By Paul Freeman [Oct. 2011 Interview]

For years, Robert Davi has sent chills up your spine, as one of filmdom’s most menacing baddies. Now, he’s ready to warm your hearts with a new album, “Davi Sings Sinatra: On The Road To Romance.”

The villain with the voice of gold has been honing his musical skills throughout his life, so this is no dilettante. Davi proves himself to be a suave, skilled singer, bringing a winning touch to such favorites as “Day In, Day Out,” “All The Way,” “Summer Wind” and “In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning.”

Davi knew Sinatra well, having appeared in the movie “Contract on Cherry Street” with him. One of the consummate contemporary character actors, Davi has brought a memorable toughness to such popular films as “The Goonies,” “Die Hard,” “Showgirls” and “License To Kill.”

He turned hero for the hit TV series “Profiler” and garnered a following among science-fiction buffs with “Stargate: Atlantis.”

Focusing on his music at the moment, Davi is swinging into top venues with live show. You can catch him at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, Feb. 23, 24, 25.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
Is this new album the fulfillment of a dream for you?

ROBERT DAVI:
Yes. I have a long history in terms of my love of singing and voice. I’ve been a student of that, as as young guy, studying opera and all of that. And when I was younger, I used to listen to Caruso and Sinatra. They were the benchmark to me, of a sound, the purity of tone, Caruso being a great opera singer at the turn of the century that brought the bel canto technique of singing to the forefront. Sinatra then adapted the bel canto technique of singing to popular music. Sinatra was a huge classical student himself and brought that to popular music and created a style of approaching the American Songbook the way Caruso did with the opera and was the standard bearer for that.

And again, that soundtrack to the lives of my parents and grandparents, listening to that Great American Songbook and Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Nat ‘King’ Cole, Dean Martin, I grew up listening to that music. And it was a music filled with optimism and romance, Sinatra being, again, the benchmark for the songbook. So I’m very excited and inspired by the whole thing.

PCC:
You must have really welcomed the opportunity to showcase your romantic side.

DAVI:
Oh, absolutely, being the tough guy for so long. But it’s funny. The Great American Songbook is the Shakespeare of America. It’s the golden age of American music. It’s what made the world fall in love with our country. And it helped us. It helped my parents and grandparents through a very difficult time. It was a music that transcended, and transcends today, generations and cultures and everything else. And we’re in a period in our history, a divisive point in our country, a very divisive part of our history right now in America, a very fragile part, where we’re split down the middle on different things and there doesn’t seem to be a voice that’s bringing us together enough.

And it can be done through the music. It’s beyond Robert Davi wanting to sing the Songbook. I felt a need, more than a need, a necessity that’s pouring out of me, wanting to bring this around. And judging from the response I’m getting from the audiences, and the age range in the audiences... again, this music, you could be 10 years old in the audience with your grandfather or grandmother. And whether it’s a Russian immigrant or a French tourist... The other night at a concert, a Korean girl, a tourist, bought six albums, saying, ‘I love this music.’ So there’s something about this music that doesn’t separate us. You can’t say that about all the music that’s out today, you couldn’t say the whole family could come to a concert it and enjoy it. But with the Great American Songbook, you can. So I’m just so inspired by it.

PCC:
In addition to the vocal techniques involved, is there a certain attitude you have to capture? Is it almost like acting in some regards?

DAVI:
It’s not almost. It is. The reason why Sinatra was above and beyond most all of them. It’s true of Dean Martin, too. Sinatra was a terrific actor. He embodied those songs. He was able to communicate those songs. He had a style and a sensibility when he performed. Because of my history as an actor - I’ve been around for a bit, playing the tough guy - the thing that Sinatra had, above the other singers, was edge. He had intensity. So now, you combine that with poetry, and music, and song, and you bring it to the stage. And that’s what people are finding from me in live performances and my interpretations of the Songbook. You have a lot of guys who can maybe sing a nice tune, but not being able to communicate that sense of danger, that sense of edge, and poetry, combined. And that combination is very affecting.

