind of liberation for me. Although I never felt as if I’d been ‘in the closet’, I was conscious of being truly myself for the first time in my life. I do think that being part of a group where, gay or not gay, we accepted each other and marked territory by our talent not our sexual preference made all the difference. Having said that, those years of puberty and adolescence were never really years of keeping myself hidden; instead they were all about growing comfortable with all parts of myself, and my sexuality was only one of those parts.
When a group of my closest high-school friends came to Nashville to visit me, I kept my Opry friends around and did not change who I was becoming. I remember thinking that my life so far was turning out okay, and my schoolmates would either accept me or they wouldn’t; we’d either stay in touch or we wouldn’t. With a couple of exceptions, we have.
The Nashville summer nights saw my Barrowman party gene kick in, and with a little help from my friends I threw some great bashes. We were all between eighteen and twenty-one years of age, all far from home, and there wasn’t much we didn’t do. At one of these parties, I finally plucked up the courage to ask Michael Clowers if he wanted to go swimming in the apartment complex’s pool.
I was a tit bipsy, I mean a bit tipsy, and so was he. In the still of the Nashville night, the stars shimmered like sequins. I kept my eyes on them even as I sensed Michael gliding slowly across the swimming pool toward me. The water rippled slightly as he slid on top of me and cupped his hand under my head. Then it happened: my first gay kiss. To this day, it remains one of the most romantic kisses of my life. As far as I know, the recipient of that slow sensational snog is now a choreographer for the Radio City Music Hall, but in 1986 he was in my arms in a swimming pool in Tennessee. It hadn’t taken much flirting on my part to get him into the pool, and that kiss led to, well, let me just say, ‘Uh oh, those summer nights …’
The sad part was that, despite both of us being comfortable with being gay, the threat of HIV and AIDS loomed large in the late eighties, and so taking the plunge, so to speak, and participating in the complete sex act scared the hell out of us. He and I still had a lot of fun, though, and that night in the pool led to a
few more romantic evenings under the stars. It was my first real summer fling and, as such, holds a special place in my memories.
I experienced lots of firsts at Opryland. Getting a real pay cheque for performing in a musical was another one. I did four shows a day in either a morning or an afternoon time block. It was hard work, but I loved every minute of it. I was getting paid to sing and dance on stage, wearing outfits that made my drum-major uniform from junior high look drab.
While performing at Opryland, I learned how to be part of an ensemble, and how to project my voice into the wind without losing volume or damaging my vocal cords. I learned how to dance my ass off in 100-degree temperatures and never let the audience see me sweat. In Way Out West I played Marshall Dillon, a character from a popular American TV show in the fifties. After each performance, the entire cast had to return to the stage, where we were expected to chat with the audience as they filtered out of the amphitheatre. When you’re already soaked with sweat and 500 people or more are filtering past you, shaking your hand, asking questions, taking your photograph, you quickly learn all about interacting with an audience, staying focused, and appreciating the feedback. Still, to this day I think the most important lesson I learned at Opryland was how to leave the stage gracefully with shit trickling down my white polyester trousers.4
You’ve probably heard from other sources that I can be a bit of a prankster. I have, on just one or two occasions,5 embarrassed my friends and family in public. Once, when Bev and I were in New York to premiere my cabaret at Arci’s Place in 2002, I was in need of a little retail therapy. We headed to Fifth Avenue and the Louis Vuitton store. I was looking for a dog collar for Penny, my beloved golden cocker spaniel, who sadly passed away in 2007 at the age of seventeen. I was dressed in my off-hours uniform: shabby chic jeans, polo shirt and trainers. For at least ten minutes, not one assistant in the store made eye contact with me – until I pulled out my LV wallet. Suddenly, three of them were on us.