He made it to American Idol,

then fronted Queen.
She started it all

The Adam Lambert Story

The Person Who Believed In Me  ·  Hosted by David Begnaud

"Adam Lambert grew up as a funny, weird, gay-before-he-had-the-words-for-it kid in conservative North County San Diego. A voice teacher named Lynn Broyles gave him something most kids in that zip code never found: a room where none of that was a problem. Decades later, that room is the reason he exists the way he does."

- David Begnaud

The Voice Teacher Teaching Out Of Her Apartment. The Thirteen-Year-Old Who Had Never Found His Match.

Adam Lambert grew up in Rancho Penasquitos, a conservative, upper-middle-class suburb of North County San Diego where his family - a hippie dad into Grateful Dead and prog rock, a Jewish American princess mom from Jersey - always felt a little separate from everyone else. He was a red-headed, endlessly verbal kid who preferred talking to adults over kids his own age, who had started trying on his mom's makeup at eight or nine, who felt alien in his own neighborhood. He was smart and precocious and, by thirteen, desperately looking for somewhere he fit.

His grandmother saw an ad. A voice teacher named Lynn Broyles was giving lessons out of her apartment in a condo village nearby. Adam's family signed him up. The first impression was instant and mutual. Lynn was, as Adam put it, "fierce - a diva in the best possible sense of the word." Even at thirteen, he was drawn to that like a moth to flame. And she, in turn, seemed to see him immediately. Not the kid he was performing as, but the actual person underneath.

They clicked through humor first. He found ways to make her snap out of her teacher mode - and she let him. The banter was rhythmic, quippy, natural. When they played back a recording from a lesson at the wrong speed, they realized their voices sounded almost identical. "It felt like we had known each other before," Adam said. "If you want to get into that sort of woo-woo thing." He had never found anything like her. She had never quite found anything like him either.

▶ Watch on YouTube: Adam introduces Lynn and the instant connection - ~1:55

Middle School Was the Worst. Then He Found the Theater Company.

Elementary school was great. Adam had energy, teachers liked him, and the fact that teachers liked him was still considered cool by the other kids. Then sixth grade arrived and everything curdled. Hormones, segregation between boys and girls, social hierarchies forming around rules he didn't understand and didn't particularly want to follow. "I feel so separate from everybody," he told David. "I didn't have a lot of friends. I didn't know how to make friends. It was really hard."

What saved him from going too far into isolation was a theater company he had joined at age ten - the Metropolitan Educational Theater, which met on Saturdays. The instructor was an educator who taught discipline and teamwork through theater, but also competition, craft, and cooperation. Adam didn't fully understand what he was getting from it at the time. He understands it now: "There's so much it instilled in me about working with other people." It was the only place outside the house where he was playing by rules that made sense to him.

The theater company also led him to want voice lessons. He'd tried another teacher first and hated it - if something didn't come naturally, he wanted to quit. That teacher didn't get him. He was already a musical theater obsessive, checking out every cast recording from the library, memorizing them, eating and sleeping and breathing the stuff. He needed someone who could keep up. He needed Lynn.

▶ Watch on YouTube: Middle school isolation and the theater company that saved him - ~14:51

She Gave Him Sondheim. She Trusted His Weird.

Lynn didn't give Adam beginner material. From the start, she was handing him Sondheim - complicated melodies, strange rhythms, deep adult lyrics. His reaction: "Cool. Not messing around." She introduced him to Cabaret, to the Judy Garlands and Liza Minnellis and Barbra Streisands, to the camp touchstones that Adam would later describe as the cultural lexicon of a generation of gay men. He went to New York when he was fourteen and they saw Rent four months after it opened. Lynn was giving him a world, a language, and a set of references - without ever naming what any of it was actually for.

The understanding between them was unspoken but complete. Adam was a teenager in the late nineties in conservative North County San Diego who wasn't ready to face what he already knew about himself. Lynn never confronted him with it. She never said the word. "She knew I was a queen," Adam said. "I think she knew I was gay. And instead of ever making it a point - she just knew. And I knew she knew. And it felt like a very safe space for me to just be myself." One afternoon in her studio, a teenage Adam grabbed a wig, a dress, a boa, and heels, and ran around the room in character. She laughed. She didn't flinch. Even knowing other parents might walk in. She didn't care. Neither did he.

He eventually became more than a student. He started hanging around after lessons, doing odd jobs - typing, designing programs, running errands - just because he wanted to be near the world she had built. She used to joke that he was her child. She had no kids of her own at the time. In some ways, Adam was the closest thing.

