Rose Cailoa

The impetus behind ROCK AND ROLL MAN: THE ALAN FREED STORY was not the Freed family. Gary Kupper was approached by Larry Marshak, with whom he had worked for many years, about a third party's desire to do a story about Alan Freed as a 'jukebox musical'. The intention was that Kupper might be able to write a couple of songs for the piece. Kupper realized that Freed's story is a classic one. A rise and fall and then redemption story that can't be told as a jukebox musical because Alan Freed wasn't a singer. He feels that a jukebox musical would have cheated the story. This is the story of this man, and the story of Rock-and-Roll. That notion gave birth to the 'book musical'. In 2011, Kupper started writing original songs and sometime later, the team started writing the script. Freed's son, Lance, stepped-in and helped to secure the rights to the Rock-and-Roll classics. They have combined the music of the era with storytelling. They admit it's both risky and tricky and has never really been done to the extent that it is in this show. Thirty to thirty-five original songs were written, most of which were thrown out. A little more than a dozen are in the current iteration of the show.