BOOP!’s David Foster on Broadway Composer Debut, Rocky Horror Past

David Foster is a self-described “pop guy.” It’s a characterization the Victoria, British Columbia native has always been happy to embrace throughout his legendary career. After all, he’s practically shaped the course of pop music history over the last four decades, playing an instrumental role in the careers of superstars like Whitney Houston, Céline Dion, Josh Groban and Michael Bublé.

The producer’s long, award-winning resumé is filled with the names of legends like Michael Jackson, Natalie Cole, Paul McCartney, Stevie Nicks, Dolly Parton, Paul Anka, Barbra Streisand and Earth, Wind & Fire. Now, the 16-time Grammy winner is adding one more icon to his long list of collaborators: Betty Boop.

Foster has officially become a Broadway composer thanks to BOOP! The Musical, opening on April 5 at the Broadhurst Theatre. Directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell with a book by Bob Martin and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead, the musical brings the unequivocal Queen of Animation to life on stage as she’s transported from ToonTown to modern-day New York City.

Starring powerhouse newcomer Jasmine Amy Rogers as Betty Boop in her Broadway debut, BOOP! The Musical is anchored by Foster’s timeless score, including whiz-bang numbers like “Where I Wanna Be,” “Why Look Around the Corner” and “Something to Shout About” that’ll have audiences saying “Boop-oop-a-doop!”

Ahead of the show’s first preview on March 11, Foster sat down with Ticketmaster to open up about doing justice to Betty Boop’s legacy, applying his pop sensibilities to the Broadway stage and how penning the music for BOOP! The Musical challenged his fine-tuned craft as a songwriter. The composer also dished on his early experience playing in the original Broadway production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, working as a studio musician on the famous film soundtrack to The Wiz, and more.

This may seem like an obvious way to start, but given the depth and breadth of your career, I have to say it’s kind of surprising that you’ve never composed a musical before.

I mean, nobody has ever asked me before to get involved in a musical. So, Betty Boop came along and said, “Would you like to try?” And I was like, “Well nobody else is asking, so sure!”

Really! I would think that you’d be at the top of a list of potential composers people would be thrilled to collaborate with.

Well, I think that, you know, Broadway is its own special thing. Sort of like how Nashville doesn’t like people just breezing in and going, “Hey, I’m a country singer!” And I think rightfully so, Broadway doesn’t want some pop guy like me coming in and going like, “Hey, you know, I think I can write a musical.” ‘Cause it is a different process, and it took me a while to understand it—if I even do today.

Was adding Broadway to your resume eventually something you had in mind as a goal?

It wasn’t. But if you look at my documentary that I did for Netflix [2019’s David Foster: Off the Record], at the end, I’m walking down the famous alley that has all the Broadway posters, and I’m goin’ like, “Someday, I’m gonna be on Broadway.” So I did move the goalpost, and it is something that I did want.

Well, according to your official bio for BOOP!, you’ve already technically been on Broadway: you played in the pit for the original 1975 production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

[Laughs] Now you’re going back to before you were born. Yeah! The very long story short is, I played rehearsal piano for somebody that auditioned for the show. They didn’t get the part, but the musical director said, “Hey you, on the piano: would you like to play in the pit?” And I didn’t even know what a pit was. But, I said, “Sure.” And so I did it for a year with, you know, Tim Curry and Meat Loaf and all the great cast. Every night in the audience [were stars like] Elizabeth Taylor. Michael Jackson. Jack Nicholson. Every night, it was so star-studded, we would look out and just be amazed. It was a great, great experience for me.

That’s wild. Is it also true that you worked on the soundtrack to The Wiz with Diana Ross and Michael Jackson?

Well, I was a studio musician in the ’70s. That might’ve been in the early ’80s or late ’70s. Yeah, I played the album. I didn’t work on the Broadway musical, but I did play piano on “Ease on Down the Road” and maybe one or two other songs.

So fast-forwarding to BOOP!—how do you do justice to a character as iconic as Betty Boop?

I put a lot of thought into it, but I had a lot of help from the director; the producers; my lyricist Susan Birkenhead, who’s amazing and a veteran; the writer, Bob Martin; Jerry Mitchell, the director. And they’re all veterans of Broadway. So I had a lot of help to steer me.

And, you know, there’s something to be said for instinct. I think I know the arc of a song and what moves an audience. In fact, in most of my record-making, I tried every time—and I was not successful every time—but I tried to put a moment in every song when a live audience would react. Or jump to their feet, you know? The big examples, I guess, being “I Will Always Love You” with Whitney Houston, the big boom [before the final chorus]. And the big high note in “All By Myself” with Céline [Dion]. I always tried to put moments like that into my pop songs. So I relied on those skills, plus all the help around me.

What was the starting point for creating the musical universe of the show?

The creative team—which was different from the creative team now, but the same lyricist, Susan, who’s, again, wonderful—we went to Steinway & Sons in New York, down in the basement, to get a piano. And one of the producers, Bill Haber, was describing what the show should be, and I just went over to the piano and said, “Well, you mean like a song like this?” And I just sort of on the spot pounded out something. And that song, “Why Look Around [the] Corner,” hung in after all these years, and became the closing song of the show. It’s really upbeat and really fun. So they heard that and figured, “Wow, I think we should hire this guy.”

Just casually off the cuff in the Steinway & Sons basement!

