Bette Midler

by Mark Bego

  It was time to bid the past a fond farewell and move on. Bette decided to concentrate on rock and ballads with synthesizers and no embellishments. “Because that’s exactly what it is,” she explained of the title of the album No Frills. “It’s music with no strings and no horns. It’s bare-bones music, as unpretentious as it can be. Just stark. But I’m enjoying this album more than any other I’ve ever made. I haven’t stopped laughing since I started making this record, because the people I’m working with are fabulous, funny, silly, silly people. Danny Goldberg is executive producer. Chuck Plotkin is producing, Toby Scott is the engineer, and Brock Walsh is the musical director. I’ve never been silly about my records” (30).

  Bette was very optimistic about her No Frills album. She hoped that the ballad “All I Need to Know” would turn out to be a hit on the order of “The Rose.” She recorded the Rolling Stones’ “Beast of Burden,” Marshall Crenshaw’s melodic “Favorite Waste of Time,” and the electronic techno-pop song “Is It Love?” She also composed a song with Jerry Blatt and Brock Walsh called “Come Back, Jimmy Dean.” Although she and Cher were no longer close buddies—for some unexplained reason—it seemed odd that Bette would write a song with this title and subject matter, as Cher was concurrently starring on Broadway in the show Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.

  Several of the songs on this album she found by listening to an endless stack of “demo” tapes submitted for her consideration. Of the ’80s music scene, she explained, “I know what’s going on—I listen to the ‘greats’ and the ‘near-greats.’ I do. I know what synthesizers are! You know, I’m an up-to-date kinda of gal. I like that song ‘Is It Love?” I couldn’t resist it when I heard it. Actually, that was one of the two thousand tapes that I got that someone had sent me—it’s a Nick Gilder song. I chose it out of that great big pile” (94).

  “I found some great songs. I found a little group from Wichita, Kansas. . . . what was the name of that band? It was an all-girls band and they had the strangest songs. But I couldn’t get ahold of them, so I couldn’t cut the songs. They didn’t have a phone, they didn’t have a manager. I had this tape in this pile of two thousand. They had songs like ‘Alien Love.’ I mean, those songs are really out-to-lunch. They were fourteen years old—these little girls had written these songs. They were very young. I did flirt with the idea of cranking out a teeny bopper album. But I’m really not that. You have a face up to that” (94).

  She spent a year gathering and recording new material for the album. She went to the Greek Theater in Los Angeles one night to see Marshall Crenshaw, who was the opening act for Joe Jackson. From her meeting with Crenshaw, she came away with the song “My Favorite Waste of Time.”

  Three singles were pulled from the No Frills album: “All I Need to Know,” “My Favorite Waste of Time,” and “Beast of Burden.” Unfortunately, none of the singles became big hits, nor did the album itself go far on the record charts. Bette’s version of “All I Need to Know” made it to Number 77 on the Billboard singles chart. Ironically, when it was rerecorded in 1989 by Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville—under the title “Don’t Know Much”—it went to Number 2 and revived both Ronstadt’s and Neville’s recording careers. Bette’s recording of “My Favorite Waste of Time” made it to Number 78 on the charts in 1983, and “Beast of Burden” peaked at Number 71. The No Frills album itself only made it as far as Number 60 in America.

  It was a big disappointment for Bette. She did everything possible to promote the album. She did a half-hour TV special for HBO entitled No Frills, and in early 1984 she even released her first video for MTV. It was her version of the Rolling Stones’ “Beast of Burden,” and it co-starred Mick Jagger, who was seen in the video getting up and dancing with Miss M. The video, which was taped at the now-defunct New York City nightclub the Peppermint Lounge, was hysterical fun. Unfortunately, it did not save the album or the single from disappointing sales.

  On her 1985 comedy album Mud Will Be Flung Tonight, Bette mentioned her video with Mick. “We were fabulous!” she exclaimed, adding, “I know what you’re all thinking: ‘Did she fuck him?’ ” But, according to Midler, they were just friends. “A lovely man. Great sense of humor. Hard worker,” she said, describing Jagger. “He’s very funny. And he really knows how to live. He’s very sharp, and I like him. [But] he’s a man’s man. He likes to be with the guys. He doesn’t want to sit around and talk to some girl who thinks she knows the blues” (18).

  In retrospect, Bette lamented, “The last record I made [No Frills]—I was in the studio for over a year, and I don’t like that process. There’s so much technology, whatever humanity I had was slowly being eroded. And I spent a year making that record and nobody bought it. Nobody cared except me. I considered not singing anymore. I thought I wasn’t taking my singing seriously. I wasn’t paying attention to it. It wasn’t just because I wasn’t selling records anymore. It had just fallen by the wayside” (101).

