Known around the world for writing the theme song to the hit NBC TV show Friends (The Rembrandts' I'll Be There For You), Allee Willis is a Grammy, Emmy, Tony and Webby award-winning and nominated songwriter, live performer, visual artist, director, multi-mediaist, collector, social artist, and party thrower.

Her hits, which have sold more than 50 million records, include Earth, Wind & Fire’s "September" and "Boogie Wonderland", The Pointer Sisters' "Neutron Dance," and the Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield's "What Have I Done To Deserve This,". Allee also co-authored the Oprah Winfrey-produced 2005 Broadway musical The Color Purple. The original book’s author, Alice Walker, called Willis "A force of nature."

In this interview, Allee answered my call to reveal:

• Writing the Theme Song to NBC's Friends ("I'll Be There For You" by The Rembrandts)
• Co-writing the music/lyrics for Oprah Winfrey's The Color Purple (Broadway Musical)
• Writing songs for Cyndi Lauper, Earth, Wind & Fire, and The Pointer Sisters
• Her her return to live performances with Ba-de-ya-Baby!
• So much more

Connect with Allee: Website

On November 8th & 9th, 2012, Allee is bringing Ba-de-ya, Baby back for two nights only. A greatest hits concert including sing-alongs, party games, prizes, dance, and of course the foot rubs. Ba-de-ya, Baby! will play NoHoPAC in North Hollywood (11020 Magnolia Blvd) at 8pm (Doors open at 7pm).

Allee Willis Ba-de-ya, Baby!
Photo credit: Melissa Manning, THE LOOK PARTNERSHIP LLC

1. You have worked in many aspects of the arts: performer, songwriter, director, visual artist, multimedia artists, etc. Who or what inspired you to want to work in the arts? No one thing inspired me. Making art, regardless of the medium, is just always what I did. I grew up in Detroit when Motown was coming up so I listened to the radio religiously. I was always running for some kind of office at school, not because I had any particular interest in the office, but because I loved making the campaign posters. I actually have never learned how to read, notate, or play music, and I certainly had no formal art training. I just always figure out some way of doing what interests me, like banging pencils together to begin the rhythm of a song, and just go from there. I've always been driven by a passion to create. My motto: If you have a weakness, turn it into a hook!

2. Who haven't you worked with that you would like to? Any and all hip-hop artists.

3. On November 8 & 9 you will once again be presenting your show Ba-de-ya, Baby! What are you looking forward to most about this upcoming show? I only recently started performing in order to get over an almost 4 decades long bout of stage fright. I used to throw a lot of parties in my backyard - my house was built in 1937 as the party house for MGM and I have carried on that tradition. The parties were the only way that I could combine everything I do into one space. I do everything from design the invitations, to hand make all the merchandise for sale as well as all the signs and art on the wall, make souvenirs, write the show, star in the show, direct and produce it, write all the music, sing all the songs, etc. It's really one big interactive performance art piece that's built around a whole lot of hit songs. And now, doing the live shows, it's a gigantic relief to finally have an avenue to express it all. What I look forward to the most is having fun and giving the audience a type of show they've never seen before.

4. What do you hope audiences come away with after seeing the show? I always say that anything I do is part self-help, meant to be very uplifting and inspirational. I've built a career on making up my own way of doing things, a supreme combo of very high levels of art mixed in with very low levels of kitsch. My shows aren't so much of "look at me and everything I've done" so much as "if I did it you can do it too." I love when people e-mail me after the show and tell me that they went home and started painting after wanting to do it for 10 years, or that they severed an unhealthy relationship, or wrote their first song in years. My show is very much about doing whatever it takes to live a happy life and have the guts to pursue what you're interested in. But unlike most other places where this message is delivered, it's all in an environment of a crazy kids party and singing along to songs that have been on your playlist for years.

5. What made you want to return to live performance? What do you enjoy most about it? I really felt that performing live would give people a chance to see everything I do and how it all works together so that I would have a chance to do more of it. Combining everything I do into one art form is always what I've wanted to do in my career. I have long been dissatisfied with writing a song for this one, building a set for that one, designing a website over here and writing a story over there. For me, an idea has always been something that I can express musically, visually, theatrically and technologically. I thought the only way I'm ever going to change to do this on a larger scale, than in my backyard, is if I get up on stage and show people.