Yeah, and you’ve got to imagine that three directors have come through, three different book writers, and that song survived. I mean, Susan and I have written probably 50 songs for the show. And only 18 or so made it, so a lot of throw-outs. But as they say, you’ve gotta be prepared to throw out your best song.

Betty Boop is a product of the 1930s—in fact, the original cartoons actually aired precisely from 1930 to 1939. Did you use that decade as a direct reference for the show’s music?

Other than as a kid, I don’t think I’d ever watched Betty Boop cartoons. But then of course I went to do a little research after that Steinway meeting. You can borrow from that era but you can’t really duplicate it, ’cause it was its own beautiful thing, you know? So I think what I tried to do, maybe, was emulate some of those musical feels, and it still sort of came out the way I would write. To me, the music sounds like it could’ve been written back then, or it could’ve been written tomorrow. That’s what I guess I subconsciously was trying for.

What’s it been like working with Jasmine Amy Rogers, who plays Betty Boop?

We had used Jasmine in a workshop for the show many years ago; she played a different part—she played the child, Trisha. And she was phenomenal in that part, but she was young, probably 18 or 19. Then the auditions came around and, of course, we auditioned dozens if not hundreds of girls for the part of Betty. But I always remembered [Jasmine], and obviously everybody else did too, and she came bouncing in and she just nailed it. And then to see her from [the show’s out-of-town tryout in] Chicago to here in New York has been quite a transformation, too. She was great in Chicago, but she’s even better here. Phenomenal.

The first sneak peek that fans really got of the show was of the two of you in the studio recording “Where I Wanna Be.” How does that song fit into the show?

“Where I Wanna Be” is the song that closes Act I. It’s the big reveal—for those of you that don’t know, and how would you?—Betty travels to the real world in 2025, and that song reveals her in a nightclub as being the real Betty Boop. And then all sorts of pandemonium and chaos comes in Act II after that exposure at the end of Act I. It’s a pretty ass-kickin’ song with a great sort of trumpet, jazz, scat thing in the middle. It’s good.

What’s another song you’re excited for audiences to hear now that BOOP! has started performances?

There’s a song that’s, quote-unquote, the 11 o’clock number—and by the way, I didn’t even know what an 11 o’clock number was. But it’s “Something to Shout About,” the big number near the end of the show. It’s when [Betty’s] got everything in the cartoon world, but what’s missing is, of course, love.

And so she talks about that in this song: “I want something to shout about.” It’s pretty cool, and Jasmine delivers the hell out of it. Last night [during the final run-through before the show’s first preview], she delivered the hell out of it. And it ain’t an easy song. My songs are not easy to sing. I mean, honestly, you don’t go around hummin’ my songs. I’m not Lionel Richie, sadly.

I have to ask about Smash, which is also opening on Broadway this month, given that your wife, Katharine McPhee, starred in the original series.

Isn’t it a great TV show? When Kat and I tour live, which we do a lot, we do a little medley—a “smash-up”—of “Let Me Be Your Star” and “Don’t Forget Me,” and it’s too fun. And there are a lot of SMASH fans in every show that we do. So I imagine that Smash [the musical] will do great, because everybody knows about the TV show.

Is Katharine excited about SMASH coming to Broadway?

Yeah! She’s glad that she was sort of one of the catalysts that helped get it to Broadway, I guess, in a way. And she, of course, starred in Waitress on Broadway, as you probably know.

I have a new musical that I’m working on, and she is one of the stars in the workshop. She’s going to play one of the lead roles—it’s called Lucky Us, based on the novel by Amy Bloom. So that starts tomorrow. And we have a great team too, headed by Michael Greif, the director who directed Hell’s Kitchen, Dear Evan Hansen and RENT. So we’re in big company there. The lyricist I’m working with is a girl named AnnMarie Milazzo, and she’s amazing too. So I’ve really lucked out. I’m surrounded by Broadway greatness, so some of it’s gotta rub off on me.

I’m curious, what have you learned about your own craft through this process?

That’s a great question and I’m just thinking about it now. You know, I used to take my writing for granted. Like, “Oh yeah, I’m a writer and so I’ll just bang this out, I’ll bang that out.” Not so on Broadway. You can’t just really sit down and bang out a tune. You’ve got to put a lot of thought into it. ‘Cause there’s no rules like with [pop music]—there’s no radio rules at all. You can do anything you want. Which expands the horizon, but it also makes you have to think more and work more. So I would say that writing these songs has been more work—a lot more work than writing a pop song.

That must be an interesting way to challenge yourself, especially given everything you’ve already accomplished in your career.

Yeah, and also, in the back of my head was—and [I say this] with reverence too, it’s not meant as a diss—I’m this pop guy that came in from L.A., quote-unquote, even though I’m Canadian, but… you really have to prove yourself, like Nashville, right? Because the Broadway community is tight-knit. They know what they like and what they don’t like, and you can’t just cruise in.

I had the great opportunity to have breakfast with Stephen Schwartz on my last trip here last month, and it was just fantastic. It’s just, like, God dang. The guy, he’s been where I’m trying to go. And it’s just amazing to listen to him. He’s a really nice guy. And talented! When you meet somebody that’s so, so successful in their medium, it’s nice to know that they’re just a regular person.

A lot of people could say that about you too, probably.

Maybe! Hope so. [Laughs]