Diverse Interviews - Seite 2 / english

Everybody Has A Cassette
(Playing Keyboards by Spencer Benedict - December 1989)

 

For a certain kind of celebrity, fame is not only it’s own reward, it’s also its own
excuse - for all manner of otherwise inexcusable behavior. By divine right, many a superstar, with the aid of a press agent, has rewritten his autobiography to suit a particular image, and in the rewriting, managed to conveniently excises any mention of the mundane byways of their particular past. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, Barry Manilow has succeeded by bringing the old neighborhood with him, eggcream, stoop and elevated subway line, proving that although you might take the boy out of Brooklyn, a Brooklyn boy can travel anywhere.

In his travels since starting out in show-biz life in the early seventies, as Bette Midler’s accompanist, Manilow’s down to earth charm has endeared him to legions of pop fans across the world, even those who may not fully understand all the curious inflections of Brooklynese. Throughout the next ten years, top-selling singles and albums, sold-out shows and TV specials established him not only as an enduring superstar, but as a person who probably wouldn’t have to worry anymore about paying the rent. In the late eighties, Barry’s had to adapt to the realities of filling nightclubs and theaters without necessarily having a hit on the record charts.

Significant challenge though this my be, it pales beside the Brooklyn boy coming to terms with the requisite California lifestyle he’s been reluctantly forced to lead. "You can’t send out for food anymore," observes Manilow of this strange Left Coast. "I sent out for a pizza and it took three hours. Three hours! This poor pizza arrived stuck to the top of the box. It was the worst. Don’t try it."

We walked with Barry about some of the other pitfalls of the contemporary performing life.

Question: You’ve just embarked on another extensive tour. Does each tour seem to have a lifespan or graph of its own?

Barry: Every tour that I’ve been on has been different. But I can tell you, whether it’s a tour or a score or an album, somehow near the end of the run, it gets a little touchy.

Everybody is ready to go about two weeks before it’s over. If you know the end is near, you see the light at the end of the tunnel and you want to be there already. That’s when it’s very important for morale to go up, because that’s when it can get a little uncomfortable. That’s when I’ve got to throw a little party for everybody.

Question: Are there any areas of the country where the crowds have been really good in the past, so, as you’re there, you find yourself expecting to have a good night and a responsive audience?

Barry: I always think that, but I’m always wrong. I always think: Oh, Chicago is going to be better than anyplace else and Chicago is always great to me, but it’s not any better than so many other towns. What I remember is when there really was a difference, because at this point, there really isn’t a difference from town to town. One’s a little more exciting than the other, but basically they’re all really a lot of fun. Everybody knows what they’re coming for. They know the songs. Unless I’m in a terrible voice, I don’t think very much could go wrong. But in the beginning I remember Philadelphia being better than anything else, and Boston was terrible. I was unknown, I wasn’t doing very well. But Philadelphia was great, so that’s probably what I remember. I guess it depends on the kind of show you’re doing, too, you know? Mine is pretty much right down the middle. I mean, it’s not that I do a very cosmopolitan act, and so you take that cosmopolitan act and put it in the boondocks and it won’t work. That’s not true. I’m right down the center, singing the songs that everybody seems to know. The talk is very friendly. It doesn’t take a Brooklynite to relate to what I’m saying. We’ve created this thing that will work anywhere, I think.

Question: In that case, how can you tell if you’ve had a good night or a bad night?

Barry: I can tell. I can compare. For someone in the audience, who’s seen the show once, you can’t compare. I compare the night before, the year before, the month before. The people with me all compare it. And certainly, my job as a performer onstage is to drive a truck. I’ve got to know when to put the brakes on, or when - it’s never gotten to this - something’s going wrong. The only thing that I’d change on a given night is that if something was going so right, I would add songs. I’ve done that. I’ve tested out songs to a very, very, very friendly audience. I say, "You want to hear something that we’re working on?" Surprisingly, the nights that I think I’m least energetic and at my low ebb, I walk out onstage and sometimes they’re magic nights, because the audience is so great.

Question: Do you have a preference for the ideal size venue that you’d like to play?

