Grease - the 50s never sounds so good in real life
SOMEONE once described that great avatar of the Fifties. Marilyn Monroe, as a great big melting banana split in other words, a glorious, delectable mess.
The same description aptly fits the new original-soundtrack recording of Grease just out on the RSO label. It drips with such currently hot box-office names as John Travolta (he sounds just barely okay in such things as Sandy and Greased Lightnin’, but I’m sure his fans will forgive him) and Olivia Newton-John (who adds her expected maraschino touch to such immortals as Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee and Hopelessly Devoted to You).
On the plate surrounding them is an assortment of sugar cookies: Frankie Valli singing the title song: Sha-Na-Na lumbering through Hound Dog, Tears on My Pillow, and several others: Cindy Bullens on Freddy My Love and a duet with Louis St. Louis in Mooning; and even good old Frankie Avalon singing Beauty School Drop-Out.
This frolic about and ode to one of the most boring generations in American history has been knocking them dead for several years now on Broadway, and, from what I hear on this album, I have a feeling that the film will be one of the blockbusters of the year. Even if (as Simone Signoret titled her autobiography) Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used To Be, there is still an enormous amount of simple-minded fun left in this hallelujah to a recent past.
And, under the musical supervision of Bill Oakes, the whole score jumps out at you twice life-size so that something such as Rock n’ Roll Party Queen, performed by Louis St. Louis, becomes a sly mockery of itself by reason of the totally uncalled-for grandiosity of the presentation.
Looking back at that era in my personal life, all I seem to remember is that Pontiacs were designed to look a lot like poor Jayne Mansfield; that there were a lot of tasteful tsk-tsks about Elvis; that Sinatra began to record some of the best things he (or any other American popular singer) has ever done; and that I tried greasing my hair back but the pompadour kept caving in on me, so that I looked like Peter Lorre after a Channel swim.
Grease brings all those bland, dull years back with an entertaining whoosh of excitement that was never there in reality. Believe me, the Fifties were a lot tamer than this humorously lively, high-spirited album would lead you to believe.
But, then again, no one ever got to see those two Thirties tots, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, doing the waltz from Swing Time in and out of a bread line either. So I guess pure entertainment calls for a certain suspension of disbelief, wouldn’t you say?
By Peter Reilly
GREASE. Original-soundtrack recording.
John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Frankie Avalon, Frankie Valli, Stockard Channing. Sha-Na-Na, others (vocals); orchestra. RSO RS-2-4002 two discs $9.98.