Journale 6

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TV-TIMES July, 1984

While It is recklessly premature to cry, "Whateever happened to Barry Manilow?", it has been more than six months since the Brooklyn-born balladeer last crooned up the charts with the song "Read 'Em and Weep" - a title more suited to a firm of solicitors than a love song.

But don't get the idea that he has spent the time lolling by his pool, gargling with champagne and counting his music awards. Minutes before he flew to London to appear in ITV's Aspel & Company this week, he completed a month-long project producing an album for Dionne Warwick. 'Working with Dionne is one of the easiest jobs I have ever done,' says Manilow. 'This is the second album I have produced for her, and we're friends, we have a rapport.'

Although he's fit and suntanned now, at the beginning of the year Manilow found his stamina at a low ebb. 'I spent most of last year on a world tour. When it was over I was sick, exhausted and bored with the music business,' he explains.

'I took refuge in Palm Springs, pulled the cord out of the phone, cancelled my magazine subscriptions and sort of contemplated my navel.'

But in no time at all, Manilow found that he missed making music. ' I decided that I couldn't compete with Duran Duran and Culture Club, but I was going to do something that I always wanted to do. I had had a long-term ambition to make an album of jazz music, so I did something for pure joy: I created a "love-child" that has drastically changed my life.'

Translated from superstar lingo, that means he has recorded an LP that he really quite likes, and Manilow observers will say that the change of direction is timely: many critics have been implying that Manilow albums to date could collectively be titled Same Again, Please.

'This is different,' Manilow claims. 'I wrote all the music really for my own pleasure. I hadn't intended to record it, but everyone who heard it thought it was so fantastic that I changed my mind. The songs are saloon tunes, blues songs, slow and sophisticated. The kind you'll hear in a steamy, basement, up-town nightclub in the small hours. The whole feel of the album is kind of back to the roots. 'I started by singing in sleazy bars and I wanted to recapture that feeling.'

Appropriately title 2 am, Paradise Cafe, the songs share the timeless quality of the jazz era, a mood which is emphasised when Manilow sings with two of the greatest vocal stylists in the business; he performs Big City Blues with Mel Torme and harmonises with Sarah Vaughan on a track called "Blue."

'It sends shivers down my spine when I think that I worked with those legends and musicans such as Gerry Mulligan, who also appears on the album.'

One side of Manilow that has surprised even himself is that he has recently turned into a computer enthusiast.

'I studied all about computers before I bought one. Now I've got my office staff linked to the computer and it's all very businesslike.'

But writing songs by computer is unlikely to appeal to the romantic Manilow. His new technology will probably be used to store the diaries that Barry Manilow has written daily since his first concert appearance, and perhaps to juggle dates for his next world tour, tentatively planned to start this September.
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1985
Barry and Dionne Warwick have got together once more for her latest album, "Without your Love", which is due for release on 1 Februrary, 1985, under catalogue number 206571. We're sure you'll all agree that the last album that Barry and Dionne worked on together was something very special, and we know that the next one will be of the same standard. Barry did in fact include one of the tracks from the album on his visit shows, a beautiful song called "Run to Me". "Without your Love" is bound to be another great classic to add to our growing record collections.
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The Anchorage Times, November 1985
Los Angeles - Barry Manilow's "Copacabana" may be the first - ever made for TV - musical. How did it happen?

Manilow says he just woke up one morning on tour and said, "Why not?" Manilow wrote 10 new songs for the film, which brings to life Tony, Lola and Rico from the famous song "Copacabana," which Manilow wrote in 1978.

"I had a deal with CBS for four one-hour variety shows and I didn't know what I wanted to do," he said. "Then I had this idea to do 'Copacabana' as a movie. It would be a movie with all the elements of a varity show. I think that's what they got excited about."

Manilow took time from his concert tour to make his acting debut as Tony. The two-hour movie, which CBS will broadcast Dec. 3, also stars Annette O'Toole as Lola and Joseph Bologna as Rico.

"Copacaba" is as corny as the 1940s movie musicals it seeks to emulate, and it's just as much fun. It's a story of two young singers falling in love as they try to make it big, and the evil Rico who comes between them.

Manilow said "Copacabana" is the only story song he's written that became popular. It is his biggest international hit. He wrote the music with lyricists Bruce Sussman and Jack Feldman.

"I've been approached many times to turn it into a movie," he said. "But... I felt the way to make it work was to do it as a 1940s musical. When I thought of that, that's what turned me on." He added that he sees it as "a loving nod to those musicals of the 1940s."

