Swoony Tunes
UK Sunday Times Magazine
May 9, 2004
By Ariel Leve
He was a high-school geek from LA. Then, almost overnight, Josh Groban's voice catapulted him to the world's biggest stages. Now he's got the Porsche, the penthouse and millions of women swooning at his feet. So why can't he sit back and enjoy the ride?

A long line of people snakes around Radio City Music Hall in New York, hugging the wall behind a police barricade, trying to shelter from a frigid wind. It's April but it feels like February in this queue for last-minute tickets. It is the third and final night and the show is sold out.

For the most part, the queue is made up of women of all ages, but there are men too. A middle-aged doctor from New Jersey and his wife are celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary; they failed to get tickets, so they drove here, anxious for one last chance to spend $90 each.

Nearby, a mother and her teenage daughter look sad. They've travelled halfway across America from Michigan and there are no tickets left. The doctor and his wife are unlucky. They came to hear a young man barely out of adolescence "because he's better than Andrea" (Bocelli, the Italian tenor). The mother and daughter are about to leave but then, in one of those inexplicable strokes of luck that folk dine out on for years to come, someone in the singer's entourage hears the story and rewards their devotion with two free tickets to orchestra seats. The 17-year-old's eyes well up with tears of joy and gratitude.

Soon the object of their adoration will be singing a few feet in front of them — because of his own stroke of luck. In 1999, Josh Groban, then just 18, was asked to fill in for Bocelli at the Grammy awards rehearsal. The show's host, Rosie O'Donnell, was dazzled and invited him on her TV chat show a few months later.

Now Groban is headlining at one of showbiz's great amphitheatres, and his album Closer is No 1 in the US billboard charts, having sold nearly 4m copies in the first two months of its release.

Groban's fans are notorious. In 2001, after he guest-starred on the TV show Ally McBeal as a high-school geek who sues his prom date for dumping him the night before, so many women bombarded the internet to find out more about him that Warner had to set up a site for him. These female fans are known as "Grobanites" and have created an imaginary country for themselves called Grobania. Later, when asked what it is about this 23-year-old singer that has the Grobanite teenager and her mother enraptured, she'll say, without hesitation: "It's his emotion. He's got such a powerful voice. It's magical."

Everything about Josh Groban seems to have the fairy-tale stardust sprinkle that usually only happens in Hollywood scripts and childhood imagination. His short, gifted life is filled with these moments. Whether it's getting the girl he had a crush on in high school, or being discovered by a legendary producer at 17, or getting his big break by accident, things have simply worked out. His American-dream appeal is underpinned by clean-cut, uncomplicated niceness: he doesn't smoke, he doesn't do drugs, he doesn't hang out in clubs, and at 3am in the morning he's not falling down in a puddle of champagne. He's more likely to be waking up in a hotel room on the road with an idea for a song. He is careful. He works hard, he feels blessed and he is obsessive about two things: his voice and his music. "Even when I was five months old, I sat on my mom's lap and banged on the piano," he says.

On the eve of Groban's Radio City debut, he arrives late for dinner at a bistro in Greenwich Village, apologising and explaining that he's been taping a show on HBO and it ran over. Radio City Music Hall is his New York debut and the stakes are high. He doesn't seem rattled, though — just excited and genuinely eager to please his fans.

There is an arresting old-fashioned politeness about Groban and an anachronistic romantic quality to his looks. He's almost Byronic: tall, lanky, pale-skinned, with wavy black hair. All that's missing is the air of melancholy.

He grins early in the conversation and it doesn't stop. He settles in, orders camomile tea. He seems good-natured, uncomplicated, easy-going. There's no slick image projection, no attitude. Neatly dressed in an oxford shirt and grey trousers, he could easily pass for a student on his lunch break.

He is a flexible baritone who sings in Italian, Spanish and French, defying the classical genre by infusing his songs with pop and easy listening, all bubbling under the veneer of a charismatic performer. He laughs, acknowledging the difficulty in categorising his talent.

He's been compared to everyone from Bocelli to Barry Manilow, even "a male Celine Dion", owing to his range. Classical crossover? It makes him cringe: "I'm not crossing over from anything. I think of it as pop music with different influences. "When I walk in the music store, [my] album is under classical/pop/easy listening. It's hard to say what genre it is. It's genreless. I try not to define what it is. I let the audience define it. Because for me, it's just me."