As far as what I enjoy most about performing:

• First, I've gotten over this terror that has gripped me all these decades and has been THE big gaping hole in my career.
• Second, I love making people laugh and the stories I tell are not your normal songwriter stories. I don't know how many people have been named "one of the most dangerous subversives living in the United States" because one of their songs enflamed the Communist government ("Neutron Dance" which they mistranslated as "Neutron Bomb").
• Third, I love seeing the joy people get from my songs. I do everything as a sing-alongs so everyone becomes the star.

Allee Willis Ba-de-ya, Baby!
Photo credit: Melissa Manning, THE LOOK PARTNERSHIP LLC

6. You've written songs for some of the biggest artists in the music industry including Earth, Wind and Fire, The Pointer Sisters, Dusty Springfield, and Pet Shop Boys, just to name a few. What was the best part about working with these artists? The best part of being able to write with the caliber of artists listed above is that you meet seriously interesting people whose life is dedicated to expressing themselves. With the number of parties that I threw I was always more interested in whether people would make great party guests, able to carry on interesting and fun conversations and indulge in all of the games that I would create to break down barriers between people. It also didn't hurt that artists such as those you mention put a few coins in my coffers, allowing me to create more and more.

7. You also wrote the theme song to the hit NBC comedy Friends. How did that come to be? What was it like to know you wrote the song for one of the biggest TV shows in television history? This is the most unlikely hit I ever had. I was on the Internet in 1991 and as early as 1992 began designing and building the world's first social network, Willisville. As soon as I went online I wasn't interested in writing linear songs for the radio anymore as I felt that not only was the internet the medium of the future but it would allow all art forms to be social because people from everywhere on the planet could link in and not only influence the art but form communities. And the one thing I knew I was good at from throwing parties was social directing.

So all I was interested in in 1994, when Friends was about to go on the air, was getting out of my music publishing deal so I could concentrate on sculpting the Internet. But every time I thought I had fulfilled my song quota - a dreadful thing to do to any songwriter as it makes you focus more on quantity than quality - my publisher, Warner Chappell, kept finding small percentages of a song that I still owed. Finally, it got down to me owing them 1/7th of a song. This commonly happens because although you may only write with one other person, if they're in a group oftentimes multiple names will show up on the label.

Friends was a Warner Bros. show so they wanted the theme song to be written by a Warner Chappell writer. My publisher called me up and said if you do this you'll be out of your deal. The music was already started by Michael Skloff. I came in and finished it and was out of my deal. I didn't especially like the song, but thought it worked great with the show. It was never meant to be an actual single, but a disc jockey in Nashville made a cassette off the TV and played it on the radio continuously for 45 minutes. There was such a demand, that the song was extended, and became the biggest airplay record of 1994. Needless to say, I'm elated that I was looking for a way to get out of my publishing deal or I never would've written it.

8. Additionally, you co-wrote Oprah Winfrey's Broadway production of The Color Purple. What made you want to be part of this project? I co-wrote the music and lyrics with Brenda Russell and Stephen Bray. The book was written by Marsha Norman, although all of us basically wrote everything together. I was good friends with Scott Sanders, the lead producer, who originally just brought me in as a music consultant. I did that for about a year and then there was a competition to write a couple spec songs to hopefully become the writer of the musical. I was collaborating with Brenda and Stephen on the scores for a couple of animated series that I had co-created and suggested we compete as a team. The only advantage I had was that I chose who we competed against. But I did honestly pick who I thought would be the best suited for the job. We won the competition and then spent the next 4 1/2 years writing the musical.

Allee Willis's Living Room

BONUS QUESTIONS:

Allee Willis

More on Allee Willis:

Allee Willis is a Grammy, Emmy, Tony and Webby award-winning and nominated songwriter, live performer, visual artist, director, multi-mediaist, collector, social artist, and party thrower. Her hits, which have sold more than 50 million records, include Earth, Wind & Fire’s "September" and "Boogie Wonderland"—both prominently featured in the acclaimed 2012 film The Intouchables—The Pointer Sisters' "Neutron Dance," Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield's "What Have I Done To Deserve This," and The Rembrandts’ "I'll Be There For You" (Theme From Friends). Allee also co-wrote the music and lyrics for the Oprah Winfrey-produced 2005 Broadway musical The Color Purple—Alice Walker, the original book’s author, has called Willis "A force of nature."