He asked Dick Clark to produce it. With a budget of $4 million, it's one of the most expensive TV movies ever made. James Lipton wrote the screenplay and Waris Hussein directed.

Making musicals out of songs was an old movie standby, and "Copacabana" is not the first song to make it to the television screen as a movie. CBS broadcast "Kenny Rogers as The Gambler" in 1980 and three years later presented "Kenny Rogers as The Gambler: The Adventure Continues."

Another Rogers tune, "Coward to the Country," was made into a movie musical, based on "Alice in Wonderland," scheduled for December.

Manilow has been on the road for 14 months and is due to wrap up the tour soon. "Then I'm going to take a year off and nobody's going to see me," he said. He wrote most of the music for the movie in hotel rooms and banquet rooms while on tour.

He said he enjoyed his first venture into acting. "I've been taking lessons and I used all the things that I do on stage," he said. "But it's a whole different thing. Let me tell you, when they call 'Action!' you feel like a real jerk. You figure it can't be good. You feel so naked. And when you think it's great, it's not. I never felt so out of control in my life."

"I think the biggest lesson I learned in this movie was to trust other people. I had a hard time doing that. I couldn't tell whether I was doing good or bad, so you just have to learn to trust other people. This was like a screen test for me. The most expensive screen test anybody ever made. I'll be sitting by the phone waiting for people to call."

Manilow was a latecomer to singing and writing music. "I wanted to be an arranger like Nelson Riddle," he said. "I never thought of composing until I was in my 20s. I didn't get my first record contrast until I was 28 and I was pushing 30 when my first record, 'Mandy,' came out."

He spent his early years as a producer and arranger. He was Bette Midler's musical director, arranger and pianist. He co-produced and created arrangements for her first album, "The Divine Miss M," and her second, "Bette Midler."

After he signed his record contract, she persuaded him to remain as musical director for her first national tour. Unbilled and unannounced, he opened the second act with three original songs. "My prime interest has always been working with musicians," he said. "I dabbled in songwriting. Somehow I wound up with a contract as a singer. I had never been a singer before. It's crazy."
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Tracks, December 1985
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Manilow Magic

Barry Manilow took time off from his mammoth tour, which will have lasted sixteen months when it closes at Birmingham's NEC, to talk to Tracks editor Bill Harry about his album 'Manilow,' his first for RCA records and the first pop album he's released in the past three years.

I'M YOUR MAN Starts off the album, but it was the last song that we wrote for it. On the album I worked with a whole bunch of brand new people, people that I'd never met before, never worked with before and we put it together over a couple of months, recording while I was on a major tour of the United States.

I would record the album in the afternoon and then I would perform a concert in the ebening, so it was quite a hectic way of making an album, but it was very exciting. 'I'm Your Man' was written by myself, along with Howie Rice and Allan Rich. Howie and I co-produced a lot of the songs on this album. It was the last song that we wrote. Actually, we wrote it somewhere in the middle of creating the album and we never completed it. We finished other songs and kept forgetting about this one. When we'd almost completed the album I couldn't get this little melody out of my head and I asked Howie and Allan to come back to my studio and see if we could finish the song.

It's an interesting song in that we wrote it based on a drum machine programme. I've never done that before. We set the drum machine to a very infectious rhythm pattern and then we wrote the song around it, so it's not structured like your basic song would be structured. It sort of has layer upon layer upon layer based on this very infectious drum machine pattern, so even though it was the last song we wrote, it starts off the album because it's sort of an introduction... the lyric sort of introduces the album.

IT'S ALL BEHIND US NOW. This was the first song that the three of us ever wrote together and is much more of a standard-sounding ballad. It's got a beautiful lyric, it's got a real nice melody to it... there's nothing really different or unique about the song. The only thing I can remember about this one is that it is the first song that the three of us wrote together and we wanted to do a traditional pop ballad and this is the one that we came up with.

The third song is 'IN SEARCH OF LOVE' and that's the single RCA has released.
(I asked him whether he chose his tracks for singles or whether he left the decision to the record company).

I've always left it to my record company. I don't like to make that decision. I give them my choices but I let them decide which one they want to go with because I don't have to actually get into the field and sell these singles the way they do. I trust that the record company knows what's out there, what's happening on pop radio and how much work they're going to have to do, so I let them choose it. They chose 'In Search Of Love,' I guess, because they thought it would fit on the radio better than the other one.

