Friday, July 19, 2002 | 2:08 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION: July 21, 2002
Fabian.
He was one of the first one-name celebrities on the pop-music scene. And he was one of the first artists cultivated by the industry -- a precursor to Ricky Martin and any young entertainers who seem to be poured from a mold.
The 59-year-old Philadelphia native's star shone brightly but briefly in the late 1950s and early '60s. He seemed destined for greater things, but then like a supernova his career faded.
Fabian Forte's recording career peaked in 1959 with such hits as "Tiger" (No. 3), "Hound Dog Man" (No. 9) and "Turn Me Loose" (also No. 9).
As that phase of his career waned, he turned to acting in movies. One of his most notable was "North to Alaska" (1960), in which he co-starred with John Wayne.
Fabian has continued to perform since those heady days when his distinctive name and good looks were instantly recognizable. He has made more than 30 films, appeared in dozens of television shows and produced several programs for television.
For the past 17 years he has toured with Frankie Avalon and Bobby Rydell in "The Golden Boys." And he hosts and performs in his own concert series, "Fabian's Goodtime Rock 'N' Roll Show," which features such popular rock acts from the '50s and '60s as Chubby Checker and Leslie Gore.
Saturday, Fabian will appear at Texas Station's Dallas Events Center with Joey Dee & The Starliters. He recently spoke to the Sun by phone from his 20-acre retreat outside of Philadelphia.
Las Vegas Sun: Your career had a very Cinderella beginning. Were you actually sitting on the front steps of your house when you were discovered by a record producer?
Fabian: I wasn't just sitting. My father was being taken out in an ambulance -- he had just had a heart attack. It was nighttime. A guy who owned a record company was driving by. He had a good friend who lived right next door. He thought it was his friend that was going in the ambulance and he stopped, only to find out it was my father.
Sun: You were very young.
Fabian: Yeah. I was 14. I'm the original fish out of water. When he asked me to do this (get into recording), I basically told the guy to go to hell. Two months later I found out my father couldn't work and about that time this guy came back bugging me. I said I would give it a shot if I could make some money.
Sun: For being so young, you were very responsible. Had life been pretty rough for your family up to that point?
Fabian: My father was a policeman, making 40 bucks a week. When I was 10 I was working for a janitor, making four or five bucks a week cleaning out Prudential Insurance Company offices -- Prudential and Aetna. And I was working in a pharmacy as a delivery boy. My mother would take half of what I made and put it in a savings account for me. We were a lower middle-class family, but I've always worked.
Sun: Why did you turn down the record producer when he first made an offer?
Fabian: It was like, I'm living here on Earth and the guy wants me to go to Jupiter. I didn't know anything about the business. The only thing I did was sing along with the radio.
Sun: Why did he select you?
Fabian: The big people then were Rick Nelson and Elvis Presley. Producers were looking for a look, basically. They were meat packers. I was a product, but almost everyone else was, too -- Bobby Vee and all those guys. All the guys in that same time period were the same, but most of those guys were dying to get into the business. I wasn't. The only reason I did it was to help the family. It wasn't a burning desire I had. I wanted to be an architect.
Sun: They groomed you to be a star, gave you voice lessons? Taught you how to dress and act?
Fabian: Yeah. I did all that. I did my first recording three months after that. The first two records I made were bombs. The third record was written by the all-time great songwriters Morty Shuman and Doc Pomus -- they gave me a song called "I'm a Man" that hit No. 40 on the charts. That got me on the Dick Clark show. Back then, it was a local program.
Sun: Did you see the potential then?
Fabian: When we started to make some bucks and I was able to help the family, then I saw the possibilities.
Sun: What was it like to suddenly find yourself one of the hottest products on the market?
Fabian: Like a kid in a candy store. In those days, if they liked the song they screamed at you. I knew something was happening. I was bringing in some money. My family could relax.
Sun: What happened to your father?
Fabian: He had to stay home for two or three years. He didn't work again 'til 10 years later, and that was just a part-time job to get out of the house.
Sun: What was it like, being at the top of the world?
Fabian: We were the beginning of all that craziness, before the British invasion. It was other-worldly, such a different world that you could never consider it real.
Sun: And you were so young, still maturing. How did that affect your development?
Fabian: Yeah. I was 14, 15, 16. We all went off the deep end, and I certainly did too. But I had a good base with my mother. She made sure I finished school with tutors. I had a pretty good base there. But hey, I was one of those crazy guys out there, too, having a lot of fun.
But it was grueling. Most of it is like a blur, because we worked so hard. I used to do 45 one-nighters, three times a year traveling on a bus. And they weren't like the buses today. They were more like a school bus. And they had like 12 acts on them -- The Drifters, The Coasters -- all of us were on one bus together.
Sun: Did you hang out with entertainers, or regular guys?
Fabian: I was always one of the regular-guy guys. I hung around with groups like Little Anthony and The Imperials, The Drifters and The Coasters. But mainly it was with my buddies.
Some entertainers looked at me kind of askew, like, "Where did this kid come from?" I was not accepted by some of the acts. They made me feel like an outsider, I guess because of the way I came up. That was kind of painful. But basically, all I was trying to do was make a living. I didn't really care about being a star, and they did. That's my attitude today, too. I'm not a real show-business kind of guy.
Sun: Why do you live on a 20-acre farm in Philadelphia and not in Hollywood?
Fabian: A lot of people in Hollywood were really nice to me. But the place just got too big. It's getting to be like that in Las Vegas. You can't even drive down the street in Las Vegas now.
Sun: You've been performing in Las Vegas for many years. What do you think of it now?
Fabian: That puts me on a spot. I'm not going to lie. It became too much like Disneyland. But that's the corporate world today. I'm not adverse to business, but they're putting in all these stock shows. Everything is prerecorded.
Sun: You began your film career in the early '60s. Who were some of the most memorable people you worked with?
Fabian: I worked with some of the great actors -- John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart. And with some great directors -- Robert Altman, Don Siegel. I ended up going to film school, and acting school in New York.
Sun: What happened to your movie career?
Fabian: Times changed. Younger directors come in. Other people get very popular. It's cyclical. Every decade or so there's a whole new regime. You have to be prepared for that. Fortunately, I realized that. It was not a question of me and my talent, just a question of times changing.
Sun: What else have you done?
Fabian: I went into producing for four or five years. We produced a major thing for PBS in 1993 called "The Wild West." It got an Emmy nomination. And I did a couple of other things that didn't quite make it.
Sun: Are concert tours your mainstay now?
Fabian: Besides investments? Yeah. I still go out, not as much as I used to, but I still like going out. I do about as much as I want. I don't have to be on the road for weeks at a time anymore.
We've done "The Golden Boys" for 17 years, but it's kind of winding down. One of the guys just doesn't want to be a Golden Boy anymore, which surprised me. I have to say one thing, that show is probably the best thing I've been involved with in the last 20 years. We get the biggest audiences, the best response. I love that show. To see it go away makes me feel bad because I really enjoy it.
Sun: How would you have handled your career differently?
Fabian: I would have started much later, and I would have wanted to do it. But that's about it. I wish I had had more experience. But I tried to make the best of it, mainly to help my family."
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