‘BUT I <i> AM </i> HIP’ : Produced by the Pet Shop Boys, Liza Minnelli’s most ambitious album may be a triumph in Europe, but American audiences just aren’t buying her hipper image

Liza Minnelli was fidgeting, her fingers nervously drumming on the table in nearly deserted dining room of the Beverly Hills hotel. She needed a cigarette.

While Minnelli was talking about risk-taking, her secretary, sitting a few tables away, raced to the rescue with a pack of cigarettes.

Minnelli’s intensity level dropped a few notches after the first puff--from fiercely intense to just plain intense.

“I feel the need to take risks now,” she explained, referring to her surprising new pop/dance album, “Results,” which was co-produced and mostly composed by Britain’s Pet Shop Boys, known for their brooding, offbeat dance music.

“I don’t know why. Maybe it’s my age (43), or those publicized changes in my life (kicking the substance-abuse habit), or maybe it’s something bizarre, like the position of the planets--who knows? I just know I was driven to do something different--like this album.”

Minnelli clenched her fists for emphasis, one of her impressive array of melodramatic gestures.

Recording “Results”--her first contemporary pop album in 12 years--was certainly a big risk for her considering that, in the pop/dance scene, Minnelli is a stranger in a strange land.

The daughter of Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli, she’s primarily known as an actress (she won an Oscar in 1972 for her performance in “Cabaret”) and an old-fashioned Broadway-style song-belter who sings standards and show tunes.

Speculating on the response to this unorthodox project, Minnelli said, in a mock-horrified tone: “People are probably saying: ‘What’s she doing singing this dance music stuff?’ But where is it written that Liza Minnelli can’t sing dance music--or anything she feels like?”

Minnelli was giving off a jumble of messages. While marvelously glib and sophisticated, there were steady flashes of her little-girl-lost persona--enhanced by those big sad eyes. It seemed obvious that the elegant superstar also has an insecure and vulnerable side.

“Insecure . . . me?,” she deadpanned when the subject of insecurity came up. “Of course I am. Everybody knows that about me. It’s part of the image.”

It’s another part of her image, however, that may work against her making it big in the youth-dominated pop scene where the Pet Shop Boys are considered hip and Minnelli is mostly regarded as an easy-listening performer--and not at all hip.

“But I am hip,” Minnelli protested with a sweeping wave of her arm vigorous enough to knock the ash off her cigarette. “I like (rapper) Heavy D and (rocker) Joan Jett. I listen to a lot of current music. What I’m about musically isn’t just what I sing with Frank (Sinatra) and Sammy (Davis Jr.)”

But will audiences accept this hipper Liza?

European audiences already have. The album and the first single, “Losing My Mind”--a Stephen Sondheim song from the musical “Follies”--were hits over there, particularly in England, where both made the Top 10.

American audiences, though, are still leery of the new Liza. Her album, released

in late September, is in Billboard’s basement, bubbling under the Top 100. “Losing My Mind” never made the pop singles chart, but was fairly popular in dance clubs, cracking the Top 25 on the club-play chart.

This is her first contemporary album since the disco-oriented “Tropical Nights” a dozen years ago.

“That one was done during the disco era,” she recalled. “I hated singing those songs. They weren’t about anything. It was a big mistake. The album died. It wasn’t promoted. I don’t even think I wanted it promoted.”

After that venture, she stuck to live, Broadway-style albums until last year, when she signed with Epic/CBS Records and decided to plunge into the pop mainstream.

“My friend (and manager) Gene Simmons (of Kiss) put the bug in my ear a few years ago about doing a pop album of contemporary songs,” she said. “The record company even liked the idea. It was just a matter of who I should work with. When the Pet Shop Boys opportunity came up, I was ecstatic.”

Neil Tennant, the bright, chatty and candid spokesman of the Pet Shop Boys, recalled his first meeting with Minnelli in England in July of last year. He was accompanied by his partner Chris Lowe. They wanted to find out, among other things, whether their personalities meshed with hers.