Howie, Allan and I again wrote this song and we made it a very up-tempo pop record and, of course, we produced it so that it was a very full production. I wanted it to go something like an R&B record and I like what it sounds like. I think it's a real nice combination of the kind of music that I make and a nice contemporary tracks as well. (I asked whether he intended to make the album as a whole more modern-sounding than previous releases).

Yes, we approached this album much differently than the other albums because instead of big orchestras, we used smaller bands filled with synthesisers, drum machines and all of the instruments that are so popular now. I had dabbled in that on other albums, but not as much as on this one. So the sound's a little more aggressive than any of the other albums I've ever made.

'HE DOESN'T CARE (BUT I DO).' This is one of the few I didn't write on this album and I love it. It was written by Kevin Di Simone and his wife Robin Grean, who work with me in my band. They're dear friends of mine and they're so talented, just so talented. They showed me this song and I just loved it. I didn't want to record and outside piece of material unless I just knew it had a shot at being a hit single because one of my goals for this album was to try and write the music to all the tracks. I've never done that, but I just loved this one so much that I had to put it on. Again, it's a much more aggressive ballad than I've ever done before and the difference for me on this particular song is that it sounds like Barry Manilow and his Band instead of Barry Manilow and some orchestra playing behind me... so I really like what this feels like.

'SOME SWEET DAY' is the song that I've gotten the most requests on to record than any other song I've ever sung. I've been singing 'Some Sweet Day' in concert for over a year now because Adrienne and I wrote it about a year and a half ago and I immediately stuck it on the concert and it started to get requests right away and I've never gotten that many requests for a song that wasn't on a record. So we did the best version that we could and tried to incorporate the kind of emotion that happens on stage with a pop record. so we'll see if the people who request it like this one. The reaction I'm getting is that everyone really does like this song.

'AT THE DANCE.' Again, I've been singing this song live in concert for about a year and a half because the three of us: Adrienne and I and a man named Charles Fearing, a wonderful studio guitar player, we wrote this around the time we did 'Some Sweet Day.' Again, I stuck that one in the show right then and there and I've also been getting a lot of requests for this one. Not as much as 'Some Sweet Day,' but everyone seems to love this one, too. I had a little fun with it because I did a little jazzy bebop middle and a interlude that was fun.

The next one is 'IF YOU WERE HERE WITH ME TONIGHT', which I didn't produce at all. This one I let Georg Duke produce and I wrote this with a friend of mine: Eric Borenstein, and Lisa Sennett. Georg is a black producer who does a lot of R&B stuff and is very well respected. He liked this song and said he'd like to produce me doing it and I just showed up and sang on. I just let him do what he does best and I really like this because it has a little bit of that R&B groove to it and I think it's a very emotional song. RCA tell me that this just might be another single and that would make me happy.

'SWEET HEAVEN /I'M IN LOVE AGAIN'. This is the song on the album that comes from this movie that I made a couple of months ago based on the song 'Copacabana' and again I've been doing this one in concert and it stops the show dead, stops the show cold... and there was a lot of pressure to make a record that would be as powerful as the live performance and as entertaining as the movie version of it. It involved Bob Gaudio who helped me co-produce this one and I think it works. I'm crazy for it, as a matter of fact, it's the one that everyone remembers from this album.
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"SWEET HEAVEN' - IT'S THE ONE THAT EVERYONE REMEMBERS FROM THIS ALBUM."
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It's the one that they call me about and say they can't stop singing. I can't get it out of my head, it's one of those. I think it's real clever. Bruce Sussman and Jack Feldman wrote the lyric to it, they're the gentlemen who wrote the lyric to 'Copacabana.'

The problem with the song is, since the movie takes place in the forties all the songs that we wrote for the movie had to have a 1940's kind of feel. Even the ballads had to have that kind of feel and the up-tempo songs couldn't be any kind of rock and roll or even hint at a rock and roll feel to them. So they were all shuffles, big band kind of music, so the problem was taking this particular song and putting it on a pop album in 1985 and having it sound like it belonged there. So I thought Bob Gaudio's treatment of it was exactly right because it reminds me a little of 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head' and a little bit of those adorable shuffles that would have been played in the 1940's and can be played in the 1980's. That was the compromise.

