 |
 LYNDA:
It does. All of the other superheroes-or for that matter, any of
the other series stars-share it with other people. The people
who do Hulk or Spiderman, for instance -Spiderman, the person
who's in the suit is an entirely different person than the
person who plays him before he turns into Spiderman. The same
with Hulk. Those are two separate people. With me it's not two
separate people. I have to do both. I'm really carrying both
characters totally. It's very hard, but it's rewarding, too,
when it all pulls together. The editors get all the pieces and
they hopefully fit. Last year at the end of the year after doing
twenty shows you start to wear down because you're doing the
same thing every single day. With the amount of hours you put in
your enthusiasm can start to wane. I think that's why many of
the series stars don't want to do it another year or you hear
all the things that you hear about people wanting to quit. This
year I came back because I wanted to come back. I felt a certain
kind of obligation. That might sound corny, but I really did.
She's given me a lot. At the end of last year, when I started
working on my album, is when the time really got to me. I would
be up at six working until 6:30, and then be at the [recording]
studio from eight at night until one o'clock in the morning. But
it was a strange thing because the music was a turn on. It was
so exciting. That time of my life was so exciting that it gave
me more energy than I've ever had in my life. |
|
 GROVE:
Within the last six or eight months you've really started doing
so many other things than only being Wonder Woman. Now you're
singing and, of course, you had a very successful opening in Las
Vegas last summer. What can we expect to see from you in the
future? What will we be seeing Lynda Carter do?
|
|
| LYNDA:
I love music. It really gives me something that nothing else
does. I love performing. The most exciting thing I've ever done
in my life is to be on that stage. Or, for that matter, to even
be in a recording studio. Being around it is really something. I
think that I would like to bring the two together in a project
of some kind. I have a special coming out. I will be filming a
variety special for CBS.
|
|
| GROVE:
When will that be telecast?
|
|
| LYNDA:
I'll start it in January. I'm not sure when it will air-either
in the spring or the fall. We haven't decided exactly what we're
going to do yet. It all depends on when I get the time to devote
to it. I really want to devote as much of me as I can. So that's
the immediate plan. From there I would love to do a movie
musical. A contemporary style movie incorporating my kind of
music into the script. I love music so much that I'd really love
to take my first trip around the world singing. I've never
really traveled at all, so the idea of the tours and all that is
really exciting.
|
|
| GROVE:
What type of music do you most enjoy performing.
|
|
| LYNDA:
My own.
|
|
| GROVE:
Music that you have written yourself?
|
|
| LYNDA:
Yes.
|
|
| GROVE:
How did you learn to write music?
|
|
| LYNDA:
I've always known how. I started making up songs when I was four
and five with my sister and it just progressed from there. I've
written for as long as I can remember. We used to call it making
up songs. Now they call it writing.
|
|
| GROVE:
In your album you sing several songs that you've written.
|
|
| LYNDA:
I have three that I co-authored [in the album Portrait on the
Epic Records label]. I write with other people usually. What I
usually do is have a melody and a lyric, but it won't be
finished because there's a whole art in finishing a song. It
takes probably the most time. The inspiration is there to begin
with, and it takes a lot of time to really finish a song to the
right amount of stanzas and this and that and just little things
that finish it off. I have three of my own. I suppose that it's
adult contemporary music.
|
|
| GROVE:
Who are some musicians or singers that you particularly enjoy
listening to yourself?
|
|
| LYNDA:
I like Bonnie Raitt. I like jazz although I don't sing jazz.
That's where my beginnings were in music-listening to Charlie
Parker and John Coltrane and Billie Holiday and those great jazz
people. But my music is not really that at all. I enjoy Linda
Ronstadt. I enjoy Credence Clearwater even though they're not
existent any more. It's very rhythmical. Its roots are still
rhythm & blues with blues changes and lyrics that have
something to say other than repetition.
|
|
| GROVE:
So you look for meaningful lyrics then? |
|
| LYNDA:
Yes. And rhythmical melodies.
|
|
| GROVE:
There was a time in the late Sixties when music was very
meaningful and every lyric seemed to have something specific to
say. Do you like that sort of thing? |
|
| LYNDA:
Do you mean Bob Dylan and all that? Is that the kind of thing
you're talking about?
|
|
| GROVE:
Yes, that's right.
|
|
| LYNDA:
No. I appreciate it, but it's not really what I am best at
singing. I think I'm probably best at singing fast ballads or
medium ballads or slow ballads. Things that have got some tempo.
Fast ballads, I think, are my best.
|
|
| GROVE:
When you opened in Las Vegas last summer at Caesar's Palace was
that the first time that you had done live performing in a
nightclub?
|
|
| LYNDA:
On that large a scale, yes. It's the first time I had ever done
something that big all on my own. I had been singing in
nightclubs since I was fifteen years old. I started traveling
around the country when I was seventeen until I was about
twenty-one. Then I did some recording here in Los Angeles, and I
did some recording in England. I toured and did twenty minutes
in front of Bob Hope at colleges. I recorded in the studios just
doing demos and did a lot of free singing for friends' albums or
for friends' projects they were trying to get together. I always
kept it up even though I had given it up when I moved here. My
husband [Ron Samuels, one of the leading artist management
executives in Hollywood and the manager for Lynda, Lindsay
Wagner, Jaclyn Smith and others] is the one who got me back into
it. I really had given it up. He heard some of my tapes and
didn't think it was me! He said, "That's not you:" I
said, "Yes, it is." He said, "No. Who is
it?" That didn't make me feel so great. But anyway from
that point on I think the wheels in his head started turning.
