In the black-and-white photo on the cover of his new album, Donny Osmond looks like he means business. He sits at pensive ease on a train-station platform, wearing jeans and a zipper-laden leather jacket. The garb may be casual, but the photo still seems to say for the singer, "I am serious about this."
He's serious on the telephone, too. For the first time in the '80s, Osmond is headlining a major concert tour, coast-to-coast and back again - a dream come true for a one-time teen heartthrob widely, and wrongly, considered a featherweight has-been."There are four shows on this whole tour that I was really looking forward to," Osmond says from a hotel room in Pennsylvania. "Columbus, Ohio, because that's the market `Soldier of Love' first took off in and went to No. 1; New York City, because of the nature of the market; and of course Los Angeles. And Salt Lake City.
Because on Wednesday, Dec. 13, Donny Osmond, again a sensation, is coming home.
Pop music has witnessed some breathtaking comebacks the past few years - Tina Turner, Steve Winwood, George Harrison, The Doobie Brothers, to name a prominent few.
But, come on: Donny Osmond? The cute, clear-voiced Ogden-born lad on the "Andy Williams Show" in the '60s? The toothy star-teen warbler, with and without his brothers, of "One Bad Apple," "Go Away Little Girl" and "Puppy Love?" The little-bit-rock-'n'-roll, purple-socked sibling of Marie on a hit '70s TV variety series of their own (not to mention the movie "Goin' Cocoanuts" and a Hawaiian Punch commercial or two)? The lead in the ill-fated 1982 Broadway revival of "Little Johnny Jones"?
Burdened by a squishy, squeaky-clean, thoroughly unhip image, Osmond has been outside looking in for a decade. But surprise, surprise: He's back.
The infectious smash single "Soldier of Love" provided the oomph. Interested industry observers and longtime fans held their collective breath as the song zoomed up the charts, leveling out at No. 2. The very top would have been awesome, sure, but it's hard to gripe when your last appearance on Billboard magazine's list of hits was a duet with Marie ("On the Shelf," appropriately enough) that reached No. 38 back in 1978.
"Soldier of Love" wasn't a fluke. Rather, it served as an introduction to an impressive, finger-on-the-pulse-of-pop album that has generated two follow-ups so far: the sincere, mellow "Sacred Emotion" and the energetic, danceable "Hold On."
The new album's title is also interesting: "Donny Osmond."
Forever young in the hearts of his fans, and still boyishly handsome, Osmond, believe it or not, turns 32 on Saturday. Once, shedding the diminutive "Donny" for the more mature "Don" might have seemed important. But not anymore.
Actually, "I've been called Don quite a bit," Osmond says - by his wife, Debra, and family members and friends - but many close to him still most easily call him Donny. Just as millions of us do. So, professionally, Donny it may stay.
After all, he observes, Stevie Wonder's still Stevie, right?
As for the album's title, "I think that's a natural thing. . . . If I'd come out as `Don Osmond' I would have been eaten alive by the public, and surely by the press, but I'm not going to force that issue."
Osmond, his wife and three sons - Donald Clark Jr., Jeremy and Brandon Michael - live in Southern California, close to the heart of the entertainment industry and a bit removed from others of the extensive Osmond clan, who as a rule reside in Utah.
That doesn't mean they don't keep in touch, or are on the outs, as some reports have had it. "My life is just so hectic and busy now, I don't get to socialize with them," Osmond says.
"My brother Jim" (note: not Jimmy) "has been to a couple of the concerts," he says. And he believes his parents, Olive and George, and brother Jay and possibly others will be at his concert in Symphony Hall.
He's looking forward to that.
Osmond has been on tour for about a month and a half now, and the trek is winding to its Los Angeles conclusion - Salt Lake City is the next-to-the-last stop. The venues have varied widely, from small clubs with 500-600 people to bigger halls for about 9,000 fans.
The age range in his audiences, and from audience to audience, has intrigued him.
"I'm finding like last night I had little teenagers, even 10-to-12-year-olds, come to the show. But predominantly they're 18 to 25, a lot of them college age, and a large percentage of those 25 to 35 who grew up in the '70s with me."
But the reaction of today's concertgoers is, in many ways, much more gratifying than was the case 10 or so years ago . . . or 18 years ago, when scream-fueled "Donnymania" and "Osmondmania" earned headlines.