It's no surprise that his eclectic taste in music was absorbed in childhood. "When I was a kid, I was taken to shows, Broadway shows that came to LA, Elton John at the Hollywood Bowl, classical concerts, opera. I saw everything." He admits: "I was a dorky musical-theatre kid." He developed a taste for musicals in particular: Sweeney Todd, The Phantom of the Opera, Cats. Sondheim was a favourite and, at seven years old, he knew all the lyrics to Sunday in the Park with George.

Groban's parents were not in show business, and they weren't stage parents either. He grew up in Hancock Park in central Los Angeles and his family was stable and loving. His father is a corporate head-hunter, and his mother, now an interior designer, used to teach art. He has one brother, who is 19 and studies film.

Groban taught himself to play the piano. At 15 he started a theatre club at school. He doesn't recall being made fun of for being a musical-theatre kid. "If it was happening, it wasn't to my face. If anything, it made me feel like I had a voice. I wasn't the kid on the football team catching the touchdown pass, I wasn't the kid going up to the blackboard solving the brilliant mathematical equation: I just felt like theatre [was] where I had something to say." That's when he realised he had a voice: plucked from the back of the school choir to sing a solo — a Gershwin jazz song. It was the first time his mum heard him sing — she didn't know he had this voice — and Groban even surprised himself that he could sing on pitch and hold a note. The audience adored him.

He pauses to review the menu. He looks earnestly at the waiter: "What do you recommend? Crab soup? Is that creamy? It is? Oh, that's not good." He has to be careful about what he eats before a show. He orders the yellow-fin tuna.

His friends in high school were not the most popular kids. He was shy; he took a lot of music classes, hovering somewhere between the introverted geek and the spirited class clown. Later he switched schools, to specialise in the performing arts, where he could fit in and thrive. "It was difficult for me with schools," he says, hinting, for the first time, at some turbulence in his childhood. "There was a lot of frustration. I had a difficult time. Not being the popular kid." But when pressed for specifics, he remains vague. "Not part of the top percentile."

Is he being coy — hiding something? Or is it just that simple? It's hard to discern the effects of his alienation. Groban sings with great depth of feeling for sorrow and loss, but it doesn't come from a place of darkness or trauma in his own life. He seems to understand it without having experienced it first-hand. There is a richness and pathos, and this tragic romanticism is to his advantage: he can convey emotion for others to relate to without the burden of drowning in it himself. This is evidenced in how he handled the adolescent bruises. Rather than get discouraged, it sparked his drive. It helped him form goals, and he says: "My goal was always to do Broadway." And girls? Where did they fit in? "I was the hopeless romantic. I had so many crushes. But not on the real obvious girls. I was into the quirky ones. I was so shy, though." At 15, for his junior prom, he took his history teacher and his English teacher. One on each arm. This solved the problem of who to bring. Plus, he says, "They were really hot."

For his senior prom, he rented a stretch limousine and invited whoever wanted to come. "Lucky for me, a lot of pretty girls wanted to go to the prom in a limo."

Groban seems momentarily rueful. "I had one of the loves of my life in high school. She's married now. Christina." Loves of his life? He's 23! "Yeah," he says, sheepishly. "But you know how it is. She was the person I would look at from afar. And then it turned out she was looking at me too. She came up to me during a fundraiser. All theatre kids are always doing fundraisers, and she took my hand and I found out that the crush was mutual."

They dated for a year, broke it off for college, were off and on for a year, and remained good friends. It was around this time that Groban was "discovered". He had been accepted at Carnegie Mellon University to study musical theatre, and had been taking voice lessons.

It was 1999, he was still in high school, and the producer David Foster asked his voice coach to submit some demo tapes because he needed someone to sing the part of the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera at the inaugural gala for the then California governor, Gray Davis.

When Foster heard Groban's voice he called him immediately. Groban didn't know who David Foster was until he went to his house. There he saw the 14 Grammys earned by producing everyone from Whitney Houston and the Corrs to Celine Dion. And Foster was taking an interest in Groban's talent. At the party, Groban sang All I Ask of You, from The Phantom of the Opera. "All of a sudden I found myself rehearsing with a full orchestra in front of 20,000 people. I could have choked. Maybe [I didn't] because I was so naive. I was ignorant of the fact that it was for something. I wasn't trying to prove to anyone other than myself that I could do it."

