Of the eleven songs on 2:00 a.m. Paradise Café, the biggest hit was a Manilow melody paired with a Johnny Mercer lyric, ‘When October Goes’. Mercer’s daughter, Mandy Mercer Neder, was at first rather puzzled by her mother’s decision to offer her late husband’s lyrics to Barry Manilow for completion. Mercer’s widow and her friend, Mark Kramer, had been going through some drawers one day and had discovered the lyrics. Says Neder, “[My mother] called me up and she said, ‘Mark wants to give them to Barry Manilow.’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know. Who else would you be comfortable with? Make a list, and who else would you feel comfortable with?’” But Kramer had his heart set on Barry Manilow. “Why he picked Barry,” says Neder, “I don’t know.”
“So they went to a concert or something,” Neder continues, “and went backstage and I guess they proposed these to Barry or to his manager. So he took them and said he’d see what he could do with them. And almost immediately he got this one hit, which is a beautiful thing, ‘When October Goes’. It’s a gorgeous, beautiful song. And he came up with that.” Neder had been a bit leery of the idea initially, but hearing ‘When October Goes’ immediately eliminated any misgivings she may have had over the choice of Manilow. “I thought it was a little odd, but of course he didn’t seem to be writing the type of things that my dad wrote, so I thought it was a little unusual. But then when he came out with that song – wow! I think it was very apropos, it was a very beautiful song. I can’t say enough about it.”
Neither could the critics. In a turnabout of the typical Manilow release, 2:00 a.m. Paradise Café was given a somewhat cool reception by Manilow’s fans, but was lauded by the critics as “a surprising change for the popular Mr Manilow”, as Max Preeo wrote in Show Music. Peter Reilly of Stereo Review concurred: “A very fine album, worth your time and attention.”
But after a personal and professional lifetime of trying to please others, it’s difficult to be comfortable suddenly becoming an iconoclast. Just as Barry Manilow Live would mark the high point of Manilow’s recording career in terms of sales, 2:00 a.m. Paradise Café would prove to be the high point of his critical success. But if Barry Manilow thought it would mark a turning point in the public’s perception of him, he was mistaken.
“The guy could be Barry Manilow in five minutes …”
In 1986, Phil Collins expressed to Playboy magazine a frustration over the negative attention popular music seems to garner simply because of its popularity. But, even while decrying the same treatment that Manilow himself had suffered over the years, Collins managed to do the exact same thing to Manilow in the following exchange:
PLAYBOY: We’ve remarked that your biggest talent is being able to speak to the average listener. Do you agree?
COLLINS: I don’t know about biggest, but it does seem that people relate. There’s a tendency for people to be cynical about popularity, like you’re appealing to the lowest common denominator, which is another term for trash. It’s an insulting attitude – insulting to the audience. I mean, sometimes I feel it. Like, God, I wish I were David Byrne, with this small, tight group of fans. The critics would like me. Instead, I’ve been taken less seriously because I’ve been more popular – I’m cast aside as some sort of Barry Manilow. I find it frustrating.
PLAYBOY: How is a Barry Manilow song different from some of your ballads – ‘One More Night’, for example?
COLLINS: It has a heartfelt thing in it, it comes from some place deeper, and that comes through in the songs, I think. It hits the chord of truth. People understand it because they have felt it, too.
PLAYBOY: Manilow might say that people respond to his songs for a similar reason.
COLLINS: He might, but I still believe there is an important difference. People are living with the problems that have to do with their homes, their day-to-day lives, their relationships. There are obviously more substantial problems in the world; but from the feedback I get, I think they find compassion for their situations in my songs. Understanding. That’s different from gay little love songs. People use music for solace. Somehow, when people are miserable, they put on a miserable song; they want empathy or something. Stephen Bishop writes some of the best love songs because he loves being miserable.
PLAYBOY: We may have caught you being less than nice right at the start. Why the sensitivity over Barry Manilow’s sort of music?
