Barbra Streisand Live at the MGM Grand - January 1st 1994

In February 1992, Barbra Streisand was a guest on Larry King’s TV interview show and he asked her why she didn’t sing live in concert. “I’m thinking about doing it, but it is very scary,” she replied.

Barbra had not sung live for a paying audience since the 1970s. She gave a handful of live performances in the 1980s and early 1990s, but those were fundraisers and the majority of her fans did not have the access or the money to attend those.

So, Barbra’s manager, Marty Erlichman began investigating concert options (“in the absence of Barbra being aware of it,” he told Vanity Fair) even though Streisand was busy developing two movie projects.

Liza Minnelli also inspired Barbra Streisand to consider singing live again. “Donna Karan gave me a wonderful birthday party,” Streisand told the Los Angeles Times, “and Liza Minnelli got up to sing and I am sitting there thinking, ‘How does she do this? How does anyone get up in front of people and sing?’” Streisand questioned her stage fright. “I didn’t like accepting that fright,” she said. “I am frightened by a lot of things, but what I hope is good about me is that I go through the fear. I thought, ‘Why can’t I do this?’ Besides, so many fans wanted me to sing live. People were saying, ‘You owe it to them.’ It was starting to get to me.”

There were several other things that fell into place, making these concerts a reality. Around Labor Day 1993, Kirk Kerkorian, the owner of the MGM Grand Hotel, asked Streisand if she would like to perform on New Year’s Eve at the new 15,000-seat Grand Garden theater. The hotel was the largest ever built at the time at a cost of over $1 billion, with 5,000 rooms. Kerkorian also offered to give $3.5 million to Barbra’s favorite charity. “That impressed me,” Streisand confessed. “Plus, the show was going to be New Year’s Eve. I hate New Year’s Eve. It’s a very lonely night for me … never a happy time. So, I thought: What a great way to escape New Year’s Eve … doing a show.”

Erlichman confessed, “We were closer more times to not making a deal than to making it, but in the end, it was a unique blending of the events – a brand-new hotel, Barbra wanting to take a shot at performing live to get rid of her fear and the chance to test the concept of a tour by doing just two nights instead of 50 nights or whatever.”

There was a lot of speculation about how much Kerkorian paid Streisand for the gigs. Most articles reported Streisand received as much as $20 million. Streisand and her management never confirmed the amount, but it’s possible reporters assumed she’d earn millions from a pay-per-view television special of the shows. (She never did a live pay-per-view special). Vanity Fair said that Streisand’s payment was $14 million, before expenses which included the 64-piece orchestra and 16,500 square feet of carpeting to cover the floors of each arena. “You know what this tour cost me? Twenty million dollars! Sixteen on the road and four in Vegas … We charged so much because it cost so much. And yet some idiot writes in a paper that I'll have made $100 million,” Streisand exclaimed.

On November 2, 1994, MGM Grand announced that Barbra Streisand would perform two shows on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

Larry Woolf, the chairman and CEO of MGM Grand Hotel, said in a statement, “We are absolutely thrilled that Barbra Streisand will be opening the new MGM Grand Garden. There is no entertainer in the world of higher ability and stature to open our new entertainment complex.” Tickets ranged in price from $100 to $1,000.

The two shows went on sale Sunday, November 7th and sold out within hours. “There were 379,000 calls from around the world recorded in the first four hours after the tickets went on sale at 8 a.m.,” said Tom Bruny, an MGM spokesman. Marty Erlichman confirmed this when he said “The telephone company wouldn’t allow us to go on sale on a weekday because they were afraid that the number of calls we were going to get would overload the system. So they made us go on a Sunday. They were right.”

Видео Barbra Streisand Live at the MGM Grand - January 1st 1994 канала Some Days You're Barbra