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Like a Rolling Stone AsianConnections is proud to present the adventures of Ben Fong-Torres, our Renaissance man, author, broadcaster, and longtime writer and senior editor at legendary Rolling Stone Magazine. This guy's our hero! There's even a major motion picture coming out this Fall 2000 featuring a character about Ben, written and directed by Cameron Crowe. (Cameron wrote and directed Tom Cruise in "Jerry Maguire.") - AC Team
Photo Courtesy (c) BVTV What I didn't get into was the production itself: How it felt to go through three days of preparation, at the NBC Studios in Burbank, where we taped the show before a live audience, in the studio where the fabled Johnny Carson did his Tonight show. In fact, we were next-door neighbors to the current, Jay Leno-driven show, and were constantly bumping into Tonight guests. One afternoon, we were returning from lunch when I spotted Carlos Santana heading for a studio, for rehearsals. I interviewed him many years ago for Rolling Stone, and, more recently, for the liner notes for a reissue of Santana's classic first three albums. We embraced and exchanged pleasantries, and, this warm August, 1999 day, he continued on into the studio, to begin another day to promote his new album, a little something called Supernatural. Although I wasn't busted for it, I'd broken the law by saying hello to Carlos. The producers of Your Big Break gave us strict rules for our three-day stay in show business. One of them was to refrain from talking with any celebrities we might encounter. This is a policy I've heard before, from the time, back in 1993, when I was a contestant on Wheel of Fortune. We were, after all, contestants. The way Your Big Break is set up, five of us�whether solo or a group�perform on the show, each doing an impersonation of a famous music star�and the audience votes for its favorite, who then goes on to a semi-finals round, leading, the winner hopes, to some cash and a recording contract. I had no such dreams. Despite the name of the show, I'm too old to be hoping for a break. I was here mainly because, by some freak accident, I was chosen by the producers to be on the show. Check my previous dispatch, Breaking a Leg, to learn how. Surrounded by starry-eyed hopefuls, I had no illusions about winning the competition. If I were true to Dylan, I'd be up there scowling, spitting out those convoluted lyrics with sarcasm. The audience's love and votes, I knew, would go elsewhere. Besides, I was still trying to learn this tongue-twisting song, "Like a Rolling Stone." So, while others were raving about how this was their chance of a lifetime, and how great it was to get the star treatment, I was looking mainly to get through the performance without humiliating myself. Accidents have happened, we were told at our orientation session. Because Your Big Break is a competition, if a singer messes up�forgets a lyric, say�too bad. There are no second takes. "It's a very aggressive three days," a staffer told us, giving us our schedules for sound checks, hair and makeup, costuming, choreography, and vocal coaching. "We'll do everything we can to make you look exactly like the artist you're doing," one of the producers told us. Of course, with some of us, they could only do so much. The show has featured an overweight woman portraying Karen Carpenter, an Eddie Murphy look-alike doing Barry White, and a Hispanic man singing Wilson Pickett. But they do try. In the makeup room, the staff has photographs of the stars we're imitating, and, with wigs, facial hair (or the removal thereof), they try to transform us. So does the vocal coach. It's obvious that some of the contestants are semi-professionals or better, but guys like me need all the help they can get, and I hungrily absorbed everything my teacher told me, about how to relax my throat to reach higher notes; how to breathe; how to get that exquisite Dylan whine down pat. Right up to the moment that I stepped, uncertainly, through the fake fog and onto the stage, I didn't have all the lyrics memorized. But I have to admit that, on the way to that moment, I had fun. Between visits to the various departments, there were long waits in dingy, cramped dressing rooms. There, I got to know my fellow contestants, and to enjoy a few memorable moments. A young man who was doing Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20 discovered, to his delight, that the real Rob was a guest on the Tonight show�to sing "Smooth" with Santana. Because rehearsals are piped into TV monitors throughout the studios, he was able to watch Thomas work, and to take notes on his mannerisms. The producers clumped two shows into a three-day span, so there were ten acts going through the paces. On the second day, a bunch of us were in the dressing room, just waiting for the next thing, and I suggested that we have a round robin, each of us doing our voices. Suddenly, we had Frank Sinatra, Earth, Wind & Fire, R. Kelly, Elton John, Otis Redding, and me�Bob Dylan�singing in succession. Inevitably, it was showtime. I'd lucked out with most of the behind-the-scenes business. Take choreography. The show treats Sixties-based acts as somehow exempt from showbiz glitz. So, for Dylan, they would have the dancers dressed as sign-carrying protestors, wandering around behind me while I paid them no mind. Since Dylan always plays guitar, I had to hold, and pretend to play one. But when the producer asked whether I might strap on a harmonica rack for the few bars the harp comes in, I became a protester myself. It was enough, I thought, to remember the words, to sing them on key, and to pretend to be playing a guitar. They gave the harmonica to one of the dancers. Photo Courtesy (c) BVTV In the interview with host Chris "Kid" Reid that led into my performance, I'd called Bob Dylan one of the great songwriters of all time. He wrote "Blowin' in the Wind," "The Times They Are A-Changin'," "All Along the Watchtower," "My Back Pages," and "Positively 4th Street." That song goes, in part, "I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes, and just for that one moment I could be you." For me, at least, that one moment had come. Ben Fong-Torres, long-time writer and editor at Rolling Stone magazine, is the author of four books, including his memoirs, The Rice Room: Growing Up Chinese-American, and his latest, Not Fade Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll. He is Editorial Director of myplay.com, an Internet music site that offers free Web space, where users can grab, store, mix, play, and share music of all kinds. Click to Ben
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