Liza Minnelli
LIVE AT THE OLYMPIA IN PARIS
1972
"Stars may be born, but the genetic genius has to be molded, tempered and mellowed with effort and experience. Liza is a worker, an inspired plugger even, a pro. She has momentum. She's happened before but she keeps on happening - movies, club tours, records, TV. On stage, she's a prancing, rocking curvy pressure-cooker threatening to explode, velvety voce questing for the top, silver bracelets flashing in the spotlights, tossing gem-like trajectories of sweat from that dripping "Cabaret" coif and swinging her arms wide to drink in the energy the audience gives back.
Some ice-cub clinking swells come insisting inwardly that se show them the Judy thing, mama's famous moves, but they get much more. Liza belts, she warbles, she croons, she smirs - with a quavering voice that has Mother Earth and skinned-knee gamine and sassy id sister and sultry vamp folded into it all at once. She is very much her own. On screen, she gently zaps you with those liquid, chestnut Elsie Bordeb eyes, or pouts you into chuckles or makes you feel the sudden stitch of old hurts with a sad wince. But she can bump-and-grind you into guffaws or nail you with an icy stare down that foxy nose and regally dispose of you like limp Kleenex. The acting's in the blood.
Which is why the French especially love her, why words fail the Paris Critics (Imagine a Frenchman short of words!), why they throw kisses, why they weep. The Paris that produced Mistinguet, Piaf, Trenet, Brel and Aznavour can sense the love that aches, the heart that overreaches, the eyes swimming with loneliness - and the hard head that rebounds with self-mocking sang-froid. Liza has those qualities, those Gallic nuances. where she got 'em, I don't know, but out they come tumbling, leaping, hand springing over the famed Olympia footlights and into the enthralled audience.
So here she is in her triumphal, third Paris tour, her cork popping, up to her ears in bubbly stardom, her moods changing like sun and shadow rippling over the rose window in the St. Chapelle. Some of it's in French, but no matter (you get Aznavour's "This Time" in English Anyway): Liza has her own sublingual esperanto that always manages to push the heart of the emotion through. The song about her name is a tongue-twister in English; in French, it's a minefield. You can hear hints of Gallic in some of the numbers, and even some bonafide Rainbow in "My Mammy" and "You'd Better sit Down, Kids." But there's much more than that. Beneath the effervescent la-la-la and the misty-quay melancholy is a vibrant, bright young woman who knows how to sing her heart out - and loves it. As Liza sings here: "Mama may have, papa may have, but God bless the child that's got his own..."
- S.K. OLBERECK from the liner notes off the Olympia LP
EVERYBODY'S TALKIN'
GOOD MORNING STARSHINE
GOD BLESS THE CHILD
LIZA WITH A 'Z'
MARRIED
YOU'D BETTER SIT DOWN KIDS
NOUS ON S'AIMERA
I WILL WAIT FOR YOU
THERE IS A TIME
MY MAMMY
EVERYBODY LOVES MY BABY
CABARET
RETURN TO LOVIN' LIZA MINNELLI