from CAS: Posted by kellykellyk at ca.com board For all of us who want to see what Simon had to say about Clay, but don't want to buy his book, here are the Clay mentions. Gonzo's spud posted this over originally here (and she is still posting more updates) but credit apparently goes to Krazy Sunshine from the PRoC. Gonzo's spud is adding more segments periodically, so you might want to check the link occasionally. Quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is what Simon says about what will become of Clay (he has each of the finalists listed with his thoughts on each one, from both seasons. This is from pages 205-206 "Clay Aiken: I think Clay has changed American Idol forever-- and I'm glad. Clay is the American dream. Six months ago he was a geeky-looking kid, working with underprivileged children, and singing for a hobby. Today Clay is probably the most talked about singer in America. He proved the point--you don't need to look like a male model to triumph in a contest like ours. Talent, personality, and determination will get you through. I confess that during season one, I had my own ideas about what the American Idol should look like. It wasn't Clay Aiken. I have always trusted the general public, and when we said, "What do you want?" in season two, they told us: Talent! Not hype. He is one of the best things to ever happen to American Idol--he broke the mold. But Clay's success wasn't a fluke. He was determined, ambitious, and he thought through his choice of songs incredibly carefully. He know (most weeks) what the audience wanted and he didn't disappoint. I think Clay can do whatever he wants in the future: sell records, act, or headline Vegas. I saw him two months after American Idol finished. He hadn't changed. Thank God." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyway, this is about Clay and the Atlanta auditions: p. 149-150 "The auditions began the next morning, and I remember two things about the Atlanta talent that second time around. The first thing I remember is Clay Aiken. As I said before, the talent in the second year was different. We were getting less of the kind of singer that dominated the first season of American Idol, the bratty girls who had been onstage since they could walk and wanted nothing more than to be the next Christina Aguilera or Jessica Simpson. Instead we were seeing talented people who wouldn't normally enter a talent competition, good amateurs rather than bad professionals. Frenchie was a perfect example. We hadn't had a particularly great morning when Clay walked in. I formed an impression of him immediately, due in part to his awful hair, his thick glasses, and the abysmal clothes he was wearing. I wouldn't have been surprised to see him pull a laptop computer out of a bag and announce he was designing his own Web site. He was just a geek through and through; I remember thinking that if we put him on the front cover of a teen magazine, it would go out of business. He was nice enough but really a complete mess. Then he started singing, and all of that was forgotten. When he finished his audition, he stood there, pleased with himself, but we was very nervous. "Well," I said, "you don't look like a pop idol, you have to admit," He nodded. "But, God, you're a really good singer," I said. "What do we do with you?" "Put me through," he said. So we did. Randy felt exactly the same way about Clay; we agreed that there was an aura about him, something unusual. He stuck in our minds, and that alone was a trememdous achievement--when you see a hundred singers a day, it's amazing if you can remember even a handful of them." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Then on page 157, Simon writes in a short paragraph about pool of contestants after all the auditions: "So at last, we had our pool. I thought Frenchie and Ruben were the front-runners in one sense, and J.D. and Josh in another sense. And Clay, of course, lurked in the back of everyone's mind as a truly bizarre talent to keep an eye on. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On pages 158- 159 he is talking about the Glendale auditions: "We actually took over two hundred people back to Glendale, and our job was to find thirty-two finalists. It was around this time that the field of contestants began to follow its own internal dynamic, and I noticed right away that Ruben was often the center of attention. Whenever there was a group song, the other performers would stand in a ring around him. There was something instinctive about it, the same way that you could look at early 'N Sync performances and see that Justin Timberlake was the center, or look at early Supremes performances and see that Diana Ross was the center, even though neither of them was necessarily the strongest singer in their group. The X Factor affects the other performers just as it affects an audience, and people are often intuitively aware of a front-runner or a leader. At this point, Clay was keeping to himself. I think he sensed that his image wasn't going to work and that he had to make some changes before he tried to grab the spotlight. The other person who was very prominent at that point was Frenchie Davis. She was calm, quiet, and supremely confident, and every time she performed, it was obvious that she would be put through to the next round. I did an interview around that time in which I was asked who might win, and I mentioned Frenchie, Ruben, Clay (I called him " the kid with the big ears" , and Corey." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Then on page 166 he talks about Group 2: "The second group were in a different league, with Ruben, Clay, and Kimberly Locke. Ruben was phenomenal: confident, enthusiastic, wonderful. Kimberly was probably the best singer in the competition, technically, but she didn't seem to have a personality, which is what I said to her after that first performance. She then attacked me. "I used to think you were sexy," she said, "but you suck." Randy and Paula delighted in this; they gave each other high fives, and Kimberly left the stage grinning. This was fine with me--I didn't mind the contestants arguing back--but the fact remained that she lacked star quality. She could be a sesssion singer, and a very good one, and make quite a comfortable living. But I didn't look at her and think, "superstar." Clay, on the other hand, was a revelation. He had done some kind of makeover, and it was like he was a different person--his glasses were gone and his hair was lighter. It was a bold effort, but he didn't quite make it. He fell just short in the vote and was left behind. He was totally devastated after the results came through." Simon says about Group one: "All in all it was unremarkable, and in my mind there wasn't an American Idol, or anyone close, in that bunch." