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Oscar winning composer doesn't watch 'Glee'

LOS ANGELES - Disney animation might never have recovered from its late-1980s slump without Alan Menken¡¯s scores for ¡°The Little Mermaid,¡± ¡°Beauty and the Beast,¡± ¡°Aladdin¡± and ¡°Pocahontas.¡±

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The New York-born Menken, who gets his star on the Walk of Fame on Wednesday, spoke with The Hollywood Reporter.

The Hollywood Reporter: You grew up in a house with lots of music — your dentist dad would play show tunes — but you initially studied pre-med at New York University. How did you escape that?

Alan Menken: I was kind of an ADD kid; it was hard for me to concentrate in school. Being a composer has been a godsend for me on a personal level. But all the men in my family were dentists, so—

THR: So of course you wrote about a sadistic dentist who dies from ingesting nitrous oxide in “Little Shop of Horrors.”

Menken: I sent the cassette tape of the score to my parents. Mom called and said, “Honey, we heard the tape. OK.” Click! I called back and they were upset: My father was the president of a New York chapter of analgesists, and they promoted nitrous oxide. You can imagine how they felt.

THR: What would your musical career have been like if Disney had never called?

Menken: There’s an alternate universe where I could have been a successful singer-songwriter, along the lines of Billy Joel, Elton John or James Taylor. But after ¨ûmarrying his wife¨ü Janis, our life together was important to me, and touring was not something I embraced.

THR: Do you think the kids who first listened to your Disney films are the ones behind the resurgence of musicals now on TV and in the movies?

Menken: It’s amazing. It’s not easy to do musicals well. But there’s a generation now that can understand them, and Howard’s 'lyricist Howard Ashman' and my work had something to do with that.

THR: Should “Glee” do a whole Menken/Ashman-themed show?

Menken: I’m not a big TV watcher, to be honest. I watch the news or a Yankee game. A lot of musical theater writers — musicals may not be their favorite things. There might be nitpicking, or jealousy. It’s not an escape if you work in the field.

THR: Does that mean writing a musical isn’t fun?

Menken: I don’t write songs for myself anymore. I only write songs on assignment. It’s purely a business, but it is still so important to me emotionally. The best parts about writing a show are ¨ûits¨ü first, second and 10^th anniversaries. Everything else is relative levels of hell.