Barry: I get used to every place I play. The first time I played a 15.000 seater, it sounded like something that I didn’t want to do, because I had based my act on being intimate, one-to-one, and after I got used to that, and figured out how to do it, it was very comfortable. The first time I played in the round seemed like it was going to be just awful, but now that I’m used to it, it’s not bad. One time in Chicago I just jumped into a little nightclub; we just appeared, threw open the marquee the day of the show, and there were only 200 - 300 people in the room, and it was great. We charged everybody five dollars to get in. I had a little set, but it was like free-for-all. I ad-libbed. I did some songs I hadn’t done in years. I did it at the Bottom Line in New York one time and I did in L.A. at the Roxy.

Question: Audiences have always liked you more than critics. Do you think critics are always going to pan your shows?

Barry: No matter what I do. And there’s nothing I can do about it. I wouldn’t change what I do. I love what I do. I love what surrounds me; I love the people that I work with and the audiences love it, too, so there’s nothing I would change. It’s just that it’s annoying knowing that my cousin and my Aunt Rose are reading these bad reviews, in New York at least.

Question: You’ve mentioned how you were really not interested in rock’n roll when you were growing up.

Barry: Well, I used to do my homework to Murray the K. But, in general, I must say that I was more into jazz than rock’n roll. I was more into showtunes. I was more into Julius Monk, nightclubs like the Upstairs at the Downstairs, even though that was before my time. But I was more into looking that kind of music up. I was, and still am, a musical snob. I thought the music I was into was sort of ’in’ and ’hip’ for a certain crowd.

Question: Nichols & May for an opening act?

Barry: Yeah. That’s before me, too, but that was the kind of thing - because I was accompanying people. I was in show business of rock’n roll or the pop music business. I was a piano player. I was an accompanist for girls and boys who would sing on the legitimate stage, so I was involved in that crowd, the theater crowd, the more legit crowd, and when I went on the road myself, with this girl singer, we did more legit kind of singing, even though it was pop music. It was nowhere near rock or what was happening then. There was a sort of legitimacy to it.

Question: One of the amazing things about Bette Midler’s debut album was her great choice of material.

Barry: Well, you see, Bette was always a different kind of performer. She injects so much of herself into whatever she does that it’s always original, and that’s the uniqueness of a Bette Midler - she may as well have written all the material she sings, because she puts so much of herself into it. The danger is becoming a singer of other people’s songs is if you wind up just being a vehicle, and that’s why a lot of pop singers of the 50‘s and 60‘s are forgotten, because the style changed and bye-bye. That was it. They weren’t strong enough personalities to live through the style changing. Bette will always be there no matter what she sings. She puts herself into it, and that’s what sells. Hopefully, that’s what I’m doing, too.

Question: In that context, what prompted you to record "Memory" at the same time Barbra Streisand did? Was there an element of competition?

Barry: I never approached it as a competition. Never. It was too different. The only hesitation I had was whether I could take this legitimate song and turn it into a pop record. No one had seemed to be able to do it and I had to do some surgery on the thing. I had to do some arranging. Thank goodness I had all these years of arranging behind me so I could sit and pull the thing apart and put together a pop version of the song, because the reason she didn’t have a hit on it wasn’t because it wasn’t a good song. It was because she stayed very close to the original showtune version of it, and that kind of song can’t get arrested on pop radio. You’re in competition with some very, very aggressive rock’n rollers. Even my version of "Memory", as pop and passionate as it was, had some trouble competing with this stuff, and I was very happy to see where it wound up.

Question: I know you’ve been considering writing a Broadway musical off and on for years.

Barry: I am dabbling in it. I have a couple of ideas that I’d like to see brought to fruition on the Broadway stage, and I’m working with various people on it. It’s just a big step to do a legitimate Broadway show. It’s an enormous undertaking. So, I mean, who knows? Would I commit to a year on Broadway in a great property? I would do it if it was really just irresistible. I would love to do that. I don’t think there’s been any American pop music on Broadway in a long time, except for Rupert Holmes. I think people like me, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, and Neil Diamond writing for Broadway would be just great, but it’s so expensive. It’s expensive it’s dangerous and it’s a different world than we’re used to. It’s not like pop music at all. It’s another field. It’s a whole other craft and you’ve got to learn it. You just can’t go into it thinking that it’s another record.