"I see much - and maybe it's just my attitude - I see much more respect for the music from the audience point of view," Osmond says. "People are listening to the music and lyrics more; people are coming to hear the band and the music."
Maybe it's because Osmond, his songs and his band deserve closer musical scrutiny these days.
The key members of his concert band are tour veterans, having worked with artists ranging from Michael Jackson to U2 and Def Leppard. His revivified career and album similarly benefited from talented, generous friendship at various stages.
Osmond hasn't been marooned on another planet. He was in a video a few years ago with rock guitarist Jeff Beck, impressively "auditioning" to sing the lyrics to the song "Ambitious," worked with prominent musician-producers Jay Graydon and David Foster on an unreleased album project and met pop star Peter Gabriel at a New York benefit show for UNICEF in 1986.
In effect, Gabriel got the comeback ball rolling.
It turned out that in the early '70s the British singer - then lead vocalist for the now-legendary rock group Genesis - had seen the teen Donny in concert at Madison Square Garden, for he'd been curious about the pop mania, quite virulent in England, that was engulfing the young American.
After the UNICEF show, Gabriel invited Osmond to his studio in England to record a few tracks. There Osmond met producer George Acogny, and in 1988 he and Acogny began producing several songs. The demo tapes led to Osmond being signed by Virgin Records in the United Kingdom. The album was finished by Osmond and producer-songwriters Carl Sturken and Evan Rogers, two Americans who wrote "Soldier of Love," "Sacred Emotion" and "Hold On." Osmond himself co-wrote "Hold On" and five others in the collection.
"Soldier of Love" was a hit in Britain, and copies drifted across the Atlantic before Capitol Records picked up the album for release in America. Fans and others who didn't have any idea who Osmond was started requesting the song. In a few markets it was played without the name of the "mystery artist" being announced - pending an in-person revelation by Osmond himself at the radio station. Still, some doubting deejays wouldn't give it a spin because Donny Osmond was, well, Donny Osmond.
"This guy at a radio station in Florida refused to play the record," Osmond told the Orange County Register this summer. "I called him and asked why. He said, `Because you're a wimp!' So I gave him as good as I got and we agreed to an arm wrestle. If I won, he'd have to play it."
Osmond won.
The whole album substantiates his talent - and also proves he's not commercially deaf. Most of the songs have a trim, tight, percussion- and synthesizer-supported sound, with vocals ranging from funky to smooth, sometimes with contemporary stylings broadly reminiscent of George Michael or Michael Jackson.
In reviewing his latest work, both on the album and in concert, critics have often, to put it mildly, betrayed amazement at what he's managed to do.
"With the hard-core critics, I've seen a lot more coming (to the concerts) with the attitude that, OK, you have some pretty strong players with you and got Peter Gabriel involved - now prove it," Osmond says.
"Some don't want to show you approval; but the reviews have been very, very good.
"This one from Portland was my favorite. The guy said, `Look. I came here not wanting to like this show, and if you'd have told me a year ago I would be going to a Donny Osmond show I wouldn't have believed it. But I'm here to tell you, Donny Osmond is kicking musical butt.' " Osmond chuckles.
The concert gives the current album a real workout, Osmond says. In fact, he was reluctant to resurrect some of his old stuff.
"At the beginning of this tour I told everybody I wasn't going to do anything from the past. But when we got into the tour we tried a real hip-hop version of `One Bad Apple' - and it's a really cool version of it, too."
Now that he's back among the artistically living, Osmond wants to stay. He's working on ideas for another album.
"And I'm going to take my time with it. . . . I want to make sure it's right. That album's going to be critical to the rest of my career, because I've got everybody's attention with the first one, and if the second is anywhere near a pop formula it's not going to have a lot of legitimacy."
So he'll try to put together a package with more potential hits ("You've got to be smart enough to try to have two or three hits," he admits), but he'll also try to pack it with top-notch musicianship, originality and a few soulful songs from the heart.
"Faces in the Mirror," a musically adventurous, lyrically heartfelt song in his latest set that offers both a reality check and a bit of determined optimism, reflects much of what he's been through the past 10 years, Osmond says. It may be his favorite.
"Sunshine only lasts just a minute, rain falls if you wait too long," he sings. "A dream grows if you only believe it, so I'm calling out to you."
Donny Osmond dreamed, believed - and millions heard him calling.