This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Douglas Goldstein: Here's the story of Rent.

[0:20] Douglas Goldstein: You have to remember there's this myth that has risen up around Jonathan that he was an overnight sensation and then of course the tragedy happened when he died, but that's not the case. He was 34 or 35 when Rent opened and he'd been knocking around New York for a long time. He'd had a trio with Maren Masey and they would perform at every little basement club in town and his parents who lived in Westchester would dutifully come to see him in the trio with Maren. I remember I interviewed his dad out in California and his dad said sometimes we come and my wife and I were the only people in the audience because nobody cared and he'd written a few musicals. He wrote a science fiction dystopian musical that he sent to Steve Sondheim and he and Steve became friends and Steve saw this dystopian new age science fiction musical and Steve thought it had promise but it wasn't good really and Jonathan couldn't get it up.

He just could not do it and the problem was that it had 18,000 people in the cast and every small little theater said, well, there's no way we can do a show that's got 18,000 people. So he decides he's going to write a very small musical which is totally autobiographical about his struggles turning 30 when he has not made it as a composer, breaking up with a girlfriend and his best friend has been diagnosed with AIDS, all absolutely from his life and he called it, it eventually became Tick Tick Boom. He called it many different things at the time and he wanted to perform it himself because he was also a performer and he went to Robin Goodman and she agreed to put it on Second Stage. There were a lot of people I'd met like that who knew that they were on a trajectory like Robbie Bates.

It was a few of them who knew. They came into your office and they knew where they were going. I had heard his music, I hadn't read the script yet and I met with him and of course he said, I'm going to bring rock and roll to Broadway. That's what he said? He said it. Absolutely. I said, okay. How old are you? How old would you have been then when you met him? 20s probably? Yeah, early 20s. What was the show? It was called Go-Ho Days There. Then we turned it into Tick Tick Boom later after he passed away and he wanted to do it as a one-man show. So we said, okay, let's do a workshop. I think the music is fantastic and you're very talented and we did this workshop and we invited a bunch of people.

I loved it. It needed work. Did Jonathan want to be in it? Yeah, well that was the problem. I said, Jonathan, why don't we get an actor and maybe we need some other character or not. Why don't we let an actor do it? You sit back, be the author and so we can work on it because being in it, it's very hard. He said, no, I'm going to do it myself. I said, well, we can't give you a production, but I think you're brilliant. So would you send me anything you're working on? One day he sent me this song Rent. Called Rent? Yes. It was the first song we wrote. He told me, he actually told me before that, he said, I'm going to write a contemporary La Bohème and he sent me that song and I said, wow, that's a great idea.

I said, you know, they did La Bohème at the City Opera, let's go. So we went together and she kept leaning over and saying, this is what I'm going to do here and I'm going to hammer on drugs that I'm going to have to, I just thought he was, and I got to know some of his friends. I loved him. I really loved him. And, you know, like I love talent, you know, I love discovering talent. It's like the thing that makes me hot. You know, when you quote him, it sounds like he's arrogant, but he wasn't arrogant. He wasn't. He was, he was just on a mission. He really wanted to change Broadway. He wanted to make it more contemporary and more American and more the sound of what he was hearing and what he grew up on and what he did so brilliantly.

And we talked about his work all the time in a wonderful way, though. So the problem was that Jonathan's ego was so big that he could not step down as the performer. So we had to part ways with Robin Goodman at that time. They stayed friendly, but Tick Tick Boom was no more. And around that time, he was beginning to think about the idea for Rent as more and more of his friends were being diagnosed with AIDS and dying. And here's what Al Larson and his daughter, Julie Larson, had to say about that situation.

[5:15] Al Larson: There's another meaning of the word rent and it's ripped apart. And so it's like it's it's like we're not going to pay rent because everything is rent is ripped apart, meaning the society around them with AIDS and everything, everyone dropping dead. It's like it. That's what that meant. It wasn't just, you know, that meant that to Jonathan, too.

[5:36] Julie Larson: Yes, exactly. And it wasn't just, you know, snotty sort of entitled kids playing, you know, you know, playing Bohemia and and just deciding not to pay rent. It was because society is our world is being ripped apart right now. And, you know, who wanted to remember who wanted to change? I don't even know if I knew. I just remember over time him saying, you know, any other titles that have cropped up? I don't think so, because he was adamant, first of all, it was rent from the beginning.

