Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 25, 1994 TAG: 9407220013
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY CAMPBELL ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
Sagal has only auditioned for two TV parts - both times she was asked to audition - and was hired for both. She has played the second, Peg Bundy, since 1987 and plans to stay with the Fox Network show as long as it runs.
And now, at 37, she's excited to be showing her singer-songwriter side with a pop-folk-rhythm 'n' blues recording titled ``Well. ... ''
When a first album, with a band, didn't sell 15 years ago, Sagal became a background singer for stars on tour, including Bette Midler, Tanya Tucker and Etta James. She says, "My intention was always to be in the front. I didn't like being in the back. But I was grateful to be able to work as a singer."
Earlier, at 18, she was hired by Bob Dylan. "We rehearsed with him for two months. Then he fired half the band and all the singers. I was speechless all the time, I was so awe-struck that it was Bob Dylan.
"I continued to audition for stuff. I went to a cattle-call audition for Bette Midler's Harlettes. They got it down from 150 to six. She showed up and picked three, including me. I was 22. I worked with her four or five tours. We did the whole world.
She left Midler to pursue her own music career. "I put my bands together and made my tapes. Record companies would put me in a studio and I'd almost get a deal. Several times I made demonstration records and those songs ended up going to other artists - Olivia Newton-John, Tina Turner, Pat Benatar. It was so disappointing."
Sagal wrote or co-wrote nine of the 12 songs on "Well. ... " She says, "I started writing when I was 15. I taught myself piano. I wanted to be Laura Nyro. I've always written, over the years.
"This time I met the president of Virgin Records and played him three songs I'd written. They brought in strong people to write with me. I tried to make a record I would like to hear." Her husband, Jack White, plays drums on it.
She thinks it's a contemporary record but mature instead of adolescent. When she was writing songs, one of which is about patience, Sagal says, "I had come through having a miscarriage at seven months. That was startling to me. I was never prepared for anything like that. The sympathetic letters I got from people who've been through it were very consoling to my husband and me.
"I lost my parents young, my mother when I was 19, my dad when I was 24. I thought I was going to get older and nothing bad was going to happen again. I had the idealistic, hopeful dream everything was going to get better. Actually, it's a lovely thought. I still live that way, more hopeful than not. But I realize I'm not immune from what we all have to face."
Sagal's road to TV began in 1985, when she was cast as a Russian poet in a punk rock opera, "The Beautiful Lady," at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. "Elizabeth Swados wrote this bizarre piece of music about Russian poets. I thought it was so great.
"I was spotted by a casting director from CBS. He had me come read for a part in "Mary," Mary Tyler Moore's show. I was a chain-smoking journalist who blew smoke in Mary's face and made fun of her. I don't know why they thought I could possibly do this. They gave me the job. It lasted 13 weeks. I had no idea what I was doing. I remember being glad I was able to do it. When it ended, I thought, `That was fun. I'll go back to my real job.'
"A couple of months later I got a call to read for Peg Bundy. It was eight years ago. I got that job, too."
Sagal says "Married ... With Children" has stayed as raunchy as it began. "We have almost exactly the same writers. We talk about sex - too much and lack of. When I got the script, I thought it was hysterically funny. It was so offbeat. I said, `This will never make it on TV.'
"When we came on the air, there were people trying to get us off TV. We ended up on the front page of The New York Times, which helped our ratings. It seems the rest of TV has caught up with us."
Peg Bundy is fun to play, Sagal says. "She's a wacky character. I wear an enormous red wig and high heels, clothes from the '50s. We're sort of a bizarre family, a cartoon family."
She says that Al Bundy, played by Ed O'Neill, is meant to be 10 years older than she is. "I'm supposed to have married him right out of high school. Or else people assume I'm much older than I am, which I would like to think they don't.
"Basically, the show is about him, this poor shlub who can't get a break. He can't cut it and keeps scheming and trying. He's a shoe salesman; I'm a housewife. The kids never leave home. The daughter is an airhead and the son can't get a date." Christina Applegate and David Faustino have played those parts from the beginning. "Everybody gets along really well," Sagal says. "We've never had egos clashing. We all came in as unknowns."
But even with sitcom success, which Sagal enjoys, she says she never thought of giving up her recording dream. "I never thought that part of my life was over."
She has put together a band and performed in some Los Angeles clubs.
She expects a baby this summer and will return in August to "Married ... With Children," which shows no signs of ending. She'd like someday to tour as a singer and to make more records. "I hope this is the beginning of what I originally intended to do."
by CNB