Living a life that is somehow nostalgic for times gone by, a leading Dean Martin impersonator was in Cyprus recently for a tour of Rat Pack shows. THEO PANAYIDES meets him
Looking back, there’s a moment in my interview with Andrea Morrelli that’s quite amusing – and quite embarrassing – though only now do I realise just how amusing, and how embarrassing. “I’ve been working with, uh, Barbra Streisand and, uh, Bobby Darin,” says Andrea on a hot afternoon at the Sun Hall Hotel in Larnaca, about halfway through his tour of Cyprus with Andrea Morrelli’s Rat Pack Show – and at the time, nodding along as he chats about his current projects, I somehow assume that he means the actual people, even though it’s unlikely that Andrea would be hanging out with such celebrities and even though (more importantly) Bobby Darin has been dead since 1973. Only later, reading through my notes as I try to transcribe the tape, do I realise that he actually said “I’ve been working with a Barbra Streisand and a Bobby Darin” – meaning Barbra Streisand and Bobby Darin impersonators, just like Andrea himself is ‘a Dean Martin’, one of a small fraternity whose voice sounds uncannily like the late great Dino.
He doesn’t look especially Dean Martin-ish, sitting in the Sun Hall coffee shop in faded jeans and a blue T-shirt, but the general impression is there: slim and suntanned, with curly hair and a big smile, looking younger than his 42 years. He has an expansive, rather showbiz way of speaking. When I mention how accurate his vocal stylings are, he nods with a pious expression and says “Thank you” very seriously (he seems about to place his hand on his heart); instead of a simple ‘yes’, he’ll often say “Absolutely! Oh, absolutely!” with great enthusiasm. But it’s really the smile that seals the deal, a remarkable smile; it’s so big it’s almost V-shaped, the whole face transforming and the eyes crinkling madly. Even Dean Martin never had a smile like that.
Andrea’s life is really two lives. Life No. 1 finds him as a working-class boy, second-youngest of five brothers, born in Glasgow to an Italian mother and Greek Cypriot father (‘Morrelli’ is actually his mum’s maiden name; his real name is Andreas Giorgalli, though he now plans to change it by deed poll). In life No. 1, Andrea (or Andreas) grows up to become a landscape gardener, a job he does – and enjoys – right up to his early 30s. Life No. 2, on the other hand, finds him criss-crossing Britain doing solo and Rat Pack shows (the ‘Rat Pack’ was the clique Dean Martin formed with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. in the early 60s), singing in a Royal Command Performance before HRH Princess Anne, and – the night before our interview – doing a Rat Pack show for a packed house of 1,000 people at the Curium Amphitheatre, earning two standing ovations and raising over €20,000 for charity. The link between the two lives – or perhaps the magic wand that turned Life No. 1 into Life No. 2 – is Stars in Their Eyes, “a very, very, very, very popular television programme” which he almost won in 2000 (coming second to a woman who sang like Maria Callas), after which the offers started flooding in.
Andrea makes it clear he wasn’t unhappy in his earlier job, and indeed still dabbles when he can: “Any opportunity I get to do some landscaping or gardening, I enjoy it”. Maybe. But I also suspect he found something new in Life No. 2, even beyond the glamour and applause. What’s quite noticeable – and sometimes strange – while talking to him is the way he wraps himself in the Dean Martin persona, whether because it’s an extension of his real personality or the opposite, because it allows him to be someone else.
What’s the secret to doing Dean Martin? “Being totally relaxed,” he replies. “Basically, if the audience see that you’re at ease, they become at ease”. And how much does his own personality resemble Dino’s? “Very much. Very relaxed, very easy-going. Very happy to work with people”. Yet it’s also true, he admits, that “I have no life”. The job is full-time to the point of being exhausting. “I get about four hours sleep, if that”. On this tour especially – which he organised himself, producing and directing – the stress from all the paperwork, phone calls and general agita has been such that his voice started to suffer. He might come across as a languid curly-haired entertainer, but his life isn’t always one big party (for one thing, he went through a painful separation six months ago). It’s the same when we talk about Stars in Their Eyes. “I don’t know how it happened, maybe it’s because I’m half-Italian, but I started singing in front of my friends and stuff, and they said: ‘You sound like Dean, why don’t you try for Stars in Their Eyes?’” he recalls, making it sound like a big lark – but in fact Andrea was going through some tough times in 2000. Both his parents were gravely ill; his mother – who had “the voice of an angel” – died just six weeks before he appeared on TV, his dad six months later. Was it a kind of escape, I wonder, wrapping himself in the goofy good humour of ‘That’s Amore’ to distract from his real-life troubles? “Yeah, yeah…” he mutters, lost in contemplation. “It was a very bad time.”
