Anything Goes · Broadway Podcast Network

Alan Menken I

April 6, 2026·32 min·3 clips

Alan Menken describes how a Texas singer's confusion over a 'Chanukah Club' sign inspired the comedy song 'Pinkfish.'

The episode is part of the third season of the Broadway Podcast Network's revival of Paul Lazarus's 1980s radio series 'Anything Goes,' dedicated to American musical theater. This installment is the first of a three-part series on Alan Menken, originally recorded in 1982. At the time of the interview, Menken had not yet begun his Oscar-winning film career; the conversation centers entirely on his theater work. Lazarus opens by replaying a segment from an earlier 1979 interview with Menken, in which the composer discusses his ability to write across multiple styles — pop, children's television, and theater. A significant portion of the early interview focuses on 'Pinkfish,' a comedy cabaret song Menken wrote for a singer named David Summers. Menken explains how he built the song around Summers's real personality — a wide-eyed Texan newcomer to New York — and used lox and cream cheese as a comic metaphor for Jewish culture. The song is played in full from an old recording, featuring multiple verses about auditions for Fiddler on the Roof and a Texas pastor craving a knish. Returning to the 1982 interview, Lazarus asks Menken how he arrived at the musical style for Little Shop of Horrors. Menken explains that the show initially had a more serious, Brechtian tone before the opening number revealed the natural fit of 1950s girl-group and early Motown sounds. He and lyricist-book writer Howard Ashman then structured the show to move chronologically through those styles. Menken notes that Howard Ashman observed the Motown rhythm carries an inherent menace, likening the chh sound to chains. The episode features the original cast recording of 'Skid Row Downtown,' described as the show's de facto opening number. Lazarus introduces a cut song, 'A Little Dental Music,' which was dropped before rehearsals began because it was deemed unnecessary once the show moved directly to the dentist's gas-laughing scene. Menken performs the song himself in the studio. He then reveals that his father is both a dentist and a former president of the American Analgesic Society, who objected to the show's depiction of a dentist laughing himself to death with nitrous oxide. The conversation turns to the character of Audrey, played by Ellen Green, and her signature song 'Somewhere That's Green.' Lazarus praises the song for being simultaneously funny and genuinely touching — a parody of suburban aspiration that nonetheless makes the audience care about the character. Menken confirms this emotional-comic balance was the deliberate goal. The episode closes with Ellen Green's original cast recording of 'Somewhere That's Green.' Throughout, Lazarus emphasizes that many of the recordings played are rare and had never previously been broadcast.

As heard by us

A patient look at Menken finding the shape of his style through craft, staging, and story.

Paul Lazarus revisits Anything Goes from 1982 to meet Alan Menken before the later film work and Oscars, when the talk is still about Broadway craft, theatrical lineage, and the making of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Little Shop of Horrors. The episode has a steady pull.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want Alan Menken before the Oscars, speaking Broadway from the inside.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Anything Goes