http://www.nationalpost.com/arts/Fir...809/story.html
Melissa Leong, Weekend Post · Friday, Nov. 26, 2010
André-Phillipe Gagnon, as told to Melissa Leong, Weekend Post
Once, at the Skydome, Gordon Lightfoot was on the bill and I was rehearsing my Gordon Lightfoot. His agent came rushing onstage. He looked at me and said: “Who are you?”
“I’m André-Philippe.”
“Where’s Gordie?”
“I don’t know.”
He thought his artist was rehearsing. That was a nice compliment.
My first impression was Tweety Bird. It was in English so I didn’t know what I was saying at the time -- "I tawt I taw a puddy cat." I was a shy kid so I had to overcome my shyness to perform.
In my young mind, I was not doing impressions. I thought, if you sing a Beatles song, you have to sound like Paul McCartney or John Lennon. I discovered that if you sing exactly like the singer, you’re an impressionist and it’s a form of humour that makes grown-ups laugh.
After a few amateur contests, I did the Just for Laughs festival in the summer of ’85. I did an impression of We Are the World and Jay Leno was the guest star of the show. He was the one who suggested that I send a tape to the people at NBC. That’s how I ended up on the Tonight Show in November ’85 with Johnny Carson. After the rehearsal, he came to the dressing room with a smoke, wearing a V-neck and jeans. He saw that I was nervous. He said, “Don’t be nervous. Just go out there and have fun.” When I do shows, that’s the advice that I’ve kept.
After We Are the World, Johnny Carson was waiting for me to come and sit on the couch which is an approval and means a lot to a comedian. I was so intimidated. I was thinking, “I did a good number but now with my bad English, I will screw everything that I did.”
I didn’t have a show put together back then. I just had a couple of numbers. After Johnny’s approval, we had my first show in Montreal and we sold 20,000 tickets in three hours; people were there waiting in line to buy their tickets. I thought, “They bought their tickets based on a seven-minute routine. We have to come up with a good show.”
Right after the Tonight Show in December, I was in [Switzerland] to do this fundraiser, I opened the show with We Are the World and in the first row, there was Roger Moore, Julie Andrews, Frank Sinatra, John Denver. I did an impression of Frank Sinatra -- New York, New York. He was really nice. He said in front of everybody, “So marvellous. Get him out of here.”
All of the voices that I do, I’m very impressed by those performers. To have dinner afterwards with one of your victims, that’s quite a compliment.
Both in French and English, [I do] probably more than 500 different singers. I should really count. Every night I do an impression of someone that I choose at random from the audience and I don’t know if it counts.
A good musical ear helps. That’s how I am able to get the voice quickly. I go, “This guy is a little like James Taylor but lower and he went sharp there and off-beat there.”
In French, I do hockey players and politicians. In English, I have this accent. Luckily, the accent disappears when I sing. For this new show, I wanted to do as many voices as possible to illustrate my capability of doing voices from the ’50s to today. We’ll do just over six decades of rock ’n’ roll music from Billy Hayes to Susan Boyle.
I’m always on the look out for new voices. Rod Stewart has this whisky kind of voice that I don’t have. I’m still working on that. I don’t give up easily.
• André-Philippe Gagnon will be at the Canon Theatre in Toronto from Dec. 1 to 5. mirvish.com.
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Impersonating Lightfoot