PCC:
You’re very effective at that, but at the outset, was it daunting to be tackling these tunes that were so associated with Sinatra?

DAVI:
Well, the Songbook, he didn’t write them. You had these black jazz, jump blues artists that created a style of music and a sensibility. And then you had Jewish immigrants and the sons and daughters of Jewish immigrants that created the American Songbook. It’s phenomenal, when you realize, from the Gershwins, to Irving Berlin to Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen, who was a cantor’s son, to Sammy Cahn to Frank Loesser to Carolyn Leigh and Cy Coleman and on, and on and on. Of course, you had a lot of other people writing the Songbook. But the majority of the Songbook was written by Jews. And Sinatra was the first artist to come out against anti-Semitism and racial bigotry. And the combination of the black and Jewish struggle and immigrant struggle, that Sinatra also came out of, and a lot of the other players, then you also have Johnny Mercer and Rube Bloom, great writers. Johnny Mercer’s a great songwriter. But it’s why this music translates.

And the reason I called the title, ‘Davi Sings Sinatra: On The Road To Romance,’ and that’s a lyric from ‘Nice and Easy,’ ‘on the road to romance,’ we are taking a bit of a journey through the process of seduction of love, falling in love, the attainment of love, the expression of it, falling out of love, the despair of love. And the rebuilding, the rediscovery of love. This is the same journey that we’re going through in our country. So there is an overriding need, for me, to bring this music and try to find a common ground for all of us, for at least an hour or a couple of hours during a live performance, or the time listening to the record.

PCC:
Were you, from the beginning, comfortable performing live on stage?

DAVI:
[Laughs] You know what? ? Maybe I’m nuts, right. But here’s the process. I did a film called ‘The Dukes.’ And I sang one song in that, just to test my waters. And then one day, I had lunch with Bob Cavallo, who’s the chairman of Disney Music and I said, ‘I want to go back to singing. Who do you recommend?’ He said, ‘Gary Catona.’ And he called him and then I called Gary and I found out that Gary had the same journey and the same sensibility about the voice. And he understood. And his technique was what I responded to, in terms of what I wanted. And I then started working out with him. Then we did a demo, with a 30-piece orchestra. I brought it to Bob Cavallo. He says, ‘Let’s do the record. I’ll help you.’ I then started working out with the piano player, starting to learn different songs. In July of 2010, I went back to my alma mater, Hofstra University. And I did three performances, live with a 30-piece orchestra, to 1,100 people a night. And that was the first time I’d done the show. And then I performed to 1,500 people in B.C. and 1,800 in Thousand Oaks, with a 55-piece orchestra. And continuing it on. I did an intimate venue, Vibrato, a real hip jazz club in Los Angeles. And I did an outdoor concert the other night. And I’ll be doing the Venetian, February 23rd, 24th and 25th. I’ll be headlining the Venetian.

PCC:
During the recording process, what was producer Phil Ramone’s input? How did he help shape the project.

DAVI:
Well, Phil is a legendary producer. And he advised me, in terms of the song selection, the mixing process, the mixing of the instruments and the sound. He’s just a great talent, he along with Al Schmitt and Dan Wallin, who was recording the music and vocals. I wanted the best there was to work on the album and they responded to my demo and believed in what I’m doing. And we did it at Capitol Records, in that studio where Sinatra did a lot of his stuff. And it was just very thrilling.

PCC:
It has to be thrilling to be singing in front of that kind of an orchestra.

DAVI:
Oh, yeah. I think it was Gustav Mahler, or one of these great classical composers, that said, ‘Music is the closest we have to the absolute.’ And you feel like you’re channeling, you feel like the music is flowing through you and to the audience. It’s very inspirational. I feel 25 years old. So alive.

PCC:
So is the music more satisfying than acting?

