Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thanks for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful you're here on today's show for our edition of Silver Liner Notes, we'll discuss the 25th anniversary of D'Angelo's album Voodoo. Kay Sohini will be here to talk about her new graphic memoir, This Beautiful Ridiculous City, and we'll talk about Caribbean food without the meat with cookbook author Lloyd Rose. His latest is titled Island Vegan.

That is our plan. Let's get this started with the legacy of the Blue Man Group.

[music]

Alison Stewart: Anyone who has seen the show will recognize this PVC percussion. You'll also be able to visualize the three inquisitive and speechless men, who are blue, playing it. This recording comes from a Blue Man Group performance earlier this month, but the musicians you hear in that clip aren't just any Blue Men. They're the group's three founders, Matt Goldman, Chris Wink, and Phil Stanton, two of whom are my next guests.

More than 30 years after inventing the Blue Man character and launching the show here in New York City, they've returned to the stage at Astor Place for one more performance before Blue Man closes its doors this weekend. Its first show was on November 17, 1991. The final show is this Sunday. Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton are here with me, an exclusive radio interview. Chris was meant to be here, too, but he's under the weather, so we're wishing him well. They're here to reflect on Blue Man's origins and legacy and take your own Blue Man memories. Welcome to the studio.

Phil Stanton: Hi.

Matt Goldman: Thank you for having us.

Phil Stanton: Yes, thank you.

Alison Stewart: We're so happy for you to be here. Listeners, talk to us about the Blue Man Group. When was your first show? Did you end up on stage? What questions do you have for its founders? Have you found yourself a Blue Man? Have you been inspired by Blue Man? Have you ever yourself being a Blue Man, I should say? Our number is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can join us in conversation on the radio or you can text to us at that number as well. 212-433-9692. This is for both of you. What is it like to be back on stage in Blue Man?

Matt Goldman: I have to say it was pretty fun.

Phil Stanton: Yes, it really was. I was worried.

Alison Stewart: Were you really?

Phil Stanton: The thing I was worried about most is because we had a new 150 people in the audience. I didn't know what that would be like because the Blue Man, there's no fourth wall, of course. We really are interacting with people. It's not a pretend here. It's not acting. We're interacting with people. It's very real. I didn't know what looking into my 17-year-old son's face would be like-

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's amazing.

Phil Stanton: -and all the other friends and family who were there.

Matt Goldman: I'd have to say that the ratio of number of hours of rehearsal to number of minutes of stage time was embarrassingly lopsided, not in our favor. You would think that it would all come back to us right away, but the precision and the drumming and the acting, it took longer than anticipated, let's put it that way.

Alison Stewart: Phil, what came back to you the fastest?

Phil Stanton: The fastest? I have this one little thing that I've never really taught other Blue Men-- and it's the ability not to blink. I thought, "Well, I'm not going to be able to do that.," but it came back really quickly. I know that sounds really weird. It's such an idiosyncratic thing to talk about, but that was it for me.

Alison Stewart: What came back to you the fastest?

Matt Goldman: Nothing came back fast. The rehearsal before the second show, we actually did two shows, the whole thing for me was greatly motivated by my own 20-year-old son, Ryas. He was going off to England for a semester abroad, and he said, "Dad, you got to do a show before I go." Called Chris and Phil and said, "I know this is ahead of schedule, but we got to do a show no later than January 9th for Ry." Even then everything was new and an adventure which is the character.

As long as you stay in character and the fact that it was discovery at every moment really plugged us into the earliest, earliest days of Blue Man, but by the rehearsal before the second show, I noticed that I was looking out into the theater and my hands were just playing the music. Then those neural firings, those neural connections were like, "Oh yes, this is how it used to be."

Phil Stanton: I never really got to that point, but I tried. When I would look up trying to play, I would hit a wrong note or something.

Matt Goldman: Your parts are a lot Harder than mine. Mine are so much easier.

Phil Stanton: He's so kind.

Alison Stewart: We're going to get Chris in here. He couldn't come in because he wasn't feeling well, but we found a video of Kurt Loder, MTV News, interviewing Chris in 1988.

Matt Goldman: Funeral for the '80s.

Alison Stewart: There you go. Let's take a listen.

Kurt Loder: It's a beautiful afternoon here in Central Park, and yet one group of people on hand today is feeling blue. They're a collective of artists who call themselves the Blue Man Group. Their leader is right here with me, Chris Wink. Chris, why so blue?