This led to him filling in for Andrea Bocelli at the Grammy-award rehearsals, and duetting with Celine Dion. It was a star-studded rehearsal. Rosie O'Donnell was in the audience, one of the many industry people there, and Groban stepped up to the plate and pulled it off. He recalls that when it was time, and the spotlight went on and he was on stage, it was all in slow motion. "I knew exactly what I had to do. It was like checklist in my mind. Gotta hit that note. Hit it — okay, great. Now remember that lyric. That was tricky — oh, I got it — good. Next thing I knew, it was the last note of the song and everyone was standing. It was the first time I'd ever experienced being in that zone that athletes talk about. Everything becomes calmer."

After that, Groban knew his life had changed. He went back to the hotel with his dad and felt things weren't going to be the same. "I went to sleep thinking, something's going to happen. I was walking on air. It felt like a big break, but I wasn't going overboard. It was a first step."

As his career gained momentum, he found himself in front of larger and larger audiences. In 2002 he performed live with Charlotte Church at the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics. There was an audience of nearly a billion. He sang at this year's Super Bowl, which was "crazy, a circus" because "Janet overshadowed everything" — referring to Janet Jackson's infamous breast-baring episode involving Justin Timberlake.

Tonight, Groban commands the stage of Radio City Music Hall, and if he is nervous it doesn't show. There are no strobe lights, no dancers, no elaborate sets. On one side of the stage there is a string section with a harp, and during his two-hour performance he will often relinquish the moment to the pretty barefoot violinist as she executes her solo. He is accessible. The show is not overproduced, and as he stands singing to the swooning audience, his appreciation for the music is evident — whether he's sitting on a stool for an orchestrated ballad like Vincent (Starry, Starry Night); doing a cover of Linkin Park's My December, where heavy drums meet a classical quartet; or, finally, belting out his inspirational anthem, You Raise Me Up, which he saves for the end. Sung with a lush gospel choir, it is infectious.

So when he's not on tour, what is his life like? He loves the movies and playing drums. He also spends time with his girlfriend, the actress January Jones. They met eight months ago at a Hollywood party. Taking a bite of his yellow-fin tuna, he is smiling again. "Yes, it's her real name." They became friends first. "She hadn't heard my music; I hadn't seen her movies. We started on a clean slate."

But Groban admits that at the moment his career is his priority; he'd rather be home with his girlfriend, but he has to stay focused on his shows.

"I don't have a social life right now. I try to — it's something that I miss — but David Foster told me: 'The golden microphone is in front of your mouth. You have to sing into it or it will get passed onto someone else.' It's very lonely, what I'm doing. Even though you have a lot of people around you, they're not experiencing it first-hand. It's hard to name more than five close friends. As much as people want to understand, it's hard when you don't see someone for five months at a time, and they're like, 'C'mon, make time.' But I don't have time. My days are gone. There are a lot of firsts for me. And I'm not going to toss it off. It would be silly to say, 'No, I'd rather go see a movie.' I know there will be time for that later."

So instead he reads. What's his favourite book? "James and the Giant Peach!"

From some of the proceeds of his multi-platinum album, Groban has treated himself and his family: a diamond necklace for mum, a Porsche 911 Carrera for himself. He has also bought himself a penthouse in Beverly Hills. "It's cool. I never expected to make this much money so soon. So I have people that I trust. I pack it away. I bought the car and the home. Other than that, there's not a lot of bling-bling. I try to keep it safe. I feel very comfortable. I don't do a lot of the parties or the red-carpet things, either. By choice. It's because I treasure my moments of quiet. Right now, there's so much going on — around me at all times — when I have the opportunity not to put myself in front of the camera or in a situation where people are going to have access to me, I always choose not to. Because I have to hang onto my sanity. That's the priority. To keep healthy."

We are handed a dessert menu. He scans it and tells me he can't have chocolate before a show, because "It sticks in my throat all night long." He puts down the menu. "I might just get some fruit back in the room, have some tea and watch TV." But he's persuaded to share a peach tart with vanilla ice cream. He continues, and as it turns out, his life is not all peaches and cream. "I tend to get very depressed sometimes. Not necessarily because things are bad. I mean, I haven't had one thing to complain about in the last few years. It's been amazing."

He moves on to his ambitions. Groban's dreams are expanding; he wants to do Broadway, London's West End, he wants to star on the big stage, and, one day, he wants to sing opera. But he recognises that his voice has to mature and build the stamina and strength to sustain an appearance at the Met, Covent Garden or La Scala. One thing he still has to learn is how to have fun, but for now he's headlining Radio City and is soon to embark on seducing a British audience. He's already living a dream, and there's time for others in the future that are attainable and tangible. "That's why I'm smiling from ear to ear."

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