Question: Are you able to walk the street without causing a commotion?

Barry: Oh yeah. I cause a commotion periodically, but not all the time. I put a little funny hat on, you know, and I can walk all the way up and down Madison Avenue and go shopping. Maybe some cab drivers will yell out their windows. The greatest think is when the garbage men hang off the trucks and say, "Yo, Barry!" and do the thumbs up sign. It’s one thing when the girls scream, but I’m telling you, when the garbage men lean out of their trucks, that’s when you know you’ve made it.

Question: Are people always coming up to you to give you a song?

Barry: Everybody has a cassette. People stop me when I’m driving in the car. I was driving home once, and there was this guy next to me in a car, waving and tapping on his window, and I usually wave back. This guy rolled his window down and said, "I know Artie Butler" (who’s an arranger of mine), and I said, "Good." He said, "My name is so-and-so and I’ve got a song." I said, "Huh? I don’t understand." We’re both at a red light and he jumped out of his car and pulled out a cassette and he gave it to me and he said, "You’ve got to listen to this, I know it’s gonna be a hit," and the light changed and everybody’s honking and everything, and we both pulled away.

Question: Was it a hit?

Barry: No.

Question: Do you have many songs waiting around for you to put on albums?

Barry: I write between 30 - 40 songs an album. I go in with a stack of songs and one’s better than the other. So I have a trunk full of stuff that I think is quality work that never made it on any of my albums. And you’ll probably never hear them, because I don’t go back to them. Once they don’t make it on the most recent album, I never go back.

Question: Did you think "Mandy" had a chance when you first put it out?

Barry: No. It didn’t sound like anything special to me. I was much too close to it, and it also came out at a time when disco was just beginning to burst upon the scene. "Kung Fu Fighting" was really big and "Disco Duck". That was my competition and "Mandy" was just sort of a pretty, legitimate ballad - nothing gimmicky about it. It was a straight ballad and a beautiful song, so I didn’t think there was any hope for it. Nobody was more surprised than I was when it became a hit. It took off within a matter of weeks.

Question: Is there anything that achieving success has enabled you to do that you may have thought you always wanted to do when you were growing up in Brooklyn?

Barry: Well, not having to struggle for the rent is really something you strive for. I mean, I’ve spent so many years working for the rent that the first time I could relax, that was a major accomplishment. Not that the pressure ever stop, because whoever thought that I’d be living in a house? Who’d have thought that I’d be living in a house and have a car? Whoever thought I’d be living in a house and have a car and have an office? You see, the bigger you get, the more money you spend. But at least success enables you to stop thinking about living for the rent. I don’t come from the kind of background that says I want to go after the luxuries. I’m just becoming aware of them. They’re nice, but I never went after that kind of thing and if they took that part of it away, I don’t think I’d miss it. Yeah, there’s a Rolls Royce. That’s a beautiful car, you know, but I don’t need it. I don’t care about material things as much as I hear other people care about them. Believe me, I live really well these days, you know, but if I don’t live real well, Uncle Sam gets it back. I always think of it this way: somebody’s going to get this kind of success - it may as well be me. I sat there in my dressing room - I think it was at the Circle Star Theater. People were screaming, trying to get in. I said, "What’s happening?" And I realized that I’d made it. I said, "Well, someone has to sit here in this dressing room, with people screaming and shows selling out. It may as well be me. Why not? Why don’t I just accept it and enjoy it?"

Question: How do you deal with it when your records don’t hit the top forty?

Barry: I remember Clive Davis saying to me in the early 80‘s that from now on it’s going to be a rollercoaster for me. I would panic every time a record didn’t go this way or that way, and he said, "You’ve got to stop it. You’ve got to learn how to deal with it, because from now on, it’s going to be up and down, and you can’t always be the new kid in town." It’s difficult to deal with. It’s not impossible. It’s always there, so I try not to think about it too much, except when a brand new record comes out. Maybe I care too much; maybe I’m more concerned, but I phone the radio people. I phone the people at the record company. I say, "Well, how’s it doing?" I’m not above calling them all at home and saying, "How’s it going? What’s going on?"

I haven’t become blasé. The moment I get blasé, it’ll all fall apart.