Barry Manilow

by Patricia Butler

  “Sinatra’s people communicated that Sinatra would want a piece of the publishing,” continues Gurst, “and Barry said, ‘Hell, no. It’s my music, my songs.’” Gurst still feels exasperation at Barry’s behaviour in the circumstances. “That’s the way the game’s played,” says Gurst. “If Sinatra wants a piece of the music, you give him a piece of the music and you get your first movie made and who cares what you give away to do it?” The movie never materialised.

  Before long, another opportunity arose for Barry to make his acting debut, albeit on the small screen. Having done four variety specials for ABC over the years, the first of which won an Emmy for Outstanding Special Comedy, Variety, or Music, in 1982 CBS approached Barry about doing the same thing for their network. But the variety genre hadn’t really survived the Seventies in the best of health, and Barry felt that he’d done pretty much all he could do in that format for ABC. The idea was temporarily shelved.

  Then in the spring of 1984, Manilow got the idea of a movie based on his hit song ‘Copacabana’, which had had its genesis in a vacation to Rio de Janeiro Barry took with his partner Bruce Sussman in 1977. While strolling on the Copacabana Beach one day, Sussman said, “That’d make a great song title.” When they returned to the States, Sussman got together with his collaborator, Jack Feldman, and the two created the musical story of Lola and Tony, a sort of Romeo and Juliet with sequins and décolletage. The words so resonated with Manilow that he was able to put the tune with the lyric in one continuous take. ‘Copacabana’, included on the Even Now album, was released as a single in 1978 and was an immediate hit. But would it make a hit movie as well?

  “The plot, like the song, was right out of a 1940s musical,” Manilow wrote in 1985, “but I wanted the film to look like a combination of an MTV video and an old Technicolor movie.” After writing the synopsis, Barry liked what he had. But CBS wanted an hour-long variety show, not a 1940s musical. “So there I sat,” wrote Manilow, “with a very exciting, innovative musical idea, but it wasn’t a variety show. What should I do with it?”

  What he did was take the idea to his friend Dick Clark, who, in addition to his roles as American Bandstand host and overall rock icon, was also a successful television producer. Clark had his misgivings about this untried format, not to mention its untried star; sure Barry could pull off a musical variety hour, but play the romantic lead in a feature length movie? Despite Clark’s misgivings, Barry decided to pitch the idea to the network himself. CBS decided to take a chance.

  In previewing the upcoming show for the Washington Post, Stephanie Mansfield wrote, “Maybe it’s my imagination, but I think Barry Manilow must have bounded into the CBS offices sometime last year and warbled, ‘I know you’re worried about network ratings. I’ve got a swell idea. Let’s put on a show!’ How else could the Mickey Rooney of rock have conceived such a gosh-darn root beer float of a film … it’s been a long time since something so upbeat has burst into our living rooms, leaving out the last Smurfs special.” Mansfield goes on to note, “Manilow is cuter than a pet chipmunk in his white tuxedo and sings ten catchy new songs. So what if they all sound like McDonald’s commercials – you were expecting Gershwin?”

  ‘Copacabana’ was broadcast on Tuesday, December 3, 1985, to mixed reviews and disappointing ratings. “A bit of consciously cornball fluff,” said the Chicago Tribune. After praising the work of Annette O’Toole, who played Lola opposite Barry’s Tony (“Annette O’Toole, a talented young actress … brings a combination of sensuality and sardonicism to her part”), the Tribune reporter went on to say, “How one feels about ‘Copacabana’, however, undoubtedly depends on one’s own personal Manilow meter. Mine, admittedly, has never even been plugged in. That said, I must admit that my favourite single moment comes during the quiz-show segment, when Barry/Tony tells the host that, no, he didn’t perform in the USO but he did fight on Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima, and not a single person in the audience laughs.”

  It did stretch the imagination a bit to accept the 42-year-old Manilow as the struggling young hero, especially when put up against the youthful exuberance of O’Toole, eleven years Barry’s junior. But some were more eager to suspend disbelief than the Tribune reviewer. “Thanks to producer Dick Clark and lyricists Bruce Sussman and Jack Feldman,” wrote Stephanie Mansfield of the Washington Post, “Manilow has managed to breathe new life into the tired variety-show format. There is much to recommend in this big-budget production: the photography is first-rate, the smoky cafes and rain-swept streets a haunting backdrop for the lush string section; even the showgirls look as though they’re having fun.”