[6:03] Al Larson: Yeah, it was. Yeah, absolutely. So he didn't toy around with it. I don't think he ever. I mean, for other things, he had different titles, but not for Rent. I mean, Rent was always Rent from the very beginning. They used to call it, you know, there was, you know, Tribeca was getting big and there was Soho and he and his friends called it and there was Noho and they called it asshole. You know, that little corner of Greenwich Street, you know, was like nothing that it was, you know.

[6:29] Julie Larson: And so what was the address again?

[6:32] Al Larson: It was 508 Greenwich Street, 508.

[6:36] Julie Larson: And now it's shops that I can't even imagine what.

[6:40] Al Larson: Right. Exactly. Exactly.

[6:43] Julie Larson: And yeah, but and for my brother, it was, you know, it was so funky and but they were on the top floor, so they had access to the roof.

[6:49] Al Larson: Yeah.

[6:50] Julie Larson: So and that's where he that's where he wrote a whole bunch of it, too. I mean, he'd feed that. That's why some of it was, you know, handwritten or whatever. And they, you know, they had a landline and they'd feed it up to the roof.

[7:01] Al Larson: Someone would like pull it up so that the phone was up there and they'd have, you know, they spent a ton of time up there with an amazing view of the Hudson River and New Jersey, you know, that people would pay thousands and thousands of dollars for that, you know, but it was.

[7:16] Julie Larson: And he wrote up there on the roof.

[7:18] Al Larson: Absolutely.

[7:19] Julie Larson: Do you remember when you first heard this thing called Rent that he started to work on? Was there a moment where he called you and said, I have an idea for something? I've written a song or this is what I honestly don't remember.

[7:35] Al Larson: Well, it all started because he was put together with Billy Aronson, who and Billy Aronson was working on something that was or wanted to work on something that would be an updated La Bohème. And John was recommended to him to collaborate. And they worked together, you know, I think nicely and for I think they wrote about three songs together in the very beginnings. But Billy's vision was sort of doing something on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and stuff. And then he, for whatever reason, got other jobs or lost interest. But John seeing what was going on with the AIDS crisis and being like right in the middle of it and recognizing, you know, that that was now what TB had been, you know. And so he just started seeing it as, no, this shouldn't be on the Upper West Side.

It needs to be downtown. This is the crisis of our age. And he asked Billy if he, you know, with permission could continue on with the project. And Billy said, absolutely. And you know, that was very, very early on.

[8:42] Julie Larson: And so then that's.

[8:44] Al Larson: What year would you say he began to start on Rent?

[8:47] Julie Larson: It's about 1988, 89, somewhere in there.

[8:52] Al Larson: So when he was working on Rent, I wonder, did you, were you ever aware of when he was going to the Met at all to see a production of Bohème? Was he studying?

[8:59] Julie Larson: No.

[9:01] Al Larson: He saw Bohème only late in the development of Rent.

[9:09] Julie Larson: Really?

[9:10] Al Larson: But he did a lot of research. He in, not, in fact, when he was out visiting me, we went to the Santa Monica Library and he picked up, and I'm blanking out on the name of it, but the book on which La Bohème was based, by Henri Muget, and sat in my backyard and read it.

[9:31] Julie Larson: And it was darker.

[9:32] Al Larson: And that's really, he, he took a lot of, you know, what became Rent, more from that even than the opera. But he did have a, he did have a couple of really good friends that worked at the Met.

[9:43] Julie Larson: So you remember him in your backyard reading the, the pencil, sort of, notes?

[9:56] Al Larson: He and my, he and my older son, it was their, you know, they went, it was my son's first library card, which is probably why I remember it, at the Santa Monica Library. And they had that version of that book.

[10:09] Julie Larson: And John explained why he was, you know, reading it. He just sat in the backyard and, and was intently, you know, devouring it, especially because I was on the West Coast. And so a lot of times when he'd be writing at night, it was too late to call his East Coast friends at two in the morning, but, so he'd call me and as he, you know, he did with many people. He would just say, he wouldn't even say hello, he'd just say, listen, and he'd just then play whatever he had just written.

[10:34] Julie Larson: And it was usually he taped it and played the tape, he wouldn't sit up at the piano?

[10:37] Al Larson: No, he would sit at the piano, it was both, it wasn't, and then, but then he would send us cassettes of, once he had built up, you know, a rough version of X, Y, or Z, he would send cassettes of works, of works in process.

