Journale 3

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The Express On Sunday Magazine 1994/1995
Crooning glory Barry Manilow is a true troubabour - on the road year after year giving his devoted fans exactly what they want: the finest schmaltz money can buy Words: Martyn Palmer Photographs: Dan Borris Just a few weeks ago, Barry Manilow was asked to pop along to the prestigious Smithsonian Institute in Washington and donate one of his tour shirts to reside for posterity in the museum. There, for the millions who visit each year, a gaudy white, silver-tassled number - which the singer-songwriter himself describes as "kind of goofy" - will be on display alongside such historic artefacts as the Apollo 11 command module and great works of art by Whistler and Rodin. It is, whichever way you want to look at it, quite an honour, one to rank with the numerours platinium and gold discs, the Grammy, Tony and Emmy awards Manilow has received. But it's to his credit that Manilow can see the funny side of what must be one of the more bizarre acco- lades to be bestowed on him. "To be honest, I was quite glad to get rid of that shirt,"he laughs."It got me into quite a lot of trouble because people thought I was serious when I was wearing it. I did it for a laugh, you know. But they asked me to donate it and I guess that's kind of cool." It is also recognition of just how much Barry Manilow has become - so to speak - part of the fabric of American popular culture. Love him or loathe him - and there will be plenty of British fans attending his 12-date nationwide tour beginning here on 13 January - you just can't ignore him. He has recorded 29 albums and sold over 58 million records.
He has written film scores and musicals - Copacabana was a sell-out West End hit and his new musical "Harmony" opens on Broadway later this year - and at 51 he keeps on going, driven, he claims, to such an extent that he finds it hard to stop. "The ideas wake me up in the middle of the night. I try to relax and I end up going to the piano or the computer to get things down. I'm telling myself now that I'll take time off after the British tour and go and sit in the sun and read a book for a week. But I'll probably get bored after about four hours." To his fans Barry Manilow can do no wrong. To his detractors, well... it became fashionable, especially in the Seventies and Eighties, to knock him, to poke fun and dismiss him as bland and mainstream. But he, of course, has had the last laugh. While other careers have dwindled, Manilow has stayed right at the top. And when you meet him, whether it's backstage after a show or relaxing in a London hotel, it's hard not to be won over by him and, in particular, by his endearing sense of irony. The message you get, loud and clear, is that he takes the music, and indeed the fans who follow his every move, very seriously, but that the rest of it - the showbiz nonsense and the crazy Tinseltown excesses - is not real life. "I have a pretty dull and ordinary life compared with most celebrities, so there isn't a lot to investigate about me unless people want to look in my underwear - and who would want to do that? I see celebrities on American TV on Entertainment Tonight, and read about them in USA Today, and they always seem to be going to premieres, jetting around the world to one party or another, and I'm not like that. I've never been part of the big cliques in Hollywood, I've never been part of the drugs scene, I've never done the parties. It's not because I'm a snob, it's just that it's never really interested me. I'd rather have a quiet life. If other people want to do those other things, well... good for them. But I don't." Instead, he lives in Los Angeles, surrounded by the trappings of success and, more importantly according to Manilow, a recording studio full of instruments so that he can works at home. His long-therm partner is production designer Linda Allen. They have never married and Manilow says that is not likely to change in the future. There are long periods of separation - Linda is often away working on films - but the relationship has its own momentum and it works. "I have time off and I get home and Linda and I spend time together. Then I'm off again, on the road or working on a musical, but it's become a bearable way of doing it. Linda doesn't come away with me very often because having family on the road with you doesn't suit me. It's like having your family go to the office with you - you end up dividing your attention and it causes problems, so we don't do that. It's a job and that's the way it should be. "We've created the kind of relationship that works for us. We're like two peas in a pod and we're very comfortable. She really is the light of my life. We're not committed to each other by a marriage certificate but we are committed in our own weird and wacky way." Manilow himself is the product of a broken home. His parents separated when he was tiny and he was raised by his late mother Edna. Seeing bad marriages at close range has left him with a less than rose-tinted view of the hallowed institution. He was married once, when he was 21, to a childhood sweetheart. But it didn't last much more than a year. "The day we married I remember feeling very, very uncomfortable. I had a sense of foreboding. It wasn't her, it wasn't the marriage as such, it was the past. I grew up around bad marriages. "There weren't any good role models for me. I didn't have one that I could point to and say, 'that's what I want'. I was raised around marriages that were unhappy - my mother, my grandparents, my relatives. I don't remember one marriage