  Unfortunately, the majority of the American public was watching ABC that night. ‘Copacabana’ earned only a 12.6 Nielsen rating and a 20 per cent audience share in the national ratings, tying for 55th place overall.

  “For all intents and purposes, Barry never had a movie career,” says Lee Gurst. “He studied acting for years and no movie ever came of it, partly because he was a terrible actor. But he just wouldn’t go along with the things you do to get there.”

  “There go my people …”

  Over the years, Playboy magazine has seemed especially quick to cut Manilow down to size if he ever seemed to be getting a bit too full of himself. A bit in Playboy’s “Fast Tracks” column was typically disdainful. “News flash! Barry Manilow admits what we’ve known all along, that he’s a boring guy. Says Manilow: ‘There’s nothing much to spend money on. I’m not into yachts, Rolls-Royces, drugs or wild parties.’ He did, however, compare his music to that of Led Zeppelin. ‘It’s as important and as good as anything they’ve done.’ Say good night, Barry …” Of course Barry’s statements might have carried more weight if he hadn’t been, at the time, living in a Bel Air mansion and driving a white Rolls-Royce Corniche convertible with red leather interior. It was just such perceived insincerity that the editors of Playboy delighted in.

  “I think Barry actually complained to Hef [Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner] at some point,” says Playboy editor and long-time Playboy “Advisor” Jim Petersen. “Like, ‘why do you guys beat up on me in the pages of your magazine? You gave me my start.’” Petersen refers to the letter Barry sent the magazine in 1964 asking if he should quit his job to pursue a musical opportunity, something the magazine’s editors encouraged him to do, though it was advice Barry actually didn’t take at the time. “We did get word down from Hefner,” continues Petersen, “ ‘please don’t use Barry Manilow as a fall guy in the music column.’ What we liked in music during that period was not what he was doing, so our music editor regularly used Barry Manilow as a measuring stick for a certain kind of thing we thought was uncool.”

  While Manilow continued to have career successes after shaking off his friends and acquiring new musicians, new producers, and new management, the Eighties would not bring the kind of personal and professional satisfaction that had seemed to gush from a bottomless well during the Seventies. His last album with friend Ron Dante proved to be a bit of a wet end. “The songs are commercials without products – overproduced but underpowering,” wrote the Playboy music editor, not yet restrained by Hugh Hefner’s orders to play nice with Manilow, concluding wryly, “They’ll probably be big hits.” In fact, they were not.

  Released in 1985, the same year as the disappointing TV movie ‘Copacabana’, Manilow’s compilation album, The Manilow Collection: Twenty Classic Hits received an even cooler reception. “The songs here are enough to make your fillings ache,” wrote reviewer J.D. Considine, who characterised the album as “an anthology that comes at the listener like a truckload of Twinkies.” He goes on to note, “Part of it is Manilow’s heavyhanded use of sweeteners; from ‘Mandy’ to ‘Memory,’ his voice is awash in strings and supportive harmony, an approach that leaves a sugary crust on songs that were syrupy at the start. But his favourite ploy is familiarity, which allows him to build his confections on the listeners’ memories and expectations. ‘Copacabana’, after all, isn’t a song, it’s a rummage sale o
f rhumba clichés.”

  Considine’s complaints weren’t new to Manilow, who had gotten used to words like “schlocky” and “schmaltzy” being applied to his work. And, as Playboy had pointed out, “overproduced” also seemed to have become another constant refrain from Manilow’s critics, if not his audiences.

  “There’s a kind of an unnatural sheen to some of his records,” says Ed Sciaky, “they’re just so finely produced. Not that he’s the only one that ever did it, but he probably did it better than anybody, and more consistently.” It was that consistency that seemed to offend. In his early career, and in his work with others, Barry would often take chances, try new things, explore his vast talent and what it could produce. But since first allowing Clive Davis to propel him off into stardom on the wings of ‘Mandy’, Manilow seemed bent on doing nothing that would alienate the fans who had made him a star. Therefore if “overproduced” pop songs like ‘Mandy’ and Bruce Johnston’s ‘I Write The Songs’ made people happy, how could he give them anything else?