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So here is what Simon says about the Wild Card and about the top twelve, from p. 168-171. "Last but not least was the wild-card show, which brought back contestants who had been eliminated and gave them another chance. In theory it was a wonderful thing. In practice it was disastrous. Hardly any of the people we brought back to compete for the remaining finalists spots shone. No one, that is except for Clay. He performed Elton John's "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me," and he was superb, in a totally different league than the others. Kimberly Caldwell, who had been close the first time around, had an off night with Carole King's "I Feel the Earth Move," but she was still worlds better than the rest. So Kimberly and Clay were a given. The only problem was that we still had to find two more: Fox wanted twelve finalists instead of ten, to extend the competition. Paula really liked a girl named Trenyce, who sang a good version of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together," and put her through. Randy picked Kimberly Caldwell; he was always a big fan. I knew America would pick Clay, so I picked Carmen Rasmusen, a young girl from Utah who had a decent voice and a great personality, and who brought something I felt we were missing at this stage of the competition. In fact, she was the youngest contestant to be moved to the next round; she was only seventeen years old at the time. But what I saw in her was the fact that she was commercial, simple as that. I thought that she could one day have a real recording career, and that's what the show is about. We now had our twelve finalists, and we were ready for the homestretch. At around that time, there was a big question-and-answer session organized by the Television Academy. Various members of the press and the academy interviewed both the on-air talent and the contestants. It was my first opportunity to see the whole dirty dozen in one place. My initial impulse had been right; it was a more interesting, diverse, and exciting group than the first year, and I was suddenly very optimistic. We had our divas, or course--Trenyce and Kimberly Caldwell and Julia DeMato--but we also had types of singers that we hadn't seen before. As the contestants answered quesetions and bantered with the press, what struck me was that there was one who was head and shoulders above everyone else: Clay. He was witty and self-effacing. He had researched and prepared. And, as the number of signs and banners at the session showed, he already had a following. Ruben, too, was very popular, and Kimberly Locke had come a long way since her audition. Afterward, there were loads of fans clustered at the exits, and the contestants went to sign autographs. I remember watching Ruben, who suddenly had access to cute girls (and was beaming like a Cheshire cat); watching Clay, who showed that he absolutely loved fame; and watching Kimberly Locke, who was basking in her own transformation. Interestingly, there were three or four girls who were already beginning to act like divas. This is the point where we started to see the true personalities of our finalists, and they weren't all pretty." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyway, on to more comments from judge number three, here he is talking about Clay on Motown night, p. 175 "The show was fairly uneventful, with the exception of Clay's ongoing transformation. That week, he had a new hairstyle and he had fixed his teeth. It was as if he were serving notice to the rest of the contestants--and the viewers--that he was determined to go all the way. For me, it didn't quite work, because in those early live shows he was beginning to perform like some ghastly Las Vegas cabaret act--horrible dance moves, embarrassing winks to the camera." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- He doesn't mention Clay again until Billy Joel night, but that is mostly about Kim L. and Ruben, with a passing mention of Clay. I'll type it out anyway because it is interesting. It is from pages 186-187 "That show was also the first time I realized that Kimberly Locke might actually win. She had toned down her fashion sense and her hair--at times it had been just insane, as if she had been struck by lightning--and she just latched on to her song, which was "New York State of Mind," and boy did she sing it well. At this point, I was beginning to feel that Ruben and Clay were in a bit of a rut. Ruben did a Barry White-style cover of "Just the Way You Are," and I criticized him for the first time. I told him he was playing it safe and becoming one-dimensional as a result. There was a gasp from the audience, and Ruben himself visibly jerked back as if he were stung. I'm sure the other contestants loved it, because we had been so sycophantic to him by that point that I had almost run out of compliments. This was also the week where Josh challenged me to a push-up competition and lost. They didn't show it all on television, but let the record show that the twenty-two-year-old Marine lost to the forty-three-year-old record producer. After the show, Ruben said, "Can I have a word with you, Simon?" "Certainly," I said. I didn't know what to expect. We went off to the side, and he took a deep breath, "You know," he said, "that was the best advice anyone has ever given me. You're absolutely right. I was falling into a trap here, and I'll think about what you said." I was impressed that Ruben had the maturity to respond this way." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here Simon is talking about Clay and Neil Sedaka night, along with his thoughts on Ruben in the bottom two and Trenyce getting kicked off, p. 190-191 "The next week, Neil Sedaka joined us, and well, there is only one Neil Sedaka. He spent about an hour anxiously preparing, jotting down notes during the rehearsals, and he came up with some of the most hilarious phrases I have ever heard, including the infamous "ear-delicious." That was Clay's night to shine: He sang a version of "Solitaire," which had been a hit for the Carpenters, that was absolutely breathtaking. It was one of the highlights of the whole series. He had the audience in the palm of his hand. "I think he's going to win," I whispered to Paula, and she agreed. Then Trenyce came on, and she had overdone herself so much, with caked-on makeup, ridiculous high heels, and a completely ghastly dress that she looked like a Tina Turner drag act. I told her so, and she wasn't amused. Randy, in fact, called me out on it afterward. "Simon," he said. "You have gone too far." Randy didn't need to say much more than this; he spoke with his actions, which in this case included a day of silent treatment. Justin Guarini was a guest on the results show the following night, when Ruben somehow fell into the bottom two and teetered on the brink of elimination. We were all shocked by this develpment, though in the back of my mind I thought that maybe his coasting had caught up with him. I didn't want him to be eliminated, of course--I had flashbacks to Tamyra's early departure the year before. Or rather, I had been having flashbacks all along, and I had done my best not to even fantasize about a Ruben-Clay final, lest I jeopardize it like I had jeopardized the Kelly-Tamyra final the first year. Luckily, Ruben made it through, and Trenyce was the one who was cut. I wasn't surprised. I never really warmed to her. If in the future we invent robots to sing, they should be modeled on Trenyce. She worked very hard at her image, too hard--she was the girl who was the most unpopular with the wardrobe and makeup people. There was a big round of applause in the makeup room when she got kicked off." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- posted by Yee 6:21 PM . . .
