{"id":973941,"date":"2019-12-09T08:00:58","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T15:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=923509"},"modified":"2019-12-09T08:00:58","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T15:00:58","slug":"see-bon-jovis-david-bryan-play-if-from-upcoming-princess-diana-broadway-musical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/music-news\/see-bon-jovis-david-bryan-play-if-from-upcoming-princess-diana-broadway-musical\/","title":{"rendered":"See Bon Jovi\u2019s David Bryan Play \u2018If\u2019 From Upcoming Princess Diana Broadway Musical"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bon Jovi<\/a> keyboardist David Bryan was still a teenager when Lady Diana Spencer married Prince Charles in 1981, and he remembers feeling captivated by the extravagant royal wedding. When Princess Diana<\/a> died in a freak car crash, spurred on by paparazzi, in 1997, he was horrified. \u201cWhen she died, that was very impactful,\u201d he says, on a lunch break from work-shopping the piece, with musicians playing behind him. \u201cEspecially the paparazzi that chased her into that, and her getting killed by the press, it\u2019s terrible. It\u2019s awful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now Bryan and his partner in musical<\/a> theater, Joe DiPietro, have written Diana<\/em>, a musical about the princess\u2019 life that will open on Broadway<\/a> in New York City in March. Today, he\u2019s premiering a rock-style music video for the production\u2019s closing number, \u201cIf,\u201d which he recorded with the show\u2019s star, Jeanna de Waal.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a song full of hypothetical scenarios as Diana, who was divorced from Charles a year before her death, parses a future she would never live to see. She sings about looking forward to standing in queues, wanting to devote herself to children, hoping to have another child \u2013 \u201cperhaps a girl\u201d \u2014 and her hopes for her sons: \u201cIf Charles steps aside, and let\u2019s my William reign\/Then all this suffering will not have been in vein.\u201d The song is a big, emotional torch song; it\u2019s more dramatic than anything he\u2019s done with Bon Jovi and it captures Diana\u2019s spirit.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis was like, \u2018If I had lived, I would have maybe had girls,\u2019 and \u2018If I did this, I would have done that,’\u201d Bryan says. \u201cSo it\u2019s telling about in the future what I would do. And unfortunately we know there wasn\u2019t a future for her. But the greatest thing the song says is that the future for her was her message, which is empathy and love. Look at Harry and the modern monarchy now; it\u2019s because of what Diana did. She made the whole stodgy monarchy that didn\u2019t show feelings and kept a stiff upper lip, and she was visiting AIDS patients, and [victims of] landmines, and sick children. She really cared, and that\u2019s what her children have done.\u201d<\/p>\n

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So what business do Bryan and DiPietro have writing about the British monarchy since, they\u2019re, as Bryan says, just \u201ctwo guys from New Jersey,\u201d who previously won Tonys for Memphis<\/em>? The answer: Objectivity. \u201cI think not being British is an advantage here,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re not under the royal anything; we\u2019re removed from it. We told a human story. It\u2019s a human, emotional story. Here\u2019s a guy that loves a married woman [Camilla Parker Bowles] and couldn\u2019t go with her because of his world, and here\u2019s the young virgin girl who loves the guy and he doesn\u2019t love her back. There were no winners and losers in that situation. Everybody lost a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

To capture the confusion, Bryan wrote different styles of music for each character. Diana\u2019s songs are in a rock-pop style from the Eighties. Queen Elizabeth\u2019s music sounds more regal, with horns and drums. Charles gets rock songs with strings and orchestrations. Parker Bowles gets what Bryan describes as a \u201clight FM\u201d sound. He made the paparazzi sounds like the Clash. \u201cI tried to make all these styles live on top of each other, so in the songs there will be a part where the punk comes in and it\u2019s over a classical piece and a rock & roll piece goes on top of that,\u201d he says. \u201cSo in theory, it was easy in my brain but to do it was not so easy, but it\u2019s fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Figuring all that out was a big part of a very busy 2019 for Bryan, who also recorded a new Bon Jovi album, 2020<\/em>, that will come out next year. \u201cYou just get in there and bash it out and see what happens,\u201d Bryan says of the new Bon Jovi record, which will follow up 2016\u2019s This House Is Not for Sale<\/em><\/a>. \u201cThat\u2019s what I love about it. It\u2019s the idea of us all being in a room and getting those basic tracks and playing it and feeling it. You can\u2019t substitute that. So it really has a good rock & roll feel. They\u2019re great songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Diana <\/em>opens in March, Bryan says Bon Jovi will be touring the new album next year. With so much going on, Bryan says, \u201cFor a little kid who took piano lessons at seven, I\u2019m blessed.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan was still a teenager when Lady Diana Spencer married Prince Charles in 1981, and he remembers feeling captivated by the extravagant royal wedding. When Princess Diana died in a freak car crash, spurred on by paparazzi, in 1997, he was horrified. \u201cWhen she died, that was very impactful,\u201d he says, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-973941","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 13:21:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KFMU Solar Powered Radio","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973941\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}