It had been decided that, at the end of his Florida retreat, Barry would spend the next year in Los Angeles, finishing Even Now, his seventh album co-produced with Ron Dante, and working on the follow-up to his first TV special, which had been nominated for an Emmy. He would also use the time to try out new west coast musicians to replace the east coast friends he had just fired. Barry’s assistant, Michael Devereaux, went ahead to find Barry a suitable place to live in Los Angeles.
Michael Devereaux, or “Dev” as Barry’s friends like to call him, was tall, thin, handsome and, as Lee Gurst puts it, “sophisticated in a way Barry couldn’t hope to be.” A native New Yorker, Dev was smart, extremely well organised and unflappable, seldom losing his cool. He was unfailingly gracious to everyone he dealt with, showing the same attentiveness and respect to hysterical fans that he would show the biggest names in show business. No matter what the situation, Barry could rely on Dev to maintain the equilibrium of his often roller coaster-like existence.
The house Dev found for Barry was a Beverly Hills mansion that came complete with swimming pool, fountains, a white grand piano, and a butler named Robert. Even Barry’s spacious 27th Street apartment in Manhattan with its sweeping balcony terrace paled by comparison to the mansion’s pink marble bathrooms, marble fireplaces, and manicured grounds dotted with marble statuary. It was not what Barry had had in mind when he sent Michael to scout for a small, unassuming place to spend his year in Los Angeles. But, Barry later wrote, “Michael’s instinct was right … The house was so ridiculous that I just couldn’t take anything too seriously when I was there. And when the real disasters did happen, the house served to lighten even those incidents.”
The disasters started happening almost immediately. To publicise the upcoming album and the second TV special, Barry had agreed to do a cover story for People magazine. When the story ran in the August 8, 1977 issue of the magazine, it brought Barry’s private life into uncomfortable proximity with his public persona.
The interview with writer Robert Windeler had not been a happy one for Barry. “I wanted to talk about music,” he later wrote of their encounter, “he wanted to know who I slept with.” Indeed, Windeler seems to casually drop a reference to Barry’s sexual preference in the very first paragraph of the article when he follows a quote about Barry’s supposed feelings of low self-worth with the attribution, “says a former boyfriend”.
The issue of Manilow’s sexuality seemed to touch everything he did. Lee Gurst noted that it sometimes even affected their relationship. “There’s no question that, in some sense, in some way, there was always a barrier between us by virtue of our sexual proclivities,” says Lee Gurst, “that there was a difference in our worlds that never got bridged. And it wasn’t an obvious problem. But on occasion I was aware that there was just that part of life that I didn’t cross over into. As open as Barry was – god knows I knew way more than I ever wanted or cared to sometimes – you’re not quite in that club. You’re not quite there. That was something that was always, not a barrier, but a difference.” Others of Barry’s colleagues, Lee observed, fitted in because they didn’t have to contend with that between them, including Michael Devereaux. “I wouldn’t go cruising the gay bars with Barry,” says Gurst. “Michael could.”
Barry’s insistence on frequenting gay bars in Los Angeles seemed an echo of Barry’s behaviour when he was working Downstairs at the Upstairs with Jeanne Lucas in New York years before, an unnecessary risk of exposure that could drive his friends to exasperation. Still, Lee Gurst acknowledges, it was a calculated risk. Barry’s sexuality, says Lee, “was not a secret in certain circles, and within those circles it was a secret that would be respected.” There was also an inherent discretion among patrons of such establishments who, Lee points out, “are going to keep their mouths shut about you the same way they want you, or all the other people in the place, to keep your mouth shut about them.”
But obviously someone had not kept his mouth shut for People magazine. The article not only made casual reference to Barry having at least one former boyfriend, saying that his busy professional life “has gotten in the way of relationships with either sex”, but also exposed the fact that Barry was older than he admitted to being, identifying him as “Now in his mid-30s (he claims to be younger) …”
There was little Barry could do about the piece without drawing further scrutiny of his private life. Years later, when he wrote his autobiography, he would get the tiniest measure of revenge by stating that “the interviewer’s mind was in the gutter”, but ten years had passed in the interim. For all his grousing about what he felt to be the writer’s misplaced attentions, Barry never actually publicly denied anything Windeler wrote in the People article.
