Sandy Summers/DN
PLAYING FROM A repertoire collected over a span 50 years, B.B. King delights a sold-out
crowd at the Lied Center for Performing Arts.
The
once -rr •
future King
Blues legend rocks sold-out Lied
By Patrick Kelly
Music Critic
The blues is an expression of life. It displays
joy. pain, happiness, desperation and the heart
break of lov e and lov e lost.
I or B.B. King, the blues is life.
For the people packing the Lied Center for
Performing Arts Sunday night. King was the wise
old sage preaching and teaching the ways of liv
ing nonstop for almost two hours.
And even with 72 years of living, 75 albums
and more than 50 of playing under his belt, he did
so with great humility.
“I don't see my influence,” King said in his
tour bus before the show. “I hear people say (how
I've influenced other musicians), but I don’t see
my influence. I hear them playing their own
thing, and I admire them for what they do.”
The highly influential, yet extremely modest
King still does not realize how much of an
impression he has made on musicians like Eric
Clapton. Robert Cray and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Just as King has impressed musicians, he
struck a similar chord with Sunday’s audience.
When a player performs with such emotion.
the audience is left wondering from where the
energy comes. King speculated on the impor
tance of putting oneself wholly into his craft.
“With any entertainer or any performer, you
always put you in it, and you do what feels good
at the time." he said. “And so, therefore, you hav e
to kind of be in it to do it. If I didn't feel what I
was doing it would become boring."
King's on-stage presence showed he was any
thing but boring and lacking in feeling. Aside
from his aw'e-inspiring guitar wizardry. King
danced about the stage to the full delight of the
audience.
After singing a mournful verse of blues he
would play up the crowd, sniffing and acting like
he was crying, or impersonating a conversation
he once had.
Dialogue played an important part in King's
performance. Just as Lucille responds to his
singing. King responds to his band, stepping out
of the spotlight long enough to let members dis
play their unique talent.
King also opens up to the audience. He sits
down “not because I'm tired," he explained to the
audience, but because he wants to let the music,
under his lead, tell a story.
Apart from having to perform with so much
verve and energy, King accomplishes the addi
tional task of doing it night after night, 300 a year.
This may lead the already bewildered fan to
wonder how the guitarist can put so much soul
into each song he plays, he said.
“Each time I perform or work on a song I
work on it as I feel it now. not as I recorded it five
years ago. 10 years ago, 15 years ago, but now."
King said. “Like tonight when I go on stage I will
do what I feel now, the way I feel it now. And gen
erally that's fresh, so I feel good."
In his lifetime. King has seen where the blues
is rooted, and he has hopes of where it will go in
the future.
“I hope that it will go into the mainstream of
music so people can hear it," he said. “Today, we
have a lot of young people supporting it and play
ing it, and I'm hoping that the radio stations and
the music media will feature it as they do other
kinds of music. Most of the music you hear has
got to have a little of the blues in it because the
blues was here first.”
The blues was here first and as long as there
are performers who can run through such classics
as “Stormy Monday," “How Blue Can You Get"
and “The Thrill Is Gone," the blues will live on.
And as long as those songs continue to move
people, there will only be one King.
Sandy Summers/DN
B.B. KING jams out on his guitar, Lucille, Sunday night at the Lied Center for Performing Arts.
Christopher Lloyd relates life on camera
By Liza Holtmeier
Senior Reporter
No blinding white shock of hair reminiscent
of Einstein's wild do. No white lab coat over a
colorful shirt. No shouts of “Great Scott!”
accompanied by a smack to the forehead.
When Christopher Lloyd spoke to three
groups of University of Nebraska-Lincoln the
ater students Friday, he was quiet, pensive and
unassuming. He was the polar opposite of the
off-beat characters - like Dr. Emmett L. Brown
from “Back to the Future” and Jim from “Taxi”
- he normally plays.
Dressed in a T-shirt and jeans with his dark
gray hair cut short, Lloyd related some of his
experiences in the performance industry with a
subtle sense of humor. Make-up artist Kenny
Myers, hair designer, Karen Myers and UNL
theater professor Sandy Veneziano joined
Lloyd for three 40-minute discussions in the
lobby of Howell Theatre.
Lloyd said his varied acting career began at
the age of 14.
“I kind of fell down to acting,” Lloyd said,
laughing. “I was academically hopeless, which
eliminated a lot of possibilities. Early on, I
found I could get myself out of awkward situa
tions, and that ability steered me toward acting.”
By age 16, Lloyd was apprenticing in sum
mer stock, and at the age of 19, he moved to
New York to take acting classes. Lloyd's first
performances were in off-Broadway produc
tions. Since then, he has appeared in a number
of Broadway, New York Shakespeare Festivals
and off-Broadway productions.
Lloyd’s film career began with his role in
the 1975 movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Nest” with Jack Nicholson. After shooting fin
ished, Lloyd was determined to pursue a film
career. In 1976, he moved to Los Angeles.
In 1978, Lloyd made a guest appearance on
the eighth episode of “Taxi.” The following sea
son, he was added as a cast regular.
Lloyd has won three Emmy Awards - two
for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy
Series for his role in “Taxi” and one for
Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series for a guest
appearance on Disney’s “Avonlea.”
Lloyd’s film career consists of various col
orful characters, including Doc Brown in the
“Back to the Future” trilogy, Fester Addams in
“The Addams Family,” Professor Plum in
“Clue” and Judge Doom in “Who Framed
Roger Rabbit.”
Recently, Lloyd finished shooting Walt
Disney’s production of "My Favorite Martian”
with Jeff Daniels, Elizabeth Hurley and Daryl
Hannah. The movie is scheduled for release in
1998.
With such a varied career in stage and
screen, Lloyd said it was difficult to choose
which medium he most favored.
“You can reach so many more people
through film,” Lloyd said. “Yet, theater has
more of a sense of community, of ensemble.
There is a deeper sense of reliance.”
Lloyd added that the energy created during
a stage performance is hard to replicate on film.
The right role
Regardless of the medium, Lloyd said he
was drawn to parts in which he feels connected
and inspired.
“I kind of have my eyes open for roles that
have something that I want to say,” Lloyd said.
“As a'ctors, we’re the chroniclers of time. We’re
blessed with the opportunity to say something
about the events of the day.”
Lloyd added that this opportunity engen
ders a great amount of excitement in him dur
ing the creation process.
“I love the excitement of creating some
thing, the excitement of getting an idea, the
excitement of imagining something and mak
ing it happen,” Lloyd said.
When formulating a character, Lloyd said
he first concentrated on his physicality.
“One of the first things that comes to me
when I read a script is an image,” Lloyd said.
“What does this character look like? I start
working out what 1 can do physically.”
However, Lloyd said after he formulated a
character’s image, a director sometimes would
ask him to be more subtle. “I often have to be
reminded by directors, ‘Take it down. Take it
down,”’ Lloyd said. “I tend to go over the top.”
Lloyd said he hoped to increase the range of
his acting in the future through independent
films. He called independent films “gold
mines” and said they provided him with the
opportunity to escape the stereotyping of the
big studios.
“The big studios will never give me a
romantic lead because I don’t have a track
record for that,” Lloyd said. “(Independent
films) are the opportunity to do the kind of
roles and the kind of material that a big studio
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