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Meet the Wiggles: Once Barney's opening act, the fab four for preschoolers are headliners at the Fox
August 20, 2003 BY JOHN MONAGHAN FREE PRESS SPECIAL WRITER The first time the Wiggles came to Detroit, they were riding a float in the 2000 Thanksgiving Day Parade. "Maybe 25 percent of the kids knew who we were," says Greg Page, lead singer for the popular children's TV group. "But there were a fair number of blank looks: 'Who are these guys and why are they singing about hot potatoes?' " Though they've been household names in their native Australia for almost a decade, the Wiggles have used their new clout in the United States to build an empire: videos, licensed merchandise, a hit show on cable's Playhouse Disney and now the live Wiggly Safari Tour. The tour stops at Detroit's Fox Theatre today and Thursday. This time, on the Wiggles' second visit to Detroit, they've sold out all four of their shows. If you haven't heard about this pop phenomenon, you probably don't know many preschoolers, and you don't have infectious Wiggles ditties like "Wags the Dog" and "On Your Holiday" playing in your head. "When people come up to us, I'm never sure whether they want to strangle us or hug us," says Greg with a laugh, though he's only half-joking. Like Barney a decade ago, the Wiggles have become at once the most loved and the most reviled children's performers on the planet. Some parents adore the colored shirts, upbeat songs and simple messages. Others see the same kind of puerile kids' fodder as the big purple dinosaur provided, multiplied by four. "It always makes you a little nervous when someone has tapped into your 3-year-old's cerebral cortex," says Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. "But these are pretty sincere people singing about some innocent things -- about friendship, their body, family." Actually, the Wiggles owe Barney for helping launch their U.S. invasion. Dallas-based HIT Entertainment, which releases the videos for both, introduced the group to the United States by placing Wiggles songs at the beginning of Barney videos. The Wiggles also toured with Barney's live shows, playing a 10-minute set during intermission. "We got along very well together," Greg says of the purple superstar dinosaur. "We still have a good relationship with him." Greg, who identifies himself as the yellow Wiggle, comes off over the phone as you'd expect: friendly, polite and perpetually upbeat about his job as a Wiggle. Fans say they can sense the sincerity beneath the marketing. Redford mom Deanna Stevenson, for example, doesn't mind her not-quite-2-year-old son Hayden's Wiggles fixation. "It makes him happy because he dances and talks about them and to them," she says. "And they teach him manners . . . they talk about covering their mouths when coughing, or looking both ways before crossing the street. "I actually got him to say 'please' the other day because I told him the Wiggles would," Stevenson says. Hayden will be at tonight's show. The Stevensons have 20th-row seats they bought for $28 apiece, though his grandmother considered buying four $125 front-row seats online.On eBay, main-floor tickets to the Fox performances have been selling for $75 to $100. Before they became the Wiggles in 1992, Greg, Anthony Field (blue shirt) and Murray Cook (red shirt) were studying early-childhood development in Sydney. Though most had musical backgrounds, Anthony had the best pop-music resume, having been in a late-'80s platinum-selling band called the Cockroaches. He brought bandmate Jeff Fatt (purple shirt) along for the ride in the Wiggles' big red car to stardom. Since then, they have sold nearly 10 million videos. They've shared screen time with Australia's other big TV import, Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter. Their first movie, made for Australian theaters in 1997, recently released on U.S. video as "Magical Adventure! A Wiggly Movie." Greg says teacher training infuses the group. Though he characterizes the show as being about entertainment, he says the Wiggles have educational concepts in mind. To parents, that's another part of the Wiggles' appeal. "Children learn by activity and being involved," says Greg. "Once you have their attention, then you can teach them things. Little kids can point their fingers and do the twist. You model, and they copy it. We don't lecture. We don't say, 'This is the color red' . . . We simply incorporate it into the show." The word "simplicity" comes up time and again. The TV show uses rear-screen and computer effects but relies mostly on the Wiggles' interaction with each other and a small stable of costumed characters. Captain Feathersword, Wags the Dog, Dorothy the Dinosaur and Henry the Octopus could easily be refugees from the old Captain Kangaroo show. The skits center around specific character quirks, like Anthony's insatiable appetite or Jeff's constant nodding off. "What you see is really an extension of our own personalities," Greg says. And then there is music, most of it written and performed by the guys. On screen, the Wiggles lip-synch and play phony instruments. Anthony bangs away on a kids' drum set, Jeff pecks at a keyboard; if there is an electric guitar, it probably isn't plugged in. "Our songs are very '60s pop-based, with simple melodies and catchy rhythms," Greg says. "Again, keeping it simple is the secret, not being too clever and going overboard." While the Wiggles provide live vocals on their tour stops, the instruments are all prerecorded. Greg says the show will have a concert format, with one song after another. He says the trick with a big venue like the Fox is keeping the show intimate, so a couple of Wiggles will work the cheap seats, heading deep into the audience. "Parents are happy if their kids are happy," says Greg. "We can see it from the stage. Watching their kids get up and jump around and dance -- that, to us, is the secret. You don't have to do double entendres to keep the parents entertained. It's at the expense of the children and not what we're about." While the appeal of a Wiggles concert is the opportunity to see the actual fab four in the flesh, if you look closely during the Fox shows, you'll see that the guy in the blue shirt isn't Anthony. The blue Wiggle is home in Australia after a painful inguinal hernia operation, forcing him to sit out the group's biggest tour yet. Brett Clarke, who has toured with the Dorothy the Dinosaur spinoff shows in Australia, will fill in. "We all have understudies, just in case," Greg says. "After all this jumping up and down, we aren't getting any younger." Neither is their audience. Though kids may end up outgrowing the Wiggles by the time they hit age 5, the guys are finding an growing fan base in the kids' moms. A year before he married in 1998, a national magazine voted Anthony Australia's most eligible bachelor. ("Yeah, he broke a few hearts," Greg admits.) Even level-headed local mom Stevenson admits that she once dreamed about Anthony, though she swears it was G-rated. The concept of Wiggles groupies puts Greg, married with two kids, into a full-fledged stammer. "Some people, including mothers of the kids, see us in a way that we don't necessarily think they should," he says. "We don't think about that. We're not in it for that reason. We just want to do something positive for children." |