I Feel Like Cher
Las Vegas Review-Journal
March 18, 2005
By Doug Elfman
A reporter for the Minnesota Star-Tribune recently went to a Josh Groban concert and detailed the large number of women of various ages who declared their love/lust for the mop-topped pop-Broadway singer. One woman told the reporter that Groban's music "makes me drool."
And even though Groban tries to downplay this sex symbol status, when pressed on the topic, he acknowledges that during a concert earlier this month, a woman screamed a sexual demand at him.
"Someone yelled out, `I want to (expletive) you' from the audience. You just kind of say, `OK, this is a song called "Caruso." ' What are you gonna do?" he says.
Still, Groban claims he doesn't have groupies.
"I'm not a crazy sex symbol. It's great there's a lot of female fans. It's funny to me, actually, they become so obsessed that way. But I don't find myself on the cover of Tiger Beat. It's not to that level."
Groban's voice and upbeat persona does him well, though. He's been on tour for 18 months.
"It's never-ending. I feel like Cher," he says.
The tour is a highlight of his 24-year-old life, he says in a phone interview, but he is ready to take a vacation and clear his head from the "zombifying" schedule of running a career that alternates between super-hectic and waiting for things to happen.
"I can see why the rockers just spend all day drinking, because there's nothing to do. I'm in Indiana looking out my hotel room window, and there's not a lot out there to do. I think I'll just stay in my room until it's time to go to the venue."
Groban has been on a fast track ever since he got his big break as a teenager. His voice teacher called the heavily connected composer David Foster.
One demo tape later, Foster signed Groban, who left Carnegie Mellon University, where he was studying for a career as a singer, he hoped, on Broadway. Instead, Foster has overseen Groban's first two albums and gotten him booked at some of the world's biggest events.
"He discovered me," Groban says of Foster. "He was the first person to give me that push. Eminem will always owe (Dr.) Dre. I will always owe David Foster."
For one thing, Foster signed up Groban to stand in for pop-opera singer Andrea Bocelli at the Grammy rehearsals when Groban was 17.
"I turned it down when I was first offered it," Groban says. "I didn't think I could do it or handle it. I didn't even look at it as a big break. I was just thinking, `Why on Earth is David asking a 17-year-old kid to fill in for Andrea Bocelli?' I just thought it was silly, and I didn't want to do a poor job. So I said no, and he called me back and said, `I'm not asking you, I'm telling you, get your butt over here.'"
At 18, Groban toured with Sarah Brightman and sang a duet with her every night. He was a single man at the time, but once again, he won't dish.
"I had a great time," he says. "I was livin' it up. It was fun. I was on tour with a lot of guys who had already toured with Motley Crue. They were, like, these 50- (and) 60-year-old British rockers. They had the moves. I didn't have the moves. They were the ones who went home with the Hooters waitresses, not me."
This year, Groban sang "Believe" at the Oscars with hip-hop star Beyonce. It was a song Groban worked on with Glen Ballard, the producer of Alanis Morissette and Van Halen, among others, for the animated movie "The Polar Express." But Groban seems to have as much joy looking back at other steps to fame, from appearances on Oprah Winfrey's show and "20/20" to "Ally McBeal."
"For me, every one of those things is set in stone in my brain as defining moments in my life. It didn't happen with one explosive music video," he says.
"We had to do it so left-of-center. We had to go really creatively to get the music out there, because we didn't have that (hype) factor of a lot of the pop artists."
Groban, a Steven Sondheim fan, says if he'd never left college, if he'd never been discovered, he would probably have ended up as one more person auditioning for musical theater.
"And that would have been my dream, to do Broadway someday. Every time I go to New York I think one day it will happen, but not yet."
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