Burt Bacharach Story and Interview

SD-UT

Burt Bacharach's non-stop musical journey
Written by
George Varga
6 a.m., July 30, 2011
Updated 9:06 a.m.

Burt Bacharach is very likely the hippest and most eclectic 83-year-old legend in pop music, as befits a pioneering maverick whose collaborators in recent years include Elvis Costello, Jamie Cullum and Dr. Dre. Bacharach, who performs a Summer Pops concert here next Sunday with the San Diego Symphony, is likely also the most active 83-year-old legend in pop.

After completing a concert tour of Italy in July, he flew to Aspen to do two concerts. From there, he jetted to New York to resume work on “Some Lovers,” a Broadway-bound musical that teams him with Steven Sater (who in 2007 won two Tony Awards for writing the score and the book for “Spring Awakening”). “Some Lovers,” based on the O. Henry short story “The Gift of the Magi,” will make its world debut here as part the Old Globe Theatre’s 2011-2012 winter season.

Following his Summer Pops show, Bacharach will vacation with his family in Del Mar, where he used to own a home on the beach and still likes to spend at least part of his summer. Then it’s back to work on “Some Lovers” for this eight-time Grammy Award-winner, who has also won three Oscars.

“It may seem like I’m a workaholic, but I’m not,” said Bacharach from a tour stop in Catania, Sicily.

“I really benefit from working, and there’s a great pleasure in doing concerts. I don’t overlook what got me on stage in the first place, and it was the music I wrote. It wasn’t that I played (piano) very well, it’s what I wrote. So it’s important to keep writing, and I’m very excited about this new musical.”

Time allowing, he hopes to include one song from "Some Lovers" at his Summer Pops concert here next Sunday.

"It's always a race against the clock," he said, citing most American orchestra's two-halves-with-an-intermission concert format.

"I've come to realize a certain momentum gets lost when you do a first half, and then there's an intermission and people eat, talk and mingle. You have to regenerate (momentum) and re-start again. But I do hope we will get a song in (from 'Some Lovers'), that I'll tell you, from the show, absolutely.

"It's just about how much material you can get in (a concert). You compromise either way; you have to do some songs in medley form. Otherwise, you've done your program and left out a lot of songs that people might want to hear, even if its only 16 bars. It's not the best way. In Australia, they are not so stringent with symphony rules and you can stay out for two hours (on stage). That's fine for me. I think we probably did two hours at the Belly Up (in Solana Beach) for Valentine's Day, and that was a kick"

A lifelong jazz fan who played in a big band as a teenager, Bacharach studied music with such groundbreaking contemporary classical composers as Henry Cowell and Darius Milhaud. His love of bebop and classical music later helped him to craft some of the most intricate and original hits in pop, full of uniquely shifting melodies and harmonies, deft polyrhythms and impeccably textured nuances.

"I was torn," he recalled of his decision to move away from contemporary classical to pop-music. "I'd go to John Cage and Lou Harris concerts, and I thought that was the direction I wanted to go in. I went to Tanglewood, but there was also the draw for me of jazz. Once I heard what was going on at 52nd Street (in Manhattan) -- even though I was under age -- and listened to the (Count) Basie band at Birdland and Dizzy (Gillespie) at the Royal Roost, that music just blew me away.

“Was I really good enough to be a classical composer? I wasn’t sure. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend my life teaching at some university, to supplement my income as a composer.”

So pop music it was for Bacharach. Alas, he was fired after only three weeks from his first prominent job as the pianist and conductor for Vic Damone.

"I don't know why Vic fired me -- he fired a lot of people -- but maybe I wasn't good enough," Bacharach recalled of his short, bumpy tenure with Damone.

"I'd never conducted an orchestra before I'd gone to Las Vegas (with Damone). I didn't quite know what I was doing. But it's a good way to make a living. I got fired by Vic, then went with the Ames Brothers and then Polly Bergen. I ended up with Marlene Dietrich and traveled the world. I was never good at chasing my desire... I wasn't like one of these 'I'm going to get there at any cost' people. I was so far from that."

In 1962, working with the great lyricist Hal David, Bacharach’s career began to ignite. That year alone saw the pair co-write three major hits, Jerry Butler’s “Make It Easy on Yourself” and Gene Pitney’s “Only Love Can Break a Heart” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”

The songwriting team also collaborated on "Waiting for Charlie to Come Home," the B-side of Etta James' combustible "Something's Got a Hold On Me." An urbane, intensely melancholic ballad with unexpected musical twists (albeit subtle ones), it sounded like nothing James had ever recorded. It still does.

"Thanks," Bacharach said. "I like the song and we do it in performance now. I like it a lot, or I wouldn't be doing it."

By the time “Alfie” came out in 1966, Bacharach and David had co-written classics for such diverse artists as Dionne Warwick, The Shirelles, Chuck Jackson, Lena Horne, Etta James, Manfred Mann and Tom Jones. Warwick scored a staggering 20 Top 10 hits with Bacharach/David-penned songs, including “Walk On By,” “I Say a Little Prayer” and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.”

But it wasn’t until “Alfie,” the title track to a 1966 film with Michael Caine and Shelley Winters, that Bacharach felt he was really on the right track.

“You write and write (songs), and have hits, and you still maybe have some doubts,” he said. “You wonder: ‘Are you shucking and jiving, and fooling people with what you are writing?’ Or are you — not stealing (from other songwriters) — but being in that proximity?

“Miles Davis said to me: ‘ “Alfie” — that’s a really good song.’ If Miles said that to me, well, that drove my self-esteem way up.”

Jazz artists have long been drawn to Bacharach and David's songs, even if they often dispense with David's lyrics to focus on Bacharach's ingenious melodies and challenging harmonic and rhythmic nooks and crannies.

As a lifelong fan of jazz, did he take particular pride when such greats as saxophonist Stan Getz and pianist McCoy Tyner recorded entire albums devoted to all-instrumental versions of his songs?

"I love McCoy Tyner and Stan Getz," Bacharach replied. "Do I think they were great albums? No. Tommy LiPuma’s production just restricted McCoy; it should have been more free (musically). You are always flattered when you hear a major artist is doing your material. I heard Stan Getz's recording of my music and it felt, to me, like they were just going through the motions. It could have been a great record, so it really dispirited me, because Stan was a great, great player."

Could the problem have been that, given how Bacharach's intricate songs are so carefully and meticulously crafted, they leave little room for the improvisational fervor that fuels great jazz?

"That's a very good observation. Maybe they are not ideal for jazz artists," he said. "I've heard some great renditions by other jazz artists, like (Art Blakey and) The Jazz Messengers. But I do think it's a little more restricting (to do my songs) and you've got to give them freedom. On McCoy’s album, he was strangled with the orchestrations. They choked him.

"I wanted those two albums to be heard and successful, because those are two artists I have huge respect for -- you can't do better than McCoy Tyner, and then you've got Stan Getz."

Bacharach’s songs have also been covered by a slew of rock artists from the Los Angeles band Love to White Stripes. His career ebbed in the late 1970s and ’80s, then surged anew in the 1990s, when he made an acclaimed album with Elvis Costello and appeared in “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” (and both its sequels). He was feted at a 1998 TNT TV tribute concert, which featured such admirers as Warwick, Costello, Luther Vandross, Chrissie Hynde and Sheryl Crow.

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