Revisiting A&M Records No. 32
‘Liza Minnelli’ (February ’68)
Despite its self-titling, this is far from the debut of Judy’s daughter. By the time she was about to turn 22 and relaunch her recording career via the auspices of Mr. A & Mr. M, Minnelli had already issued three LPs for Capitol Records, starting with ‘Liza! Liza!’ in ’64, the same year she embarked on her first national theatrical run as Luisa in the touring production of ‘The Fantasticks.’
But the reality remained that after four years of working her young tail off — including landing the lead in ‘Flora the Red Menace,’ her Broadway debut — Liza was still struggling to step out from her mother’s formidable shadow.
Probably didn’t help that up to this point her most successful recording had been her live special at the London Palladium with the singular (if declining) Ms. Garland. That Capitol release nearly cracked the Top 40 of Billboard’s albums chart; her own discs didn’t break past 100.
Neither did this one. Yet, in retrospect, it sounds like a turning point: the moment when her own unique personality came to the fore and her seemingly predestined fate began to unfurl.
Some of the credit for this step forward could be attributed to her then-new husband, singer-songwriter Peter Allen, who nudged her away from the Great American Songbook and toward emerging and/or newly established talents like Lennon/McCartney (she subtly dramatizes ‘For No One”) and Burt Bacharach (redoing ‘The Look of Love’ seems a prerequisite).
Also: Randy Newman, who provides three early obscurities here. ‘The Debutante’s Ball’ and ‘Happyland’ are amusing scenarios Newman will rapidly outgrow; ‘So Long Dad,’ which he will reclaim on his ’71 live LP, displays truer DNA.
And let’s not overlook Sonny Bono, whose prescient divorce piece ‘You Better Sit Down Kids,’ a then-recent hit for Cher, is wed here to Kander & Ebb’s ‘Married,’ a Lotte Lenya number from a new musical that eventually will loom large in Liza’s legacy: ‘Cabaret.’
The idea that this record is somehow less theatrical or beholden to olden pop traditions than its predecessors were is a laughable stretch, however. Liza cannot *not* sound theatrical; it’s not only too intrinsic to her bloodline to be denied, it’s also precisely why millions began to love her, and still do.
Even when she worked with Pet Shop Boys two decades later on the marvelous collaboration ‘Results’ she was still unmistakably Liza, the plucky charmer for whom all the world’s a stage, and no stage is too small to be transformed by larger-than-life performances.
Why that persona has rarely worn thin a half-century later is because of an intimate maturity and survivor’s sadness imbued in her demeanor. That begins here, with her A&M works. In a year her mother would be dead. Six months later Liza’s career would skyrocket via ‘The Sterile Cuckoo.’ This LP is the sound of her about to take flight.