Arguably the most puzzling compliment Barry has received came during a now-famous encounter between Manilow and rock icon BobDylan. Brought together at a party in one of those random acts of providence, Dylan reportedly embraced Manilow and said to him, “Don’t stop doing what you’re doing, man. We’re all inspired by you.” So shaken by this encounter was Manilow that he actually had to leave the party for a moment in order to pull himself together and begin parsing Dylan’s statement for hidden meanings.
It’s this seemingly odd pairing – BobDylan and Barry Manilow – that brings into focus the observations made by Fong-Torres and others that the business of entertainment is built in image and illusion16. In truth, there are as many similarities as differences between Manilow’s career and Dylan’s. For example, Dylan’s trademark was his absolute lack of artifice, while Manilow has often been faulted for being almost entirely a creation of his own public relations machine. These are, of course, the images that have come to be hung on each of these performers. But Manilow’s image has never been as false as assumed, nor has the complete honesty Dylan projects ever been based in reality. Bob Dylan was, after all, born Robert Zimmerman, and later went through a couple of name changes, from Elston Gunn (paying homage to both Elvis and popular TV character Peter Gunn) to BobDillon (after another television hero, Marshal Matt Dillon), finally settling on Bob Dylan, “because it looked better.” When asked questions about his origins, Dylan would say whatever came into his head – he was an orphan, or he had joined a circus at 13 and travelled with it around the Southwest, or he had played the piano on Elvis Presley’s early recordings. “To put it frankly,” said disc jockey Oscar Brand, who was host of WNYC’s Folksong Festival, “he was a nervous wreck. “He came on my radio show, and he said nothing but lies about his life. Naturally, he was nervous all the time. He was living with these enormous lies. Here he was, a kid from Minnesota, and he came here to a climate where a number of people were already quite seasoned. He was afraid he couldn’t compete and afraid he wasn’t good enough, so he lied.”
How, then, is Dylan’s behaviour somehow more forgivable than, say, Barry Manilow’s show of bravado when thrown in with Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel? Why was it okay for Dylan to play down his relatively affluent upbringing (his father once gifted him with a pink Cadillac) to make himself appear among the downtrodden his songs championed, when Manilow, who could honestly report that he’d been raised in poverty, was sneered at as a melodramatist when he would speak honestly of his humble origins? How was Bob Dylan’s bare feet and ragged clothing any less of an artifice than Barry Manilow’s rhinestone spangled spandex?
“It’s a matter of image,” says Ed Sciaky. “The public just get sold images … every teenage kid in America wants the same stupid products for no reason at all. It’s funny because Aerosmith can do the most disgusting Diane Warren ballad and get away with it, but Barry can’t. I don’t know what it is about him that riled the critics other than his songs were hum-able and what they considered to be overproduced.”
Ben Fong-Torres would tend to agree, having noted, albeit from a distance, the change in Barry over the years. “The only time I ever saw him was when he was backing Bette Midler, and he was the arranger and pianist in her clubact. This is at the Boarding House in San Francisco, a nightclub that held probably about 300 to 400 people on the main floor. And Bette Midler was the headlining act and Barry was onstage with her doing his role … I thought he did a great jobanchoring that act. I was a fan of Bette’s clubact from the Boarding House all the way through to arena-sized lavish productions of hers. And he was very good in that job.”
But of course a large part of Barry’s job with Bette was providing a stabilising hand to keep her wildness in check. While Bette’s frenzy was still hypnotic without Barry’s disciplined counterpoint, without Bette’s unpredictability, Barry’s discipline as a solo act could often come across as simply boring, particularly in comparison to his earlier association with Midler.
