When your mother’s Judy Garland and your sister’s Liza Minnelli you have a unique musical heritage that makes you part of show business legend. So, when Barry Manilow urges you to create a musical tribute to your mum saying, “It's your great mission in life to continue her legacy,” what’s a girl to do?

Well, when you’re Lorna Luft and a star in your own right, the only answer is to get out there and knock ‘em dead. And that’s exactly what she does with her debut CD, Lorna Luft: Songs My Mother Taught Me, a celebration of the legend, the music and the memories of her mother Judy Garland.

Based on her acclaimed live concert (which tours the UK in January and February 2008), Songs My Mother Taught Me, features 11 tracks with over 38 riveting interpretations of her mother’s most memorable songs.

We caught up with Lorna to find out more about this affectionate tribute and what it was like having Judy Garland as your mother.

It’s great to meet you and we absolutely love your album. Was it a long process to record an album like this?
Yes, because I started doing the show about five or six years ago. It takes a record company with real courage right now to put out a record that’s basically a live show, that has a live feel to it and is not your normal everyday album so I’m very, very grateful to John Craig and everybody over at First Night Records who took a chance with this CD and it’s going really well, I’m really thrilled.

And let’s just underline the fact that – who is your mother because …?
My mum was Judy Garland.

…hence the title of the album. It’s kind of overwhelming isn’t it. Do you find it difficult performing these songs, does it overwhelm you?
It did when I first started my career and that’s why I never sang them. It was overwhelming and it was all something I was never comfortable with; I wasn’t comfortable with my legacy, I wasn’t comfortable on that …

Why was that?
Well, I think that when you loose a parent at any age it’s really hard, but when you loose someone who is a legend and you’re reminded every single solitary day that they’re not here, it’s hard because you have no one to go to and ask, ‘How do I do this? How do I do that? How do I handle all of this?’

I’m not alone in this feeling. My friend Natalie Cole and I have talked about it and I just recently met Lisa Marie Presley - there are a lot of us that have this sort of overwhelming shadow and it takes you a long time to become comfortable with it.

It’s quite a unique situation to be in really isn’t it, if you think about it as you say.
Yeah it is, it’s a unique situation to be in because you didn’t choose it. You didn’t ask for it, you were born into it so you have to either run away and do something totally different, change your name and really sort of ignore it, or you have to find a way to make friends with it.

Have you ever had much resentment towards it then?
Never resentment. Fear, frustration - I would say more frustration than anything because when I was first starting out that’s all anybody really wanted to talk about, so when you don’t have a very good or big track record at all, right, and you’re nineteen years old, and everybody just wants to talk about one subject, it was frustrating to me. But then I thought to myself, ‘I choose this business, okay, I made the commitment, I did it, so take responsibility”.

But you’ve managed to get lots of opportunities from it, have you?
Yeah, but you want to know something, there’s no difference between me and the person who doesn’t have a parent or a sibling or whatever in show business because they can’t get in the door.

Okay, so maybe they can’t get in the door, I can get in the door, but so much more is expected of me – because of my family – so it’s not … I haven’t had it any harder or any easier than anyone else.

And of course your half sister is Liza Minnelli so it’s almost like a double whammy?
Well, there’s seven years’ difference so I when I was seven she was fourteen, so she started way before I did so that’s never really been an issue.

“I wasn’t comfortable with my legacy. It was overwhelming and it was all something I was never comfortable with.”

What was the first musical you saw, the first one you remember and the first one that you fell in love with?
The first musical I ever saw was Westside Story. Right here in London.

Really.
Yeah, in 1960. We were living over here - that’s when I started to live here on and off - and yeah, it was Westside Story. Then I saw Gypsy with Ethel Merman and realised that’s what I really wanted to do. When I saw everyone on the stage I thought to myself, ‘I really want to do that’ because it looked like it was interesting, it looked like people were having a good time and it made me feel good as an audience member, as a kid even. I guess the other show that really made me want to go into this business was Oliver!.

It’s a great score…
It’s a great score and it happens to be a fantastic movie too. I mean, I liked Shani Wallis (Nancy in the film) but I did miss Georgia Brown (the original London stage Nancy) because she was incredible. That’s one of those shows that I wanted to a part in, mainly because when we lived here at that time my mum wanted me to have this really nice proper English accent, so she sent me to this really, really proper school - you can tell it didn’t work and...

Have you got like a New York accent?
I don’t know what I have. I have a Virgin Airline accent …

Bit of everything…
…And so she wanted me to have this accent, but what she didn’t know is that the nanny that we had employed was having an affair with one of the guys on the crew of Oliver! so we were going over and hanging out with those kids all the time so I came home and I had the most amazing little cockney accent that stayed with me for a very, very long time.

