It’s official: Rufus Wainwright is a friend of Dorothy’s. His connection with the legendary star of the Wizard of Oz goes right back to his childhood when he was frequently called upon to perform his show-stopping party piece “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” at family gatherings. Young Rufus already had a voice way beyond his years and, as a three year old boy impersonating Judy Garland, clearly had a well-formed gay sensibility. As he says himself: “On good days I was Dorothy and on bad ones I was the Wicked Witch of the West”.
Little did he know that by the age of 32, already an established gay icon in his own right, he would be paying tribute to his camper than camp heroine at the scene of one of her greatest triumphs - New York’s Carnegie Hall. In June of this year, at that holy grail of all music venues, Rufus starred in a reconstruction of the famous Judy Garland show of 1961, one of the most legendary concerts in post-war music folklore.
Sarah Jessica Parker was in the audience to pay homage, as was platinum-selling artist Norah Jones. And Rufus was joined on stage by Judy’s own daughter Lorna Luft (was her other daughter, Liza, busy?) for the rousing duet “After You’ve Gone”. The event was a dazzling success and instantly Wainwright became the darling of Manhattan.
It was a daring, audacious project which could so easily have backfired. Any miscalculations and the public might have seen it as nothing more than a huge ego trip for an ambitious upstart, particularly since the posters so boldly announced him as ‘The World’s Greatest Entertainer’. But if anyone was going to make it work, it was young Wainwright. Backed by legions of gay fans and equipped with a camp, often self-deprecating sense of humour, he rarely fails to inspire awe with his astonishing musical and theatrical talents.
“After 9/11 when we were going to war and things were looking pretty dismal,” says Rufus, as I chat with him backstage before his only Irish gig this year. “I bought the rerelease of the 1961 concert and somehow the album, no matter how dark things seemed, made things brighten.”
He was instantly taken by the heart-on-the-sleeve frankness of Judy Garland’s performance and saw it as a beacon of light shining in the bleakness of New York during those early days of the new Millenium. And, of course, he was immediately attracted to the very camp nature of a gay man singing all those songs normally associated with a woman. Not quite drag but not far off it.
“I don’t think it would have been possible for anyone other than a gay male to do this concert,” he says. “In a weird way, a gay man has some sort of perspective on it, I believe.”
Thankfully, Wainwright is no shrinking violet when it comes to his sexuality. Indeed, he has been so out there right from the start of his career that he has been described as the first “post liberation gay pop star.” Unlike other famous singers in the recent past, Rufus has always adamantly refused to hide his sexuality, even if it means his work has remained slightly to the left of mainstream. He has never been tempted for commercial reasons to take the George Michael option and blatantly deny being gay in order to sell more records (only to be finally caught with his pants down in a Beverly Hills public toilet). Nor did he opt for the Boy George approach, maintaining the pretence of celebacy and the notion that he found a cup of tea more appealing than a good shag (which we all now know was entirely ficticious) . In fact, young Rufus was so true to his convictions that, even at the age of 23, when he was flown to LA to sign his first record deal with Dreamworks, he made it clear that he would not be part of any cover up by record executives when it came to discussing his sexual orientation with the media.
“I never really questioned being gay,” he tells me quite frankly. “Anyway, I was voraciously sexual even by the age of 14.”
Growing up in Montreal, the child of two well-known musicians – Kate McGarrigle and Loudin Wainwright 111 – things were often difficult, as he tried to come to tems with his parent’s failing marriage. And there is no doubt that such early conflict, in particular the tempestuous relationship between himself and his father, is still one of the driving forces in young Wainwright’s life as a creative artist. That which many feel is his most beautiful songs to date, the deeply felt Dinner At Eight, was written after a huge row between father and son as they posed together for a the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. The lyrics are heart-breakingly candid, describing Rufus as a young boy being abandoned by his father one snowy day in Montreal.
Why is it so that I’ve always been the one who must go
When in fact you were the one long ago
Actually in the drifting white snow who left me.
“A lot of people love that song,” he says, when I bring it up in conversation. “And my mother always cries when I play it to her. But whereas initially I thought it was this damning indictment of my father I now realise that it’s just a love song and was my attempt to get closer to him when things were really bad between us.”
The words are stark and emotionally exposed. They are also typical of Rufus Wainwright’s honest approach to his work and when I ask him if he feels that his overt stance on his sexuality might have hindered the progress of his career, particularly in ultra-conservative middle America, he laughes and replies with characteristically self-deprecating humour.
