Meet Will Butler, the singer-songwriter who makes Broadway's 'Stereophonic' rock
The assignment was daunting: Write a song for an onstage moment of transcendence
NEW YORK (AP) — The assignment was daunting: Write a song for an onstage moment of transcendence. Make it kind of funny and exciting and for a five-piece band. Write it so it justifies an audience sitting in their seats for two hours before they hear it. And, oh, it must plausibly be a rock hit in 1976.
That was the job facing singer-songwriter Will Butler and the music arrangers for just one of the songs that stud the Tony Award-nominated play “Stereophonic,” a leading contender at the June 16 Tony Awards.
“It’s like, 'OK, that is a lot of things to think about, but let’s just try it out and we just tried it out,” says Butler, who left Arcade Fire in 2022 and has a new band, Sister Squares.
“Stereophonic” is playwright David Adjmi’s story of a Fleetwood Mac-like band in the mid-’70s recording music over a life-changing year, with personal rifts opening and closing and then reopening.
