'Stereophonic' is informed by an expert

Arcade Fire’s Will Butler composes for another volatile band — this time fictional.

- JESSICA GELT

WILL BUTLER appears with the cast of the “Stereophonic” touring production at Amoeba Music last week. The Tony-winning play is showing at the Pantages.

(JASON ARMOND Los Angeles Times)

The singer of the band lights up a cigarette and smoke drifts into the theater.

Ditto for the pungent aroma of marijuana when a few band members share a joint. “Stereophonic,” which is playing at the Hollywood Pantages through Jan. 2, isn’t biographical, but it sure feels close.

The authenticity springs in part from the quality of the songs being recorded by the fictional band on stage, which were written by Will Butler, a multi-instrumentalist and former member of the Grammy Award-winning band Arcade Fire.

“Stereophonic,” which holds the record for the most Tony nominations of all time for a play and won five, unfolds over the course of a single year as a rock band on the cusp of megastardom struggles to record its second album as the first reaches No. 1 on the charts. While the pressure to produce a hit builds, the band falls apart.

For proof of the formula’s resilience, look no further than the success of VHl's “Behind the Music,” which plumbed the depths of dozens of rock ‘n’ roll train wrecks.

“We really tried to just make something real,” Butler said during an interview in the small, cluttered green room at Amoeba Music before he joined the cast of the show for a brief in-store performance. “This is three hours of what it’s like to make a record.”

Is it ever. There is something inherently combustible about being in a band.

(Full disclosure: I played in a semi-popular indie band for a decade, which imploded with huge amounts of drama right on cue.