“Everybody has their own personal feelings about him,” says Ben Fong-Torres. “And it is easy when someone is labelled a square or something like that. It’s awfully hard to get that off, fair or unfair. I have never thought of him as a particularly great singer. That’s a basic fact. I just don’t identify with his voice and presentation. But you see him being lauded by fans, by adoring fans, Neil Diamond-like, for his entire stage presentation. And I think on the other level, speaking of Neil Diamond, there seems to be an adoration on the level of Neil that had to do with the entire package. Not only the singing and the songs, but also the whole show that he presented. And I don’t know, I suppose that some people would say, this guy looks like a dweeb, and the fact that he’s getting the kind of mobfemale adoration only puts me off more, whether it’s male or female saying that, I don’t know. But I think that’s also part of the – the fact that he looked like a cartoon character, dressed in all white, not a particularly great looking guy, singing not particularly great songs, in a not great voice, and yet he’s got this kind of outrageous response, does put people off. It solidifies for them the lack of taste on the part of many of their fellow Americans, and so then Manilow becomes the target for abuse about the declining values in pop culture. Fact is that they’ve been declining and haven’t been at high levels in the very beginning anyway. So I think he’s victimised by that. On the other hand, though, I find myself having a hard time defending him based on the quality of the music and his act and his show and his style and all of that. There’s nothing there for me to latch onto.”
But what of Bob Dylan’s seemingly heartfelt tribute? Dylan is typically mute on the subject, refusing to either confirm the sincerity of his words or reveal his comments to be a cruel joke. Those who know Dylan can easily see it either way. “Well, BobDylan has a great sense of humour,” says Fong-Torres, quick to give Dylan the benefit of the doubt. “Bob Dylan, for whatever else he is, is also in show business, and there’s a certain etiquette. If you’re a mature person, no matter what you think of a person – and it’s the same thing in general social life – you by and large, unless you’re a complete punk, you don’t go around insulting people publicly without good reason. So you’re kind, you’re nice, you’re part of the same fraternity overall – we’re entertainers, so I’m not going to abuse you and, in fact, I’m going to go out of my way to make you feel good. Of course anyone who’s seen D.A. Pennebaker’s 1967 documentary Don’t Look Back knows that Dylan has never had any trouble in the past behaving like, as Fong-Torres puts it, “a complete punk” when it comes to making sometimes bitingly cruel public statements about his fellow performers.
“There’s a clown aspect of Dylan, for sure,” says Fong-Torres. “And he may have felt like, oh, boy, he will get a kick out of it if I really go and overpraise him and make it so that he has a story to tell, and that’s going to make it fun for me, too, because it’s just a joke, but hey, if he wants to take it seriously, great, too. There’s a [possibility] of that.”
However Fong-Torres goes on to tell of a similar incident that occurred between Elvis Presley and Ricky Nelson. “When [Nelson] first broke out with his first recordings and began challenging Elvis Presley on the charts, he was at a party along with Elvis Presley. And when Elvis spotted Ricky, he brushed past a number of people and got to him, and greeted him, and bear hugged him, and lifted him off the floor, and praised Ricky’s parents’ show, Ozzie and Harriet, and his music, and just said, ‘Hey, man, I’m really a big fan of the show, and I love …’, and he starts recounting certain shows to Ricky. And he just made it very clear that he was supportive of him, and a big fan, and following his career. And just like that, and so generous, that Ricky was completely shocked and taken aback by it. And he would not have expected that of Elvis along with somebody who was perceived to be a rival of his for the number one position week after week there in the mid and late Fifties. So these things happen in the business.”
“Don’t play around with me …”
So Barry Manilow, it would seem, has been designated our national punchline. If he finds himself uncomfortable with his role as everyone’s favourite celebrity fall-guy (with the possible exception of Joey Buttafuco, whose overall derision factor is cemented forever if not by his overall sleaziness, then certainly by virtue of having the most joke-worthy name since Fanny Hill) and tries to do something sincere and praiseworthy, there is a pack of pundits poised and ready, ‘round the clock, to slap him back into place. A good example of this is Manilow’s 1998 tribute to Ol’ Blue Eyes, Manilow Sings Sinatra. Apparently unable to come to acceptable terms in order to forge a working alliance while Sinatra was alive, Manilow, after Sinatra’s death, was finally able to pair up with the legendary singer, if only in spirit.
Of course the name Frank Sinatra carries with it the same kind of iconic imagery as does BobDylan. When it was announced that Manilow would be releasing a CD on which he would be covering a dozen Sinatra standards, there was, of course, no possible way that critics were going to let him get away with what they saw as an unbelievable display of chutzpah. “Had I thought about it a little more,” Manilow told a reporter after the album’s release, “I probably would have chickened out. I was dealing with my heart and not my head. Had I actually thought about it, I probably would have said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’” Luckily, there were no end of folks happy to pose the question for him.
