You may not know John Kander's name, but you know his music.
As one-half of the powerhouse musical-writing duo Kander and Ebb, his tunes are among the most iconic ever written — and staples of every theatre kid's songbook.
There's the desperately hopeful Maybe This Time from their musical Cabaret, the siren song All That Jazz from Chicago, and — most recognisable of all — the duo's love letter to "the city that never sleeps", New York, New York.
Frank Sinatra, who crooned the song into the lexicon of popular music, described it as "one of the most exciting pieces of music of all of [his] years".
Nearly half a century after the pair wrote the titular track for Martin Scorsese's 1977 film, New York, New York it has been turned into a stage show. It premiered on Broadway earlier this year, with additional lyrics from (the man who never sleeps) composer, lyricist and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda.
But only Kander is here to see it. His longtime collaborator, lyricist Fred Ebb, died in 2004.
Despite losing Ebb, Kander has continued to write well into his 90s, bringing their unfinished ideas to fruition and composing new music for lyrics left behind by his friend.
Their older work still holds cultural clout though, and is regularly staged all over the world. Chicago alone has had a near three-decade run on Broadway and is about to get a national tour here in Australia.
Ahead of its opening in Perth, ABC RN's The Stage Show spoke with the legendary 96-year-old composer about his life making musicals.
'A deliciously musical idea'
Chicago was written in 1975 and is Kander and Ebb's sixth musical.
As the title suggests, it's set in Chicago during the Jazz Age and centres on a bevy of brazen women on trial for murder. It smoulders with sass and dark humour and, nearly half a century on, remains one of the most popular musicals of all time.
Those familiar with the show (or the Oscar-winning film adaptation starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renée Zellweger) may be surprised to learn there's some truth behind it.
It's based on the 1926 play by Maurine Dallas Watkins, who was a court reporter for the Chicago Tribune in the 20s and covered several high-profile homicides committed by women. Stakes were high at the time: murder convictions in the 20s resulted in the death penalty.
Juries were comprised entirely of men, and many of the women on trial were acquitted, it was argued, because of their good looks. Sensational stuff.
Celebrated Broadway choreographer Bob Fosse acquired the rights to the play after Dallas Watkins's death, and approached Kander and Ebb about adapting it into a musical. They said yes right away.
"It seemed like a deliciously musical idea," recalls Kander.
"The fact that the play was realistic in some ways and unrealistic in others made it easy to open up and musicalise."
Dallas Waktins's play centred on the 1924 trials of Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner, who were acquitted of murder just days apart. Their stories became the basis for Chicago's Vaudevillian murderesses Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, who sing and dance their way out of a conviction.
Their real-life-inspired courtroom theatrics were a perfect fit for the stage.
"When [Roxie's] trial is just about to really start, she's pregnant, and the lawyer says [to her], 'Don't be afraid. This is all showbusiness kid, these trials," says Kander.
"And he sings a song called Razzle Dazzle, which is a sort of charmingly nasty lyric about how you can really fool most people, most of the time."
And fool us they do. Despite being thoroughly guilty, Roxie and Velma win over the jury, and the audience, proving that time-honoured adage: there's no such thing as bad publicity.
From just some dumb mechanic's wife
I'm gonna be… Roxie
Who says that murder's not an art?
And who in case she doesn't hang
Can say she started with a bang?
Roxie Hart
A Willkommen success
When Chicago first came to Australia in 1981, the starring roles were played by Nancye Hayes (Roxie) and Geraldine Turner (Velma). In the upcoming production, set to tour Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney after Perth, the coveted roles will be played by Lucy Maunder and Zoë Ventura.
They're the kind of bucket-list, star-making roles Kander and Ebb were known for.
Their first show — 1965's Flora the Red Menace — was a total flop, but debuted an as-yet-unknown Liza Minelli, who won a Tony for her performance. It sparked a professional ménage à trois that would last decades.
They collaborated with Minelli numerous times over the years, including their second show and first real breakout success — Cabaret.
First staged in 1966, it was an unlikely hit in many ways. The story orbits around doomed romances between queer misfits in a dingy Berlin nightclub, the Kit Kat Club — a sanctuary for bohemians against creeping fascism between the twilight years of the hedonistic 20s and the rise of Hitler's Third Reich.
The show's ever-present undercurrent of foreboding doesn't, perhaps, instinctively inspire jazz hands. But it was groundbreaking for its time, particularly in its portrayal of queerness, which was still outlawed in the US at the time (and everywhere else, really).
