Culture
Gold medalist Scott Hamilton talks Rust Belt Rock roots & rebirth with Nashville arena CARES spectacle
By: Ian Saint
Posted on:
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (WOUB) — Scott Hamilton’s most famous victory was winning the Gold Medal for men’s single figure skating at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia (modern-day Bosnia), a diplomatically significant Olympics after the USA boycotted the preceding Summer Olympics in the Soviet Union. But Hamilton tells WOUB that his favorite night of skating came 10 years later, when he defied naysayers and bested his younger Gold successors with the Arena Rock music that he grew up loving in Ohio.
On Sunday at 4 p.m. Central Time, Hamilton is staging a multisensory show at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena (501 Broadway), where Arena Rock vocalists will perform their greatest hits while figure skating champions perform on ice. Featured rockstars comprise REO Speedwagon’s Kevin Cronin, The Romantics’ Wally Palmer, Loverboy’s Mike Reno, Journey’s Jason Derlatka, Chicago’s Jason Scheff, and Kansas’ John Elefante. Figure skaters include fellow Olympic medalists like Polina Edmunds, Gracie Gold, and Jeremy Abbott. For complete lists of musical and skating performers, visit this link. A separately ticketed VIP aftershow party at the adjacent Omni Hotel (250 Rep. John Lewis Way S) includes dinner and additional live entertainment.
Proceeds to these events benefit CARES Foundation, which funds cancer treatment research. Hamilton lost his mother to cancer at 18; and he has survived testicular cancer and several brain tumors, all treated at the Cleveland Clinic back in Ohio.
Hamilton and CARES are also hosting “Sk8 to Elimin8 Cancer” skating events throughout the country, including in downtown Cleveland’s Public Square on December 11.
Ahead of Sunday’s Nashville engagement, Hamilton spoke to WOUB’s Ian Saint. A transcript of their conversation, edited for length and clarity, follows.
Ian Saint: Tell us about being raised on what you describe as “Rust Belt Rock” radio in Bowling Green, Ohio.
Scott Hamilton: My parents were both teachers and it was very idyllic small-town-America (upbringing). My best friend, besides my minibike, was music. Now I get to work with lots of my heroes from that era, especially in this show, which has been remarkable.
(Bowling Green is near the) Ohio and Michigan (border), where rock ‘n roll lives — the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland, look at Motown and bands that came out of Detroit. Ric Ocasek of The Cars went to Bowling Green State University. John Melloncamp is in Indiana. You’ve got this identity of music in that region, and it’s well-represented in our show. REO Speedwagon were an Illinois band; The Romantics from Detroit. Chicago, Chicago; Kansas, again, midwest. Loverboy is Canadian; but Turn Me Loose, I skated to in 1982. Jason Derlatka is the newest member of Journey; his first performance with (Chicago native) Jonathan Cain and Neal Schon was our (2019) show.
All these iconic superstar artists, I’ve aligned strategically with our skaters so that the marriage of music and movement is perfect. John Elefante is covering Foreigner’s Cold As Ice and a skater is doing a character piece to it, which is going to stretch her. I like giving our skaters music that may not have been their first choice; then afterwards, (they’re amazed). It’s remarkable, the artists and skaters we have and the spell it casts over the audience.
Figure skating is commonly accompanied by classical music, but you’ve often selected rock music. How did your routine with Aerosmith’s Walk This Way, a huge hit in your Ohio adolescence, come about?
Hamilton: I always loved Aerosmith growing up. That was the second concert I ever saw, right after (1974’s) Get Your Wings came out; my first was Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Anderson Arena (inside Memorial Hall), Bowling Green State University.
Walk This Way was going into the 1994 season. I thought, “let me see how good I can be.” I hit the gym like I was training for the Olympics; I was sore for seven months, but I got all my jumps back. I love Walk This Way, so I sent it to my choreographer; I put it in the Stars On Ice tour. We did dress rehearsal on Thanksgiving, and it was really hard — footwork sequences were impossible, and I missed every jump. I said, “This’ll be a disaster. I can’t do this.” The choreographer said, “No, it’s too late to change. Let’s soften some of the entrances and make sure you can get through this performance.” So I did it in the show Saturday night at Lake Placid (where Hamilton competed in the 1980 Winter Olympics); miraculously, I skated clean, and the response was incredible.
Next year, there was the Gold Championship — past gold medalists competing. I wasn’t invited to it, but the reigning Olympic champion decided he didn’t want (to do this); so they held their noses and invited me. I went to this competition in Alberta, and I’m up against Brian Boitano and Victor Petrenko — Olympic gold medalists after me (Boitano in 1988, Petrenko 1992) — and I beat them both. As soon as the audience heard those Walk This Way drums, they went crazy; I thought, “All I have to do is stay vertical, and I’m going to win.” I think it’s my favorite night of skating in my entire career. If I’d quit Walk This Way (in rehearsal), that night never would’ve happened; so sometimes, we’ve just got to stay the course.
It’s interesting that returning to your “Rust Belt Rock” roots, a decade after your Olympics gold win, produced your favorite night of skating.
Hamilton: Yeah. I joke that I’ve probably performed Walk This Way as many times as Aerosmith has.
And now you’re hosting a night of Arena Rock in Music City’s arena to raise funds for saving lives.
Hamilton: My message to your audience is: come if you want a sensory overload experience, where you’ll get to see and hear these amazing musical artists performing while skaters are doing things that you can’t imagine are being done right in front of you. The speed, the athleticism; the explosive nature of these jumps and the lifts and throws — it’s so dynamic and exciting. The house band, Sixwire, are extraordinary masters at their craft.
It’s greater than the sum of its parts, to have all these incredible performance artists (in one arena of) Music City for our shared mission. We do a lot of research in glioblastoma; Michael Bolton, one of the phenomenal stars of (CARES’ 2014 arena) show in Cleveland, is now going through glioblastoma — and we’re trying to fund the research that’s going to help people survive this brutal brain cancer. The rock ‘n roll community is amazing; I’ve been so blessed to bring my heroes into this space, where I can leverage these incredible setlists to raise money for cancer research.
For event information and tickets, visit this link.
