"It was an art-form at first and now it's turned into an industry." Emma McAlpine interviews Michael Winslow, AKA Police Academy's Larvelle Jones, man of 10,000 sound effects and counting...
You heard it here first people. Police Academy 8 is happening. Michael Winslow is so excited about it, it’s the first thing he tells me when I ask him whether he’s looking forward to returning to London again. Winslow has appeared in every Police Academy film since 1984, and it's no wonder he’s stayed loyal to the franchise; after all it put him on the map.
Winslow’s life story is a classic rags to riches tale. Leaving his home in Colorado at the age of 18 to seek his fortune in LA, he had a homeless stint on Venice Beach for a while (“I was running around Los Angeles trying to figure out where north was.”), before he got a job waiting tables and performing in a local restaurant. Amongst the other jugglers, magicians and guitar players, he started to develop his own craft; in particular his skill at imitating sounds and voices.
He began performing on the comedy circuit, at various gong shows and improv nights, before he was asked to open for jazz legend Count Basie at Long Beach Theatre. Winslow is in no doubt that this was the career break of his life:
“We call it the 'dream gig' that shows up every once in a while and you wonder 'should I take it or struggle with the other stuff?' So I took it and it turned out that the director of Police Academy was in the audience (he was a jazz fanatic) and wrote me into the picture.”
The rest is history. The movie was a success and Winslow’s classic opening scene (perfectly imitating the sound of machine gun fire, causing a crowd of people to hit the deck) quickly got him noticed. From then on he was hired by Mel Brooks to star in Spaceballs and was immortalised as the creepy voice of Stripe in Gremlins. I ask him what it was like to work for Brooks, a notoriously intense director:
“You'd better bring your A game with Mel because he's going to ask you for your B game and your C game too. He knew what he wanted. But the things that he had in his mind - they always worked. I hoped to be there two days and I ended up there for two and a half weeks. He was way ahead of everybody else.”
Although he still pops up in the odd film or two, nowadays Winslow is back behind the mic, showing off his vocal talents at live shows all over the world. He is allegedly the man of 10,000 sound effects and I am surprised to hear that, not only has this actually been documented; he has surpassed it: “We've always tried to keep a copy of everything I can do. It’s on somebody’s computer drive somewhere and I’m pretty sure I’m in excess of 10,000 now; the last time we checked!”
Next week, Winslow brings his latest show to London, but he’s keeping us guessing about what he's got planned: “There's a couple of surprises in there because I know there's a lot of music fans in the UK. There'll be some bits people have seen before and something for everybody. It changes all the time. This week I could be playing Tina Turner's sister Tuna Turner or this week I might be Louis Armstrong doing hip hop.”
His mostly gets asked to perform his now legendary Jimmy Hendrix impression although he concedes that “Zepplin fans also approach me a lot.” Aged 52, his days of using his voice box for pranks, like his namesake Larvelle Jones, are long gone. “I used to get into trouble. I can't do the call button for the flight attendant noise anymore. People get thoroughly upset if I go (does perfect call button noise) ‘Boo boo!’"
During the ‘80s, Winslow was a beatbox pioneer, indeed, he believes he was the first. Nowadays he has to share his niche with the likes of fellow comic beatboxers Reggie Watts and Beardyman, but he is graciously enthusiastic about his successors:
“It was an art-form at first and now it's turned into an industry. Now people come to me with their own sounds – (laughs) they don’t want me to do them anymore! Things have evolved and that’s great.”
Michael Winslow will be performing at the Southbank Udderbelly tent from Monday 12th-Tuesday 13th July.
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