reflections

The suckiest thing about that tape from Sondheim was the outrageous expectations that it set for me: people expected me to turn out a show as sophisticated as Company or one of his other mature musicals, but he was 40 when he wrote Company. Plus I wanted to impress my pop/rock/jazz muso friends with the scores so they'd want to play the tunes (everyone wants to write a new standard🤣). - With hindsight, the thing that really hurt my feelings was this idea that people would rather that I was 'like Sondheim' or 'like Don' or 'like David Russell/Roland Dyens (Jane's idea 👋)', than 'like myself!' That's probably why I'm bitter about my uni days: I appreciated the opportunities, but I hated being a closet case .. perhaps I could've come out if I was younger, but it wasn't the hip thing when I was a teenager. 👍