It’s the week before Christmas and I’m sitting with Harry outside a bakery on Rockerfeller Plaza in Manhattan. It’s freezing as we cradle our hot ciders (and my giant pastry) looking up at that enormous iconic Christmas tree. We arrived in two black SUVs with tinted windows, Harry’s photographer daughter Georgia darting around us on the street taking pictures and fans constantly asking for selfies. The jazz legend and star of movies like Hope Floats and Memphis Belle has been unfailing gracious but it’s quite a trip (literally) for this boy from Southampton, living out a real-life Entourage moment. Our budding bromance started in the summer when I interviewed Harry for his Cole Porter album, True Love. We clicked and he mentioned I should pop over for the Broadway opening of his new show celebrating the iconic composer. ‘Yeah, yeah,” I thought, “I’ll call my private jet.” And yet, he stayed in touch and here I am…
His wife Jill cuts to the heart of it.
Two nights earlier I’d swept past the red carpet and gawked at stars like Candice Bergen, Hello Dolly legend Tommy Tune and Glee’s Kristen Chenowith. And yes, I gushed all over Kristen and asked for a selfie. She high-fived me and obliged.
At the after-party, I met Jill and mentioned the whole crazy adventure and my amazement to her: “Harry doesn’t B-S,” she said. “Never. Not in his private life and not on stage.”
Spending a second period of time with a man who has been performing since he was five and famous for over 30 years, I now know this to be wonderfully, refreshingly true.
Combined with his dazzling talent, it explains why he has been married for 25 years, stayed with his manager for 34 years and known at least one band member since he was 14.
In a modern age of instant gratification and the next shiny thing, Harry stands steadfast, surrounded by a core of family, friends and musicians.
“I love and revere quality and talent,” he says. “There are depths of love and passion and pain you just don’t get without commitment to people and to life.
“My tenor sax player, Gerry Weldon, has known me since I was 14. My trumpet player, Seneca Black, has been with me for years and also has the coolest name. Seriously, how come I just got plain ‘Harry’?
“I genuinely love these relationships. It’s so fulfilling. I’m raising my children to understand that.
“I ask myself, ‘What is the ultimate goal? How can you live at the highest level of your humanity?’ I have the utmost respect for the past, but it has already gone. I prepare for the future, but I can’t control what’s coming. So, living completely now is all that matters.”
READ THE FULL REVIEW OF HARRY CONNICK JR’S NEW SHOW A CELEBRATION OF COLE PORTER HERE
It could all so easily be saccharine soundbites, except Harry is never afraid to show himself on stage and off.
Harry’s acceptance of everyone for who they are shines as he speaks on stage about Porter’s homosexuality and later tells me, “I can’t even imagine what that must have been like. To have to deny who you are and hide it. It makes me deeply sad.”
The star has always openly spoken of his deep Catholic faith but has never been afraid to question aspects of the church or organised religion he finds troubling: “I don’t mean to sound ashamed of my religion, but we discuss what Christmas really means, away from judgement and separations. My God is love for everyone, whatever their ethnicity or sexuality. So we talk at home about what the birth of Jesus means. What can we learn from this guy? What was he really like? He didn’t look the images we see in churches here. He was an Arab. Whether or not you believe he was the son of God, he was still a living, breathing person. What did he really think?”
Let’s be clear, life with Harry is not all some philosophical journey to enlightenment. The man knows how to have fun, often at his own expense. He happily goofs around on stage throughout the opening night, teasing audience members who arrive late and then having an adorable embarrassing dad moment.
Harry’s family were all there and he told the crowd Georgia had brought along new boyfriend ‘Tall Paul’ who he hadn’t met yet but knew looked like a strapping Superman. Of course, we all peered over laughing and saw Harry was right. “I want to impress and intimidate him while I’m still up here on a huge stage with a full orchestra,” he joked.
Afterwards, he told me “I didn’t sleep that night. I got carried away. I knew it, even as I was doing it but I couldn’t stop my mouth moving.”
At the after-party, Georgia and the very tall and very handsome Paul tell me how much they had laughed at Harry’s antics.
Of course they did, because this is a family and wider group founded on absolute trust and commitment established across the years. Something which Harry also applies to his work and this show in particular.
It’s a dizzying undertaking, inspired by his manager Ann Marie’s suggestion that they do “something different” to promote the current album, True Love: A Celebration of Cole Porter.
Harry tells me: “This show is uncharted territory. Nobody has been the headliner of a show, written the script and 1400 pages of score, and also directed. It was monumental to create. But the error and flaws are what make it real each night. That’s what I’m proud of. I can simultaneously be an obsessive control freak and also let it all go in the moment, play in the shadows around the edges.
“I’m the epitome of a perfectionist, but that way I can embrace imperfection. That’s what jazz is. It’s like a Picasso. Anyone can learn to do something perfect or to imitate, the fun and art is when you have that foundation and then find the freedom to express.”
My favourite moment in the show sees Harry tap-dancing on top of a huge piano which stretches the length of the stage with young dancer Aaron Burr, who plays Cole Porter.
Harry’s not a Broadway-level dancer but he hits every step and his slight flaws in the sequence make it more real, engage the audience and make us smile – as does his evident joy throughout.
I confess my delight in watching him get lost in another moment at the piano, almost bouncing off his seat. His face is unguarded, uncontrolled, fiercely concentrating like a child caught up in a moment of uninhibited wonder.
“Oh no, was I making crazy faces again?” he groans.
Yes, he was – and it was wonderful.
“Sometimes I have so much in me, I can’t get it all out in one art form, I need to sing and dance and play,” he says. “That’s why every show is so important. People say Broadway is a grind, eight shows a week. No, it’s really not. It’s beautiful and fallible and sometimes terrible but you have to give it everything you have, every night.”
It’s something he applies to every aspect of his life. Having met Jill, Georgia and youngest daughter Charlotte, they are just the same – and a family of refreshingly big huggers.
Interviews with established stars can be a game of cat and mouse or a disappointing road to nowhere.
Hanging with Harry in New York is the opposite of that, and not just because he bought me a giant pastry. No B-S from me. Harry’s the real deal.
HARRY CONNICK JR; A CELEBRATION OF COLE PORTER AT THE NEDERLANDER THEATER, NEW YORK: MORE INFORMATION HERE
THE ALBUM ‘TRUE LOVE: A CELEBRATION OF COLE PORTER’ IS OUT NOW
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