The Emmy Awards, the television equivalent of the Oscars, were presented on September 12, 1977. A flustered Barry went forward to accept the award for Outstanding Special Comedy, Variety or Music for The Barry Manilow Special which had aired the previous year. After hugging presenter Jack Albertson, of the sitcom Chico And The Man fame, Barry said, “I have nothing to say! I’m freaking out!”
In retrospect it doesn’t seem surprising that the first special was such a success, nor that ABC would want more of the same from Barry. A glance at the television line-up for that period of time shows that several of the regular prime time series were variety shows centred around musical acts. Sonny and Cher, whose career had been foundering on the schlock rocks of seedy lounges by the end of the Sixties, had found new life on TV with The Sonny And Cher Comedy Hour. The show also foundered when their marriage did in 1974. After attempts at separate careers failed, the couple came back to give the show another go under the slightly altered name The Sonny And Cher Show, which was in what turned out to be its last season when The Barry Manilow Special aired in 1977.
When Sonny and Cher left the airwaves in 1974, CBS filled their slot with Barry’s one-time producer, Tony Orlando and his variety show Tony Orlando And Dawn. A summer hit, the show returned in December and enjoyed respectable ratings until it was retooled in the second year and presented as The Tony Orlando And Dawn Rainbow Hour. Switching the show’s emphasis from music to mind-numbingly banal comedy (for instance, a sketch called “Chinook and the Man”, featuring Orlando as an Eskimo, playing on the success of the sitcom Chico and the Man) proved to be fatal; the show folded in December 1976.
Hoping to capture the same magic that had made Sonny and Cher a hit for CBS, ABC presented The Captain & Tennille. The singing husband and wife team, whose song ‘Love Will Keep Us Together’ had beaten Barry’s ‘Mandy’ for the 1976 Record of the Year Grammy, provided little substance to build a show around. Alabama-born Toni Tennille was cute, with an inherent southern charm, but she lacked the caustic wit that Cher had used with rapier precision against her husband each week. For his part, “Captain” Daryl Dragon was a master of all keyboard instruments, but had little, if anything to say. The couple’s few hits, combined with their limited ability to engage the audience as well, perhaps, as the fact that the only other regulars on the show were their two English bulldogs, spelled an early end to The Captain & Tennille, which folded after scarcely five months.
ABC had better luck with another musical duo, the brother and sister team of Donny and Marie Osmond. The Donny And Marie show had the odd distinction of putting its hosts on ice skates to open the show. Much fun was made of the Osmonds’ wholesome Mormon background. When Donny sang ‘Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog’, the line was changed to “… and he helped me drink my milk” to accommodate the church’s doctrine against alcohol consumption. So important was family and church to the show’s stars that at the beginning of their second season they left Hollywood and moved the entire production to their family compound in Orem, Utah, from where the show continued to air until May 1979. In fact, by the time The Second Barry Manilow Special aired on February 24, 1978, Donny and Marie was the only musical variety show left on the regular prime time schedule.
Barry’s second special
lacked some of the spontaneity and wide-eyed charm of his Emmy-winning first special. He looked strained, and seemed to be trying too hard. His performance of the song ‘Daybreak’ from the album This One’s For You put together in the space of one song every show-business manipulation ever invented. There were kids singing along while hanging on a set of monkey bars surrounding the piano; old people singing along as they went about clichéd “old people” activities; cartoon characters singing along in helium-squeak voices; and even Barry’s dog made an appearance. It all seemed like a good idea at the time but, more than a decade later, the spectacle would make Manilow cringe. “You get up there with the lights and the sound and the make-up, and your first instinct is to be a phony,” he told Rolling Stone in 1990. “Have you ever seen those old TV specials? Come on – this is an idiot on television! This is just a jerk. But I thought this was the way I was supposed to be: campy, giggly, charming, cute, silly, entertaining, goofy.” Mission accomplished.
