Best known as having been “Annie” in the 1982 motion picture of the same name, Aileen Quinn – along with her band, the Leapin’ Lizards – performed and then sat down for this interview during the Winter 2017 NAMM show in California. While she does talk about having played the little orphan on the big screen when she was nine years old, Quinn talks about rockabilly music and how her band formed, and they contribute to the interview as well. She also talks about where her career took her after “Annie” but before this band and compares theater life to being in a band.
“I got into this kind of music kind of later in life too based on a rockabilly women in music, back in the day, and when I saw how… spirited and passionate they were I was like, ‘It’s really good!’ So, it’s kinda nice because rockabilly kinda has those great roots. So it has all that country in it, and that R&B kinda thing, it’s got a lot goin’ on that you can bounce off of, so I love it myself!”
“Albert (Finney), by the way – actually I don’t talk about this a lot – took my entire family out to dinner after the filming of the movie, including Grandma – Grandpa was back in the States doin’ his thing – and, um, so did John Huston to his private cove in Mexico.”
“I’ve been doing 25 years of Broadway since ‘Annie,’ which a lot of people don’t realize, on and off Broadway national tours, for those who’ve seen me in different cities, with ‘Saturday Night Fever’ and ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ ‘Peter Pan,’ they know that.”
“What’s nice about having a band is that, the good and the bad is that you get the creative control and it really does become like a family. A theater is definitely a family as well, but when you have a 40-44 person cast, ya’ know, that’s a little difficult to make it a tight family, but with the bands I’m noticing it really is nice.”
“My intentions were really to do TV and film in L.A., and then I just met, actually kind of in a funny way too – vocalizing in the shower every morning as the Broadway girl that still wanted to keep her voice – the neighbor next door said, ‘I need to talk to you’… and she said, ‘You should meet my ex and you should talk about music and you singing in the band.’”
“Rabid For Your Love” (live)
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