Pianist also a rich story teller
Monday night’s concert at Kelowna Community Theatre could have been titled The Complete History of Frank Mills.
The consummate composer-arranger-pianist, who will turn 75 on June 27, noted he has spent 48 years in the Canadian music industry and then elaborated on his life from his birth in Montreal (Wikipedia initially got it wrong, he claims) to his latest album, After the Dancer, which he personally thinks is his best.
His two-and-a-half-hour compendium proved he is indeed the man of a thousand stories. His performance was at least one-half anecdotes with musical interludes.
He launched his piano portion with To A Wigwam (after apologizing to any First Nations’ members in the audience), playing it badly as it would have been heard for the first time by his pianist mother and tenor father.
His short stint with Montreal rock band The Bells produced the No. 1 single, Stay Awhile, before his first solo album, Seven Of My Songs, produced the hit single, Love Me, Love Me Love.
At that time, the standard was 10 songs on an album, but he joked he wanted “the extra two cents a song” and added Music Box Dancer as the 11th. It was the B side of a single with The Poet and I on the A side.
Ottawa Valley radio DJ Dave “50,000” Watts played the B side once and “the switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree,” said Mills. Music Box Dancer became the No. 1 record in 26 countries selling millions of singles.
The album sold more than two million copies remunerating Mills handsomely as he wrote, arranged, conducted and recorded it himself. Since it was a “master lease” deal, he owned the entire project and “I could stop feeding my kids Kraft Dinner.”
Music Box Dancer has since garnered more than 24 gold albums worldwide; earned a Million-Airs award from BMI for more than a million radio plays; sheet music sales have exceeded three million copies and it was nominated for a Grammy for best instrumental in 1980. In all its various interpretations, Music Box Dancer has sold close to six million copies.
In fact, “it overshadowed everything I’ve done since,” joked Mills, adding: “I enjoy playing it to this day.”
The highlight of the Kelowna show, however, was a 76-piece orchestra — brought to the theatre on “a memory stick.” After recovering the tapes of 25 albums he produced in 25 years, Mills eliminated the piano track from the multi-track recordings and performs the piano live while the other tracks play.
With that fantastic offering, it was curious why he would launch his second set with a Beatles’ medley. It was choppy, uneven and underwhelming, ultimately beneath his incredible skills.
As for the one-song encore, who else but Frank Mills could perform the same song twice? It was the original version of Music Box Dancer with the piano track removed and Mills performing it live.
The disappointing aspect of the concert was the theatre at only one-third of its 856-seat capacity. The sea of white hair did nod in time to the music and there was an intimacy to his verbal exchanges with those in the front rows.
He even joked about the official title, An Intimate Evening with Frank Mills, quipping: “It’s hard to get intimate when you are 12 feet away.” And twice repeating an earlier audience member’s comment: “I think more people would have stood up for the standing ovation if they could.”
He concluded with the promise: “Brenda (his wife) and I are attracted to pretty places so this won’t be the last time you see me.”