But if Manilow seemed strained on TV, it may well have been because he was facing much stress off-screen. Michael Devereaux had been in a serious car accident which had landed him in the intensive care unit for two weeks. Barry had taped the special, he said, between trips to the hospital. And something even more disturbing was diverting Barry’s attention from the many professional commitments he was trying to fulfil: he’d begun receiving death threats.
The threats at first had seemed mild, nothing more than the usual “craze-os” as Barry called some of his most zealous fans. Barry’s manager in New York, Miles Lourie, insisted Barry hire a bodyguard to protect him, as well as a detective to track down the source of the threats. Barry found it impossible to believe that anyone could really mean him any harm. But the violence of the missives escalated, and Barry believed that the upcoming article in People would reveal that Barry was recording his new album at the A&M studios in Hollywood, making him easy for anyone to find.11
So, an Israeli bodyguard named Shlomo was added to Barry’s entourage. Shlomo and his partners took shifts protecting Barry, staying within sight or earshot of him every minute of the night and day until the culprits – “they were just kids and they claimed they were playing a joke on me”, Barry later wrote – were apprehended.
Barry had told Robert Windeler that, while everyone in the music business seemed to gravitate to Los Angeles, “I’m not coming. I choose to live in New York. I’m a city kid with soot in my blood.” But a year of breakfast served poolside, presumably sootless, by a butler, seemed to have changed his mind. Barry’s return to New York near the end of 1977 was simply to pack up his belongings for the permanent move to California.
The album Even Now marked not only the end of Barry’s days as a New Yorker, but also his reconnection with Lee Gurst, with whom he hadn’t worked since they’d parted ways in April 1977. Wrapping up production of Even Now after his return to New York, Barry was finding it difficult to get the people at Arista to understand what he wanted for the look of the album’s cover. So Barry called Gurst, who was himself now living in California. “They just keep showing me all this crap,” Barry told Lee. “Here’s my idea – can you shoot it?” Lee knew just what Barry was talking about and was on a plane to New York within the week.
“I got off the plane like 5 o’clock in the morning at Kennedy,” says Gurst, “raced to the apartment on Central Park West so I could be there when the sun came up, and shot the cover. Had the proofs back by 10:30, and that was it! It was done.” The result was a stunning shot of Barry, in profile in the extreme right foreground of the photo, looking out over the city as the sun rose in spectacular colour over the skyscrapers. It was a perfect complement to the album’s collection of songs which included ‘Starting Again’ and ‘Sunrise’.
To Barry’s long-time co-producer Ron Dante, Even Now represented the best work Barry would ever do. “I think, in terms of creative input of his arrangements, his vocals, some of his songs, the outside songs we chose,” says Dante, “I thought that was one of the highlights of his career.”
The album certainly came together in record time. “That was the smoothest album ever made,” says Dante. “We were hitting our stride, as Barry said on some liner notes at one point. Well we were. We were both flexing; he was flexing as artist and I was flexing as producer. And we were really hitting it perfectly with the sounds and the songs we got to record, mainly because Barry was such a big star then that we were getting great outside songs sent in to us. We had an abundance of great songs.” Outside songs included in the album were, indeed, memorable. ‘I Just Want To Be The One In Your Life’, by Michael Price and Dan Walsh; ‘Where Do I Go From Here’, by Parker McKee, and the spectacular ‘Somewhere In The Night’ by Richard Kerr and Will Jennings, a sweeping song that included the dramatic key changes and “big-titty” (as Barry liked to characterise it) orchestrations that had become Barry’s signature. But Barry’s own contribution, along with his long-time songwriting partners Panzer, Sussman, Feldman, and Anderson, were not to be discounted. “Barry was writing better than ever,” says Dante. “I thought ‘Even Now’ was one of his most beautiful songs.”