  “I can’t believe that Barry set out to have a career writing ‘Copa-cabana’,” says Lee Gurst, of the wildly successful 1978 singing soap opera penned by Manilow with partners Bruce Sussman and Jack Feldman. But Manilow has said that it’s the audience who should set the programme, not the performer. “I’ve done that kind of thing once or twice,” Manilow told an interviewer in 2000, when asked if he hasn’t yet reached a point when he can do what he wants in a concert. “The audience indulges me for the first couple of minutes, and then they get antsy. They want to hear the stuff they’ve come to hear me sing. And the difference between the response when they indulge me and when I do ‘Copacabana’ is so huge. Am I here for me, or am I here for them? How self-indulgent can you be?”

  Perhaps, say some critics, it’s not selfless devotion to his audiences that has held Manilow back, but rather fear of losing that audience by risking something new. Professionally, Manilow became like the French radical who says, “There go my people. I must find out where they’re going so I can lead them.” Far from breaking new ground, Barry seemed content to follow the well-worn groove forged by the perceived desires of his audience.

  “I think the artists who really endure and who are taken seriously are the ones who say, look, I’m creating to express something for myself, and I’m on this journey and I’m eager or at least willing to have you watch and come along,” says Lee Gurst. “But I’m doing it for me. When you stop doing it for you and start trying to figure out what the audience wants, I don’t think you can ever do that. I mean it’s impossible. The audience is looking for the artist to lead, as it were. So you get people who are constantly experimenting and trying new things. A Paul Simon, and Elton John, or Billy Joel. Every album has got at least some degree of exploration, searching. Certainly Paul Simon has been around the world, several times, coming up with new things – and it’s from his heart. And with that, the audience says, hey, I want to come along with that – I’m with you. If you try to do it the other way around I think it’s not likely to succeed, and I think Barry’s been trying to do it the other way around for a while.”

  It’s a conformity that hasn’t gone unnoticed by other artists as well. As Gurst mentioned, Paul Simon was a musical trailblazer, and someone that Barry Manilow idolised. In fact, when asked for a high point of his collaboration with Barry, Ron Dante mentions an incident involving Paul Simon.

  “I think we were in the studio with the second album,” recalls Dante, “and Clive Davis came in with Paul Simon, and they sat down in the booth with us. They listened to like four or five of the songs. And Paul Simon leaned over to Clive and Barry and said, ‘I really like what you’re doing on ‘New York City Rhythm’.’ And I remember Barry and I kind of glowed. Here was Paul Simon, one of our idols, and one of the finest songwriters/singers in the world – right up there with Gershwin when they finally write it – and he’s complimenting us on a production and a song. We were very, very self-satisfied that day. And I leaned back in my chair next to Clive, and Barry was next to Paul, and I said, ‘We have achieved some of those things we started out to achieve, which was to create something good, something with a life of its own, and something that people get to hear and like, and a lot of people. And here’s one of our idols sitting here saying they like it.’ So I remember that instance was really, really nice.”

  Nearly ten years later, Simon would undo whatever good feeling he had imparted by denigrating Manilow’s efforts during an interview with Tony Schwartz for Playboy magazine. Schwartz asked, “Do you have to be an artist to have an emotional impact on people? What about Barry Manilow?” Replied Simon, “No. You might be a liar. An innocent. A sentimentalist. But I question what emotion Manilow touches. People are entertained by him. But are they emotionally moved? By ‘Mandy’? By ‘I Write The Songs’? I don’t think so. I don’t believe anything that Barry Manilow sings.” When Schwartz pointed out that there obviously are many people who do believe what Barry sings, Simon’s reply was condescending, at best. “Not everyone has the opportunity to be sufficiently sensitised to what is genuine. If you were raised with a lack of exposure to quality, I think it would be more difficult to recognise it. If you just eat Big Macs all your life and someone serves you the finest French food, I don’t think you will necessarily appreciate it.”

