When Peter Himmelman took the stage at a concert in central Russia, he started speaking to the audience. Through a translator, he told the crowd that he had visited the Kremlin and spoke with Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin, he said, had agreed that Himmelman and the band could hold their own version of American Bandstand. At that, he invited the crowd on stage.

Of course, Peter Himmelman never spoke with Boris Yeltsin. He made the whole thing up so these people could have a good time.

Making people feel good comes very easy to Peter. He's been known to invite an entire balcony of fans to join him on stage -- just so they could get a closer seat. During another concert, Peter was so hungry, what did he do? Bring the entire audience to a 24-hour diner across the street from the venue. At yet another show, Peter was hit with a terrible case of the runs. He took a break, and ordered a stagehand to run up the street to get him Kaopectate. Minutes later, Peter was on stage with a high-ball glass filled to the brim with the white, creamy potion and announced to the crowd, "There's nothing like a White Russian."

As he put it, nothing he does on stage is personal. Not personal in the way he could offend someone, but personal in that he can sing about some of the most emotionally powerful moments of his life and feel nothing. "It's impersonal. Although the songs are intimate, I'm still portraying them," Peter said with a serious tone. "It's a portrayal. I am an actor and it's only intimate to a point."

Intimacy, however, is something that shines through in Peter's music. It's passionate and moving. When Peter sings, his voice is sometimes rough and heavy as if he's just smoked a pack of cigarettes. Other times, his chords reach harmonious heights while blending with pure rock rhythms. Occasionally, Peter will perform alone and acoustic. He's joined only by his guitar and grand piano, which sits almost opaqued on stage until Peter's fingers hit the keys. He is a singer/songwriter on par with people like James Taylor and Jackson Browne. Sometimes he rocks. Other times his music can hit a chord and make you want to weep.

In the early '80s, Peter fronted a Minneapolis-based, new wave band called Sussman Lawrence. Like any young band, Sussman Lawrence would gig whenever they'd get a chance. One of these opportunities brought them to Amery, Wis., a small town just east of the Mississippi. Though only an hour away from Minnesota's twin cities, Peter described the setting as "a hick bar in a hick town." The night Sussman Lawrence played that bar fell in the middle of a sad point in Peter's life.

When Peter was 21, his father was dying of cancer. He wanted to be a famous rock star, but his emotions and the lack of enthusiasm from the audience in Amery kept him from being so. "I wanted to be a supersonic superstar and one was getting into it," Peter said. "For the encore, I stripped totally nude -- sack and hairy leg nude, not attractive at all. The band was dying but they knew I was freaked out." At that point, Peter grabbed the mic and stood in the middle of the stage.

In a deep, prosaic voice, Peter began asking the audience what they thought they were doing with their lives. He began to ridicule a man close to the stage about how pathetic he looked drinking his beer and trying to get in bed with the woman next to him. At this point, Peter and the rest of Sussman Lawrence had to get out of the bar before the locals mauled them. "The bar owner not only wanted to have me arrested, he wanted to kill me. We had to run out of there." So with his sack hanging low, Peter and his hairy legs flew out of the bar and out of Amery forever. That attitude, his spontaneous, emotionally-laden way of entertaining fans, however, has not only stayed, it's gotten better.

Over the years, Peter has become a learned man. His brain works in different ways than other people's. You can see his wheels turning while he puts a philosophical spin on his speech. Much of this has come from his connection to Judaism. "You look like a religious man. He looks like a religious man. What does that mean 'I'm a religious man?" Peter asks during the interview. "At any given moment, you're either focusing on reality or distortion. Reality is like selfless, giving and love, and things that really make a difference. Things that transcend time; things that we admire in people -- virtures. On the other side is distortion."

To Peter, becoming distorted means getting wrapped up in himself. Life becomes twisted to the point that distortion makes people think they are the highest being in their world. Distortion, he explains, makes you feel that you're responsible for your own existence. "Distortion lies in the fact that you relinquish any control on humility and that becomes the distortion," Peter said. "With reality, there's definitely a force that is in control -- and we're being willed into existence by that force." Under Judaism, life needs to be synthesized, Peter explained. The spiritual world must be in sync with the material. And although Himmelman wears a yarmulke (a Jewish skull cap) under a hat or bandanna during each performance and even though he wears Tzitzis (a religious shirt that signifies the 613 mitzvot, or Jewish deeds) under his shirt, to him, those things don't define him as a Jew.

"Does this religious garb make me better than I was last week?" Peter asked in a gruff tone. "It's always a question of you against you, not me against me. Judaism offers the idea that things have to be synthesized. At any given time, I am fluctuating between the two sides." Peter wears the "religious garb" and goes to synagogue and even travels to visit close, learned Jewish friends in Brooklyn and Israel because he strives to feel religion. "It's everything. It completely influences what I do," he said.

Even while he is a religious man and a "rock star," Peter Himmelman deals with every day problems like everyone else. He gets angry, frustrated and tense. He has anxiety in his life, but without it, he might not write the music that has been attracting fans across the Unites States for the last 15 years. Peter takes his everyday experiences and puts them to music. One song, "Woman with the Strength of 10,000 Men," recounts one of those experiences.

When Peter was younger he was brought to meet this woman named Suzanne. When Peter walked into the room, he saw her lying on a table, hooked up to all sorts of machines. She couldn't move, and could only speak by moving her eyebrow, which was connected to a computer screen. Suzanne had Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, an illness better known as Lou Gehrig's disease, and it kills you slowly by eating away at your muscles. Suzanne has since died, but her legacy lives on through Peter's words. Those words, in turn, continue to touch lives each time someone new hears them, which is what Peter Himmelman strives for.

"I wrote the song "Woman With the Strength of 10,000 Men" thinking about all the things I worry about and how those things are dashed by perspective," Peter said. "When I saw her (Suzanne), I sat in awe of the strength of this other person." This experience caused Peter's distortion to become reality again. Now, when he writes music, he puts that experience of reality into his words and he gets people to relate to him. The strange thing about that, however, is when people tell Peter how they've been moved by a song, he doesn't always connect with them. "I don't feel I had that much to do with that," he said. "If a song was just written, they (other people's comments) may move me more. If it's an old song, I feel so removed from the guy who wrote it. The song was given to me anyway, so I don't have that much to do with it."

Peter Himmelman is a man on the go. His mind is constantly moving and his music is in a state of flux. He calls his musical career a constant process. "You make a discovery and then expand on it," he said. "Then you become complacent rehashing the fire of that original discovery. Until you make a new discovery, you run the risk of becoming bored again."

Someone once said that you never know what to expect from a Peter Himmelman show. After learning what his own life is like, this statement is not so surprising. The reason you can never expect anything from a Himmelman show is that you can never expect anything from Peter himself. And that's why people continue to come out and listen to his music. Like his shows, his life, and in turn the lives of those who he affects, are all a surprise. And that, to Peter Himmelman, is how life should be lived.

At the end of this interview, Peter expressed thanks for allowing him to share his time. And then, without even a thought, turned into the surprising, spontaneous man he portrays and bid adieu with the following phrase:

"I am going to urinate now."

ARI BENDERSKY