Peter Allen: The Boy from Oz

Peter Allen

I caught another documentary on TRIO tonight, Peter Allen: The Boy from Oz. The name caught my attention because Hugh Jackman was in the Broadway show of the same name a couple of years ago. You couldn't turn on the TV during that time without seeing Jackman singing and prancing to "I Go to Rio." I remember seeing Peter Allen on TV back in the 1980's singing his songs on The Tonight Show and Late Night with David Letterman and thinking he was the happiest, most extraverted queen I'd ever seen. That said, I didn't know a lot about him, so the documentary was pretty interesting for me. He married Liza Minelli in 1967 (they divorced in 1974), which makes her most recent marriage less of a surprise and more of a case of history repeating itself.

The list of songs that wrote or co-wrote over the years includes: "I Go to Rio," "Don't Cry Out Loud," "I Honestly Love You," and "The Best That You Can Do (Arthur's Theme)." Growing up in the '70's and '80's, I was surrounded by his songs, but never realized that he was the Cole Porter of the era. Peter Allen was funny and risqué and took cabaret performing to new heights. He wrote and released albums that gave a nod and wink to his sexuality (Not the Boy Next Door and Bi-Coastal), but his wittiest songs never made it onto the charts.

I think he was a much better songwriter than he was a singer, but his style as a performer was so enthusiastic and embracing, that his less than stellar voice was inconsequential. He died of complications related to AIDS in 1992, and I don't think we have any songwriters around who fill the void he left.