And that's how all this came about. And I'm so glad. It's like
rediscovering something. Going into it on the level that I went
back into it. Like I left it on a small potato level
. |
|
| GROVE:
And there you were at Caesar's Palace! |
|
| LYNDA:
Yeah. So that was really not exactly like I had remembered the
road! |
|
| GROVE:
I'm sure not. Do you have plans to do another nightclub tour
like that? |
|
| LYNDA:
As soon as I get the time I will be out there. As a matter of
fact, they want me to go to South America, England, Europe and
Japan and to tour the U.S. and all that bit. It's really a
matter of the amount of time that I can spend. I'd love to be
out three weeks out of the month if I had the time. I don't
think Warner Bros. [producer of the Wonder Woman series] would
be too happy.
|
|
| GROVE:
With so many things for you to do I wonder if Wonder Woman will
figure in your future for too long?
|
|
| LYNDA:
I don't know. I kind of am leaving that up to the Lord. I'm just
leaving that up to what my life is really supposed to be about.
I feel that I'll be led to do one thing or another and I
certainly don't want to disregard Wonder Woman. But I've been
doing it for a long time already. I am ready to move on. But you
never know if the next year you'll get picked up, you know.
There's always, with every series, a big if. So when that ends
then that ends, and I'll just go on. |
|
| GROVE:
Certainly then if Wonder Woman were to be canceled in six months
or a year you wouldn't sit around crying and saying, "Gosh,
now what am I going to do?"
|
|
| LYNDA:
No. I think there would probably be a little place in me that
would wave goodbye and be kind of sad. But not for very long, I
don't think. I care about that part of my life, and it's been a
definite piece or hunk of my life. I have always seemed to have
some kind of a title somewhere. I was Miss USA and then Wonder
Woman and then voted the Most Beautiful Girl In The World [by
the London-based International Academy of Beauty]. It seems like
I always have some title attached to me. When I was Miss USA
they said that would stereotype me. They said the same thing
with Wonder Woman. But nothing does. Nothing will if you're
continually growing and- moving and changing and being creative.
I don't think that anything can really stand in your way. And I
just really want to be ready with it, too. I want to do what
makes me happy because I love my husband and 1 love my home and
that's also a big factor in my life. That's making that work
first because then anything can happen that I can take in my
career if things are right at home. Then nothing can be wrong
anyplace else.
|
|
| GROVE:
Let me ask you some things about what you enjoy doing as a
person. |
|
| LYNDA:
First I'd like you to ask me when I have time! |
|
| GROVE:
Well, if you had suddenly a totally free day with absolutely no
commitments
. |
|
| LYNDA:
I don't know what to do with myself!
|
|
| GROVE:
Really? |
|
| LYNDA:
Yes. I will usually try to sleep in. Can't. |
|
| GROVE:
You're so used to getting up early? |
|
| LYNDA:
I'm so used to getting up that on the weekends I still get up at
7:30. Boinnng! My automatic alarm clock. But I like getting up
on the weekends because we ride bikes, we swim, we have a gym
here. We have a tennis court. We have a Doberman and a German
Shepherd that are guard dogs, so we're always out working with
them. They sound like real ferocious dogs, and they are under
the right circumstances. But they're super loving, and it's
really exciting to work with a dog that you know would kill for
you as well as be a loving and wonderful pet. That's a release
in a certain way. |
|
| GROVE:
Do you find that Wonder Woman fans have found your home? Do they
come and try to get into the house? |
|
| LYNDA:
They see those dogs and they don't. And that's the truth.
They're not fooled. They just aren't. That's why I love working
with them so much. Yeah, there are tours and things that go by,
but they get within a few yards out by the front and the dogs
are right there. We leave them outside. They're not locked up or
anything.
|
|
| GROVE:
They're outside where they can do some good. |
|
| LYNDA:
Yeah. It's one of those things that's really fun. When we have
guests, they're fine. That's why I like working with them.
|
|
| GROVE:
You must find it difficult to circulate around town. |
|
| LYNDA:
I don't. |
|
| GROVE:
Is it because you can't? |
|
| LYNDA:
Yeah. I get yelled at a lot 'cause I have a bodyguard who's with
me most of the time, and every once in a while I like to take
off by myself in my jeep. But I don't ever go out or go in
anywhere. I just will drive around or something. I just don't go
out unless I have a bodyguard.
|
|
| GROVE:
Shaun Cassidy told me recently that when he goes out sometimes
he wears disguises. He says he's been recognized even while
wearing those disguises though.
|
|
| LYNDA:
Yeah. It's impossible. There's a thing that I think happens-you
would just like to wait in line once and just be like another
person. All those things that you hated before that have changed
so drastically. It's an insidious kind of a thing. It's sort of
like, the joke's on us!
|
|
| GROVE:
I know that you have undergone the experience you've described
as being Born Again. Would you tell our readers about that?
|
|
| LYNDA:
If one word I could ever say would be influential to someone
discovering the Lord Jesus then I would be very grateful for
that because someone led me to find a peace of mind I'd never
known, ever in my life. It has just totally filled my life out.
Before I had everything. I still have everything. But now
everything I have means something. The Lord Jesus came for a
specific reason and I know. It's a real personal thing. It's not
really for soap-boxing for me, anyway. It's very personal and
incredibly fulfilling and it really changed my life. It's not
Positive Thinking, 'cause I was into that. I really was
searching for something that made my life full and nothing ever
did or did for more than a week or two.
|
|
| GROVE:
One final question, Lynda. You're very young now. Ten years from
now what would you really like to be doing?
|
|
| LYNDA:
I'd like to know myself. [LAUGHS] I'd like to have a family and
still have my career and have figured out the right way to go
about getting all that.
|
|
| GROVE:
Lynda, thank you, and good luck!
|
|
| LYNDA:
Thanks, Martin. Good luck to you. |
