Dean Friedman review: Why 'after 40 years I still thank my Lucky Stars'

[froodle]

AS THE starting point for a love song, the opening lines of Lucky Stars: "What, are you crazy? How the hell can you say what you just said?" hardly suggests a fine romance and happy ending.

But so enduring is Dean Friedman's 1978 single - a semi-humorous exchange between a jealous wife and her husband who has just bumped into his ex-flame Lisa - that it is still played regularly on Radio 2.

From next Sunday 62-year-old Friedman will be playing it all over again as he embarks on a 30-date UK tour to celebrate its 40th anniversary.

"I always wanted to tell short stories set to music," he says, "then invite the listener in as a co-conspirator."

Lucky Stars, a duet with fellow New York singer-songwriter Denise Marsa, was certainly a hit with comedian Dawn French.

In 2008, her then-husband Lenny Henry had the singer flown in to perform it at her 50th birthday party in a hotel near her West Country home.

"It was supposed to be a surprise so she couldn't know I was in the hotel," explains Friedman.

"I always have to warm up before I do a performance so I had to walk away from the hotel and wander deep into the woods to vocalise so nobody would hear me.

"It's hard to do when you're singing at the top of your lungs but I managed to get far enough away so that the only ones who knew were the squirrels.

Did Dawn take the female part in Lucky Stars? Friedman laughs.

"The whole audience joined in," he says, "and it was so gratifying that they knew all the words.

"I always really enjoy it when I'm on tour and some big bloke in the front row sings (he puts on a deep, gruff voice), 'Did you see Lisa?'" Friedman was born in Paramus, New Jersey, part of a musical family.

"His mother sang and performed on Broadway under the name Rose Rosett so, he says, "there was always a show-tune on the piano".

He bought his first guitar aged nine and started writing songs "out of sheer boredom.

I'd be standing in a line at the post office or the bank and a lyric or melody would come to me. As a kid I had a lot of time on my hands!

"My first song was for a fourth grade teacher I had a crush on and was called I Would Love To Take A Swim With You In Summertime. I've been writing ever since."

After bombarding record companies with tapes and pinning his rejection letters to the wall "for inspiration", he was eventually signed to a record label.

Dean Friedman released one of the first crowdfunded albums in 2002

His first hit in America, Ariel, released in 1977, was also a song about unrequited love.

"Ariel was actually a composite of all the girls I had a crush on growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey," he says.

"But all the details are from real life, from the lives of my family and friends.

"For example there's a line where she was collecting quarters in a paper cup for the Friends of BAI. That was actually a radio station that my brother Aaron was collecting for in the local mall.

The following year, when his breakthrough album "Well, Well", Said The Rocking Chair was released he drew even more directly from life by recording the background sounds for The Deli Song in New York delicatessens.

"I felt compelled to order something in every one of them too," he laughs, "so it was quite a delicious recording session."

He has had a love/hate relationship with the music business.

His first record company did not want to release Lucky Stars.

"They said, 'Dean, you're a solo singer, why do you want a duet on there?'" Then again, he says, they didn't like much of the rest of the album either.

"To my amusement and satisfaction about a week later I was getting Telexes - this was before faxes and the internet - saying that Lucky Stars was racing to the top of the charts."

Another hit followed, the infectiously catchy Lydia and "Well, Well..." was a hit album both in the UK and US. It is being reissued, in remastered form, this month.

His problems with the industry continued in the 1980s when his single McDonald's Girl was banned by the BBC for name-checking a brand and his label promptly dropped him. Undeterred, he channelled his energies into writing manuals about synthesisers and devising video games, including the first one to feature virtual reality.

"But," he says, "there was always a bit of music involved and I never stopped writing."

He did not stop touring either, and brought out one of the first crowdfunded albums in 2002, paid for by his fans.

Married with two grown-up children, Hannah and Sam, both of whom work in TV, he also organises folk festivals in the area where he lives, at the foot of the Catskill Mountains in New York State.

"I love that travelling troubadour tradition," he says.

"The big thing for me is to turn up in a smalltown hall, filled with people, say 'Hi, how ya' doing?' and tell my stories face to face. That keeps the music alive for me."

He'll be doing just that in the UK until early June. Don't miss him.

“I love that travelling troubadour tradition,” he says.

“The big thing for me is to turn up in a smalltown hall, filled with people, say ‘Hi, how ya’ doing?’ and tell my stories face to face. That keeps the music alive for me.”

He’ll be doing just that in the UK until early June. Don’t miss him.

For tour dates visit deanfriedman.com.