While waiting to interview Colm Wilkinson at the King Edward Hotel in downtown Toronto, I spotted another musical
icon striding across the lobby. It was Leonard Cohen. The sighting would be utterly tangential to this story were
it not for Wilkinson's reaction five minutes later.
"Are you serious? He was here?" Wilkinson asks, incredulous. After I explain that Cohen appeared to have been
checking out, Wilkinson's mood changes from wonder to disappointment. "Shoot, that's too bad," he says, slouching
in an overstuffed lobby chair, "He's one of my idols."
This fond admission is indicative of Wilkinson's character. The Irish-born singer may have gained international
renown for his starring roles in musicals like Les Miserables and The Phantom of the Opera, but he's
never lost his childlike veneration of other talents. His appreciation of music is as pure at the age of 59 as it was when
he first picked up his father's banjo as a boy.
That sincere love of music is in evidence on Wilkinson's latest CD, Some of My Best Friends are Songs. The album
is less a recording than a gathering of all the musical acquaintances he's made over the course of his life. Those friends
include pop standards like Leon Russell's "A Song for You," Willie Nelson's "Funny How Time Slips Away," and "Suzanne"
by the aforementioned Mr. Cohen.
One of ten kids, Wilkinson grew up in Ireland in a musical household. His mother played the violin and sang; he father's
instruments included the banjo and piano. They were young Colm's most immediate influences. Wilkinson quickly revealed
a gift for singing. He also took up his dad's banjo, eventually graduating to guitar.
During his teens, Wilkinson worked with father as a contractor, but laying asphalt was not the way he wanted to earn his
long-term livelihood. To his father's chagrin, young Colm chose the unpredictable life of a troubadour over the more steady
existence of a roofer.
Inspired by early rock and rollers like Bill Haley, Elvis and Eddie Cochrane, Wilkinson toured with a number of pop bands in
Ireland. At 16, he travelled to New York to play Irish clubs with a group called the Chris Lamb Show Band. One of Wilkinson's
earliest epiphanies about music came while watching Jazz on a Summer's day, a documentary about the 1958 Newport
Jazz Festival in Rhode Island. Although the concert was a showcase for jazz giants like Thelonious Monk, Louis Armstrong
nd Dinah Washington, it was a performance by Chuck Berry that made the deepest impression on Wilkinson.
"You had this jazz band backing him, this guy on clarinet wailing away, and I thought, "There's the connection between rock
and roll and jazz," he recalls, breaking into a lively simulation of Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven."
"That was a great catalyst for me, seeing him play among all those guys. I thought, I don't have to be ashamed to like this
this kind of music."
Since then, Wilkinson has always taken an open-minded approach to music, loving jazz, rock and more rarefied forms like opera
and classical equally. He was performing in pop bands in the early '70s when he was picked to play Judas Iscariot in Andrew
Lloyd Webber's groundbreaking musical Jesus Christ Superstar. "I was so fortunate to be part of that show," he says.
"It was rock and roll; it wasn't a classic musical. It was the best transition I could have had."
After that, Colm Wilkinson became a recognizable name and then a marque star. In the mid-'80s, he took the role of Jean
Valjean in Les Miserables, a role he rendered in London as well as on Broadway. In the late '80s, he was planning to move
his family to the United States when theatre impresario Garth Drabinksy intervened and propositioned him about moving to Toronto.
The bait: the title role in another Webber production, The Phantom of the Opera, at the refurbished Pantages Theatre
(now the Canon Theatre).
Wilkinson concedes he was intially sceptical. "[drabinsky] said, 'Don't start thinking that this is a backwater. I'm telling you, this
is going to be one of the major theatrical centres. It's not going to be London, New York, LA; it'll be London, New York, Toronto."
Wilkinson eventually bought into Drabinsky's vision. The singer originally agreed to play the Phantom for six months, but given the
audience fervour and growing appreciation of the city, he kept extending his contract. Wilkinson would go on to play the Phantom
for four and a half years, finally retiring from the role in 1994. By then, he had resolved to make Toronto the permanent home for
himself, his wife and their four children.
During his stint with the show - which required him to perform eight shows a week - Wilkinson rarely had the chance to explore the
city. "When the kids started going to school, I started to come out of my shell and really took a look at the place for the first time. I
started thinking, this is a really good North American city. This is probably one of the best North American cities to be in."
Wilkinson and his family eventually settled in south Rosedale. "There are fantastic old houses there," he muses. "I like the trees; I like
the space; I like the safety aspect of it. It's accessible to the centre of town." He also enjoys the anonymity the area affords him.
For Wilkinson, the greatest perk of a life in music has been meeting other luminaries. As a youngster in New York, he met Stan Getz.
Later on, he met bandleader Stan Kenton, as well as Frank Sinatra. Tony Bennett once bought Wilkinson a bottle of champagne
as a reward for doing the best version of "Danny Boy" he'd ever heard. Wilkinson talks seriously about writing a memoir, if for no
other reason than to itemize all these momentous encounters.
If that book is ever published, his invitation to the Kennedy Center Honours in Washington, D.C., will figure prominently. While renting
a home in New Jersey in 1987, Wilkinson got a letter in the mail from the White House, bidding him to sing at a special event. While
flattered, Wilkinson told the co-ordinator that he and his wife couldn't make it.
"And these Americans were, like, 'Pardon me?' The President of the United States wants you to come to Washington, and you can't
go?' I said no because we have nobody to look after the kids," Wilkinson recounts. "It wasn't that big a deal for us." Eventually, a
neighbour agreed to babysit the Wilkinson brood, thus enabling the singer and his wife, Deidre, to go to the nation's capital. Told that
he would sing Ray Charles's "Bring 'Em Home," Wilkinson assumed it would be a private concert for the president and select staff.
As it turned out, it was for the Kennedy Center Honours, a brassy showcase that celebrates achievements in American entertainment.
That year, the honorees included Charles himself, one of Wilkinson's biggest heroes. "I've got a video of Ray Charles listening to me
singing Bring 'Em Home," says Wilkinson tenderly. "It's one of my prize possessions."
While it doesn't contain any of Charles's nuggets, Some of My Best Friends Are Songs does pay tribute to a number of Wilkinson's
spiritual forebears. And though he also composed three new ballads for the project, it perhaps most importantly gave him an opportunity
to work with his oldest son, Aaron, himself a singer/songwriter of demonstrable talent. Not only did they unite on a duet ("Father and Son"),
but the elder Wilkinson rendered one of his son's tunes, the aching "Last to Know."
Wilkinson cherishes his son's talent but was initially wary about shepherding him into the music industry. "I was really fortunate to stay working
in this business. The business is so inconsistent and so tough," Wilkinson admits. "I didn't want any of my kids to get into this business.
At the same time, I wasn't going to say, 'I don't want you to do music.'" Several years ago, Aaron was studying architecture when he had to make
the same decision his father had to make 40 years ago.
"I told him look, you're getting into a tough business. I said where is your heart? He said 'Music.' And I said follow your heart." Wilkinson, the
reluctant roofer, understood the decision only too well.
March 2004
Cover and photos by Margaret Malandruccolo
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