Greg Page puts a Wiggles spin on Christmas
The first time I met Greg Page — better known to generations of children as “The Yellow Wiggle” — he was clearing a spot for the Wiggles to perform a free show for about 50 people in the back of a toy store next to the Randalls supermarket on Bissonnet.
Not exactly the stuff of entertainers’ dreams.
That was 2001. The Wiggles, four guys who met while studying to become pre-school teachers in Australia, weren’t playing toy stores for long. The next year, they opened for Barney at Compaq Center. That began years of headlining, and selling out, shows at the Arena Theatre, Reliant Arena and Toyota Center.
It was the only time I saw ticket scalpers outside a show where a pirate wielding a feather instead of a sword performed songs encouraging 5-year-olds to wash their hands before dinner.
It wasn’t just Houston. The Wiggles won over the world with their catchy pop-rock children’s albums, TV show, relentless tours and merchandising. Millions of kids drank from Wiggles sippy cups and wore Wiggles T-shirts to kindergarten and Wiggles pajamas to bed. The Wiggles wheelhouse was children ages 2-8.
And their parents, who paid for those sippy cups and concert tickets.
The Wiggles became Australia’s biggest moneymaking act — five years in a row — topping Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe and rockers AC/DC. The Wiggles were performing up to 520 shows (three and four shows in one day sometimes) and hauling in $40 million a year.
Page left the group in 2006. He was diagnosed with orthostatic intolerance, a circulation disorder that left him too tired to continue performing and touring. He was replaced by a new “Yellow Wiggle” and the group went on. Page returned to the Wiggles for a few months in 2012, but two other Wiggles decided to retire and Page left again for good.
The Wiggles revamped with a new lineup and still are on the road.
Page has new projects as a solo performer now, a TV show called “Butterscotch’s Playground” and his first holiday CD called “Here Comes Christmas” — 26 songs, most of them classics such as “Frosty the Snowman,” “Jingle Bell Rock” and “The Christmas Song,” done Nat King Cole-style, only with some wiggly tinkering for children’s ears.
“My children (he has six, including stepkids) were always captivated by Christmas songs, and they loved the instruments and arrangements in the original versions. So I decided to do the songs that way, with my voice, and a few other things that children will enjoy,” Page said over the phone from his home outside Sydney, Australia.
Page has four original songs on the CD, but the others are familiar classics. His personal favorite: “Let it Snow.”
“I’ve always loved that melody and the image of it being cold outside while the listener is warm inside his home,” Page said. “Of course, when you’re growing up in Australia, Christmas comes during the summer. It’s 90 degrees and you go to the beach. But Australians see so many movies and TV shows about Christmas. We can dream of one day having a white Christmas.”
Page’s “Here Comes Christmas” CD is available through Monday at butterscotchtv.com. It goes on sale Tuesday on iTunes.
Here’s something I didn’t know about Page until our phone conversation. He’s a huge Elvis Presley fan, and his collection of Elvis memorabilia is rated the fourth best collection in the world by people who rate those sort of things.
“My love of Elvis started during one of our tours in America. We decided to go to Graceland to pay homage to the king. I’d always been a fan, but while walking through his house and seeing things he used and owned, I drew a connection to Elvis as a person, not just a performer. That’s how I caught the collection bug. I began buying things he owned.”
Over the years, Page managed to procure Elvis artifacts like his last Cadillac, a piano, stage outfits, marriage license and movie props.
“I’m most fond of some of his clothing. I have things he wore in movies like ‘Roustabout.’ To know that the clothes were on his body, that’s special to me.”
Page’s collection of Elvis memorabilia is on loan to an Australian museum.
“Elvis never performed in Australia. But now people here can see some of his things and get a connection to him like I did at Graceland.”
And something I never asked Page before … how did the Wiggles get their name?
“At the beginning, we were talking about what we should call ourselves. Murray Cook (the Red Wiggle) suggested ‘Wiggles’ because it reminded him of the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. We all liked that name. We already had a song called ‘Get Ready to Wiggle.’ Wiggling is something that children do when they dance, they kind of wiggle. So that was it — we became the Wiggles.”