The entire album had come together in a matter of a few months, “a labour of love,” as Dante characterised it. “I thought everything was clicking,” says Dante. “I thought we were very on top of our game and I thought that album was our landmark album for that kind of music. It was one of his biggest successes. I think it went triple platinum. To this day it remains one of his best.”
In his 1987 autobiography, Sweet Life: Adventures on the Way to Paradise, Barry skips from his 1978 move to Los Angeles directly to his 1980 appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Far from being unremarkable, this short space of time was actually action packed.
Before returning permanently to California, Barry had turned over his Manhattan apartment to his mother, who was now divorced from Willie Murphy. “They actually date,” Barry said in an interview, “and they live together when they feel like it. That seems to me the way to do it.”
Apparently Barry had changed his mind about working with friends, as he once again asked Lee Gurst to join him as percussionist and arranger on his latest tour, which would take him to Europe. The tour, unfortunately, was not without its problems.
“The tour was scheduled to be quite a lengthy one,” says Gurst. “While we were in Las Vegas, at the Riviera, the whole second half of the tour fell apart. And at the same time they were trying to put together a European tour and a few other things.” A Barry Manilow show is always carefully crafted and rehearsed. With the delays caused by problems with tour dates, Barry was afraid he would now lose his musicians and be faced with using unrehearsed replacements at the last minute. Lee, who was in charge of coordinating the personnel for the tour, gathered together crew and performers and explained the situation to them.
“If you can hold on as long as you can before you have to take other work, they’re trying to put something together, and we’d really appreciate it if you’d just try and stick it out a little bit,” Lee told everyone. As added incentive, Barry promised bonuses to all those who would stick with his show rather than finding immediate employment elsewhere. All agreed to stay and wait for Barry’s tour to fill out.
The tour finally did get off the ground, performing at various dates around the country, each more successful than the last. The reception at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles in August was especially ecstatic. The management of the Greek took out an ad proclaiming,
“Congratulations, Barry! Your first week sold out four months in advance! We added four more days, and they sold out in 51/2 hours! Now we’re adding three more days: September 16, 17, 18! Welcome back to LA!”
The tour left the States for London in October. The trip started off memorably with a seeming insult. “We’d landed in London one morning after a redeye from Chicago,” says Lee Gurst, “and a couple of us had gone out walking around. We’d walked over to Westminster Abbey. And it’s probably not even 1
0.30 in the morning. And Barry and I were there, and I think one or two other people. And a big Rolls-Royce drove by, and from the Rolls-Royce we heard, “Bloody tourists!” It was Paul McCartney, who recognised Barry. It was kind of a nice moment. Wow! I guess somebody knows we’re here. And it was, I think, a nice greeting that morning that none of us had our heads on straight as I recall.” Upon reflection, though, Lee has to wonder if the remark had been made in as lighthearted a manner as it had been received. “Maybe he meant it seriously!” says Gurst. “You know I never considered that! I always took it as a friendly remark. But now for the first time I’m stopping to think, was he serious?”
If McCartney wasn’t welcoming, the rest of England was. A debut at the Royal Albert Hall was followed by a week of sold-out shows at the London Palladium. After brief stops in Holland, Belgium and France, the tour wound up with two days in Germany before heading back home to LA.
The end of the tour would prove to be another ending for Lee and Barry. After promising his musicians bonuses if they stuck with the tour rather than taking work elsewhere during the tour’s initial delay, now that the tour was over, Barry seemed to be having second thoughts.
Barry had, according to Gurst, promised each musician a bonus equivalent to two week’s salary. So Lee presented Barry with a list of each musician and their weekly salaries so he could approve their bonuses. But instead of approving the funds for each musician who had remained faithful, Barry instead chose to exclude certain of the musicians based on personality. “No, the guy’s a jerk,” Barry told Lee as he vetoed a bonus for one of the musicians. “Well, he may be a jerk,” Lee replied, “but he’s done his job, and he’s done his job for a lot of years at that.” Barry would relent, but only partially. “ Well,” he said, “I’m just gonna give him one week.”
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