that was centred around love. The partners were married because they had to be and they were always arguing. And I guess with all that, my own marriage was inevitably going to fail. She was a sweet girl and we were kind of in love but it was like being forced to get married instead of living together. It was wrong and I blew it. I just had to get out because I felt like I was suffocating." His one regret is that he has never become a father and he doubts now that it will ever happen. "I still think about it sometimes. I say to myself, do I really want to bring a kid into this world? It's a big responsibility and I don't know whether I could have handled it because I am so committed to this career of mine. There were a couple of years when I really did think about it but it's easing off a little now." He has been financially secure for years but admits that he still suffers from a terrible fear of going broke, a deep-rooted insecurity that dates back to his poor beginnings in a tough part of Brooklyn and the time when, after several hits, he was told that he was on the verge of bankruptcy. "It's a negative thing and I fight it all the time. And in a way it doesn't matter if you do go broke, not in itself. It's what it represents - that feeling of suddenly having nothing again and being helpless. It represents that past life." Manilow speaks from bitter personal experience. His career really started on the day he decided to quit his first job, working in the CBS mailroom, and follow his dream of becoming a musican. But in the early days it was a hand-to-mouth existence. It was meeting the then relatively unknow Bette Midler in 1972 that set him on the road to stardom. They toured in Manilow producing her Grammy award-winning debut album "The Divine Miss M" and its platinum-selling follow-up. Barry himself began performing during Midler's concerts and was extremely well received.
By 1975 he had his own platinum-selling album and began an incredible run of hit singles like "I Write The Songs," "Mandy," "Could It Be Magic," "Weekend In New England" and "Looks Like We Made It." Ten years into his career, he should have had the satisfaction of a bank balance boasting several million. Instead he was virtually broke. "It was a horrible experience. I'd really made a bundle in those 10 years and I'd had all those hits. It had been the most amazing time for me and then I was told that I had just $ 11,000 in the bank. And that was after selling millions of records. It was bad business advice, nothing more than that."   "I was making this money and I knew it had to be invested and protected but I had no experience of anything like that. I really didn't have a clue. So I hired people that I trusted and I thought they were good at what they did. But you know I was licky. Ten years in this business is a long time and more than a lot of people get, and I was lucky that I could start again." If nothing had prepared him for the financial side of success, he is equally candid about how the effects of sudden mass adulation hit him for six. "It's the same with celebrity, popularity, stardom... whatever you want to call it. There's no training for what happens to you. The first thing you do when it happens is become an asshole. You spend the first few years of your popularity being an asshole and if you're lucky enough and don't do drugs and drink and lose all your friends in the process and wind up lonely and surrounded by sycophants, then you wake up one morning and say 'what happened to me, where did I go?'. And you get yourself back. If you're not lucky, then you end up in a very sad situation and a lot of people in this business do that, believe me."   "Actually, my asshole period didn't last too long, but I certainly did make a lot of enemies and I lost a lot of friends and I was very unhappy. It was the best and the worst of times." "I do think I became very difficult at that time. I look back on it now and I forgive myself because, you know, it was fear and it was a very, very out-of-control life. I can understand that now and understand how I behaved like that. And if you do manage to come through then you do change - for the better." "In my experience, success is a lot harder to handle than failure, and I've had both. Success is another batch of problems to deal with and if you don't make it through the hurricane of success, you are lost forever. At least if you are still trying to succeed then you have something to strive for, there's a goal. But if you get lost in success then it doesn't seem like there's anywhere to go." Manilow feels he has tamed those particular demons now and is enjoying one of the most rewarding times of his life. He feels at ease, happy and, as ever, believes that he has plenty still to achieve. He has been touring, on and off, for five months and will arrive in Britain - a special place for him - on the last leg. In the early days when he came here he would have to employ bodygards to sit outside his hotel room and keep overzealous fans at bay. Things are a little calmer now - at least outside the concert halls. Inside, they still go nuts. "The audience keeps me going, and audiences in the UK have always been really special. I love the UK. I get swept away by the euphoria and it makes it all wortwhile, all the little difficulties, room-service food, shaving in cold water in the homesick, all of that just disappears. That's why you do it."   "If you could stand where I stand and look out on those people and see them having a great time, you'd know why I want to carry on - it's like a revival meeting or something. I mean it's just wild and I love it."
