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Sagal gets her singing act together

By Frank Lovece
John Lennon said it best: Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans. And for singer Katey Sagal, life happened to make her actress Katey Sagal, of
Fox's "Married... With Children." But after having toured with Bette Midler, sung on movie soundtracks, and per-

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through hard times, and I had this naive belief that once I got through
those OK, that nothing bad was going to happen to me ever again. It was like child-thinking," she understands now. "Because then to have more bad stuff happen, later in my life, was startling to me. And I realized," she adds with a sad, small laugh, "that it's not like so much bad stuff happens and then you're immune to it. Life continues to go up and down till the end. Ijust kept thinking naively that at some point it levels off. I think as you g0 on that you

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formed onstage in an Elizabeth

Swados musical, she was always, in her own mind, a singer simply doing

not affected by too many people like that, but I would come into the room where he was and just be stunned." A year later, in lg78, music producer Paul Rothchild suggested Sagal try out for a spot as one of Bette Midler's backup singers, the Harlettes. Out of an open-call audition of 150, Sagal became one of the chosen three. For the next few years, her life was a pattern of touring with Midler, then coming back to L.A. to put together bands.

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this TV thing.
Sagal's plans have finally caught up

with her life, with the release of her soul-inflected solo album, "Well." Garnering respectful reviews, the reeord is no DoA Johnson/Bruce
Willis vanity project Sagal can sing as well as Streisand- can act. "My life has gone nothing like I've planned it," Sagal muses. Her TVtrademark red hair has grown back

people who got lots of development deals tiful Lady," somehow got Sagal a from record reading for a sitcom Tyler - Mary (1985-86). Moore's short-lived "Mary" companies, but never Sagal played Jo Tucker, a cynical,

'l was one of these

companies, but never made a record," she says ruefully. "I was
everybody's near miss." An all-singing part in the Elizabeth Swados punk-rock opera, "The Beau-

people who got lots of development deals from record

"I was one of these

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to a natural dark auburn; she sits "I have to admit, my life's turned out thanl could have planned it. The record couldn't have come at a better time in my life, because I was at a place where I was finally able to be OK with what I wanted to do," she says, "and not everybody
way better

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sharp-tongued, chain-smoking news-

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paper columnist. One year later, she was the cynical, sharp-tongued, but nonsmoking Peg Bundy on her cur-

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do have better understanding and

it ever levels off."

don't know if

rent show. Maybe it was in her genes: Sagal's mom. Sara Zwilling, was a singersongwriter and assistant director;
her younger sisters are actress-twins Jean and Liz Sagal, stars of the 198485 series "Double Trouble"; brother David, 37, is an entertainment lawyer,

with some gratefulness is a testament to her ability to survive and

move ahead. For despite all the substantial rewards of a long-running TV

else's idea of what I should do." That Sagal, 38, can look at her life

The ups, fortunately, have been as extreme as the downs. When still a teen-ager, she played a bit part ftilled as Catherine Louise Sagal) in her father's TV movie "The Failing of Raymond" (1971), netting her her critical
Screen Actors Guild card. Though she

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and brother Joey, 35, is an actor

whose g'ork includes the recent film

"The Chase." But it's music, not acting, she says, that soothes the
savage beast.

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show, Sagal has suffered tragedy beyond balance. Her father and mentor, director Boris Sagal, was killed in a freak accident in 1981, when he stepped into the whirling
blades of a helicopter. Her first mar-

cut short college after a half-semester at the California Institute of the Arts, she began to get work as a
singer around hometown Los Angeles including a stint as a singing waitress at the fabled and now long-gone

"The album," she says gratefully,

looking back at everything else going on in her life as she recorded it. "The

album,
stuff."

it

helped me get through

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riage, to musician Freddie Beckmeier, ended that same year. There were years of drug abuse that finally led to recovery in a l2-step program in 1986, and a miscarriage four years later. Then, in 1991, in the eighth month of a highly publicized pregnancy that was worked into her
TV-series' storyline, she and her husband, drummer Jack White, endured

Great American Food & Beverage

Company, where fellow alumni include

01994 NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSN.

Rickie Lee Jones. Sometime afterward, Sagal became a backup singer, sort of, for the even-more-fabled Bob Dylan.

STAR VIEW

"I actually only rehearsed with him," Sagal remembers. "I worked
a

with him for two months, and then

the soul-wrenching stillbirth of their daughter, Ruby. "When I was younger," Sagal says

softly, philosophically, "I went

week before the tour, he fired me and half the band. I don't know what happened; he just lost it. But also I think I wasn't doing a very good job," she admits. "l was pretty starstruck. I'm