When I moved back to the States I had to go to a dialect coach and get rid of it and sometimes, I mean it can come out at any time and people are always asking me to do it so it’s easy for me to fall into it. I constantly have to remember to – you know, use my American accent. Do you know John Barrowman?

Yes.
Well John’s the same way. I mean he’s Scottish and we talk about it all the time, how all of a sudden when we relax our accents will come out.

Tell us about your mother who was just this phenomenally huge star. Why do you think that was?
Talent. I just think that you are born with a gift - because you don’t get to learn this stuff. When my mum performed and when she opened her mouth and that incredible voice came out – when she was a kid – I mean she walked on the stage when she was two and a half, so she’s been working all of her life and I really do believe that she had the greatest schooling at MGM and she had the most fantastic group of people around her, of choreographers and writers and directors and all of that, but if she didn’t have the talent nothing would have worked.

I also believe that because the talent was larger than the person it destroyed her.

“When (Judy Garland) was 37 years old she had made 39 movies and over 500 radio shows and about 12 hundred concerts. That’s an amazing amount of work. It means she never stopped.”

Really?
Yes I do – because my poor mum was only four foot eleven, she was a tiny little person, and when she was – I’ve always said this – when she was 37 years old she had made 39 movies and over 500 radio shows and about 12 hundred concerts. That’s an amazing amount of work to pack into… it means she never stopped.

So I think that you become a product and that’s what she was, she was a product to MGM, she was a product to her home life because when you become the breadwinner you have a very good chance of spinning out of control and we are seeing it now.

We are seeing it now with the young people who are spinning out of control because they become the breadwinner of their family and they’re very, very young and they’re earning huge amounts of money and what happens is that you start to believe the tornado of success and you get swept up into it and it hasn’t really changed – in that sense, people telling you all of the things you want to hear and you believing it.

What do you think your mother would have thought of things like American Idol and the kind of new talent that’s around now?
I think my mum would have really liked Simon Cowell. I mean, I’ve got to tell you something, I like Simon, I’ve met Simon and I think he’s incredibly talented. He’ll probably hate me for saying this but everybody sort of thinks of Simon as not very nice, well I have to tell you, it’s an act - he’s really nice, a really smart gentleman with a good sense of humour and I like Simon Cowell a great deal. And I think that what he has done is amazing because what he’s achieved is telling people the truth to their faces and I would rather that than having it all said behind my back.

He’s honest isn’t he?
He’s really honest and that’s what this industry sort of lacks in a way, because people have a tendency to only tell you what you want to hear. And your family is not going to be really honest with you in the sense of – they’ll look at it as being mean and we’ve seen this, we’ve seen these kids come on Idol and we’ve seen them just be horrendous and Simon will say ‘You’re horrendous’ and they’re stunned.

They believe that they are really good, don’t they. Where does that come from?
Their parents. There are people in their pubs and their villages and all of that saying ‘You’re great, you’re great, you’re great, you’re going to be a star’ and this that and the other. Well no, and listen, Simon will be the one to tell them.

When was the first time you saw The Wizard of Oz?
I guess I was maybe six or seven.

And what did you think? Did you like it, is that a good musical of yours?
I love that movie. I’m very, very protective of that movie, I don’t like it when people take the movie and do other things with it and put other …tales ….

Like Wicked?
Yeah.

“I will never sing ‘Over The Rainbow’ – I’m never going to sing it any better, I’m never going to give it any new. I’m never going to have the emotional connection that my mother had to that song, so leave it alone.”

I was going to ask you about Wicked actually, what do you think of it?
It’s not my cup of tea, but that’s not saying that it’s not a bunch of talented kids up on that stage - okay, I’m way too close, I’m the wrong person to ask about things like that because I’m incredibly protective of The Wizard Of Oz’ because that is part of my family heritage and there are certainly things that you just say, ‘Leave it alone’.

I know that apparently – somebody showed me this the other day – Natalie Portman, they were going to make a remake of The Wizard of Oz – why? It’s like Gone With The Wind – leave it alone. Casablanca – leave it alone.

They will never be as good as the originals.
No. And why would you want to touch – it’s like I will never sing ‘Over The Rainbow’ – I’m never going to sing it any better, I’m never going to give it any new – I’m never going to have the emotional connection that my mother had to that song, so leave it alone. And that’s how I feel.

Why do you think Judy Garland became such a big gay icon particularly?
There’s no answer to that. I wish I could have said ‘Gee, I’ve never been asked that’. There is no answer to that because – I’ve sort of talked to so many friends of mine in the gay community, they all have a different answer, they all have a different take, they all have a different view of why, so you’re not going to get that answer.

