Groban's in the Groove
Edmonton Sun
September 3, 2004
By Mike Ross
I tried to dig up dirt on Josh Groban, the hunka-hunka burnin love whose silken Teshian, Yanniesque, Mouskourish classical crossover music has bewitched legions of women the world over - alas, to no avail.
Why? Just jealous, I guess. I wonder if other men feel the same, fed up that their wives and girlfriends spend their days mooning over Josh Groban posters.
Anyway, the best I could come up with is that he used to play drums in three different rock bands, that he's a fan of the metal band Tool and that he's in league with David Foster.
Pretty slim scandals, really. In fact, Groban himself freely admits working with David Foster.
"I'm not a real scandalous person," he says, playing along during a recent phone interview.
"I don't think I'd find myself in a situation where the fans would be really mad at me for doing something. I probably wouldn't find myself in those situations to begin with, but I've also tried to make it clear that I'm a real person and I'm not some perfect mannequin. I'm a 23-year-old guy and I think the fans understand that. I don't think they put me on a pedestal so much."
Oh, you're wrong about that, my friend. You may still be in the "aw shucks" phase of celebrity. Little do you know.
This guy is huge. Witness the nearly sold-out concert at Rexall Place Sunday night.
Know that Groban fans are called "Grobanites," that the wave of popularity that's swelled around this nice, unassuming singer from Los Angeles is known as "Grobania," as in "Groban mania." Consider that the money spent on his albums so far could buy beer and pizza for every male football fan in Canada. All this despite having no commercial radio airplay or video exposure whatsoever.
Instead, Groban has won the trifecta of feminine approval: Rosie O'Donnell, Oprah and Ally McBeal. Beat that, Tool.
The story of Groban's rise to fame is literally a "dream come true," as he says more than once.
In 1998, fresh from attending the L.A. County High School for the Arts, Groban was approached by Foster - who's friends with Groban's vocal coach - because he needed a young musical theatre guy to sing at the inauguration of Gray Davis as governor of California. It happened Groban fit the bill perfectly (and no, he didn't sing at the inauguration of Arnold Schwarzenegger).
He recalls, "I was 17 and (Foster) had me come in and sing a song from Phantom of the Opera and it was a dream come true. It was the first time I'd sung with a full orchestra and the first time working with somebody of David's calibre.
"It was just such an intimidating, wonderful learning experience and I went home on cloud nine and thought to myself, well, that was a fun one-time thing."
But it wasn't over. It turns out that Foster had the same idea Groban did - to make a pop album with an orchestra that infused elements of both classical music and musical theatre.
And when David Foster gets an idea - that a young Quebec singer named Celine Dion could become a star, say - it usually comes to fruition.
After recording a demo, they joined forces in a duo on the "circuit," as Groban puts it - "charity after charity, party after party," many attended by showbiz big wheels.
Groban says, "It was a great opportunity to help the charities and get in front of a very important audience at the same time. It was the best thing to do."
Dreams continued to come true as the Foster-Groban juggernaut carried on. Groban sang with Celine Dion during rehearsals for the 1999 Grammy Awards (standing in for Andrea Bocelli) - a seemingly insignificant event that "that was one of the defining moments of my career," Groban says.
This caught the attention of Rosie O'Donnell, which in turn led to appearances on Ally McBeal and so on and so forth in classic showbiz "momentum."
In February, Groban performed at Oprah's 50th birthday party, icing on the cake in more ways than one. By then, Groban's second album, Closer, was a smash hit.
Rosie calls him "opera boy," which, he laughs, "If and when I do opera, I guess that'll be appropriate."
The answer to the next obvious question - when's the opera album coming out? - is "not yet."
He continues, "My music is operatic, for sure. But it's not opera. I really wouldn't want to make the opera album until I felt like it was the right time.
"I could wait a year or two, but it's not really where my heart is right now. I have much more I want to experiment with and when it comes to opera there's not much room for experimentation. I feel like now's the time for me to experiment. When I get older and my voice has really clicked into this place where I could tackle Nessun Dorma every single night, maybe then, but for now I just have to go with the flow."
And woe betide anyone who goes against the flow of Grobania - even Groban himself.
Ladies: A few nosebleed tickets remain for Sunday's concert, at Ticketmaster. Guys: There's women's tennis on TSN.
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