“Well, as I like to say, that’s why I make the small bucks!” And then he adds with more than a hint of irony: “Which is a shame because I’d love to own a house in Nice.”
Indeed, a villa in the South of France would suit Rufus Wainwright to perfection. When you meet him in person, he has that kind of rarified presence that would seem totally at home sipping cocktails on the terrace in the afternoon sunshine, hidden from the world’s glare behind a pair of fabulous Gucci sunglasses. (He’s a natural born poser but somehow at the same time quite unpretentious.) Then, in the evenings, he could hang out with Cap Ferrat’s most famous resident, fellow singer song writer, good friend and equally iconic gay star, Elton John, who once described Wainwright as “the best songwriter on the planet.”
Rufus’s history with Elton goes back to a time when the young star found himself immersed in the dangerous and clearly very enticing world of drugs and sexual promiscuity in 1990s Manahattan.
He already had been catapulted into the limelight with some very high profile movie soundtracks, notably Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in Shrek 2 and an on-screen appearance as the nightclub singer in “The Aviator” alongside Leonardo di Caprio. As the beauitful new kid on the block, he was welcomed with open arms by the former Studio 54 set in Manhattan where, for some time, he indulged himself in every available vice that was on offer. For the young sensual boy from Montreal, it was like being a kid in a candy store; only, in his case, the delights that were on offer were primarily chemical and sexual.
“So much of the rock and pop world is concern with annialating itself,” he tells me, now that he is fully reformed. “It’s a grand old tradition and I was happy to take part in it for a while but not any more.”
However, dragging himself away from the world of “partying”, which for him meant a serious physical and psychological addiction to the street drug crystal meth, wasn’t as easy as he makes it sound. In fact, for most of his twenties, Wainwright failed to admit that he had a drug problem at all, even though many of his friends and colleagues were becoming increasingly concerned about him. It was only when he woke up one morning to find that he had gone temporarily blind after a long drug binge that he decided it was time to do something about it. It was then that he rang Elton John who immediately checked him into rehab.
However, out of all that is bad can come some things that are good and, fueled by drugs, drink and months of unrequireted love for an unattainable straight man called Danny, Wainwright produced his stunning eponymously-entitled debut album. It is a collection of romantic tracks inspired by the first love of his life, a beautiful man he saw one day walking down the street in New York.
“I waited months and months to speak to him,” he remembers, “because I am really terrible at making the first move.” (I find it very endearing that a man of his fame and undisputed charisma is so reticient and shy when it comes to approaching other men.)
“But we finally met and ended up kissing. Over the next few months, Danny and I slept together a lot but we never actually had sex.”
That was the difficult part because, even though there was a great bond between the two young men, Danny was straight and would never be able to fully reciprocate Rufus’s affections.
“He definitely was in love me though,” he says insistantly, almost as though he were trying to convince me. “But, as you know, love really has very little to do with sex. Instead we just had a lot of drug-induced cuddling time but I always knew he was straight. It was painful but, hey, I got a lot of songs out of it.”
I ask him if he is drawn to painful situations because as an artist he might benefit from them in some way.
“Probably. One of the things that really worried me when I decided to remove myself form the usual partying involved with the pop world was that I would be bereft of torturous experiences,” he replies. “But now I have just inherited much grander ones, like real life.”
Life is great now for Rufus Wainwright and certainly much more real than during his drugged up days. It seems that, with the stability of a steady new boyfriend and his music notably less littered with the torturous angst of unrequited love, he has finally come of age.
“At the moment we just snatch time together,” he tells me, without giving away his new fella’s name away, “but soon he’s moving to New York because he has got a job there. I don’t think we will be living together, though. Not just yet anyway.”
It certainly looks like there might be some settling down in the not-too-distant-future for Rufus but, for the moment, he needs to concentrate on the very important task of being Judy Garland. Early in 2007, he will bring his sensational new stage show fresh from the triumphs of Carnegie Hall to a number of major European venues. This coming February, he will perform for two nights at the London Palladium and for one night at the stunning l’Olympia Hall in Paris. At last, those of us over here on this side of the pond will have the opportunity to see one of the most talked about musical events in recent years.
So, you really have no excuse. Buy yourself a ticket, put on your ruby slippers and follow the yellow brick road to the gayest show on the planet. I know I will be there!
Catch Rufus in The Judy Garland 1961 Carnegie Hall Show at
London Palladium 18th & 25th February
Paris l’Olympia Hall 20th February