Allee is also an internationally shown visual artist whose paintings, ceramics, motorized sculptures and furniture are widely collected; were done in tandem with her fearless alter-ego, Bubbles the artist. Allee’s first solo gallery exhibition, 1985's Wear The Right Clothes Even At Home, featured kinetic sculptures, some named after her hits, including "Neutron Dance" and "Boogie Wonderland." Allee's body of work further extends to art direction, set design, and animation. In a feature on Allee, People magazine once called her artistic overdrive, "a multi-threat creativity that itself seems like a Godzilla out to conquer Lalaland."

Most recently, Allee has been performing live, including sold-out runs of Ba-de-ya, Baby!—her "one-woman-show-with-25-people-in-it"—and Allee Willis’ Super Ball Bounce Back Review, which have both drawn raves. After a long hiatus from performing, Allee celebrates her life in music and art with greatest hits sing-alongs, stories, a live band, dancers, special guests, motorized art, games, videos, and mid-show foot massages from Manly Handz, all delivered with her signature party vibe. People magazine has written that "tickets to Allee Willis’ ultra-exclusive parties…are the campiest hot tickets in LA."

Allee Willis Ba-de-ya, Baby!
Photo credit: Melissa Manning, THE LOOK PARTNERSHIP LLC

In 2009, she designed and launched the Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch, a social network that’s the largest collection of pop culture kitsch on the planet, and home to her popular Kitsch O' The Day" blog (Dictionary.com once included Allee Willis in its definition of kitsch). Her proudest musical kitsch discovery, The Del Rubio Triplets—mini-skirted octogenarians who toured the world and appeared on more than 20 network television programs—were introduced via Allee's’ late-1980s column for Details magazine, Some Like It Smog.

In a career marked by constant reinvention and embracing of new technologies, Allee's accomplishments also include developing Willisville, the first social networking portal, in the early to mid-1990s. During that period, Allee also consulted for Intel, Microsoft, AOL, and Disney, created virtual worlds for diverse companies, and keynoted the first Digital World conference with Steve Case and Andy Groves. In 1997, representing 3,000,000 BMI songwriters, she addressed the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property regarding artist rights in cyberspace.

Allee Willis in Willisville

Allee first returned to live performing at the University of Wisconsin (where she earned her Journalism degree), conducting the school’s marching band through a medley of her hits during halftime of the 2010 Homecoming football game. In 2011, she launched Allee Willis Marches on Detroit— events dedicated to her hometown—with a marching band performance in Detroit’s Fox Theatre. It benefited her alma mater, Mumford High—the school made famous in Beverly Hills Cop, for which Allee won a Best Soundtrack Grammy. The cast from the national touring company of The Color Purple sang with the students as Willis conducted.

Marching on Detroit part two took place in 2012 with Alle's Last Call Before the Wrecking Ball greatest hits concert at Mumford, just a month before the school was demolished. Allee was also honored at Detroit’s Cass Technical High School, the first high school in U.S. to license, and second to produce, The Color Purple. With future Detroit-related plans in store, Allee and writing partner Andrae Alexander wrote “The D,” a new theme song for Detroit and its renaissance. In 2013, Allee will record the song—which is also a love song to the city—at locations all around Detroit, with the participation of literally tens of thousands of Detroiters, and film the proceedings for a series of accompanying videos and films.

Allee Willis's Backyard

Many of Allee's events have taken place at Willis Wonderland, her art deco home and studio in Los Angeles, where she’s lived since 1980 (she grew up in Detroit, a city she cites as the source of her creative inspiration, and broke into the music business in NYC with the 1974 Epic album Childstar). The house—previously featured in the LA Times and NY Times—was built in 1937 as an official party house for MGM. Allee continues the tradition with A-list parties and thematic soirees through which she freely expresses all her multimedia talents to serve one festive end. James Brown once said "This is a museum" in praise of the way Willis Wonderland also showcases Willis' world-famous collections."

Journalist Anne Stockwell has written that, "To understand where Willis is going, you have to open your mind to a degree of inventiveness that's frankly a little scary." As Allee continues to make art out of life, and make living an art, she is going stronger than ever. Ba-de-ya, Baby!