Chris Wink: It was actually an accident. A rock and roll genetic engineering accident made us this way. We thought it was pretty interesting because afterwards, what we realized was after this accident, our skin was blue, but also we became interested in all different kinds of music, not just one kind, not just new wave or hip hop or heavy metal or reggae. We became interested in all those things and more. Turkish music, Japanese music. We became this genetic permutation and we became interested in everything.

We were no longer nationalistic or single-minded or single category oriented. We decided we would mix everything. It was this interesting thing that happened. It was so interesting, we thought we'd tell everyone about it. They don't have to be blue to think this way, but we thought we'd share it with the world.

Alison Stewart: Let's bring me back to 1988. How long had the Blue Man existed, or at least in your mind, until that point?

Phil Stanton: Oh, weeks, maybe.

Matt Goldman: We would consider that event, the funeral for the '80s in Central Park in May of 1988, we would consider that the actual start.

Phil Stanton: I guess that's right. We didn't even have an idea that we would go on stage at that point.

Matt Goldman: Oh, not even close.

Phil Stanton: We just thought it was a happening, is what we called it.

Matt Goldman: There were so many ways into the antecedents and how it started, but really, you're right, Phil, it was weeks before where we got bald and blue.

Phil Stanton: We just did some experiments.

Matt Goldman: We got bald and blue for the first time. We literally just put the makeup on and stared in each other's eyes. It was a powerful moment, though, because we knew that there was something bigger than us and it wasn't us. We could subjugate our ego completely because it wasn't us. It was this character, this being. We knew we somehow stumbled across something special.

Now, when you're bald and blue in your living room and then you go up to the roof of your building for a shoot, if you then say at that moment, "Oh this is going to lead to sold-out shows all over the world and platinum albums and rock shows and 22 appearances on the Tonight Show and Grammy nominate-- and on and on and on, they would take you, put you in a room with very soft walls and put the key away.

Alison Stewart: Lock it.

Matt Goldman: Yes. That would have been nuts, but little by little, thing by thing, that's what actually happened.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking to Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton, two of the founders of the Blue Man Group. The show which started here in New York over 30 years ago is ending its run this Sunday. Our phone lines are popping. Let's take some calls. Let's talk to Adam. Hi, Adam, thanks for calling, All Of It. You're on the air.

Adam: Hey, thanks for taking my call, guys. First off, I just want to say thank you. I've seen this show twice. I can't believe it's been 30 years, because I saw it about four or five years in. That means I'm old, but as a drummer, I really appreciate the creativity of what you guys do and just the rhythms that you've come up with. It's just so fun and interactive. My question is, were you guys performance artists also? How and when did you incorporate the marshmallows and all the other bits that you guys do, which might be fun to watch, but they're incredibly difficult? Who can stuff that many marshmallows in their face at once anyway?

Phil Stanton: How did we come up--

Alison Stewart: Were you performance artists first?

Matt Goldman: Right. I had just moved to New York not too long before we started on Blue Man, really. I moved here, I thought to be a normal career as a theater and film actor, but I also came here with a lot of curiosity about the city, and I wanted to find where's that edge, that unusual place where you can express in ways that are not so conventional. I don't know, I just happened to meet Chris on this catering job, my first job I got in New York, and we just started exploring the East Village and what was happening down there. Then Matt, you had known Chris for a long time. You were 11?

Matt Goldman: Yes, Chris and I started to go to school together when we were 12, and we were two of nine new kids in a group of 100. We were already outsiders. I think that part of the antecedents of Blue Man as outsiders. I think to your question about performance art, in a way we're anti performance art in the same way that we're anti-clown. I think that the skill stuff is like a Nouveau Vaudeville. We studied all different forms of performance and entertainment.

Vaudevillians used to spin plates or swallow fire or whatever to gain the respect of the audiences. We thought that that was a tried and true and great mechanism vehicle. That's where the catching in our mouths stuff. It just happened that people used to throw stuff at Phil and Chris in catering as they walked into the kitchen. They developed the catching side really well. I just happened to be a pretty precision dart thrower and thrower in general.

Our skills just were predestined, let's just say, to that throwing and catching. While the catching looks impressive, I think Phil will be the first to admit it's really the throwing where the skill lies.

Phil Stanton: Here, here. Yes, that's true. No, pretty quickly, it became a way for us to put all of our interest into one pot. It's not only acting. I'm not even sure I saw it as acting initially.

Matt Goldman: You didn't. About five years in, I had to convince you that you you were acting.

Phil Stanton: Because it was such an unusual character and just so much fun to inhabit, too. It was a way for us to put all of our interest in one place.

