Oscar nominee Alan Menken on winning, collaborating and the vices of the ‘60s

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No question, Alan Menken is an in-demand tunesmith. Witness how this year’s Oscar luncheon on Monday (he’s up for a potential record-setting fifth original song win for ‘Tangled’s’ ‘I See the Light,’ written with Glenn Slater) conflicted with the first rehearsals for Broadway’s ‘Sister Act,’ which he’s also got a hand in.

But New York-based Menken, who broke into the business with 1987’s “Little Shop of Horrors” and then helped Disney reawaken its animation division in the 1990s, chose the sun over the slush and hopped coasts to lunch in L.A., where he spoke to the Envelope’s Awards Tracker.

Do you find the flip side of the creative part of the business -– these kinds of industry functions -– an easy gear to slip into?

I find these events to be excruciating often, regardless of how many awards I’ve won or been honored for. Plus, there’s always this moment when you get out of a car at the carpet and the cameras raise in anticipation ... or lower in disappointment. You feel like a hooker in a window in Amsterdam: ‘You want to talk to me?’

Music almost wasn’t your career -– you took pre-med classes at New York University in the late 1960s, correct?

Unhappily so. More often than not, I was part of the ‘60s generation, with all the fun and vices. I played fiddle on street corners in the summer of 1969, hair down my back -– and when I finished college, I signed up to play music for ballet classes, and wrote a rock ballet. Of course, now I have a doctorate at NYU and a scholarship in my name, but back when I was a student there, it was not pretty.

You’ve got eight Oscars, four for original song, and if you win this year you’ll have surpassed legends from another era, such as Sammy Cahn and Johnny Mercer. Does that have a particular resonance for you?

I don’t think of songwriting like the Super Bowl. Sometimes you win for reasons other than that you had the best song, and sometimes you lose even if you had the best song. It’s all about political context –- and I’ve been a fortunate recipient of some good luck. And I’m a good songwriter.

Over the years, you have collaborated with such people as Howard Ashman, Tim Rice and Stephen Schwartz. What makes a musical partnership mesh?

I’m a pretty good mesher, I’ve got to say. But the proof is in the pudding. The more experience you have writing with someone, the better it gets, generally. But sometimes, you say, ‘You know what? Time to work with someone fresh.’

These days, you say you only write for assignment, not for pleasure. Do you miss not having that muse of inspiration fluttering around at all hours?

Not really. I miss being able to sit down and read a book. I’m constantly in situations where we’re adapting films for stage, writing something new for the stage, in a workshop or reading or in production or a tour. It’s wonderful juggling that we do, but I see it as being like a storekeeper. I’m just keeping an eye on the goods, and occasionally adding some more in there.

-- Randee Dawn