She’s the world’s biggest gay icon. There’s no comparison and of course we have the term ‘A friend of Dorothy’s’…
I was once sitting in the Canadian parliament and there was this young sitting next to me and he looked at me and he said, ‘Are you Lorna?’ and I said, ‘Yeah’, and he said ‘I’m coming to your concert tonight,’ and I said, ‘Oh that’s nice’. Now the next thing I know is that I’ve got a note shoved under my door of my hotel saying, ‘We can’t wait to see your show, and I’m a friend of Dorothy’s’ and I started to laugh - it’s just a very interesting expression.

When my children were young and it was Halloween we’d always go into West Hollywood - which of course is the huge gay community in Los Angeles - and watch the phenomenal parade with all these wonderful costumes. I said to my children, Now listen you may see…’ and I thought, ‘How am I going to say this?’ and my son said, ‘Members of our family?’ and I started laughing. I said ‘Yeah’ and he went, ‘Mum, we’ve got it’.

So we went down to West Hollywood, and we were walking along with my husband and my kids and this guy comes up to me and says, ‘That’s good, that’s really good, that’s the best Lorna Luft we’ve seen’. I just looked at my husband and we just all fell down laughing.

“Someone once said to me that when the orchestra started up the overture and (Judy Garland)  walked on stage and sang her first note they said, ‘This is going to make history’ and it was just the most amazing thee hours in Carnegie Hall history.”

When you look out over from the stage, when you’re performing, is it just a sea of gay men?
No and it wasn’t like that when my mum performed either. Because we all reach generations. When I look out into the audience I see lots of young people who are big fans of Grease 2.

It’s one of my favourite movies…
Thank you so much. So I see families, I see people who bring little kids and yeah there’s a real mix of people in my audience, as was there for my mum.

Will you be doing some more live concerts in the UK?
Yes, I am doing a big tour of the show starting in January and I guess just go onto my website, which is www.lornaluft.com, to see the dates. But before that I’m in the stage production of White Christmas in Edinburgh and Cardiff.

Now Lorna Luft, you have been performing with Rufus Wainwright quite recently haven’t you. What was that like?
That was really fun. Rufus is a lovely guy and he’s very nice and he’s very talented and we’ve played London and Paris, New York and a couple of weeks ago the Hollywood Bowl.

He’s recreated your mother’s famous Carnegie Hall concert. Why do you think he did that?
Rufus told me that after 9/11 he was devastated and felt he had no hope left. He said he felt so completely emotionally devastated by humanity. He put that album on and it gave him hope, which was such a fantastic visual for me because it was saying this is a great American concert and this is the way that my mother loved America - My mother was really patriotic. He wanted to say ‘Thank you’, so why wouldn’t I want to be part of someone saying thank you to my mum?

Were you at the original concert yourself?
Yes, I was.

What was that like?
Amazing. I just remember that I was sitting there, and I always thought that grown-ups should be in control, and to see grown ups standing and rushing on stage and screaming and yelling and all that. Adults weren’t supposed to act like that and that’s what I remember more. I remember these grownups just running down the isles trying to touch my mum, men, women, and holding kids up and just trying to grab her.

“Whoopi Goldberg told me the night before she won her Oscar she played that album (Judy Garland At Carnegie hall) and she said that’s the one thing that got her through the Oscars was that album of joy”.

Did you mum know it was going to be such a special night, because it’s become quite iconic as a piece of work hasn’t it?
I think it was one of those nights. Someone once said to me that when the orchestra started up the overture and she walked on stage and sang her first note they said, ‘This is going to make history’ and it was just the most amazing thee hours in Carnegie Hall history.

I also think that it’s the most brilliant live album that’s ever been made because when you think about it, nobody went back into a studio and was able to fix it. What you hear on that album, that’s the real deal, that’s what happened that night - with the applause, with the screaming and the yelling and all of that, so it’s so exciting.

Whoopi Goldberg told me the night before she won her Oscar she played that album and she said that’s the one thing that got her through the Oscars was that album of joy. So many people have told me my mum’s Carnegie Hall album is their favourite. I just think it’s an incredible piece of art.

It means so much too so many people doesn’t it? It touches people doesn’t it?
I just think it not only touches people but it’s so exciting and for young people who have not heard a live album like that it’s so important to go out and get that album because you’re not going to get that any more because we’ve become a society of perfection.

Now we know that there are, quote, ‘Live Albums’ now but we also know that they go back in the studio and they perfect it and they work on it, but it’s not really what we call live, the Carnegie Hall album was live and it was one night only.

Find out more at www.lornaluft.com.

Lorna Luft stars in Irving Berlin's White Christmas: The Musical until 12 January 2008. She then takes a concert tour of Songs My Mother Taught Me across the UK from 26 January-27 April 2008.

Songs My Mother Taught Me, by Lorna Luft
Label: First Night
Released: 22 October 2007
ASIN: B000VZPOX2

Buy Songs My Mother Taught Me by Lorna Luft online and save yourself some money to put towards Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall and the DVD of Rufus! Rufus! Rufus! does Judy! Judy! Judy!