▶ Watch on YouTube: Sondheim, Cabaret, and the unspoken understanding - ~18:05

He Quit Wicked to Audition. The First Song Bombed. Then He Did Bohemian Rhapsody.

By the time Adam Lambert walked into the American Idol audition room, he was already a professional. He had done the national tour of Wicked. He had union cards. He had credits. He was the most seasoned person in his entire Idol season, the oldest at twenty-seven - the exact cutoff age for the show. He went in with clear eyes: this was his last year to be eligible, so he might as well try. He had no expectation of winning. He just wanted screen time.

To get in front of the TV judges, he had to give up everything. Quit Wicked. Negate every contract. Become a complete amateur on paper. It was a huge risk. The main producer, a straight-shooter named Patrick, told him: there are no guarantees. Adam looked at him and said: do you think this is a good idea? Patrick said: yeah, I think you've got a shot. That was enough. Someone thinks this is a good idea. Let's go.

The first song he sang in front of Simon, Paula, Randy, and Kara was a Michael Jackson song. It didn't air. The judges were perplexed - it didn't match for them. Adam could tell. He had everything riding on this moment. He wasn't going to leave. He looked at them and said: "Hey, what else can I do for you? Let me sing something else." They said okay. He said he'd do a classic rock song. He did Bohemian Rhapsody. "And the rest is history," he said. Randy called him one of the most diverse people they'd had audition. Simon, who had been staring Adam down from across the table, eventually started smirking. Adam had waited him out. "I think he sees me," Adam thought. "I can keep up."

▶ Watch on YouTube: Quitting Wicked, the risk, and Bohemian Rhapsody - ~29:24

He Kissed a Guy at the AMAs. The Network Wasn't Happy.

His first solo single was about to drop. He performed on the American Music Awards. It was a huge production number - the biggest stage he had ever been on, nothing like Idol, and he was nervous. The adrenaline got the best of him. The sound was off. The track and band weren't lined up. He knew it wasn't going well. And then at the end of the performance, he kissed a guy on stage. He hadn't done it in rehearsal. He hadn't planned it in any formal way. He told David the quiet truth: by the end, he was looking for something big to take the attention away from how badly he'd just performed. "I did not sing well that night."

The blowback was big - a Christian parent organization filed complaints, he had to had appearances cancelled. Looking back, he knows "This is a double standard," he said. "Madonna and Britney and Christina did this at the VMAs a few years before. Women can do it, but not men? What's the standard?"

What followed surprised him. He had never felt shame about being gay before. He came out at eighteen, had been openly gay his whole adult life, lived in LA around people for whom it was never an issue. But suddenly he was mainstream - and for the first time, he was encountering real prejudice and homophobia. "I started having moments of shame for being gay once I got famous," he told David. He hadn't expected that. It was disorienting. And yet it also clarified something: what he was doing wasn't just about music. "There weren't a lot of openly gay male pop artists at the time," he said. "This has a bigger ripple effect, maybe."

▶ Watch on YouTube: The AMA kiss, the backlash, and the double standard - ~38:43

She Introduced Him to Cabaret. He Played the MC on Broadway. She Sat in the Audience.

Lynn had introduced Adam to Cabaret at thirteen. The music, the world, Fosse, Liza - all of it. And years later, after American Idol, after a decade fronting Queen, after everything, Adam Lambert was cast as the MC in the Broadway production of Cabaret. When the show was open and people were reaching out to come see him, he tracked down Lynn. He got in touch. He wanted her there.

"I was really excited for her to see it," he told David. "Because I was like - this one, this is a full circle moment for us." Lynn is now a mom. They are still in touch. And with the cameras rolling, Adam turned to address her directly. He said: "I want to say thank you. Thank you for seeing me and creating that safe space and allowing me to just play. Because that's what it was. I remember we were in her studio and it was beyond just voice lessons. I would just do work for her because I just wanted to be around."

The conversation ended where it had been building all along. Seventeen years of doing interviews. Seventeen years of knowing the right thing to say. And now, with a new self-titled album on the way, Adam said what he had never let himself say out loud: "I've been doing this a long time and it's my turn. Give me my flowers." Not as arrogance. As a statement of arrival. "I know it's good. Actually, no - I don't think it's good. I know it's good."

▶ Watch on YouTube: Lynn at Cabaret, Adam's message to her - ~1:12:07

The Person Who Believed In Me

A podcast about the one person who saw something in you before you saw it in yourself.

Hosted by David Begnaud  ·  thedogoodcrew.com