DAVI:
There’s nothing more satisfying. I love the acting, but let me tell you something, the singing... I sang as a young boy. I won first place in the New York State School Music Association Solo Competition, as a 15-year-old boy, singing Vincent Youman’s ‘Without A Song.’ I sang opera. I studied in Florence. I studied with a guy named Dan Ferrol at Julliard and Samuel Margolis. If you asked my family what I was going to do, it was going to be the singing. And I just loved the singing. And there is nothing, to me, more powerful than that experience.

PCC:
So when and why did your focus shift to acting?

DAVI:
I did my first movie with Frank Sinatra in 1977. I was in my early twenties. When I was singing, I had a vocal strain, as a young kid. I was a baritone with the heart of a tenor. And I started to push the voice a little bit early. And while I was recuperating, I then didn’t focus on the singing. I was working as an actor. I had been acting concurrently.

For me, there were two voices - Caruso in opera and Sinatra in popular music. Sinatra communicated a lyric with such depth and honesty, the way Caruso did in his singing. And Tito Gobbi did that with his singing in the opera world. But a lot of the singers that I had heard were more external than internal, more representational than embodying the music. And I wanted to not go that route. I didn’t like that kind of broad musical comedy or broad operatic route. I wanted to get the intimacy and the internalization that Sinatra brought to the lyric and to music.

So I then focused on the acting and once I did that first film with Sinatra, I was put under contract to Columbia, at the very end of all that stuff. And I started to work as an actor. But I always knew that I wanted to go into the singing. There was a part of me that felt unfulfilled, that felt empty, to be honest. I felt that there was something I was meant to do that I was not doing. And then I did ‘The Dukes’ and I did ‘So Much In Love’ at the end of that. And that started me back on the singing path. And I’ve just been on fire. And I have a need to express through the song, through music. The fear I may have had from the past has absolutely gone. And it’s now just the need to communicate this. And especially the American Songbook.

A song like ‘All The Way’ won the Oscar in 1958. A couple of years ago, a song, ‘It’s Hard Out There For A Pimp’ won the Oscar. So not only in a sociopolitical sensibility, is this music is so vital and necessary, but culturally it’s necessary. There was romance and respect for women back then, even during heartbreak... and for each other, a gentler, more respectful attitude. So it’s not just about me wanting to sing. There is something I am driven to communicate.

PCC:
The experience working with Sinatra - what was that like? Did you learn a lot from him?

DAVI:
You know, I was lucky enough to work with some great people, really. And it’s an osmosis period. I observed. I watched. He was very gracious and then over the years was friendly and very helpful.

Here’s how he was - I’ll give you two little anecdotes. I’d met him during the auditioning process, of course. Then there was the first time on the set. I had already shot some stuff a couple of days before him. I was on the set in a big tractor-trailer, on the driver’s side, when he, all of a sudden, appeared on the set and he points to me in the window of the tractor-trailer and he says, ‘I saw your dailies from the other day, the stuff you shot, most real stuff in the film. You’re terrific.’ And that was his first comment to me. And we were now friends.

And Harry Guardino was in the film. And Martin Gabel. And we were in a social club one night, at two o’clock in the morning. We had been in Little Italy, waiting to shoot. And I’m standing off to the side. And they’re at the bar. And I’m observing, thinking to myself, ‘I’m here with Sinatra!’ And it’s my first film. I’d done 700 performances on stage prior to this, but this was with Sinatra and company. And he looks over and he sees me and he goes, ‘Robert, have a drink.’ I said, ‘I don’t drink, Mr. Sinatra.’ He says, ‘You don’t drink? Come over here.’ He reaches over to the bar, gets the bottle of Jack Daniels and pours my first Jack Daniels. So he was very engaging. I saw him over the years. He was good friends with Cubby Broccoli, as well. I was good friends with Jilly Rizzo. So you just observe.

You learn from all these greats. I watched a lot of Robert Mitchum films and Bogart films and Edward G. Robinson and Marvin and Brando and on and on, DeNiro. You watch and you learn and you assimilate things. I studied with Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg. I was at the Actors Studio and all that stuff.

