The music of the '80s was known for �" what? Hair, it turns out, as in the long-shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen hair on the swaggering guys in such heavy-metal bands as Poison, Ratt, Styx, White Snake, and Van Halen. They're often called "hair bands," and as are about as far away from Broadway music as you can imagine. But writer Chris D'Arienzo and his collaborators on Rock of Ages saw the theatricality in the overblown anthems. Indeed, he said, "They have this epic, almost-Shakespearean musicality to them."
It took four bumpy years, but Rock of Ages became an unlikely Broadway hit when it opened in 2009, and has since launched several international productions as well as the touring company arriving March 8 at the Curran Theatre. D'Arienzo was speaking from Los Angeles, where the tour was in residence at the historic Pantages Theatre. "It's just two blocks away from where we first did it," D'Arienzo said of the small Hollywood music club where an early incarnation of Rock of Ages faced its first audiences in 2005.
Another L.A. club date followed, and then an expensive failure as a hotel-casino show attraction in Las Vegas. "There were many times we thought the project might be dead," D'Arienzo said. The producers, with deeper pockets than theatrical experience, were afraid of New York as a destination, but took the plunge with an off-Broadway production that soon transferred to Broadway.
"Ironically, New York audiences embraced our show even better than Los Angeles audiences," D'Arienzo said. "It was both shocking and surprising for this show that was just supposed to be a fun, irreverent, silly night at the theater."
Working with director Kristin Hanggi, D'Arienzo created a story about a wannabe rocker working in a music club on the Sunset Strip of the 1980s who falls for a girl just off the bus from Kansas. They team to save the club from destruction at the hands of a greedy real estate developer, as about two dozen songs from the '80s punctuate the story.
"There were songs I was devastated we couldn't use," D'Arienzo said of getting clearances from the various bands and songwriters. Notably, Def Leppard did not want to be included despite the fact that the show took its name from one of the group's songs. "But we always tried to be malleable in the early stages, knowing that if we couldn't get song X we could find another. As I look at the show now, I wouldn't change any of the songs we used."
Reception from the New York theater critics was predictably mixed, with some dismissing the show as only so much noisy nonsense. But there were good reviews too, most notably from The New York Times, whose critic Charles Isherwood invoked the phrase "guilty pleasure" to help explain his welcoming words.
"I hate the term 'guilty pleasure,'" D'Arienzo said. "It's like a security blanket for people to not feel judged because they like something. I unapologetically just like things, and that's how I go about my day."
The writer liked better the critic's description of the show as "Xanadu for straight people, and straight-friendly people, too." "I was very flattered by that, because I really enjoyed Xanadu," D'Arienzo said of the tongue-in-cheek Broadway musical based on the notorious movie starring Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly. "While I'm a straight guy, I think my humor and sensibility are very gay-friendly."
As a theater kid at his high school in Paw Paw, Michigan, D'Arienzo was sometimes bullied by teens whose music of choice included the very songs that Rock of Ages celebrates. And so, it wasn't a soundtrack he embraced during his youth. "I fought it," he said of the heavy-metal genre. "I didn't want to like 'Appetite for Destruction' because the guys who would push me into a locker were the guys who would listen to it."
But he gained a respect for the music as he developed Rock of Ages, and he took on its persona when he pitched himself to the producers as their man to write the script. "I kicked open the door to the conference, and I tried to unleash by inner rocker," he said. "In my pitch I played the different characters and took them through my ideas of how to shape these songs into showtunes. I got an e-mail on my drive home saying, 'You're our guy.'"
D'Arienzo had been a struggling screenwriter in Hollywood for 12 years when Rock of Ages came along. "I'll be honest," he said. "I was kind of at the end of my rope." But the success of the musical has turned his career around. He wrote and directed the 2010 feature film Barry Munday, and wrote a script for the movie version of Rock of Ages to be directed by Adam Shankman (Hairspray ) and starring Tom Cruise as the ruthless real estate developer. He has many more irons in the fire.
"I am the furthest thing from an overnight sensation," D'Arienzo said. "Rock of Ages was a thing I created on my way out, and it pulled me back in. I probably would have ended up doing community theater in Paw Paw."
Rock of Ages will run March 8-April 9 at the Curran Theatre. Call (888) SHN-1799 or go the www.shnsf.com.