[10:52] Julie Larson: And did he want to know what you thought, or did he want your criticism, feedback, or was it sort of?

[10:57] Al Larson: I think he, he, he wanted it as long as it was approval. And actually of the three of us, of my mom, my dad, and myself, I, my dad and I were really just his, like, huge cheerleaders, you know, regardless of good, bad, or indifferent, you know, absolute cheerleaders, supportive. My mom was the one who could, would sit there and honestly say, you know, that one I didn't, you know, and it was.

[11:21] Julie Larson: And generally, if she didn't like something, would it be she didn't like the melody, or any specific objections she'd have, or just?

[11:28] Al Larson: It could, you know, maybe she just didn't think it was a good song, or that it didn't work, and, you know, I, but she, of the three of us, would be the one to be the most honest in terms of if there was a negative comment.

[11:38] Julie Larson: Right.

[11:39] Al Larson: And how would he respond to that?

[11:41] Julie Larson: It varied. There were, you know, it depended what mood you got him in. He sometimes genuinely did want critique, and, and, you know, and other times he, you could tell it's like, okay, just keep going, great job, keep going.

[11:55] Al Larson: Great job, yeah, yeah.

[11:56] Julie Larson: But he wasn't afraid to throw things out, start again, move things around?

[11:59] Al Larson: No, no. I mean, it wasn't wedded to, I knew the composer John Barry, and with John Barry, when he played for you, it was an unveiling, you know, because he had, and that was it, it would not be changed.

[12:09] Julie Larson: No, no, no.

[12:10] Al Larson: He was absolutely, in fact, he had many, you know, scribbles of things that changed, you know, over time, you know, multiple times, and songs that, you know, that got discarded and used later, or not at all.

[12:23] Julie Larson: Major changes.

[12:24] Al Larson: Yeah, major, so he didn't, he didn't have an issue with, with that.

[12:28] Julie Larson: Yeah.

[12:29] Al Larson: And did he write everything out longhand? Would he write the lyrics out longhand, dialogue?

[12:34] Julie Larson: He was on, was he on the computer?

[12:35] Al Larson: He was on the computer, but it wasn't, it depended where he was when he was writing.

[12:39] Julie Larson: Right.

[12:40] Al Larson: If he got an idea and he was sitting in a coffee shop or something, he'd write, I mean, there are lyrics that we have that are definitely in his handwriting, and scribbled, and things changed and stuff like that, but he also did use a computer.

[12:52] Julie Larson: Basically, Jonathan Burkhardt, who's now a producer of many things, was an assistant camera person at that time, when they were all just struggling and starting out, and he had gotten his first, like, a first continuing gig for, like, you know, and so there was this keyboard that John had been eyeing that could really take his work to a next level. He could do a whole lot more with it, and that's what Jonathan surprised him with. He just, you know, and those are the kind of friends that he had, you know.

[13:24] Julie Larson: Jonathan and his sister both had a talent for making friends that were really lifelong friends, really good people.

[13:38] Douglas Goldstein: And we'll be back with Al and Julie Larson after this break.

[13:41] Douglas Goldstein: We're back with Al and Julie Larson. When were you guys aware of AIDS, I guess is what I'm asking? Because I know in the theater world, people didn't know what it was at first.

[13:47] Al Larson: Right.

[13:50] Julie Larson: Were you a little too young to...

[13:53] Al Larson: No, I was out here. I mean, we were, you know, adults. I was two and a half years older than John, but it certainly wasn't being talked about other than, you know, the gay man's cancer.

[14:03] Julie Larson: Right, yeah.

[14:04] Al Larson: That's what it's called. But he was, he and everyone he knew were starting to lose friends. I know he was very nervous about it because nobody knew what was causing it, but the idea that only gay men could get it was, you know, supposedly comforting to people and it allowed, I think, you know, the government and everyone not to talk about it for a long time. And then John was close friends with three women that died of AIDS. And so that was terrifying because it's like, you know, they thought no one really knew what it was, but in theory it was, you know, women couldn't get AIDS.

[14:53] Jonathan Larson's Father: And so there are three women that are named in the support group scene. I mean, everyone in the support group that's named was a real person that Jon was trying to honor. Steve. Gordon. Allie. Pam. Sue. Hi, I'm Angel. Tom. Collins. I'm Paul. Let's begin.

