Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 5, 1991 TAG: 9104050417
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY/ STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
We got nearly 100 calls. Many of them were similar - and, yes, they were mostly about pizza.
Michaelangelo, Donatello, Raphael and Leonardo have been on the road since September with their "Coming out of Their Shells" musical tour, but he was glad to take the time to call us and answer our readers' questions.
By the way, Michaelangelo said the tour is truly hot. The initial 40-city schedule has grown to more than 75, and the hardshells expect to be on the road, like, into October.
Enough gossip, dudes. Let's go to the phone:
\ How did you get into the music business?
"What happened was, Raphael and I were sitting around one day waiting for a pizza to be delivered, and he started bopping on some sewer pipes until we got a rhythm, and I came up with some words and we got our first song: `Pizza Power.'
"We took it to the other guys. We had never played music before or anything, but one thing Master Splinter always taught us is if you commit yourself to something and give it your best shot and practice and practice, you can accomplish almost anything.
"What happened then was that Master Splinter incorporated music into our teachings. We learned a valuable lesson: Music is much more powerful than violence. If you sing a song with somebody, you make a friend. If you fight with someone, you make an enemy."
\ It seems whenever I see your show you usually solve your problems with violence. Why don't you get out of predicaments using your intellect? I would like you to set a good example for all young children.
"Dude, I have only one thing to say to that: Did you ever watch the Roadrunner? I mean, really. We've never blown anybody up or thrown them off a cliff. I don't think I've ever seen an anvil in my life.
"We've always had this reputation of being these bad dudes that go and beat people up and stuff, mostly from the movie and the TV show and stuff. But those are movies and TV, scripted episodes around an action plot. That's not who we really are.
"Now if somebody attacks us, we will defend ourselves. They'll have more than their hands full.
"But we realized that, like it or not, we're role models. We figured, if that's going to happen to us, we ought to say stuff that's important. We have a song called `Walk Straight - No Need to Mutate.' The coolest thing you can be is yourself. You don't have to do drugs, hang with gangs or rip people off."
\ How old is each of you?
"We're all about the same. Actually, that's about 16. But it takes about 3 1/2 turtle years to make one human year. So we're around 5 1/2 or 6. We don't know for sure."
\ Do you go to people's houses if they want to have a party?
"If we have time, you know, and we're hanging out with somebody and they want to invite us back, we've done that before. But we have so little time now. We used to play a week in each city. Now it's like a show a day, and 20 minutes in each city. It seems like it, anyway."
\ Do you lip-synch your concerts?
"There are a couple of things that we have to address here. There's a serious rumor going around that we are the voice of Milli Vanilli. I'll give the story to you first: It's true. We wrote all the songs, we did everything.
"Our show is like what Madonna does. We do a lot of dancing and with the high production values, in order to maintain that high level throughout the show, it's really, really strenuous. Sometimes the choreography gets so hard we go to [recorded] track at a couple of points. It's our voices when we go to track.
"Donatello made these instruments special, because we only had three fingers, dude, so we needed special instruments. They're remote units that let us go anyplace on stage and play.
"I play a lead guitar with three strings on it, but the signal feeds into an amplifier which turns it into sounding like a six-string guitar. Leonardo has a one-string bass that does the same thing.
"Donatello has a huge synthesizer that has a remote keypad so he can go anyplace on stage and play it. Raphael started out playing the saxophone, and with all his many talents, singing and playing the saxophone at the same time is something he's not able to accomplish. So he plays percussion. His drum kit is really cool. Wait till you see it. He can actually leave it and play percussion anyplace on stage."
\ Do you like Vanilla Ice?
"He's a cool dude. He was in our movie and stuff. We got along. He's not really into pizza, but we forgave him."
\ Do you have any girlfriends, and would you be willing to go out with me? I'm 29.
"What does she look like? We're young. We're on the road. We're becoming rock gods. We're always on the lookout for an interspecies relationship."
\ Do you like Michael Jordan?
"The dude is excellent. He can fly. Not quite so much as Magic Johnson, the ultimate basketball player of all time."
\ Do you like black people?
"That's an interesting question. I've never been asked that before. I'm green, you know, so I don't think it really makes any difference what color a person is. I'm kind of shocked to get a question like that. What matters is what's inside a person, how they think and feel and how they feel about other human beings and the turtles around them."
\ What's your favorite pizza topping?
"Peanut butter and M&M's."
\ Why do you like pizza so much?
"Who asked that? That's a stupid question."
\ How many pizzas can you eat?
"In a two-show day I eat maybe five or six."
\ Are you going to be nervous on stage?
"The coolest thing about performing on stage is that every show is a new experience. It's not like you can do a second take on it. So, every show you get nervous, but you can channel that into your performance and stuff."
\ Who's your favorite wrestler?
"I personally think they're all a bunch of wimps. I kind of liked the Hulkster [Hulk Hogan] a little bit, but basically they're all a bunch of wimps. I could take any one of them with one arm tied behind my shell."
\ When are your birthdays?
"Dude, we don't know. It's an awful thing, but all turtles are orphans. You poke your head out of the sand and there you are, all by yourself. It's a lonely, horrible thing to go through life as an orphan. When we were little green turtles, I remember flopping around in a little plastic bowl with the palm tree and people dropping flakes on us. It was a nightmare.
"People think we're brothers, but we're not really brothers. We don't know. We don't think so. We could be. But we're closer than brothers."
\ Is your costume hot? How do you get air?
"It's just a denim jacket. You know, some guy asked me what I look like under my shell, and I said, `I don't know, I've never been operated on.' "
\ How can you live in a sewer with the smell?
"That's the only downer. You judge a sewer by the three D's: dank, dark and damp. Everyplace we go we stay in a new sewer. We're making our own sewer guide to the United States. But the smell sometimes gets to be too much. Then we just kinda block it off and set up some fans and stuff."
\ What is your sewer at home like?
"We're doing a little expansion, giving it a little more space. It's cool. It's got a studio and stuff down there so we can record."
\ How can you say you're a Ninja Turtle when I know you're a fake?
"Who said that?"
\ It doesn't say.
"The coward. Listen, have you ever talked to Bart Simpson? The Roadrunner? Wiley Coyote? Superman? Batman?"
\ No.
What's the one thing you have done that would verify the reality of my existence?"
\ Talked to you?
"Right. You got it. Hey, I got one more thing I'm supposed to tell you: Give a big cowabunga to everybody and tell 'em we can't wait to see 'em."
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Thursday, 7:30 p.m., Salem Civic Center. $9.50-$14.50. 375-3004.
by CNB