Associated Press Release by Mary Campbell
Joseph, The Coat And The Amazing AndyNEW YORK:
When pop singer Andy Gibb was invited to play Joseph in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," he knew neither the Old Testament story about Joseph and his coat of many colors nor the Broadway show.
Told it was the first collaboration by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice and where the story came from, Gibb didn’t think it was for him.
"It sounded kind of biblical,"Gibb says. "I didn’t know if I wanted to be in something like that. It was a big transition from being a rock singer to a biblical thing."
Gibb, now 24, is best known as a solo singer, whose three singing older brothers are the Bee Gees, short for Brothers Gibb. Andy Gibb has been moving into theater. He played Frederic in "The Pirates of Penzance" in Los Angeles and Toronto and acted in a movie made for cable TV and shown in early December, "Something’s Afoot."
After the "Joseph" offer last summer, he saw the show on a trip to New York from his newly purchased ranch in Malibu, California, and changed his tune immediately.
"I wanted to be in it," he says emphatically. "I just knew I wanted to do it, no doubt about that. It was so colorful. I wanted to be up on that stage."
Since "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" is called a rock opera, the music didn’t call for "serious tenor singing," as Gibb had feared. Gibb performed the title role during November, the last month of the show’s national tour, in Philadelphia. Audiences were harder to win in Philadelphia, he says. On Broadway there has been a standing ovation nearly every night.
After he saw the show on Broadway he read - and enjoyed - Joseph’s story in the Bible. Now he’s pleased when people come backstage and call him Joseph.
Gibb couldn’t make his Broadway debut until he’d taken another first show-business step for which he as committed, acting in a movie made for cable TV. "Something’s Afoot," an Agatha Christie mystery starring Jean Stapleton, was shot in late September and early October in the Elgin Theater in Toronto.
He says, "They had a huge mansion built on stage" a six-ton set. We’d start every evening with a live audience. We kept stopping to get things right and they’d get bored and leave until in the end there was nobody in the audience at all."
Each night, cast members learned their lines for the next day. Gibb says, "Instead, I’d find myself slipping in the tape of the "Joseph" soundtrack. I loved the music."
Gibb has been sent a script for another cable TV movie and another Broadway show, neither of which he has read. He’s also hoping to be offered a part in a Hollywood film.
Gibb, who was 6 months old when his family moved to Australia in 1958, was 5 when the Bee Gees had their first hit record in Australia and 10 when they became internationally known. Barry Gibb, now 34 phoned baby brother Andy in Australia and invited him to join himself and the twins, Robin and Maurice, now 32, in Miami in 1976.
Andy Gibb did. He made a record which came out in 1977, two of its songs becoming hits, "I Just Want To Be Your Everything," and "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water." An album in 1978 produced his biggest hit of all "Shadow Dancing" plus "Everlasting Love." He had one hit record in 1979 "Our Love (Don’t Throw It All Away)."
After "Joseph", Gibb wants to make another album, writing most of the songs himself. Some of his hits were written with his brothers or for him by his brothers. His last singing tour was in 1978 and he’d like to do that again, too. "I miss performing in front of my fans, singing my own hits and stuff," he says.
