While preparing the accompanying piece, I was given the opportunity to chat over the phone with one of the principals of the stage show, which runs Tuesday through next Sunday at Arie Crown Theatre.
(”I bet in all your years in journalism you never had to interview a turtle,” I said to a colleague. ”No,” she answered, ”but once I had to interview Joe Namath.”)
The $3 million show has gotten grudgingly good notices (”pleasant, harmless and not as crass as it could have been,” said the New York Times), although critics have also noted blatant product-pushing.
My caller on the road was party animal Michaelangelo, lead guitar and lyricist. ”Hangin` out in Milwaukee, dude,” he began. ”It`s rainin` and it`s damp and I`m diggin` that, being the tubin` terrapin that I am.” He went on to explain that Shredder, the Turtles` Darth Vader-ish foe, had followed the group from Radio City Music Hall to Wisconsin. ”I think he`s jealous we have a record out and stuff. I think he`s going to start droppin` cheese wheels on us.”
Asked about the show, Michaelangelo (call him ”Mich”) said, ”It`s amazing, dude. The kids rush the stage. We have to get security guards and everything. They`re dancin` around and it`s so cool, and they`re all wavin`
their lighted swords like matches. It`s totally like a rock concert. Except that everybody comes up to only your knees.”
He went on to explain that it was hard to play with three fingers
(”except that Donatello, who`s a total gearhead, made me this custom guitar and I tune it to an open E and just kind of bare everything”), and that the Turtles prepared for the tour by hanging around clubs on New York`s Lower East Side, mainly CBGB`s (”the only place you can go at 3 in the morning and nobody cares if you have green skin”).
At the end of the mercifully brief conversation, I asked Mich if the Turtles-like Van Halen and other rock groups-had special backstage requests for food and drink. ”Dude, just pizza. Keep it comin`. That, and a big plastic bowl with a palm tree in it so you can kind of swim around between sets.”