PCC:
You mentioned Cubby Broccoli. It must have been great to be part of a kind of landmark Bond film, “License To Kill,” which had a different tone, a different kind of villain.

DAVI:
Yeah, that was the first time with that. They wanted to go more contemporary in terms of being realistic. We took ‘Casino Royale’ and how Bond and the villain are mirror images of each other, in a way. And also taking a very contemporary subject matter. It’s happening in Mexico with the drug cartels. It’s as real today, even more so... It’s a present danger.

Also Cubby Broccoli was just tremendous. And to be part of Bond history... I was born in Astoria, Queens. Cubby was born in Astoria, Queens. So was Tony Bennett born in Astoria, very interestingly. But I’ve been lucky with doing these - Bond and ‘Die Hard’ and ‘Showgirls,’ ‘Stargate,’ ‘Son of Pink Panther.’ I’ve done a couple of these classic, classic films.

PCC:
‘Goonies’ certainly has an amazing life of its own. It’s a landmark for kids that grew up in that era. You must constantly get stopped and recognized from that movie.

DAVI:
Oh, ‘Goonies,’ Bond, ‘Die Hard, ‘Showgirls.’ What’s great about ‘Goonies,’ you’ve got these kids coming to my concerts. There’s a lot of young people and it’s because of the film and TV stuff. And now they’re loving the American Songbook.

PCC:
‘Goonies,’ that operatic element, was that something they wrote for you? Or you brought into it? Was that part of the script?

DAVI:
No, ‘Goonies,’ that was not part of the script, the operatic element. You know the scene when I’m feeding Sloth in the basement? Well, that scene was written where I bring out a plate of food. I put it on the floor and, as he reaches for it, I move it a few inches away from him, so he can’t reach it, because he’s chained. And then I push it back close to him. And he reaches for it and I push it away from him. I taunt him with the food. When I read it, I said, ‘It’s just sadistic.’

So I wanted to create a character, knowing that I had a bunch of kids in the film, that was his own big kid, in a way. So I thought to myself, ‘What if I was the brother than no one would listen to, that really wanted to be an opera singer, but his mom and family were criminals, wouldn’t let him?’ And the only one who would listen to me sing was the brother in the basement, chained, when I went to feed him. And he would have to shut up and listen, if he wanted me to give him his food. So this one time I go down there and he won’t listen to me, so then [Chuckles], that propels me to throw the food at him. At least I have a justification for that.

And I told that idea to Richard Donner and Spielberg and they said, ‘Well, let’s see it.’ And I did it and Dick loved it and they left it in and made it a motif. I then also had Anne Ramsay, who played Mama Fratelli, I said to her, ‘Periodically, when I’m saying something, slap me. Just slap me.’ Chris Columbus wrote a terrific piece there, a benchmark. And Dick Donner gave us great freedom in terms of creating those characters.

PCC:
And what about ‘Showgirls’? It had such a negative buzz even before it opened and it later developed such a cult following.

DAVI:
Verhoeven was a guy I wanted to work with for years, since I saw his Dutch films, like ‘Soldier of Orange.’ And then also Joe Eszterhas was on top of it all at that time, with ‘Basic Instinct’ and stuff. And the subject matter seemed interesting to me, that underbelly of Vegas. And also the strip joints. I hadn’t played like a seedy character that was the owner of a strip joint. ‘Pulp Fiction’ had come out and all those films, ‘Reservoir Dogs,’ that had that edge going on. So it was fun. I liked doing ‘Showgirls.’ And the great camp aspect of it, I think, is what let it continue on. I know in San Francisco, thousands of people will go out to a midnight showing. So it’s fun to be part of that film.

PCC:
‘Die Hard,’ did you have a glimmer that it would be such a juggernaut franchise?