[15:23] Jonathan Larson's Father: When do you remember any of the first songs you heard in Rent? The early stuff that he wrote? I remember hearing Rent. I remember hearing Light My Candle and thinking that was a great musical theater song to me. And then little by little, I don't remember exactly what things and things morphed. I mean, one song Glory was originally called Right Brain and was about the creative process as opposed to finding his song. And I can tell you that the last song that he wrote was Take Me or Leave Me. And my parents were living in New Mexico at the time. And Jon came out for two days over the Christmas holiday when he really should have still been working because it was going to open off Broadway in a few weeks and he still had two songs he needed.

But Toy Story had just come out and he was adamant that he be the one to take my son, Matt, who was like six. And he came out for literally 48 hours, went back. And I remember being back in my office and he called me and he said, OK, I'm going over to the theater now. I have the song. Listen. And he played it and went and a few hours later he called me back and he said, they love me. I think there had been a lot of stress that he felt he needed to know Idina and Freddie more to get a sense of what really that song should be. But that was a couple of weeks before it opened. Do you remember Seasons of Love hearing that for the first time?

[17:16] Jonathan Larson's Father: I don't remember necessarily the first time. I remember hearing it. And your reaction to it was? It's a very powerful song. But as family members, we'd be listening to things and it didn't take on the importance until hindsight. In the moment it was, I might have been changing a diaper and whatever. And go, that's a beautiful song and that's a really powerful song. But then again, also question ourselves, what do we know? We're his biggest supporters. We're going to love anything anyway. So who knows? Well, there are a few things that even I would say. Good thing you lost that one. That was good. I remember when he really did ride his bike past New York Theater Workshop and say, I think I found a home.

And they were just remodeling it, which is why it was open. And he just felt like, no, this was a place that could really develop it and invest in him. And not so much financially, but with energy and time. And he really felt immediately a connection there and with Jim. I mean, Jim Nicola just truly nurtured him along for a number of years. But by the time he was working on Rent, he had had so many sort of come close, came close, but then it didn't happen that he was a little bit guarded in terms of being completely excited. He was guarded till the very end in terms of, he was hoping against hope. He felt very confident in what he had, that he really had something and that he was proud of it.

And it was what he had been hearing in his head, where even when he placed stuff for his friends, some of them afterwards said, now I get it. Now we know what was in that head, that he was trying to convey. He was very proud of it and he believed in it and believed in himself, but I don't know that he had the confidence to believe that it was going to be recognized by others. And so there was the excite. I remember he was enormously proud and excited and terrified, you know, I think like every artist and feeling like if this doesn't happen, I don't know what I've got in me next.

[19:44] Jonathan Larson's Father: So back in those days in the late eighties, early nineties in New York City, you actually could ride your bike as Jonathan Larson did to a little off Broadway theater, the New York Theater Workshop and leave the cassette tape to the man who ran it, who was Jim Nicola back in the day. And Jonathan, he left the tape at the box office treasurer, I think. And the box office guy went to Jim Nicola. Some kid left this tape and here it is. And Jim listened to that tape and we have Rent because of that. We'll be back after this break with Jim Nicola and we're back with Jim Nicola. I would say the first meeting and impression was not him in person, but was the script and the tape that he dropped off. He just dropped it off. Yes.

[20:23] Jim Nicola: That story is that I do think about this a lot, that the sense of fate or the right people meeting at the right time by chance that we were moving to this neighborhood as he was looking for a theater to produce a play about this neighborhood. Where had you been before? We were at the Perry Street Theater and we were rental. We were renters there. The people that owned it decided they didn't want to have a theater in there anymore. So we were out and we had to find our own space. This is 92. We moved in here. So that summer of 92, we were renovating the space and he rode by in his bike and he had just finished coming to terms with Billy Aronson. They had just parted ways and made a deal about that Jonathan would proceed with crediting Billy.

They made an arrangement and he came by and he saw the theater being constructed and he thought, oh, this might be just the right spot for this musical about the East Village. So he happened to know our production manager who was in the theater supervising the construction when he poked his head in. And George got the script and this cassette tape of Jonathan singing and playing all the score to us. And the associate director read it and thought, hmm, interesting. And then I read it. This is all within a week of this happening. Because we were actively looking for... You were looking for things too. Well, we're moving into a new neighborhood. We want to connect to the neighborhood. Wouldn't it be nice if we could find a play about the neighborhood?

