A Quote by Michael Feinstein
I started out as a pianist and singer in gay and piano bars - they were the only places I could get a job singing show tunes.
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It is hard to be unhappy in a gay bar where everyone's singing show tunes! In fact, I've spent many a night in those kind of places - in that particular place, actually - Marie's Crisis: it's truly a New York establishment.
My mom's a concert pianist, so she started teaching me when I was around seven. When I was eight, I started writing my own songs, and kinda started putting piano and singing together. But I'm trained classically, which is a big influence on me, I think.
It's all very well having a great pianist playing but it's no good if you haven't got anyone to get the piano on the stage in the first place, otherwise the pianist would be standing there with no bloody piano to play.
My dad was a homicide cop in the gay neighborhood in the city when gay neighborhoods were desperate, depressing, sad places run by the mob. The only gay people he'd met when I came out to him were corpses.
I first started playing in piano bars for three reasons - to make money, to be in the company of my friends - and also to hook up with young girls. I always knew, even before I played in piano bars, about the effect of my voice.
I've watched other people singing, I've become a much better singer. I've become a singer that plays the piano instead of a piano player that sings.
Working in bars back then, in the '50s, to get a job you had to play all kinds of music. There'd be customers come in and yell jazz tunes at you and yell rock 'n' roll tunes at you and polkas and rhythm and blues and country music.
I do catch myself driving around singing tunes, but I don't know if it's necessarily show tunes.
I ... started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that's just the way it came out.
I've never dated anyone because they were vegetarian, just like I'm gay but don't only go to gay bars. I hang out with people because they are fun, smart, and kind, and if they happen to be veg I'm thrilled.
My mother adores singing and plays piano. My uncle was a phenomenal pianist. My brother John is a double bassist. I used to play the piano, badly, and cello. My brother Peter played violin.
I have never engineered a record. I will draw a record and I'll show you what it's gonna look like. And I will design it and sketch it out and show you, you know, the breaks are coming in here. Sixteen bars. Move out. 32 bars and you get this baseline. Repeat this. Ghost it. Take the tops out of that. Make it go thin. Get a filter. Reverse it.
The only thing I could do was play music, because I'd studied classical guitar, trumpet and piano at the American School in Alexandria. So I started out with two other boys in little clubs in Athens. I became a singer by default when our lead vocalist was late one night. Someone had to sing.
I just wanted to eat, to survive. I started singing a cappella in bars. I saved up money to get my first guitar and started writing songs.
I'm not really a country singer, although I did make a couple albums and love its simple, straight-from-the-heart approach, but I have always sung a lot of jazz, show tunes, pop tunes, gospel and blues.
However, it [singing] wasn't until halfway through high school that it dawned on me that singing wasn't just a hobby, it was something I had a growing need for in my life, and that was about when I adopted the neglected guitar I found under our piano and started singing about all the things I could never say.
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