Joel Jackson – Not the Boy Next Door

Fresh-faced NIDA graduate Joel Jackson is the new Boy From Oz, shaking those maracas in the Channel 7 mini-series Not the Boy Next Door (now available on DVD), based on the life and times of singer songwriter Peter Allen. *David Spicer reports on the lengths he took to prepare for the role and how he got there.

When Joel Jackson auditioned for NIDA, the teenager from Karratha in north-western Australia had never even set foot on stage in a play. Against the odds he was plucked from the thousands of hopefuls to join the prestigious drama course.

Joel’s credentials were as a musician.

“I was a singer song writer playing in pubs since the age of 14,” he said.

Sound familiar? Peter Allen made his start in the pub of a country town in New South Wales – Armidale. He’d dance and he’d sing, do just about anything, just to get his name in lights.

Joel Jackson says Peter Allen is his kindred spirit.

“We both came from very small country towns and made something out of nothing. I draw a lot of my own life story from the early part of his. I sympathise with his struggle of wanting to be heard singing your own songs, but not knowing where your songs will be heard, or what your target audience will be.”

Peter Allen’s rock was his mother Marion. She was immortalised in an episode of ‘This is Your Life’, saying she was proud as punch of her son.

“My Dad was exactly that. He was always driving me to the pub to play, and staying to make sure everything was OK. He was that pivotal person who I owe everything to.”

And while Joel Jackson has not yet won an Oscar, or sold out Radio City Music  Hall, or married the daughter of Judy Garland (as Peter Allen did), his career, even in its early stages, is impressive.

He scored two major TV roles in his first year out of NIDA. The first was that of Charles Bean, one of the journalists who reported on the deeds of ANZACS, in the Foxtel series Dateline Gallipoli.

“Watching other great leading men and women doing their thing gave me the confidence to research and to play Peter Allen, the leading man.”

This helped him a week in to the shoot, when the director took him aside and urged him to own the camera, to put his stamp on it as leading man.

Joel has never seen the musical The Boy From Oz and was determined to avoid even any glimpses of the performances of Hugh Jackman or Todd McKenney that are available on-line.

“I did not want any hang over of their performances. I wanted to make it my own.”

There was plenty of original material to dive into. He watched hours of footage of Peter Allen’s concerts, videos of his holidays and Vaseline ads from his school days, available in the State Library of NSW.

“The more I read and the more we shot, the less I wanted to say goodbye to him. I think he was a remarkable human being. His charisma, his jokes, he was so lovable. A lot of people spoke about him never being angry, never upset or worried too much. He was a really simple guy. He knew what he wanted to do, then only did them once and kept going.”

So how did Peter Allen cope with the disappointments? Breaking up with Liza Minelli, having a flop on Broadway (Legs Diamond), struggling to get his own music recorded?

“We all crack, but he put it into his song-writing. He released the deep seated fears into his music. That is why his songs are so lovely and so evocative.”

I asked Joel to name his favourite Peter Allen song. I was expecting something like ‘Tenterfield Saddler’, ‘Everything Old is New Again’ or ‘I Still Call Australia Home’.

Instead he nominated the little known song ‘I Don’t Go Shopping’.

“One of his record producers said you’ve got the gay audience, why don’t you write a song about shopping?  He sat down with a friend and said I hate shopping! So he wrote a song about not going shopping for love. It’s something money can’t buy. I fell in lovewith the charisma behind that. What a dude, what a guy.”

The TV series Not the Boy Next Door has other insights into Peter Allen which were not in the musical. Olivia Newtown-John (played by Christie Whelan-Browne), Peter Allen’s sister Lynn and his song-writing partner Carol Bayer Sager were trimmed from the book in the Nick Enright musical. The TV series has more time to explore their roles in his life and what happened behind the bright theatre moments. His early Bandstand days are also fleshed out, with Rob Mills playing his Allen Brothers partner.

“There is a lot of interesting stuff about his split with Liza Minnelli and how he tried to forge his own way after the breakup of the Allen brothers.”

Sigrid Thornton as Judy Garland brings acting class to the role, albeit without her own singing voice (which is dubbed).  

“Sigrid did an amazing job of Judy, physically with her mannerisms and her voice. I had to be careful how much time I spent with her on set before and after (shooting scenes) because the magic would wear off. I needed to see her only in the scenery as Judy.”

Joel says mastering Peter Allen’s voice was a big challenge as he had different accents depending on where he was at the time because he was the consummate entertainer.

With his partner Greg he sounded more Texan, when he was staging the Broadway musical Legs Diamond he sounded more “twangy” clipped Broadway, but on his visits back home his Australian accent returned.

“It was a challenge on set, going through three different accents for the same person in a day.

“I also lost about 8 or 10 kilos, and had my hair pushed back.”

Then came the songs.

“I taught myself how to sing listening to Pearl Jam, Jimmy Hendrix and those sorts of guys. My style is the pub-rock singer-song-writer, so I really worked on that Broadway twang, those power ballads and really going for that support and vibrato.

“To me Peter Allen sounds like Fats Waller. That fed into his timing. He was rhythmical with his lyrics. His timing and phrasing were beautiful. Then I found the shape of my mouth to fit his speaking voice, then sing to that and listen to his influences to where he got that sound from.”

Since filming finished Joel said he has been inspired to pick up on his own song-writing, which he likens in style to Paul Kelly. He’s also keen now to see a stage production of The Boy From Oz and play Peter Allen “maybe in eight years”.

However, “for me there are so many songs in the musical that I would be jealous of other people singing. I would want to sing them all.”

Not the Boy Next Door played on the Seven Network during September and is now available on DVD.

To help Joel Jackson see The Boy From Oz, it is playing at Spotlight Theatre on the Gold Coast from October 23 to November 13, 2015.

It is also being staged by regional theatres in the United States including recent productions in Chicago, Tennessee, New York state and Dallas, with productions next year in Florida and Hollywood.

*David Spicer is the agent for The Boy From Oz. www.davidspicer.com.au

Article originally published in the September / October 2015 edition of Stage Whispers.