Matt Goldman: The real thing was we wanted to make a show that we ourselves wanted to see. We just trusted that if we wanted to see it, we would be attractors for others. We wanted to do something that hadn't been seen before. One of the main things was if you had ever seen a bit or a joke or a piece before, then it didn't make it. That's not always an easy thing to do, is to go into the cracks. We also wanted to speak up to our audiences.

We had really been ourselves offended by the lowest common denominator that so much of books and media and movies and everything was just lowest common-- to sheer numbers. We thought, "People are smart and they have good taste. If we talk up to them, we can also get--" At the time, we were trying to fill 300 seats. We weren't talking about tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands a year, but 300 seats. We figured if we talk up to our audiences--

The show's very layered. That's why there's science in it, and there's comedy and there's music. Of course, music and humor being the international languages. That's, I think, why we attracted people from all over the world, besides the fact that we don't speak so much. There's a lot of language in the show. That's the funny thing. [unintelligible 00:13:59] "Oh, it's great for people from other countries because you don't speak. There's so much English in the show."

I think because of the humor, because of the music, which also has influences from all over the world, and then all these other influences, I think people felt-- Then it was multi-generational. We didn't ever write a show for little kids. We wrote for adults, but we found that three generations of families the grandkids, the adult kids and the grandparents, and they could talk about-- They would tell us, "We spent the whole holiday season talking about-- All of us had different takes and different impressions." That's why they came back over and over again.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about Blue Man Group with two of its founders, Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton. This text says, "I've been a huge fan since seeing it in 1993. I've seen the group five times at Astor Place. I even volunteered to mash bananas when I was young. I'm most happy to say that I introduced Blue Man to my wife and just last week to my daughter. Thank you for creating such a wonderful, inspiring show." Let's talk to Shayna. Hey, Shayna, thanks for calling All Of It.

Shayna: Hey, Allison and the Blue Man Group. Thank you for taking my call. I just have a little bit of a funny story, I guess that happened 23 years ago when I was 2 years old. My family decided, "Let's go to the Blue Man Group and go see this show." Again, I was two. During the performance, at one point, I think y'all were making a mess or something with either paint or smashing something. As a two-year-old, I was told, "Don't make messes," and everything.

I thought in all of my great ideas to scream at the top of my lungs, "Hey, knock it off," in the middle of your performance. Apparently, according to my mother, you all turned to me and stopped the show and pointed at me real quick. Then an usher came by and was like, "Hey guys, I'm sorry you have to leave." We got kicked out of this show because of me being a silly little two-year-old child yelling at y'all. Just thank you for all you do. Apparently, my parents enjoyed the show a lot up until that point.

Matt Goldman: I remember that show, Shayna, and we were so upset that you guys were kicked out that disciplinary action was taken. I just want you to know that retribution was had on your behalf.

Phil Stanton: Yes. Thanks for that story, Shayna. Thanks.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Greg. Hey, Greg, thanks for calling, All Of It. I understand you have a relation to the Blue Man.

Greg: Yes. Hey, thanks for taking my call. Hey, Phil and Matt. I was a Blue Man for six years, actually. I have a weird, unique Cinderella story. I started working for Blue Man as a crew member at the Astor Place Theater when I was maybe 19 years old. This was Circa 2009, I suppose. I was a flyjack sub, and then an electric sub. Then auditioned and became a performer and spent most of my time performing in the Boston cast, a little bit New York, a little bit Chicago for a while on a cruise ship. [crosstalk]

Phil Stanton: You were a pretty good player on our softball team, too, Greg.

Greg: Thank you. Yes. I was not too bad myself.

Phil Stanton: I forgot what position you played, though. Matt and I both played in the Broadway show league for a number of years, but I forgot what position you played. Anyway, that's not important.

Greg: I think that might have been a different Greg. There was a couple of Gregs.

Phil Stanton: Oh, really? I'm sorry.

Alison Stewart: That might have been a different Greg. I don't really recall many softballs.

Matt Goldman: Good try though. That was good. I like that.

Phil Stanton: Maybe--

Alison Stewart: Another one. Thanks for calling, Greg.

Phil Stanton: Sorry.

Alison Stewart: Maybe you're a good softball player. One more question before we go to break. Why blue? Could have been the Purple Man Group. It could have been the Green Man Group.

Phil Stanton: It was really an intuitive choice initially, and I don't think we knew why, but after the fact, there were all these reasons. So many other colors have specific baggage associated with them and blue only has sky and water. It's the blue planet to put a simple spin on it. It's a color that we found you could be either comic or sublime or solemn at times, and it had the ability to surf all of those different moods and emotions.

