David Cassidy In The News
Entertainment Column
April 8, 2001
By Mike Weatherford
The Las Vegas Review-Journal
A lot of guys would kill to be Frank Sinatra, but Steve Lippia had a bigger struggle to be himself.
Las Vegas first heard of Lippia in November 1998, when he headlined a cabaret-sized venue at the Rio. Plucked from the obscurity of singing with dance bands in south Florida country clubs, Lippia suddenly found himself working with a former Sinatra manager (Tino Barzie), musical director (Vince Falcone) and publicist (Lee Solters).
Lippia's voice had a sometimes uncanny resemblance to Sinatra's, but his act had a lot of catching up to do. Billed under his own name instead of calling himself an impersonator -- "I would never demean myself," he says -- figuring out his own stage persona was a lot harder than anyone expected.
"It's hard to say I walk like a duck and quack like a duck but I'm really a goose," Lippia says.
But now he's the Father Goose. Barring a snag in contract formalities, Lippia has agreed to stay for a year as "Frank" -- no last names, thanks to litigation with the Sinatra family -- in "The Rat Pack is Back" at the Sahara.
David Cassidy, the show's co-producer, talked Lippia into giving the show a try last Thanksgiving. Lippia has since overcome his early concerns and says it's a good fit.
"It's a great piece of nostalgic, golden-years Vegas," he says of a show so well-crafted it rises above an impersonator revue. It's also "a bit of a stretch for me, an acting as well as a singing role."
Walking onstage with a cigarette, a shot of bourbon and a swagger does have its advantages.
"It's a good cover," Lippia admits with a laugh. "But I have to nudge myself into it a little bit because I'm not an attitude kind of person."
Here the attitude is scripted, reconstructing the Rat Pack showroom antics of the early '60s.
When he opened at the Rio, "I didn't even know how to bow properly. The most I would ever say onstage (in Florida) was, `Would the person with the license plate such-and-such please turn their lights off.' ... All of a sudden I'm onstage with a 20-piece band in Las Vegas."
Now the challenges are a little more subtle. "Trying to replicate spontaneity has a very fragmented feel to it," he says.
The Rat Pack would likely back that up, if its members were still around. If the real Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin and Joey Bishop didn't rehearse every ad lib, "they had a very good outline at the least."
But there were times the real legends genuinely cracked each other up, and now there are nights when Lippia and his comrades -- Doug Starks as Sammy, Rick Michel as Dean and Mark Cohen as Joey -- derail one another and "capitalize on our silliness and mistakes."
"We've developed a rapport and chemistry," he adds. "I trust them and rely on them."
As Frank might have told him, it's a lot less lonely in the spotlight when you've got your pals around.