COLLINS: Well, it defines a certain area of music to me: soft, spineless music. I never met Barry, so I don’t know what he’s like, but though the music may be very well produced, polished, smooth and glossy, it has no spine, no edge, no backbone.
In 1997, Los Angeles Times music critic Robert Hilburn, managed to slam two singers at the same time when he printed a quote from an unnamed “industry insider” who said, “I don’t consider [Michael] Bolton a threat in any way. He could disappear in a minute. The guy could be Barry Manilow in five minutes.”
It’s important to note here that Manilow has had an unprecedented 25 singles reach the Top 40 in consecutive order; had five of his albums chart at once in a single year – a feat matched, to date, only by Frank Sinatra and Johnny Mathis. He’s won an Emmy, a Tony, a Grammy, and was nominated for an Academy Award. He has walls filled with gold and platinum records marking a career which has, so far, spanned over a quarter-century. Yet, given all of his accomplishments, somehow it’s understood that, when it’s suggested a performer could become Barry Manilow at any time, it’s not meant to be a good thing.
The question of why Manilow has always been viewed with such pervasive contempt is difficult to answer, and one Manilow and his friends have been grappling with for years. But Collins’ charge that Manilow’s work is “smooth and glossy” but has “no spine, no edge, no backbone” seems to hit closest to home. As Lee Gurst has pointed out, a true artist is expected to break new ground, lead, inspire. Manilow’s work, however, has, over the years, inspired any number of jokes, but very little serious consideration.
“The criticism of Barry wasn’t serious,” agrees disc jockey Ed Sciaky, “it was more joking. I’ve never seen a really serious critic that says there’s something wrong with his music or it’s bad or some reasoned explanation of what’s wrong with it. It just became a sort of an easy, shorthand way to say schlock, basically the new elevator music. People become clichés in a way, and he became the cliché for the schlock pop artist. The elevator music, schmaltzy – I don’t know what the real, the underlying cause is other than just taste. He just got branded as somehow either insincere or just lacking in musical credibility. Kind of cheesy pop music like guilty pleasures and so on. But that doesn’t do him justice because there’s a lot of finely crafted music there.”
Dick Clark agrees. “I think it’s a combination of envy and misunderstanding. Once they understand that the guy is really good at what he does, then they become a fan. He’s a consummate entertainer. He knows the business backwards and forwards. He does it well. I can’t put it any other way.” Ed Sciaky echoes that opinion. “I don’t understand how anybody can go see his concert and not rave,” he says.
Jack Wilkins, leader of Barry’s first band, The Jazz Partners, like others, sees Barry’s problems hopelessly enmeshed with his blessings. “How do you explain a guy like Barry?” says Wilkins. “It’s a dichotomy, and that’s what Barry is. Everybody’s snickering and all that – I don’t buy that. It’s bullshit really. I like the ‘Copacabana’ song, I like a lot of songs he’s written and all that. I like his voice and I like his charm on the bandstand. I mean the fact that most of the girls that like Barry are in their late 40s or 50s is neither here nor there in a way, is it? He’s not exactly attracting the Madonna crowd, is he? So he’s got these old housewives who love him. Okay, that’s cool. Sure, you could laugh at what he does. But this guy is doing great; he’s charming and he does a lot of great stuff. At the same time, I could find the humour in what he does. I could see how people could find it rather amusing. What he’s doing is appealing to the lowest basic instincts. But it’s n
ot because he’s doing that, it’s because he hears this. He deals with it. He understands it. He’s not trying to attract the 50-year-old crowd. He’s just doing his stuff that he does. And people love him. And why not? You have no idea how good that feels, getting up on the bandstand and having 15,000 people screaming at the top of their lungs because they love you. There’s nothing like it. So Barry gets up there and sings a song that’s heartfelt for a lot of women – screw it! I’m happy about that. You could say anything you want about Barry after that. Hey, man, you get up there and do that, see what you feel.”