And this walked in the door. So we were highly motivated to put it to the top of the script pile, to look at it. He looked at it, I looked at it. We both thought, this is great. We'd never really... We'd done a tiny musical called The Waves, which was based on the Virginia Woolf novel, but we'd never thought of ourselves as a theater that produced musicals. So this was going to be a serious challenge to us because we were already stretched the limit, having laid out all the cash to buy a building and then renovate it. And it was going to be a bigger space than we'd ever been in. So it was a real stretching point for us. We wouldn't necessarily do a musical just for the sake of, oh, it's time for us to do a musical, do a challenge. An artist we believed in brought us this thing.

[22:53] Jim Nicola: So what I remember, the impression that I remember about that was the stage direction of that script right at the top was, there's a full Broadway orchestra in the pit and there's a rock band on stage. And I thought, this is really interesting because the influences of more contemporary popular music into American musical theater were things like Hair, where there would not be a Broadway orchestra. There was a rock band. And this idea was to me, represented someone who had a sense of the legacy and tradition of the body of literature and all the artists that created what we call the Broadway musical. And he wanted to be a part of that, but he wanted to reinvent it for his own generation. Then the next big impression I had is when I listened to the tape and I listened to Light My Candle for the first time, and I thought, this is really a good pop song, but it's also a complete dramatic event.

There's a beginning, a middle, and there's a scene, something happens. So this is a singer, this is a composer for the American theater who can do both sides of that equation, that can fulfill the needs of a pop music form and can write, has a theatrical sense and can make, and is fluent in it. And I thought, aside from that sort of more overt, formal thing, I felt the music also, like Puccini, his inspiration, Puccini had a wonderful dramatic, innate dramatic sense about his music. His music that he wrote for the circumstances of his characters is theatrical in its essence. And Jonathan had that same gift, I thought. So it just felt like there's a lot of promise here. Let's look into this.

[25:14] Jim Nicola: I think I would say that I felt he had a great deal of confidence, that he was certain of his mission with this piece. And I was a little bit, well, I thought that was really powerful and important for a young person trying to make their way. It also could be a roadblock. It could be that he didn't know all the answers. I could see from what I had read and listened to that there was a lot of work to be done. He had a lot to learn, but if he's too confident and closed, then this may not work. This may not, all this promise may not matter if he's not open. There was a complicated relationship that he and I had personally that I always felt like dad to the adolescent son who just wanted the keys to the car and why won't you give them to me?

And I was the dad who had to say, well, you know, you have to get a license and that I was having to disappoint all the time. And it did actually come to a point where I said, I don't think you trust us. And I don't think you're happy with the speed or the process that we need to work at. So he was wanting it faster.

[26:36] Jim Nicola: Yeah, of course. So I said, if you don't feel obligated to us, if you want to go out and look for other possibilities, you know, we're happy for you to do that. And if you can find someone that's willing to go faster than that, but that didn't happen. So the first thing we did was a reading in June of 90. It would be the summer of 92 that it came by with the script. And then it took us quite a while to organize the resources and stuff. So it was like May, June, like coming up 93 that we did the first read through of it. And I think you could say that one of the big things that I think we contributed that I could point to and say that this is where his probably accidental encounter with New York at workshop shifted in a fateful way, the course of this piece.

He wrote it to be about the East Village, and he wanted it to be this sort of inclusive, diverse world. But he really had not detailed that in the script. And that's largely what we did with him, I think, is we said, you know, who are these people specifically, let's get into the details that you need to get it as the author of who they are, because they're not generic, the people that live in the East Village. They're very particular people from different communities.

[28:09] Jim Nicola: So the characters weren't fully fleshed out at this point. They were representations of...

[28:44] Michael Riedel: And that's it for this episode. But when we come back, we're going to delve really deep into the New York Theatre Workshop production of Rent. We're going to talk to Jim DeCola, who commissioned it, and the director, Michael Greif, and the man who decided he should bring it to Broadway, the producer, Jeffrey Seller. Thank you for listening to Singular Sensation. I'm your host, Michael Riedel. To find out more about Singular Sensation, the book and the podcast, visit bpn.fm/singularsensation. This episode was edited by Sarah Goodman and produced by Dori Berenstein, Kimberly Garris, Alan Seals, and Sarah Goodman for the Broadway Podcast Network. Special thanks to Liz Armstrong and the entire BPN team.