After initial introductions have been established for an interview, the subject on the other end of a telephone line quite often asks something akin to, "So, how's San Francisco?" At which point I look out the window and, figuring more details aren't really being sought, say something like, "Partly cloudy and about 60 degrees." But Ben Vereen is primed for any meteorological report. "Then it's a glorious day in San Francisco," he said, "because any day you're above ground has to be a good day."
Short of a tsunami, earthquake, or hurricane, it's likely that Vereen would come back with a similar answer. He returns time and again to his philosophy �" it's not about religion, he stresses �" that the glass-is-half-full concept of spirit will bring blessings. "Someone once said, 'Do not lean on man. Lean on spirit. Man will let you down every time, but spirit will never let you down.'"
Vereen, 69, is headed our way, for performances June 17 and 18 at Feinstein's at the Nikko. The official title of the cabaret show is Steppin' Out, but Vereen prefers to call it "my gratitude show." He first began performing an earlier incarnation in 2012, but he said it has metamorphosed since then. "I realized about two years ago that the show is really about a thank you to you, the audience, who has been with me all these years. This career has been a gift, and the public has been saying we like you and want to hear more from you. So all the songs I pick for the show have a direct link to that place of gratitude."
In the earlier parts of his career, when he was winning a Tony Award for Pippin, playing to millions of television viewers as Chicken George in Roots, and headlining on the Las Vegas strip, he said, "I was riding high and not having the understanding of what goes along with it." Having played Judas in the original Broadway production of Jesus Christ Superstar, he can still quote from The New York Times review. "The reviewer said, Jeff Fenholt, who plays Jesus, gets lost in the scenery, and Ben Vereen, who plays Judas, tears up the scenery looking for him. I was so excited, all the raw energy, but the director asked me to calm it down a bit."
Temptations began to ferret their ways into this heady life. "Someone points a finger at you and says come this way, and you get caught up in the swirl of things, and you fall into the pits of life, but here's the good news. I was able to raise myself up, and to this day it amazes me."
Drug addiction, divorce, illness, a late, accidental discovery that he had been adopted as an infant, the death of his daughter in an automobile accident, and his own horrific injuries sustained when he was hit by a car walking on a highway near his Malibu home finally all came to a head as he began arduous rehabilitation to let him walk again �" never mind singing and dancing on a stage. "I can't do cartwheels or splits like I used to, but even on a small stage like Feinstein's, you feel the movements."
Some of the songs Vereen is expected to perform are from Broadway musicals that featured him in the original casts or as replacements in long-running hits. He doesn't limit himself to songs that his characters performed, and a recent song list includes "Defying Gravity" (Wicked ) and "Corner of the Sky" (Pippin ), plus such songs of uplift as "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries," "I've Got a Lot of Livin' to Do" and his signature signoff, "Mr. Bojangles."
"We get to talk," Vereen says of between-song patter. "We get to share. We have a conversation." Reminded that he had had an interview 40 years ago with me when he was appearing at the Fairmont Hotel in New Orleans, he said, "You took the time to talk to me. I don't know whether you were assigned to do it, but you showed up, and we got to share together, and now we're still talking 40 years later. Thank you."
When not performing, Vereen spends time working with students and schools trying to maintain art curriculums, and has programs set up in Sacramento, Tucson, and New York, with hopes to move into the Bay Area sometime soon. In addition to his philanthropic work, Vereen recently spent four months directing an updated production of Hair in Florida, several months in Canada filming a new TV movie of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and developing a new movie based on the 2010 Kenyan film The First Grader, in which he would play an 84-year-old man who must start his educational quest at the very beginning. Then there's an autobiography that's slowly making its way to fruition. "Bob Fosse said to me during All That Jazz that the hardest thing is not to make yourself the hero of every scene." On top of all that, he is working on expanding his Steppin' Out show into a full-blown Broadway musical.
"I had this whole nonstop year, and I figured I needed to decompress before I came to San Francisco." He was speaking from the Optimum Self Institute in San Diego, where people with various ailments come to cleanse out their systems. And is Vereen cleansing as we speak? "Why, yes, I am."
It's a far cry from when he was appearing in Hair at the Orpheum Theatre and living in a beat-up mail truck behind the theater so he could send the usual per diem home to his family. "One night I woke up because I was being towed. I thought maybe it was finally time to move out of the mail truck."