Hank Azaria put together his own Bruce Springsteen cover band for his 60th birthday party, and is now bringing it to Toronto for a benefit concert.Leah Bouchier-Hayes/Supplied
Turning 60 last year and feeling down about it, actor Hank Azaria threw himself a birthday party at City Winery in New York. He told his friends a Bruce Springsteen cover band would be the entertainment. What he didn’t divulge was that it was his newly formed band, and he’d be fronting it.
“I’m a true Bruce Springsteen fan and I’ve been imitating his speaking voice since I was a teenager,” the Queens-born Azaria told The Globe and Mail from New York. “The birthday party went so well we decided to keep it going.”
Some men buy a Maserati; others seek a younger woman. Azaria, famous for his voiceovers on the animated television series The Simpsons since 1989, decided to become the rock ’n’ roll hero of his youth.
Glory days, yeah they’ll pass you by.
Azaria and a Canadian version of his EZ Street Band (along with Serena Ryder, Billy Talent, City and Colour, Amy Millan, Royal Wood and more) are among the high-profile artists performing Friday at Toronto’s Koerner Hall in benefit of Canadian charities Make Music Matter and Matthew Perry House.
Toronto benefit concert in honour of Matthew Perry to raise awareness about mental health
The latter organization was founded by the family of the late Friends actor to mitigate the impact of addiction in Canada. Azaria was a close friend of the Ottawa-raised Perry.
Replicating Springsteen’s gritty vocals was a process for Azaria. After working three months on the sound and finding the right key, he landed on a suitable musical impression. Then he hired a vocal coach to not only sound better but to support his voice.
“Bruce has that rasp,” Azaria explained. “I had to learn how to sing like him without destroying my voice.”
On our video call, the actor hilariously demonstrated his triangulation method for zeroing in on the exact Springsteen timbre. “You have young Al Pacino on one end, and Bruce on the other margin,” he said, nailing both voices. “And right in the middle is Moe the Bartender from The Simpsons.”
So, he had Springsteen’s voice down. But what about inhabiting the man, finding the true Bruce? That’s a tough job − the complicated New Jerseyite with a Dustbowl accent is a myth covered in a leather jacket; a rockstar wrapped in a workingman’s persona. “I come from a boardwalk town,” he wrote in the foreword to his 2016 memoir Born to Run. “Where almost everything is tinged with a bit of fraud. So am I.”
Azaria hired a vocal coach to help him sing like Springsteen without damaging his voice.Leah Bouchier-Hayes/Supplied
In Scott Cooper’s new biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, about the struggled making of the 1982 album Nebraska, the rocker portrayed by Jeremy Allen White buys his first car. It was a Chevrolet Camaro Z28, and the Racing in the Street singer was over 30 years old at the time.
“There are certain things we think iconically about Bruce,” Azaria said. “But he never had a driver’s license until he was in his early 20s, and with half the songs he wrote you would have thought he was driving since he was 10. Every metaphor you have is about cars, and you didn’t drive one?”
In Deliver Me from Nowhere, even the love interest is frustrated by Springsteen’s fakery. “I believed you could be the man you pretend to be,” the young woman, Faye Romano, says.
Played by Odessa Young, Romano is a single mother and waitress. And not based on an actual person. In real life, the passenger seat in Springsteen’s muscle car was empty during the lonely creation of Nebraska. His relationship with the beautiful actress Joyce Hyser was over. His failed marriage with model/actress Julianne Phillips was a few years away.
Filling the gap with a gum-chewing diner girl was the perfect move to serve Springsteen’s blue-collar fabricating. Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty and meet him tonight in Atlantic City.
In Deliver Me from Nowhere, a car salesman tells Springsteen he knows who he is. “That makes one of us,” the Boss replies.
Of course, Springsteen creates worlds and characters for our entertainment and for the record company’s benefit. What he lacks in driver’s licenses, he makes up for it in artistic license.
“Listen, I don’t know any actor or any performer who doesn’t have a public and a private persona,” Azaria said. “And during the making of Nebraska, it all came crashing down on him. ‘Am I just this guy who makes these songs? And if I’m not, who am I?’”
Make Music Matter and Matthew Perry House present Live Loud LIVE, Nov. 14, at Toronto’s Koerner Hall.