Where have all the good men gone

And where are all the gods?

Where’s the street-wise Hercules

To fight the rising odds?

Isn’t there a white knight upon a fiery steed?

Late at night I toss and turn and dream of what I need

When comedian Sandra Bernhard opens her performance with a rock-fueled rendition of Bonnie Tyler’s 1984 anthem “Holding Out for a Hero,” it’s hard to know what to think. With its pompous, melodramatic lyrics, the “Footloose”-soundtrack ditty seems at first to be just a total eclipse of good taste. Mere irony of a look-how-bad-this-is nature.

But somehow it all relates in a meaningful way to Bernhard’s latest show “Hero Worship,” an evening of two-thirds comedy and one-third concert. The lithe, mouthy entertainer uses the tune as an apt segue into scathing political/social commentary that primarily focuses on life after 9-11.

“I just have an uncanny ability for talking about topics and subjects that most people would turn into a disaster,” Bernhard said. “But I can do it with a sense of irony and intelligence. You never get a collective ‘Whoa’ from my work. People aren’t like, ‘Oh, that’s gross’ or ‘Oh, that’s awful’ or ‘Oh, how dare you.’ You know what I mean? It’s smart, it’s multilayered, it’s thoughtful, it’s compassionate and it’s never done for a cheap shot.”

With a five-piece band in tow, the 46-year-old Bernhard insists she’s not trying to emulate Bruce Willis or Kevin Bacon by using fame to prop up a career in music. For the hard-to-define entertainer, it’s all part of her ever-evolving persona.

“I’ve been doing my live shows with some kind of music for at least 20 years, whether it was just a keyboard player or guitar player,” said Bernhard, who hauls her aggressive act Sunday to Lawrence. “When I can bring a band, I bring a band. The show and the band I have are definitely worthy of the extra expenditure.”

Armed with original compositions and eccentric covers like “To Sir With Love” and the aforementioned “Holding Out for a Hero” (“By what’s her name,” she flailed. “Bonnie something?”), it’s easy to picture the notoriously surly Bernhard embracing the rock star lifestyle. But apparently the comedian avoids the all-night parties and illicit hijinks evocative of a Mtley Crüe tour, instead approaching the road the same way as her stand-up outings of the past 25 years.

“I’m a very ‘do my show, go back to the hotel, watch a little TV, got to sleep’ kind of person,” she said during a recent phone interview from her home in New York. “It’s just too hard; I’m up there by myself. I have a band, but they’re not really participating in the sense of keeping the audience engaged. It’s my gig. I can’t fall back on the typical blunders that a rock band can pull off.”

Moment of truth

Since coming to the public’s attention in the late ’70s as a member of “The Richard Pryor Show,” Bernhard’s career has been a continuous work in progress. She really evinced her star potential in 1983 when appearing opposite Robert De Niro in director Martin Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy.” Playing an unbalanced fan who helps kidnap a famous talk show host, the role won her a Best Supporting Actress award from the National Society of Film Critics.

“Unfortunately, the film didn’t do well at the box office, so (the studio) didn’t mount a campaign. I think if it would’ve been now I would’ve been up for an Academy Award. But it didn’t happen then,” she remembered, though still referring to the Oscars as “the most tawdry, crappy event of the year.”

She did nab a Grammy (Best Comedy Record) for her 1988 solo act “Without You I’m Nothing.” More albums, movies and a trio of books followed. A stint as the lone comedian on the Lilith Fair kept her in the public’s eye, as did a recurring role on “Roseanne” and her constant TV appearances (around 30) needling host David Letterman. Then there was all that club-hopping with Madonna.

After another phone call momentarily pulls her away from the interview, Bernhard is asked if that was the Material Girl.

“No, that was my baby sitter,” she replied. “Madonna doesn’t call me. We don’t speak. We haven’t been friends for 10 years. She had other fish to fry. She’s got her own thing going on. She’s over in London doing theatre and working on her accent.”

All of Bernhard’s past accomplishments add up to one thing: diversity.

“I consider myself a little more than a comedian,” she said. “Because a comedian to me is someone who schlumps around and sells some jokes … I am what I want to be. I’m a performer, a writer, an actress, a creative person. I’m lucky enough to get to do my own work and talk about things that are important.”

One constant thread to her work is her dedication to radiating truth  the ability to strip the Hollywood sheen from her character while still basking in the limelight. That inner concept was fostered by a key piece of advice early in her career.

“My friend Paul Mooney  he’s a writer who’s written for Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy  he kind of discovered me. He said to shed my skin every night I was onstage. Just be absolutely real and go for broke,” she recalled. “So I keep it pretty real. The most important thing is that you’re in life, you’re out there living it, you’re experiencing things. You’re not sending your minions out to the drug store. I’m out there buying groceries like everybody else.

“I can’t afford to travel with a posse. The band is enough of a posse.”

However, this reverence of the authentic doesn’t apply to every aspect of the entertainment world.

“Reality TV is my biggest disgust,” she confessed. “It just draws upon nothing. It takes no preparation. It doesn’t draw on talent or intelligence or people that have worked for their craft. What’s real about some bachelor who is denigrating 20 women?”

Not growing up

Aside from an appearance in the Ben Stiller comedy “Zoolander” last year, things have been comparably quiet for Bernhard prior to her “Hero Worship” excursion. Her A&E show “The Sandra Bernhard Experience” didn’t cause much of a stir, nor did roles in go-nowhere movies such as “Dinner Rush” and “Expose.”

Lately, much of her time has been devoted to her nearly 4-year-old daughter Cicely. And when she starts to talk about the child, her sardonic edge briefly evaporates. But only briefly. Bernhard isn’t likely to go soft any time soon.

“Obviously, being 46 and being in the entertainment business makes me really 26,” she said. “You just never change emotionally. You’re tapped into that youthful spring of inspiration. I’ve still got the vibe of somebody who is in their 20s. That’s how I feel internally, and certainly physically I’m still rocking.”