Being Dean Martin works as a kind of shield from all that. It’s also a kind of lifeline, a wild card in the hand he’s been dealt, valuable both in itself and what you can do with it – and Andrea seems keenly aware that his talent only goes so far, trying hard to branch out in the world of showbiz. “I’m very happy to nurture talent,” he says, sounding very Simon Cowell-ish. One of his protégés is Ben Mills, a young man who ‘does’ Michael Bublé – and Andrea’s trying to organise shows like ‘Frank, Dean and Bublé: Rat Pack, the Next Generation’, as well as positioning himself as a producer and all-round impresario. He purposely chose to do everything himself on the Cyprus tour as a kind of learning curve, even scripting the banter between ‘Frank’ and ‘Dean’. Can he give me an example of the jokes? He thinks for a moment: “‘Hey Theo, did you take a bath this morning?’. And then you say, ‘Why, is there one missing?’”. He chuckles, looking a little shamefaced: “It’s not too complicated. But it works.”
It worked well enough last night at Curium, and in Paphos the week before. The past 11 years have been good to Andrea Morrelli – yet Stars in Their Eyes, arguably the most important thing that’s ever happened to him, sounds strangely insubstantial when he talks about it, like a dream whose details keep eluding him.
What was it like? “Very nerve-wracking,” he recalls, shaking his head, “because I was a complete amateur. Didn’t do any performances before that. Hadn’t even done karaoke!” At the time, the show was as big as The X-Factor is now, pulling in an audience of 15 million. There were 150,000 applicants when he sent in his tape – yet he somehow made it, with 600 others, to the first audition, then the second audition, then (with 49 other performers) to the show itself. There were hundreds of people in the studio audience, millions more watching on TV. How did a landscape gardener who liked listening to 60s music – but had never sang before an audience in his life – handle that kind of pressure?
“Not very well,” he admits, and smiles. “Very nervous.”
Was he given any tips? Any tricks to lessen the stage-fright?
“Not really. Just had to go out there and do it.”
Yes, but how?
He shrugs. “It’s a complete blank,” he says, and smiles again (that smile!). “It’s a complete blank. I think I shut off in order to handle it.”
Maybe it does feel like a dream, made even more unreal by the timing – because Robbie Williams released his so-called “swing album” (Swing When You’re Winning) in 2001, and suddenly this easy-listening 60s music, w
hich might’ve been dismissed as hopelessly square five years before, was seriously trendy. Do his audiences even know who Dean Martin was? “Absolutely! Oh, absolutely! Great popularity, especially recently. The past decade has shown an absolutely huge education in the re-emergence of the Rat Pack”. Williams’ album “propelled that genre of music to the young”, the kids often encouraged by their parents who see it as a wholesome alternative to hip-hop and gangsta rap; “We find our audiences are younger and younger,” explains Andrea. “And we have teenagers, we have children of the ages of nine or 10, singing along to the songs.”
Andrea Morrelli is an ordinary fellow (“The Singing Gardener,” he calls himself, and laughs) blessed with a precious gift. It’s not like he spent years and years watching Dean Martin, mastering his moves and precise tonal shadings. He doesn’t even have to change his voice that much, he admits – just exaggerates it slightly, and there it is. Even in the songs he writes himself (he’s hoping to release a CD soon), he prefers to sing in the style of Dean Martin, not Andrea Morrelli. “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”
His was the right voice at the right time, Mad Men taking over from Robbie to ensure the style stayed fashionable. Is it just nostalgia? He nods thoughtfully: “The nostalgia of the 1960s,” he explains, “it’s – it’s basically when men were men and women were women. And men acted like gentlemen… it’s going back to that nostalgic time when everyone knew, basically, their place. I’m not saying women should be under the thumb or anything, by no means! But I feel that, especially in a man’s role, a man knew…”
He stops, trying to find the words. I nod sympathetically. I know what you mean, I reassure him; I know exactly what you mean. It was just easier in those days.
“It was easier,” he agrees, and flashes that suave Dino smile again.
