THE ’LOW MUST GO ON
Now onstage, Barry Manilow reveals his love for Broadway and recalls his Brooklyn roots
BARRY Manilow, back on Broadway at the LuntFontanne for a few weeks, came onstage at Tuesday’s opening night and cracked: “You weren’t expecting Faye Dunaway, were you?” Big laughs followed from a crowd who knew the star had been fired days before from her Broadwaybound show for being an out-of-control diva. You’ll never hear that said about Manilow. He’s been an international superstar for more than 40 years, and yet everyone who meets him says the same thing: Manilow is a mensch. Friends say that even now, famous and wealthy at 76, he’s still the same Barry who accompanied them on piano at auditions and who made a living scratching out jingles such as “You Deserve a Break Today” for McDonald’s. True, there are private planes, adoring fans and a very nice spread in Palm Springs, Calif., but you never hear of Manilow pulling a Faye Dunaway. “There’s a very simple reason for that,” the singer tells me. “I never wanted to do this. I’m a musician in my heart. This other thing — I don’t know what it is — makes me uncomfortable.” This “other thing” is stardom, the kind that comes from singing hits the world loves: “Mandy,” “I Write the Songs,” “Can’t Smile Without You,” and the one song guaranteed to get everybody on their feet: “Copacabana.” Manilow says that while he’s “grateful for the gig” of
being a pop superstar, “it’s not who I am.” And he’s amazed that it keeps going.
“I haven’t been on the charts in a long time, and when you stop having hit records, your career is supposed to go down the drain. But I’m filling two hours with songs from the ’70s and ’80s, and the way people are responding, you’d think they were just on the radio.”
That may be because Manilow’s signature songs, many of which were selected for him by music legend Clive Davis, have the durability of showtunes. Some are soaring anthems “that could end the first act,” Manilow says, while others are ballads “that you could drop in the middle of the second act.”
He never wants his performances to feel “like an oldies act.” To keep things fresh, he’s constantly reorchestrated (he’s a first-rate orchestrator) his songs. “Looks Like We Made It,” a chart-topper in 1977, is “very far away from the record we made,” he says. “I’ve added loops and synthesizers so it doesn’t sound old. I think you could put this version on the radio today and it would work.”
Though he never studied acting, Manilow says he approaches his songs as though they were one-act plays in which he stars.
He sings the line “can’t smile without you” 14 times during that song — but by singing it a slightly different way each time, he says, “it never becomes stale.”
When he’s performing another favorite —“This One’s for You” — he does it the way an actor would, imagining he’s someone else.
“I think my love of the theater, my love of actors, helps me approach a song in a way that’s different from most pop singers,” he says.
The former Barry Alan Pincus — Manilow was his mother’s maiden name — was born and raised in Williamsburg. Or, as he likes to say, “I was born under a bridge!” He’s been a fan of musicals ever since the day his stepfather brought home a stack of Broadway cast recordings. “The Most Happy Fella,” “The King and I” and “Oklahoma!” never left Manilow’s turntable.
“That stack of albums was a stack of gold,” he says. He fell in love with the Great American Songbook, and knows by heart every song written by the greats: Richard Rodgers, Larry Hart, Oscar Hammerstein II, Cole Porter, Frank Loesser.
Manilow wanted to write Broadway shows, but pop superstardom got in the way. But he did, in a way, get the chance to collaborate with one of the Great American Songbook’s writers.
An executive at Arista Records called him “out of the blue,” he says, and told him that Johnny Mercer’s widow, Ginger, had found a bunch of his lyrics no one had ever put to music. A few days later, a Manila envelope arrived at Manilow’s home. The first lyric he looked at was “When October Goes,” as wistful a line as any that Johnny Mercer wrote.
“I sat down at the piano, hit the recording button and played the melody in one take,” says Manilow. “It was as if the song had already been written. But anybody could have written a beautiful melody to that lyric. It was like a poem sitting on your shoulder.” “When October Goes” is in Manilow’s Broadway show. And of all his hits, it may be the one he loves the most. “I still have that Manila envelope with Johnny Mercer’s lyrics,” he says. “It’s one of my treasures.”
While he’s in New York, Manilow plans to visit his old neighborhood, Williamsburg, to see what all the fuss is about.
“I heard that Brad Pitt bought an apartment,” he says. “Maybe it was my Aunt Rose’s apartment. I hope they fixed the incinerator.”