Hey Mandy, Mr. Manilow can't smile without you so could it be magic that you'll be somewhere in the night where you can stay and hear the old songs? So let's hang on as he thinks you're looking hot tonight!
"They like me because I sing the truth to the m"... Barry Manilow among the faithful
REACHING FOR THE STAR: Fans linked by love of Barry.
Above: Fans waiting for the show to begin. Not all were middle-aged and some /left) were jokers. Others wouldn't admit to being fans. Estate agent Lee Stuart said: 'I thought it was, a tropical fish convention.' And Colin Stimpson, of Catford, London said he was there 'just to please the wife.' He added: 'I don't like Barry Manilow at all really.' But the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough (right) seemed happy enough.
MANILOW SPELL OF MAGIC FOR 40,000 by Patrick Hill Manilow magic was in the air... for groupie grans and screaming school- girls. And celebrities including pop star Boy George and George Best's estranged wife Angie were in the 40.000 crowd for superstar Barry's sell-out concert. Fans flocked from all corners of Britain to pay homage to the American idol in the grounds of stately Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxforshire. Many of the pilgrims had travelled overnight and walked miles from jammed car parks for the £15-a-ticket open air show. Even the Duke of Marlborough, who lives at Blenheim - Winston Churchill's ancestral home - was there to welcome Barry. Despite the huge weekend crowd and the problems associated with holding the concert at one of Britain's most historic spots, police reported no trouble. Melt And the fans went away happy as Manilow climaxed the 2,5-hour show with a candlelit rendition of "We'll Meet Again." Housewife Marion Smith. 54, paid £30 to travel from Carlisle for a glimpse of her idol. She said: "His appeal has got nothing to do with his looks. It's just that he comes over so sincere and his songs ring so true to life that he can melt any woman's heart."
There are two kinds of people. Those who think Barry Manilow is the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel and those who, when his name is mentioned, contort their features into a pained mask. Why is it that a gauche, lanky and largely inoffensive man should cause such extreme reactions when all he does is play the piano and sing songs about love? Any artist who can fill the grounds of Blenheim Palace for a concert (which he will on 27 August) and win so many awards that he needs a room, not a mantelpiece, to store them, will obviously attract critical attention, but the campaign against Manilow has been particulary unrelenting. It is true that, in the beginning, he leapt about the stage with all the nervy, forced jollity of a holiday camp cheerleader on a week's trial. It is also true that he is an uneasy, wary interviewee and not the best spokes- man in his own defence. "A lot of reviewers get my goat when they say I don't sing like Caruso. Well, I know that. That's not the point!" What is the point, Barry? "I love the music and the job. I have favourites that never fail to affect me all the time. I like to feel I'm reaching every person there because I believe it just like they do." If what he says is true, it confirms the worst fears of the Manilow 'knockers' who feel that writing songs about love is not a proper job for a grown man - yet few will criticise Paul McCartney on the same grounds. McCartney, of course, started young, proved he could rock'n' roll and changed the world. What's more, he's now a seasoned family man with a strong image. Manilow is a loner, who appeared on the British music scene eight years ago with the rather damply-titled "Mandy", which included lines like 'you came and you gave without taking'. Sounding rather like a charty jumble sale, it continued, 'you kissed me and stopped me from shaking'. Fuel to the fires of those who think it unlikely, from his songs, that Manilow would rescue maidens from burning buildings or even refuse to buy brushes at the door, for fear of offending anyone. Manilow sings music for suburbia - good mannered and faintly adolescent. He knows his market-place is romance, with woman his main audience, and he is unlikely to turn around and announce that it bores him to tears because behind the ballads is the sharp business mind of a workaholic. Doubtless there are scores of singer-songwriters with finely-chiselled profiles strumming out haunting melodies in garrets and moaning in perfect baritones: 'What's Barry Manilow got that I haven't?' The answer is probably nothing. There is absolutely no reason why he should have succeeded except that he tried harder than anyone else. Whenever Barry Manilow appears on stage, it is for at least two hours of nonstop music. There are no short cuts, long intervals, late appearances or abrupt departures. He is a professional showman, so that even sceptics emerge admitting: 'Well, at least he gives value for money.' Whether you believe he's a myth on magic, it seems he's here to stay.