Matt Goldman: For me, the blue, it seems like it's the putting on of a mask, but for me, it's the opposite. When you take away hairstyle, when you take away features like ears and what have you, when you take away the different skin tones that all humans have just over their bones, and maybe what's left underneath is just, we're all blue. It's really stripping us down to what's essentially the most human.

In the best shows, I think what happens is people come in, and in the Astor Place Theater especially, it's this neutral zone because you come off the street, you come down into almost a dungeon-like thing, and then you've passed through this corridor of nothingness from where you were to where you're going, You meet the Blue Man, who's also come from somewhere else. For the first, I don't know, third of the show, you're thinking you're seeing someone very strange and unusual.

Then I think for that middle third, you start realizing, "Hey, wait a minute. I'm watching myself. I'm watching what's essentially human." Then by the end, you're like, "Yes, let's get this party started. Let's get together and have an exalted moment," so the climax of the show with all the music and the dancing and the paper and the craziness. When the show works, that's all real. That's not like a fourth-wall experience. That's like, we're all jumping up and down and we're freaking out because we just had an hour and a half of total fun. When the show is just mediocre, then it kind of works.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about the legacy of the Blue Man Group. It's ending its run in New York this Sunday. My guests are Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton. We'll take more of your calls after a quick break. This is All Of It.

[music]

Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guests in studio are two of the original Blue Man, Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton. We're talking about the show, its legacy. It started here in New York over 30 years ago. It's ending its run in New York this Sunday. Let's take a couple of calls. Rocky. Hey, Rocky, are you there?

Rocky: I am. Oh, my God, you guys, thank you so much for over 30 years of fun and mayhem. I was very lucky to be one of the people picked, at least you guys were crawling all over the audience to pick people to go up on stage. I don't know how you got that strap-on thing that extruded bananas. It was just absolute chaos there. I don't know how I function because I was laughing so hard. Thank you.

Matt Goldman: Thank you.

Phil Stanton: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Let's go to Robin calling in from Long Island City. Hi Robin, thanks for calling All Of It. You're on the air with two of the Blue Men.

Robin: Oh, hi. I actually knew Chris. The others, they wouldn't remember me, but we worked at Glorious Food and Chris would come in like you guys mentioned, and ask me to stand 20, 30 feet away from me and I threw things into his mouth. He practiced what became the Blue Man Group all the time at our [unintelligible 00:22:12] thing. We all couldn't believe what happened to you guys. You did your own thing. It was amazing. I became a professor. We were all actors and performers who worked in catering, but Chris and Phil and Matt, you did your own thing. Everybody was so amazed at what you accomplished.

Matt Goldman: Thank you.

Phil Stanton: Oh, thanks.

Matt Goldman: Since you're bringing it up, we should mention this isn't just any catering place. This was Glorious Foods. Jean-Claude Nedelec was one of the great chefs in the world. He cooked for presidential inaugurations and the Kennedy weddings. You either went to one of the many, many, many other catering companies in New York or you Glorious Foods. Chris was a captain of the catering teams and Phil started his thing there. I became an honorary member.

I just have to tell the quickest story because Jean-Claude, he was so supportive of not only Chris and Phil, and myself, but Jon Stewart was an alumni of there. So many amazing, talented people. Jean-Claude and his partner Sean really fostered and created an environment where people could thrive. Jean-Claude used to make the Jello for us. We had a 90-pound jello mold-

Alison Stewart: Oh my God.

Matt Goldman: -that we did a little magic trick. Someone disappeared and later in the show, their head showed up inside of the jello. When we got the run at the Astor Place Theater-- He just made it for Chris and Phil because they were friends. When we got to the show, our so-called producers at the time, they were short-lived, said, "We can't do the jello because it's too expensive. It's $100 a night and that's just too much money." We told Jean-Claude that and he said-- I do a pretty good Jean-Claude [crosstalk].

Phil Stanton: Yes, you do.

Matt Goldman: He says, "Well, of course, we are going to have to make the jello for you because we only want you to be successful." For three years-

Alison Stewart: He did it.

Matt Goldman: -$1,000 a week-

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Matt Goldman: -he made us this jello for gratis.

Alison Stewart: That is very cool.

Phil Stanton: Eight of those big jello things a week for three years.

Matt Goldman: Yes. We had to go pick them up in a taxi. We left them in the trunk a few times, but we did it. Of course, the day we took over the show was just three years in. We said, "Okay, Jean-Claude, we are going to make this right." To this day, Jean-Claude and we all have remained friends, and he even did a benefit for us for gratis. It's all crazy. It was a crazy world.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Lisa. Hi, Lisa. Thank you so much for calling, All Of It. You're on the air.