'AIN'T NOTHING LIKE THE REAL THING.' one of the executives at RCA suggested that I do a duet on this album with one of the girls who have been working with me, backing me up for years. He name is Muffy Hendrix. She's just one of the best singers that I've ever worked with. She's a friend of mine, she was in Lady Flash when I had the three girls backing me up and she's just a friend and she sings great and they mentioned that in the song. I just went along with the whole thing. I loved it, I loved the song, I love Muffy.

The last song, 'IT'S A LONG WAY UP (WHEN YOU'RE COMING FROM NOWHERE') is a wonderful song. It was written by a man named John Annesi. He lives in Syracuse, New York and he's been trying to write a song for years now and hasn't had much luck. I didn't know him until I received his tape of this song in the mail. Somehow it got to me. I don't know where he sent it or how he sent it, but it got to me out of the blue and I played it and I loved it, I just loved it. I played it over and over and I finally found out his home phone number and called and they didn't believe it was me at first. Finally I convinced his sister that it was me and I got him on the phone and after he calmed down I told him that I loved what the song said and I'd like to record it. I mentioned that I felt that it needed a couple of changes and maybe a different bridge and a couple of lyric changes and he said 'would you do it?'. I said O.K. That's why l get credit on the record as cowriter, but actually it's John's song and again, I immediately put it in my concert act and I close the show with it and it just drives people crazy. It's a very uplifting song and a very positive song, a very nice bookend to 'I MADE IT THROUGH THE RAIN', only an up-tempo version of that thought. I hope big things happen for John, I think he's great. (I asked him about his 'Copacabana' film project).

It'll be shown in the States in December. It's a TV movie. I had this idea to make a movie out of 'Copacabana,' it just sort of woke me up in the middle of the night. I was on tour, as I always am, and I tracked Dick Clark down 'cause he's one of the few people in television that I really like and he's a friend of mine. I called him and said' What do you think and do you think there's an idea in this thing?' and he liked it. When I got back from the road for a few weeks we sat and talked about it. He liked the idea and he liked the idea of making it into a 1940's kind of 'Singing In The Rain' musical, but the problem was selling this idea to... anybody. First of all, I'm not a proven actor, I've never done anything like this before and it was going to cost a lot money. So we went to CBS, whom I had a deal with and I pitched the idea myself. I got up there and told them the kind of thing I wanted to do and I got them all excited about it and they went along with it.

This is a very expensive movie and they were all very, very nervous that they were putting it on my shoulders... but after the first couple of days of shooting I think they heaved a big sigh of relief because they liked what they saw, so they got behind is. So far we've had a lot of encouraging reports about the movie and about the reaction to it, although I'm not expecting any rave reviews, I never get them. But I think the public will love it so we're trying to bring it to Britain too and I think that's going to happen.
(I'd heard he'd been recording in various languages and asked him if he was branching out into broader fields).

Yes, I am. You see, RCA is an enormous International company. I mean, Arista was a smalled company and didn't have as much power in the rest of the world. One of the first things we all decided was that if I was going to go with a bigger company we wanted to try and get to more of the world with my music, so the way to do that was to record in different languages. So during this crazy tour that I've been doing for fourteen months now, not only did I make the movie and the soundtrack to the movie, which will come out in a couple of months, and this particular album, the new one, but I also did a Spanish album and a Portuguese album of my old hits, like 'I WRITE THE SONGS' and 'THIS ONE'S FOR YOU.' I did them in Portuguese and in Spanish and I did a duet in Japanese with one of the guys in Japan. It's been quite a year. (I asked him about his trip to Japan in December).

I'm not going to tour there. I'm going for a couple of days to do television and interviews to promote this single that I did with this guy, his name is Hideki Saijo and we did a duet on the single 'In Search Of Love' for when it comes out in Japan. It comes out as a duet between the two of us. They're very excited about it... and then I come to Britain. I do six nights in Britain and that's it! The last night in Birmingham is the last night of this mammoth tour and I expect it will be emotional. (I asked if he had any plans for recording in further languages).

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MIRIELLE MATTIEU
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Yes, I may be making a record with Mirielle Mattieu in France. That's different, too, it's a whole different language and all. There's this song that bad, it's an old tradional French folk song that some producer jazzed up a little bit and I'm considering doing it, this might happen

It would really be fun to get some of this music out to the rest of the world because I just know that the Latin American and the French markets would love the romantic stuff that I've been doing all these years and it's a shame that they haven't been exposed to songs like 'EVEN NOW' and 'This One's For You.' It's too bad that we're keeping them to ourselves, I would just love them to hear them."

Barry Manilow.  
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