DAVI:
I had no idea. Joel Silver called me up and says, ‘I got a character for you. I think you’ll like it.’ And it was the ‘Die Hard’ character, Big Johnson. I thought it was a small part and I thought the film really wasn’t going to go anywhere, to be honest with you, because it was at a time when Bruce Willis needed a hit. His previous films had not hit. And he needed something. I knew John McTiernan had done a film called ‘Nomads,’ so there was a shot there. But I really didn’t know if this film was going to go anywhere. I even said, ‘No, I won’t take billing.’ He wanted to give me front billing and stuff like that, paid ads. I said, ‘No, No. ‘You gotta take it.’ ‘I don’t want it!’ He said, ‘Well, you gotta have it at the end, at least.’ I says, ‘All right.’

Then I go to a screening of ‘Die Hard’ with Arnold Schwarzenegger, because I had done ‘Raw Deal’ with Arnold. He said, [spot-on Arnold impression] ‘Let’s go see ‘Die Hard.’’ So we went to the Fox and saw the film for first time. And it just bangs off the screen. And I remember, the first time I come on screen, Arnold says to me, ‘Look at this, you’re terrific here!’ Because it looks like I’m going to come in and save the day, right? The FBI is here to save the day. He thinks it’s going to go there. And then when it went south and the character becomes a jerk, he looks at me, ‘What the hell’s going on with you, you idiot? What are you doing here now?’ [Laughs] But the film just exploded. And I did not expect it.

Dick Donner did know ‘Goonies’ was going to be a classic. He said, early on, ‘This is going to be a perennial, an annual film, like ‘Wizard of Oz.’ He thought it was going to be a classic.

PCC:
And ‘Stargate: Atlantis’ also has a cult following. Did you enjoy working in the genre?

DAVI:
Oh, yeah. That was great. I’d like to do more sci-fi. The fans are so enthusiastic. I had not done a lot of sci-fi, except that ‘Predator 2’ thing. And I would love to. I had a lot of fun doing Acastus Kolya.

PCC:
You’ve had so many juicy roles. Did you feel confined being pigeonholed into the villain parts? Well, you know, I looked at the careers of Humphrey Bogart, Lee Marvin, Mitchum, Edward G. Robinson. And everybody got pigeonholed somewhere. You’ve got guys who got pigeonholed being the romantic lead ‘Tennis, anyone?’ kind of guy. They hated that. So at least I wasn’t boring. You could live out everybody’s fantasies of being a bastard. But, at the same time, I then was able to do ‘Profiler’ for four-and-a-half years, where I played the good guy, Bailey Malone. So now I mix and match and do comedy. It’s just a lot of fun.

PCC:
What’s been the most challenging aspect of the career?

DAVI:
I directed my first film, ‘The Dukes,’ and the challenging aspect could be to stay current. And to stay focused. Getting ‘The Dukes’ marketed was the challenge [Chuckles]. If you don’t have the budget, getting people to see it and know about it, when you know it has value and is entertaining, that is the challenging aspect.

PCC:
And what’s been the most rewarding aspect?

DAVI:
Meeting people and going anywhere in the world and having a connection with people, the friends you meet along the way. That’s really what is is. It makes the world much smaller. You get to understand the different cultures and the connectedness to all of us. That, to me, is very rewarding.

PCC:
As for what’s ahead, is there a chance you will bring the Great American Songbook to a film project, as you did with doo-wop and “The Dukes”?

DAVI:
Ah, I have a major producer that just optioned my screenplay. We’re going to be making an announcement. It’s ‘The Fighter’ and ‘King’s Speech,’ set to music. Big band era. We’re quite excited about it. I don’t know if I’ll direct, but it’s definitely a vehicle for me to sing and act in. And I’d like to bring that kind of musicals that we had, back to the screen. And this here has an edge and a contemporary feel to it, but giving us the big band thing. It’s just a terrific piece. [Laughs] Pretty perceptive question.

PCC:
That’s exciting. We’ll watch for the film and, in the meantime, we’ll be enjoying the ‘Road To Romance’ album.

Visit www.davisingssinatra.com.