But perhaps it’s not surprising that in a world where television shows need laugh tracks in order for the home viewing audience to know when they’re supposed to be amused, people have a tendency to look over their shoulders to make sure that the entertainment they’re enjoying is socially acceptable to their peers. Ron Dante is angered by those who feel the need to “make you feel somehow less because you happen to like a certain song or type of music. I don’t expect everybody to like what I like, but don’t tell me I’m crazy for liking it. Because you don’t have the right. They don’t have the right.”
Manilow found a surprising champion – of sorts – in the acid-tongued critic and columnist Joe Queenan. In his 1998 book, Red Lobster, White Trash and The Blue Lagoon, Queenan, while not pledging his eternal love and devotion to Manilow, at least pays him grudging respect:
“Here was a guy who knew how to put on a show,” Queenan wrote. “Not a show I necessarily wanted to see, but a show all the same. Here was a guy who understood that no performance was complete without dragging some woman who had flown all the way from England up onto the stage for a kiss and a cuddle. Here was a guy who realised that when the public had given so much, you had to give something back. Here was a guy who knew that when six thousand women named Debbie get together with one guy named Barry, there’s going to be magic in the moonlight.”
As comedian Dennis Miller once said, “I wanted to get right up to the precipice, pivot, and jeté back to Coolsville.” In like manner, Queenan tempered his tribute with a bit of a disclaimer:
“I am certainly not suggesting that after all these years in the business, Barry Manilow had finally learned to sing or dance, or that his songs had miraculously stopped sucking. ‘I Write The Songs’ was still a crime against nature. Manilow still danced like a spindly Travolta impersonator. And the guy who writes the songs that made the whole world sing still sang like Barry Manilow.”
But, as Dick Clark and Ed Sciaky both stated, if one watched and listened to Barry Manilow with an open mind, you just couldn’t help but admire the guy, as Queenan discovered:
“I am only saying that his songs were at least songs, not pointless New Age riffing like Kenny G’s interminable jerking off. And unlike Billy Joel or Phil Collins, Manilow seemed to be doing material that he genuinely believed in, songs that were appropriate for his personality. ‘Memory’ may have been pure schmaltz, but Manilow was nothing if not a schmaltzmeister. Like Lawrence Welk or Liberace before him, he knew himself and he knew his audience. My hat was off to him.”
Faint praise, perhaps, but at least well reasoned and thoughtful, consideration most critics never bother to give Barry Manilow.
Ben Fong-Torres has been one of America’s leading music journalists for over thirty years. He began writing for the enormously influential Rolling Stone magazine in 1968, during an incredibly exciting time in music history, and later served as one of the magazine’s editors. He has interviewed such musical luminaries as Paul McCartney, BobDylan, Elton John, Jim Morrison and the Grateful Dead, to name just a few. Fong-Torres tends to agree with Ed Sciaky’s position that, in the music business, image is everything, and the public perception of a performer is far more telling than that performer’s commercial success. “Success does not provide a shield from such criticisms,” says Fong-Torres on the lack of respect Manilow is given. “In fact, it often makes one vulnerable to that kind of attack. And that’s been the case with Kenny G and Michael Bolton, and goes all the way back to any number of people who have tremendous commercial success and not a particularly hip credential, and they get slammed. It goes all the way back to Pat Boone and before. That’s just the way it is in popular culture.”
But why?
“It’s just the nature of people to criticise others and to find targets that are vulnerable and to have fun with them,” Fong-Torres explains. “And it’s not just in entertainment. It’s often in sports and in politics and in other areas as well. So that’s just human nature. And certain artists come along and they get to be that target for that particular time that they’re around. Sometimes there’s substance to it and sometimes there isn’t. There certainly are what you might call fabricated artists who are seen to be such by not only critics but by a lot of fans, but still attain success for other reasons, because of their looks, because of a particular song that becomes a hit and that leads to more success, or because of other media exposure, because they’re good for television or movies. So they are able to make a id for themselves, but that name is quite often tarred and feathered.”