“We were nervous, of course, meeting this superstar,” Tennant said by phone from London. “We wanted to like her because we wanted to work with her. If she had been one of those stars with a big ego and told us, ‘I won’t do this or this or this . . . ,’ well, we couldn’t have worked with her. But we all got along right away. That was the big step. She wanted to put herself in our hands. Well, who could resist that.”

Tom Watkins, then the Pet Shop Boys’ manager but now their ex-manager, had heard about Minnelli’s plans to make a pop album and pursued the possibility of her working with the duo.

“Originally we were supposed to do just a few cuts on the album but after we met and started discussing ideas, she wanted us to do the whole album,” Tennant said.

They wrote five new songs for her and found three others--including Sondheim’s “Losing My Mind” and Tanita Tikaram’s “Twist of My Sobriety”--that could be reworked in their style.

“We wanted her to do ‘Sobriety’ as this outrageous, psychotic song, but weren’t sure she’d go for it,” Tennant said. “Everybody knows about Liza and drug rehab and all that. But she got a big kick out of doing a song that mentioned sobriety.”

One thing that intrigued the duo about the project was the lack of restrictions. “She said do whatever you want and be as avant-garde as possible,” Tennant said. “If you’re a producer and writer, that’s music to your ears.”

The more enthusiastic reception to the album in Europe came as no surprise to Tennant: “She has a different stature in Europe. She’s a colossal star, she’s treated with reverence. In America, Liza is perceived as this Vegas performer. That’s a stigma in America, but not in Europe. Europeans love the Vegas glitter and Liza projects some of that.

“In Europe this album was an event. In America, she has to struggle to get radio play. It’s very weird when you’re treated better in foreign countries than you are in your home country. That can’t make her feel very good.”

Some American critics haven’t been kind to “Results.” People magazine treated it like a bad joke, comparing it to Ethel Merman’s infamously awful disco album of 1979.

But “Results” has its supporters too.

Done in the Pet Shop Boys’ trademark moody, eerie, detached style, the album boasts songs that are very melodic and danceable. Rather than belting out songs in her usual theatrical style, Minnelli virtually becomes a Pet Shop Girl, her vocals subdued and droning--almost ethereal.

Explaining why she was so eager to work with the Pet Shop Boys, she said, “I like their offbeat style. It’s dance-music with this tough edge. I like the biting, cynical quality of their songs--and the dramatic quality of the songs too. I thought I could fit their style very easily.

“I also liked the fact that it’s so different from what I usually do. If I’m going to do a pop album I might as well go all the way--as far away from my image as possible.”

Musically, Minnelli essentially surrendered herself to the Pet Shop Boys.

“I was putty in their hands,” she said. “I trusted them not to do anything weird, like putting strange effects on my voice, or speeding me up or slowing me down or making me sound totally like someone else.

“What they did was put me in a key much lower than I’m used to singing in. They doubled my voice and put it on top of the background music. I wasn’t singing loud. It wasn’t theatrical singing. I was singing in a quiet, personal way.”

This album isn’t for Minnelli’s hard-core fans. It’s for pop fans and dance-music fans, particularly those who like the Pet Shop Boys. According to Minnelli, though, her peers like the album.

“I was touring with Frank and Sammy when I was recording the album,” she said. “I played it for them and they liked it. If other friends don’t like it, they haven’t told me.”

Minnelli said she has no plans to do a “Results” tour with the Pet Shop Boys. But is it possible that she might bow out of theatrical singing and turn dance-music diva?

“No, no . . . no!,” Minnelli shrieked emphatically, clenching one hand into a fist and reaching for another cigarette with the other. “I’m not giving up my bread-and-butter. Theatrical singing is as much part of me as breathing.”

How about her ability to relate to the younger fans--the target group for this album? No problem either, she insisted: “I’m not this old lady looking for her lost youth. The key is doing music they can relate to. If the kids like the music, they won’t care if I’m 80 years old.”

Regarding the criticism of the album, Minnelli said: “I knew when I did it that people would take some shots at me--that some would laugh and say: ‘What is she trying to prove?”’

Stopping for a moment, she struck a pose of mock-haughtiness, peering around condescendingly. She snootily announced: “Dahling, I have nothing to prove. I’m Liza. That’s enough.”

Minnelli seemed to be kidding--but maybe she wasn’t.