Since I’m sharing some embarrassing moments from my past this week, it’s time to share this bit from the Sondheim Listserv Q&A. I wish I had kept the document with the original phrasing of the questions, since clearly he takes issue with how I asked this one.
You see, I had compiled questions from lots of people, but stuck in this one from myself without mentioned who asked what. The lyric “spend sleepless nights to think about you” from Losing My Mind had bothered me, because it sounded… off to me, I guess. (I was a teenager at the time. I don’t remember exactly what my thought process was, but it was something like “we spend time doing things, we don’t spend time TO do things.”) Steve didn’t like the question, as you can hear from his response. Twenty years later, I still feel like an asshole for asking it, even as I don’t remember exactly how I asked it.
Back in 1995(ish?), Steve agreed to answer a series of questions submitted by members of the Sondheim Listserv. He didn’t realize how many questions he’d receive, so he chose to answer into a cassette recorder, and he sent me the tape to transcribe and post online. This is the first time anyone other than me is hearing this tape. Big thanks to Michael Mitnick, an accomplished playwright and composer/lyricist in his own right, for digitizing the cassette for me.