That has certainly proven true of Barry Manilow’s career yet, says Fong-Torres, Manilow is certainly not the only performer to live, personally and professionally, through such constant drubbing. “So have many of the others who have been vilified,” he says. “They maintain a success. They have somehow a personal strength, they have a knowledge of a core base of fans who are loyalists. They have come up with a psychological defensive shield against those attacks. As you know, there are many artists who don’t read reviews or don’t look at clippings or don’t read books or whatever, don’t watch TV shows in which comedians might be making fun of them. And that’s how they are able to survive. I don’t know Barry Manilow, so I wouldn’t be able to say how he has survived, but he certainly seems to have been one that has thick enough skin that he’s able to continue with his career and make just enough adjustments every few years to keep things interesting for himself, whether it’s tackling a new medium, or tackling a new form of music, or whatever.”
In fact Manilow has not always been able to maintain good humour about the attacks by critics and others who just want to get in a good shot or two at his expense. But even his anger at unfair personal attacks simply seems to provide fuel for those who seem to have fashioned themselves his opponents. Ron Dante cites Los Angeles Times critic Robert Hilburn as a prime example. “Hilburn doesn’t like Barry,” says Dante. “He’s not the market; nobody cares what he likes. But he’s got the LA Times as his power, so when Barry first came out he’d write some bad reviews. Barry finally wrote him a terrible note and told him to go screw off or something, and he posted it on his board. He was proud! Look at what Barry Manilow sent me!”
Knight-Ridder newspaper columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. is another example. “Barry Manilow knows we’ve been laughing at him, and he wants it to stop,” Pitts wrote in a 1993 article entitled, Barry Manilow Wants a Little Respect, and He’ll Go Toe-to-Toe to Get It. Using a technique popular with paparazzi, Pitts basically did his best to irritate Manilow, then gleefully reported the results when he was successful. “I’ll tell you what,” Pitts writes, obviously exultant, “I got into a fight – verbal, folks, verbal – with Barry Manilow.” How very thrilling for Mr Pitts.
It’s no wonder, then, that Manilow has, over the years, become suspicious of everyone’s motives, and, as Bill Zehme wrote in Rolling Stone in 1990, when paid compliments “he sifts them for snide subtext.”
And for good reason. When Canada’s hip music magazine Graffiti decided to put Manilow on its cover, it was with tongue firmly in cheek, though Manilow seemed unaware of this fact. “I felt kind of sorry for him,” said former Graffiti editor-in-chief Alastair Sutherland, who conducted the interview with Manilow, the same interview in which Manilow denied being gay. A one-page addendum to the interview stated, “Nobody polarises music fans faster than Barry Manilow. At the peak of his popularity in 1977, he wa
s simultaneously the biggest selling pop vocalist in North America and a man whose severest critics split into camps of those hating him, those really hating him, and those who drove cars over cliffs every time one of Barry’s songs came on the radio.”
It’s not surprising, then, that when British magazine Q requested an interview in 1990, Barry’s response was, “Why do you want to interview me? Why should I be in your magazine? What’s the slant?” The magazine made sympathetic noises. “Pressing the British flesh has never been high on Manilow’s priority list,” wrote Adrian Deevoy. “His press here has been only marginally better than Adolf Hitler. Reviews of his live concerts haven’t always been so kind. Subsequently he is ferociously paranoid and has only given a handful of interviews in the last decade.”
Of course just because someone’s paranoid doesn’t mean no one’s out to get them. The Adrian Deevoy Q article was preceded by the less than flattering introduction, “You are either adored with a frightening intensity or despised with a burning passion. Your closest friends are in your employ. You are cosseted, isolated, deeply embittered, yet every night you’re high-kicking down the spangly staircase of showbiz singing ‘Sweet Life’. You are imprisoned in a role of your own devising.” The blurb ends, obviously quite impressed with its own cleverness, with the kicker, “You’re Barry Manilow and, what’s worse, Adrian Deevoy is on your tail.” Paranoid? Right.
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