An internet jokester quipped, “Barry Manilow announced that he’s putting out an album of Frank Sinatra songs. Isn’t that like LaToya Jackson putting out an album of Barbra Streisand songs?” Even campus newspapers couldn’t resist a dig. In a faux “retraction” run in UCLA’s Daily Bruin, student columnist Matthew D. Glaser wrote: “CORRECTION: Barry Manilow erroneously released a Frank Sinatra tribute album, thinking he was honouring Ol’ Blue Eyes’ memory and hoping to make a quick buck. Manilow regrets this error and his entire worthless career, except ‘Copacabana’. I really like that song.”
Manilow Sings Sinatra, released only a few months after Sinatra’s death, did seem to some to be less a tribute and more a marketing ploy. “Awash in enough echo to swallow the band,” writes Amazon reviewer Rickey Wright, “Barry Manilow does what he can to honour the memory of Frank in a (commercially) timely manner.” Making unfavourable comparison’s between Manilow’s straight renditions of the Sinatra classics and Sinatra’s own improvisational delivery of the songs, Wright concludes, “He’s made poor homages to the past before this, but this one verges on the offensive.”
Lloyd Sachs, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, expressed similar dissatisfaction with Manilow’s attempts to deliver Sinatra songs as anything but pale impersonations. “On ballads such as ‘In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning’,” wrote Sachs, “his imprint is mighty wee, indeed. When you have as many gaps to bridge as he does with this material and this legend, passiveness is the last thing you can afford.”
In an ironic twist, for all the ire the album provoked among critics, it garnered Manilow his first Grammy nomination since 1978, when he took home the award for Best Male Vocal for ‘Copacabana’. In 2000, the Sinatra tribute album was nominated for Grammys in two categories – Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance, for Barry, and Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist, for Johnny Mandel’s arrangement of ‘In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning’. Though both awards would go to others – Tony Bennett and Alan Broadbent, respectively – it was a reassuring validation amid the hailstorm of criticism that the album’s release had unleashed on Manilow.
Equally reassuring was the support of Sinatra’s family. In a May, 1999 appearance on Larry King Live marking the one-year anniversary of Sinatra’s death, Barry joined Frank’s daughters, Nancy Sinatra and Tina Sinatra, who were announcing the establishment of the Frank Sinatra Foundation which, said Tina, “carries into the 21st century the works and visions of Frank Sinatra in education, medicine, the arts, and the individual in need.” In the course of the show, Barry remarked that “even ‘bootleg’ Frank Sinatra is better than most other guys”. In turn, Nancy Sinatra, referring to Manilow Sings Sinatra, said, “There’s nothing wrong with your album either, kiddo. It’s great!” In closing Barry noted, “I’ve got my stack of Sinatra albums out all the time,” to which Nancy replied, “And we listen to you, Barry.”
Later that year, Manilow spoke with a Detroit Free Press reporter who was obviously hoping to embarrass the singer. She failed. “Do you ever get tired of being a punchline?” she asked. “What do you think? How would you feel?” Barry replied. Not to be deterred, the reporter pressed the point. “No, how do you feel?” Manilow replied, “I’ve always been surprised that anybody would consider anybody a punchline. I’m surprised I would find myself at the end of a joke.” Not willing to let it go at that, the reporter poked a little deeper into the wound. “Why do you think people make fun of you?” she asked. “That’s what you get when you become terribly successful,” answered Manilow. “I experienced it from the very first moment of my success. So have all of us – from Michael Bolton to Lionel Richie to Michael Jackson to Madonna.” So, then, the reporter wondered, “Is there anybody out there you’d like to beat up?” Showing just how long his memory can be, Manilow harkened back to critic John Wasserman and his vicious review of Bette Midler’s 1973 show. “When I was beginning and I really needed encouragement, there was a reviewer in San Francisco who tore me so apart and insulted everybody, including my family. I never quite forgot it. That guy was so horrible. But he died. So watch out. Don’t play around with me.”