Cabaret catapulted Kander and Ebb to musical theatre stardom, along with Minelli.
After a string of relatively well-received shows, their second big hit came in the form of Chicago. Following successful runs in the late 70s in the US and the UK, the show was revived on Broadway in 1996.
That revival is now Broadway's second-longest-running show ever, behind only The Phantom of the Opera.
But Kander shirks praise over their many accolades, saying, "You can drive yourself crazy."
"Chicago didn't get great reviews when we first opened. When it was revived 20 years later, it got much [more flattering] reviews, even though it was the same show presented in a somewhat scaled-down fashion," he says.
Kander has always been wary of defining success through the box office.
"You'll find yourself getting slammed for work that you know was really good, and you'll find yourself winning prizes for work that you know was mediocre. So you have to know the difference.
"You have to be your own critic."
Returning to New York, New York
Key to Kander's success is his deep and abiding love of music. And at 96, he's still going.
"It's a bad habit I can't get rid of," he jokes.
New York, New York is the fourth show the 96-year-old has staged since Ebb's death.
It's set in the Big Apple amid the wave of migration that followed World War II — a time when there was a palpable feeling of hope and possibility in the city, says Kander.
"You come to New York when you have a feeling that, whoever it is you are, you have the best chance of being it in New York. I still believe that," he says.
The show is (very) loosely based on the Scorsese film, for which Kander and Ebb wrote five songs, including its iconic title track.
But the original version was quite different from the one we know today. The film's star, Robert DeNiro, felt his number didn't have enough oomph compared to that of his fellow star, Liza Minelli. So he requested the song be re-written.
Kander and Ebb were unimpressed, but acquiesced. It was fortunate, Kander later reflected in a 2015 interview with NPR, because the original version was "terrible".
They hurried back to Ebb's apartment from the studio and re-wrote the track in 45 minutes. It produced a diamond.
"We wrote fast and we tore up fast," Kander told The Stage Show.
Their speed was due in no small part to their synchronous improvisation style.
Kander explains: "Fred had a remarkable ability to improvise in rhyme and metre the same way that I can improvise at a keyboard.
"We would talk about the moment that we were writing and the characters and the situation and what our intentions were, and then we would sort of ease into a moment where I would play a [musical] phrase, or Fred would have a [spoken] phrase, and we would begin to improvise at the same time."
Even though the pair were quite different as people, they were simpatico in the writing room.
"I don't know how to explain it, because we came from very different backgrounds, we looked at life differently … But when we would go into that little room and go to work, it was almost like we were the same person," says Kander.
While Kander's partnership with Ebb was incredibly successful, he doesn't over-sentimentalise it.
"Sometimes it would be good and sometimes terrible; sometimes there would be a germ in what we improvised that we could take and develop," he says.
"Making art is not like it is in the movies where a sort of flash of inspiration comes and suddenly you've created the Mona Lisa. It just doesn't work that way. It's careful craftsmanship.
"We're carpenters, we're not geniuses."
The importance of friendship
Ebb was Kander's sole writing partner up until 2004.
While the New York, New York stage show includes songs Kander wrote with Ebb, it also features several new songs with lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who came on board as the "lyric fix-it guy".
Miranda is a longtime friend of Kander's and saw an earlier preview of the work. He was "knocked flat" by the beauty of it.
"I just said, 'Whatever else you need, let me know,'" Miranda told CBS News.
The pair first met in 2007 when Kander attended an off-Broadway performance of Miranda's musical In The Heights. This was long before the success of Hamilton, for which Miranda is best known.
Kander recalls: "I'm not a very aggressive person socially but I hung around after the show to meet whoever it was that was making that incredible thing."
The respect between the pair, both Broadway legends in their own right, is mutual — as is their love of the musical form.
"It's my passion. It's what gives me pleasure … but I don't think I own it. There are lots of really talented people and every once in a while you stumble on somebody whose work you like," says Kander.
"It's really important not to delude yourself about who you are."
Above all else, Kander's enduring joy for the work comes from collaboration.
"[It's] something that I really rather cheerfully believe in, [that] next to really, really great sex, there's nothing as satisfying as making art with your friends."
Chicago is at Crown Theatre Perth until December 17, 2023; Lyric Theatre, Brisbane from January 2 – February 3, 2024; Her Majesty’s Theatre, Melbourne from March 23 – May 5, 2024 and Capitol Theatre, Sydney from June 9, 2024.