Do you remember Liberace? Yes, of course you do. Who could forget him? The Wisconsin-born son of a poor Italian immigrant, Liberace turned a natural talent for playing the piano into a vehicle for achieving celebrity and wealth. As a child, he was regarded as something of a musical prodigy, but he wasn’t tempted by success as a concert pianist. He sought and achieved stardom by transforming himself into a bizarre showman, extravagantly dressed in lace and velvet, bejewelled with enormous rings, playing an equally bejewelled grand piano with a candelabra placed on it, and engaging in constant joking banter with the audience.
He himself said, ‘I don’t give concerts, I put on a show,’ and most serious music critics took a dim view of these events. After one Liberace performance in the Carnegie Hall, a critic wrote, ‘It’s almost all showmanship topped by whipped cream and cherries,’ while another accused him of lacking respect for the great composers: ‘Liberace recreates — if that is the word — each composition in his own image. When it is too difficult, he simplifies it. When it is too simple, he complicates it.’ But Liberace was undismayed by bad reviews and responded famously that he ‘cried all the way to the bank’.
Liberace died of Aids in 1987 at the age of 67, having achieved all the fame and riches he wanted. But perhaps, if he were still alive today, he might have aspired to an even higher peak of celebrity, the presidency of the United States. As a conservative with a fervent belief in capitalism, he might even have had a chance of success. For somebody very similar to him has just shown that such an implausible thing can be achieved.
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