“If you can’t say something nice …”
For all the waxing and waning of his career in the past three decades, Barry Manilow, it would seem, leaves himself very little time to brood over anything others might have to say about him.
Seeming to be on perpetual tour, Manilow has managed to continue to sell out most of his concerts for the past twenty years, and into the 21st century. In fact, while Las Vegas’ MGM Grand was, on December 31, still trying to sell tickets to Barbra Streisand’s Millenium-eve concert (erroneously reported to have been sold out), Connecticut’s Foxwoods Casino was adding shows to Barry Manilow’s New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day shows, all of which were sold out nearly as fast as additional performances were announced.
His concerts still rely heavily on old works, but in between ‘Copa-cabana’ and ‘Mandy’ and all the other favourites made popular in the Seventies, Manilow now inserts big band and jazz pieces, as well as selections from another new venture he’s undertaken in the past decade, Broadway musicals.
Despite his usually heavy touring schedule, Manilow has been very gradually shifting his career away from the concert stage and towards the Broadway stage. Squeezing ‘Copacabana’ for the last dregs of marketability, Manilow adapted the song once again, this time into a stage play. Doing away with the unhappy ending that many felt had been a flaw in the song’s television adaptation, Barry Manilow’s Copacabana toured the world to mixed ticket sales and reviews. Unfortunately the mix was heavy on the negative side (“Copacabana is a Rotten Banana” read one headline), and the show folded in early 2001. Another stage show, Harmony was inspired by the true story of The Comedian Harmonists, a German singing group that was the toast of Europe from the late 1920s through the early war years. In addition, a tribute to Manilow’s most memorable songs, either penned by the singer or simply made famous by him, is now being presented in the stage review Could It Be Magic, which opened in Chicago just before Manilow’s 58th birthday. Though Manilow does not actually appear in the review, he seemed to be hovering over every detail of the production from his seat in the audience at every performance during the opening run in Chicago.
Of course with Manilow’s ongoing success and diversification comes the continued taunts of critics. When Manilow sang the national anthem at the opening day of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “I liked the way the Dodgers invited Barry Manilow to sing the national anthem
and then had a pair of F-16s fly over early to drown him out. I’m told the Fighter Wing wrote off the exercise as a smart bomb run.” When it was announced that Manilow would perform at the Houston Rodeo in March 2001, one newspaper columnist couldn’t help but quip, “Surely someone’s going to be fired for this.” But Michael D. Clark of the Houston Chronicle saw things differently. “Some may think it odd to see Barry Manilow at RodeoHouston,” Clark wrote, “but why not? This showman of showmen has played nearly everywhere else.”
And it’s true. Manilow’s performance schedule is exhaustive and, one could only assume, exhausting. Manilow’s charitable endeavours seem equally varied and numerous. Of the many charities Manilow lends his name to, he is most active in AIDS-related organisations, including the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, the Gay Men’s Health Center, and the San Francisco Bay Area Destination Foundation. Edna Manilow was active in similar activities until her cancer-related death in September, 1994 at age 70. During the last ten years of her life, she volunteered at hospitals to help care for children with AIDS. “That was her passion,” said Manilow’s spokesperson, Susan Dubow, after Edna’s death. “Rain, sleet, hail, snow, she would be there for these children.”
“That’s something celebrities do with their life,” says Playboy’s Jim Peterson, of Manilow’s charitable activities. “I don’t have to go that far to admire him. This is part of a musician’s lifestyle, to make himself available and to use the attention that centres on him to help other people. That’s in the guidance counsellor’s handbook on being a celebrity. And I’m sure he’s done it more seriously than most.”
It’s the lack of fanfare for these endeavours that seems to mark Manilow’s seriousness towards them. Unless his celebrity will help focus attention on a particular cause, most people would never know of Barry’s hand in many of the organisations he supports. Certainly those who spend much of their time denigrating all Manilow does seem to turn a blind eye when it comes to his charitable endeavours. While reams can be written about Comic Relief, or Farm Aid, or Band Aid, or the ‘We Are the World’ venture (Barry wasn’t invited to participate), when it comes to Manilow, the credo among journalists seems to be, as Dorothy Parker once said, “If you can’t say something nice, come sit next to me.”
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