  Of course there are far fewer escargots sold worldwide than Big Macs. In 1983 Manilow played a concert at the English estate of the 11th Duke of Marlborough, Blenheim Palace, that drew over 40,000 enthusiastic fans to the grounds of his ancestral home15. The year before, over half a million people had applied for the 21,500 seats available for five Manilow concerts at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

  Ironically, Simon made his remarks to Playboy in 1984, the year after Manilow’s enormous success in England, and the very year in which Manilow released what would be, to date, his most critically acclaimed album, 2:00 a.m. Paradise Café. The album came about, as Manilow has stated, as a result of Barry’s apparent recognition of his surrender to pop sensibilities and abandonment of his own creative desires. “I had never imagined that I would wind up being thought of as the King of Commercial Music,” Manilow wrote in his 1987 biography Sweet Life. “I mean, me – with all of my snobbish musical taste. Me – who wanted to be the next Edgar Winter or Laura Nyro! Me – who didn’t even like Elvis Presley when I was growing up because he was too commercial! How did this happen?”

  Ed Sciaky sympathises with Barry’s puzzlement, remembering Barry’s comments that he’d always envisioned himself as another Edgar Winter until he sat down with Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, and he suddenly saw himself as Bobby Sherman instead. “I think that’s important,” says Sciaky, “because he doesn’t really see himself as Bobby Sherman. He thinks he’s Edgar Winter. I guess if you’re Bobby Sherman you don’t want to think you’re Bobby Sherman either. But, you know, he kind of became like Bobby Sherman in a way, although I think that’s not really fair because Bobby Sherman was just a teen idol singer and [Barry] produces and arranges, and he became much bigger than Bobby Sherman.”

  But unless you’re living in 1969, being bigger than Bobby Sherman is hardly an accomplishment any entertainer wants to be remembered for. “I had set out to make a living at a job I loved – making music by arranging, conducting, and songwriting,” Manilow wrote. “When I found myself in the Top 40 arena, I had to learn new rules and compromise in order to survive.” But one compromise, he found, often led to another, until constant compromising leads to total capitulation. “Art versus commerce,” Manilow wrote. “I was in the middle of the classic dilemma. I’d read and heard about it for years, and here I was, smack in the middle of it. Although I was emotionally attached to my values and tastes, I saw the wisdom in the commercial approach as well. Barry Manilow (in capital letters) had become successful, and I needed to keep supporting him, but now I was searching for Barry Manilow.”

  Lee Gurst echoes Barry’s own sentiments about his career choices by this ti
me. Speaking of Manilow’s desire to give the fans what they want rather than take chances on what might be more heartfelt material, Gurst says, “I’d say it’s a very risky proposition in terms of success, and it’s even riskier in terms of your own life and endurance as an artist. It just kills you. And I’m sad to say that I think Barry made a choice a long time ago to be more focused on trying to find that success or somehow gratify the audience. And I don’t think that’s really what they want. I think they want to be led along on a personal journey. And it’s a very gutsy thing for an artist to do, and it’s a courageous path to take to let the world observe your own exploration. But if you don’t do that, I think no good will come of it ultimately. Obviously Barry’s making a very nice living and he’s not been abandoned, but nor has he gotten the recognition, and I would be very surprised if he really has the satisfaction that he would like to have from his career.”

  Manilow would probably agree. By his own account he had, by 1984, lost his ability to play the piano for his own pleasure, and listening to the radio had become, he has said, “a competition: ‘Oh, why didn’t I think of that drum lick?’ I was always trying to catch up. You can go nuts doing that.” So, after opening Super Bowl XVIII with his rendition of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, Manilow retreated to his Bel Air mansion and, he has said, began to look into himself for a change, rather than looking around him to gauge everyone else’s approval or disapproval at what he did. “It was like the end of the ovie,” he later told an interviewer. “I didn’t know what to do. I felt the credits should roll: ‘The End’.

  Instead, he conceived the idea for 2:00 a.m. Paradise Café, he has said, in a dream. “I always know I’m onto something when I get ideas in dreams. These projects always go smoothly,” he later said of the album. “Paradise Café was composed and recorded in less than two months.” In fact, the album was recorded, astonishingly, in a single take. “When we finished,” Manilow later wrote of the experience, “it had been 45 minutes of straight playing and singing. Everyone in the control room burst into applause.” It was a long way from the “overproduced” pop records he’d been used to making, and it felt good. “It represented taking control of a career in which the light of success had been so bright that it had blinded me.”