Lisa: Hi. I'm going to add my voice to all the people calling to say thank you. I have tremendously vivid memories of seeing you in the East Village sometime-- Must have been maybe very late '80s. I don't even think you were the only people on the bill.

Phil Stanton: That's right.

Lisa: You made me laugh so hard. I think I've laughed at you harder than anything in my life. There was such electric shiver in the room because nobody had any idea what was going to happen. It was so incredible. I can't tell you how many times I thought of how funny it was. I guess if I had a question for you beyond my thank you is, you definitely create that electricity with a little bit of danger. I'm just curious about that in your [inaudible 00:26:04].

Matt Goldman: That's a great question. That's a really astute observation because for anyone who's been to the show, we cover the first four or five rows with plastic. We give ponchos to the people in the front. There is this sense anything can happen because frankly, anything can happen because there's technology, there's paint flying off of drums, there's banana coming out of our chest. There's a lot of things, but at the same time, we really want to take care of our audience.

If you notice, when people participate and they come on stage, we're really caring for them. We're connecting with them. It's about relationship. Your observation is so right on, because we want to create this sense that we're all in it together, but life is dangerous. We're often living on the edge and we're connecting with new people. All of the audience and the Blue Man are all connecting. It's a potentially explosive combination. That's something we really, really wanted to-- With humor and the sublime and the freaky and the dark and the humorous and loud music and soft music. We're all these contrasts. These are all things that we tried to get into the night.

Alison Stewart: Tough question for you guys. Matt, you sold your share of the Blue Man Group in 2010 I believe?

Phil Stanton: 2011.

Alison Stewart: 2011. Then it was sold to the Cirque du Soleil. It's been everywhere. It's been Vegas, Orlando, went to Shanghai, I think, of last year. There's merch, there's all kinds of stuff. How are you feeling about what it became?

Matt Goldman: That's a fair question. There are so many ways into that. I'll answer it by these closing days at the Astro Place Theater. First of all, there's several people who are still working there who were there on opening night. In fact, Larry Heineman, one of our very first musician, was there years before opening night. He was our first, first, first musician. He still does shows at the Astor Place Theater.

Alison Stewart: That's amazing.

Matt Goldman: Amazing. Same with one of our stage managers who was originally a light board operator who got her master's degree while she was a crew member at Blue Man. The list goes on and on. What it became was a community who connected around the original, original mission, which was to inspire ourselves and our audiences, perhaps do just a little bit of social good, a little, and have a good time doing it. We weren't much more bombastic than that. We were happy.

We had no idea we were going to make a living from it, let alone do a little bit better than a living, but the community, these callers who've come in, who've connected on this level, to me, that's what it's become. Has Cirque maintained that same vibe all the way through? How could they, and they're not even really Cirque themselves really anymore, because they're two bank buyouts, hence. The core, the themes that love, that connection, that inspiration, I think that's prevailed.

Phil Stanton: I agree with that. There's something that continues to live through the communities. That's one of the things that I'm most proud of, really, is the places that we opened shows, we really left a tight community of largely artists behind. There are so many that still collaborate. There's a whole contingency of former Blue Man people in this one area, upstate New York, and they all produce these shows together and create bands together. That's really satisfying.

I still think Blue Man has a long way to go. I think that the character is very universal, or I would say, because it's so universal. I think the theme of exploring our humanity, asking the questions, "What are we? What's essentially human?" That's what the Blue Man is there to ask through humor and through music and satire. I think the character can go a lot further than it has. I do think that it lives beyond us. I would like to see that vision. I'd like to see it still progress over these years.

Alison Stewart: Let's go out on Jane from Port Washington. Hi, Jane. Thanks for calling, All Of It.

Jane: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I am the grandmother of a young boy with special needs, it's called Jacobson syndrome, who just loved the Blue Man Group so much. We went twice. The second time, because of all the water that was coming off the drum, he made me go out of the good seats and go into the bad seats, but anyway, he has gone on now to be 17 years old, just about to be 18, and he is a real master drummer because [inaudible 00:31:36].

Phil Stanton: Wow.

Matt Goldman: Oh, my goodness. Wow.

Jane: He's even taking timpani drum lessons. He just loves the drum. He's been taught by my son, his father, and I just am so proud of him. Thank you for all you do, and I'm so sorry to see you go. I hope you come back.

Phil Stanton: Thank you.

Matt Goldman: Thank you, and thank you for sharing that great story.

Alison Stewart: Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton, they are original Blue Man. Blue Man ends this Sunday. Thanks for spending time with us. Really appreciate it.

Matt Goldman: That's great. Thank you.

Phil Stanton: Thank you.