  Coinciding with the release of No Frills had come the announcement of a 1982–1983 concert tour to be entitled De Tour. The tour opened on December 6, 1982, and it played at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve. Just as she had done in New York’s Philharmonic Hall ten years before, at the stroke of midnight, Bette bounded onstage dressed in a diaper—this time as “baby 1983.” However, this time around she was accompanied by “old man 1982,” who was none other than Barry Manilow! It had been almost a decade since they had been onstage together. Although they had never done a duet of any sort, that night they sang “Auld Lang Syne” together, much to the delight of her audience. It was of her best New Year’s Eve surprises since she had flashed a crowd from King Kong’s hand.

  When De Tour was announced for its Radio City Music Hall run in New York City, the response was overwhelming. Fans stood for up to twelve hours in freezing-cold January temperatures to purchase tickets. With a gross of $1,327,000, Bette’s latest tour broke all the existing box-office records at Radio City.

  The De Tour shows represented the first time in a decade that Bette performed almost all new material. She basically left the character of the Divine Miss M at home and decided to attempt something completely different. The only old Midler songs that she performed in the show were “In the Mood,” “Stay with Me,” and “The Rose.”

  There were some hysterical new bits of staging and conceptual comedy. There were several minutes of stage time devoted entirely to her breasts. “I’ve been wearing my bra for years and years,” she explained. “That is my field of expertise, you know: brassieres. I know all about them. Well, I’ve just been wearing mine for years and years, and I got my first one when I was eleven years old—I was a ‘D’ cup” (94). In the show she did a tribute to her “tits” called “Pretty Legs and Great Big Knockers.” While the Harlettes (Ula Hedwig, Katie Sagal, and Linda Hart) held pairs of large puppet breasts with talking mouths, Bette ran backstage to put on enormous inflated balloon bazooms.

  In a comedy bit she explained to the audience that one day, out of curiosity, she wanted to find out exactly how much her breasts weighed, so she got hold of a postage scale and positioned herself strategically upon it. “I won’t tell you how much they weighed,” she announced, “but it costs $87.50 to send them to Brazil” (94).

  Since she was famous for poking fun at herself, Bette pulled down a huge movie screen to introduce a segment from Jinxed. However, this segment was dubbed—badly—in Italian, with comic new English subtitles. She also joked about popular singers—including Olivia Newton-John: “I love Olivia’s new song, don’t you? ‘Let me hear your body talk. . . .’ Mine said, ‘Fuck you!’ ”

  One of the most successful songs of the evening was her version of Jonathan King’s 1965 pop hit “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon.” Bette performed the song in a starry-eyed techno-pop version, which was dazzling to hear.

  She also hauled out one of her most popular characters, the famed mermaid in the electric wheelchair, but this time all three o
f the Harlettes were in identical get-ups. Their entrance was heralded by an offstage MC who announced, “The internationally acclaimed Dolores De Lago, the Toast of Chicago, and the semi-somnambulant De Lago Sisters in their spanking new review, Disco Memories.” They came out doing Busby Berkeley-inspired dance routines (complete with an overhead mirror for aerial views) in their wheelchairs. Their medley included “We Are Family,” “In the Mood,” and “I Will Survive.”

  Bette’s De Tour was a huge success, and the critics loved it. The show was conceived and written by Bette herself and Jerry Blatt, and Blatt directed it. It ultimately grossed $8 million, and even though it didn’t help to sell many No Frills albums along the was, it was itself a triumph.

  During the summer on 1983, Bette took a trimmed-down version of the show on still another cross-country tour. For this journey, she had a new set of Harlettes: Jenifer Lewis, Siobhan O’Carroll, and Helena Springs. Bette has jokingly suggested that since she had gone through so many Harlettes, “I’d love to have a reunion and get all of them in one room!”

  By September, Bette was beginning to burn out emotionally and physically. It was only days after videotaping the show in Minneapolis for the HBO Special Art or Bust that Bette collapsed midshow at Pine Knob in Detroit and had to be hospitalized to recuperate from exhaustion. Although she was heading for another nervous breakdown, she recovered enough to finish the tour and then took a well-deserved rest.

  The fall of 1983 found Bette back on the charts and in the Top 10. It wasn’t on the record charts, though: it was on the New York Times bestseller list. A View from a Broad had been such a success that Midler was encouraged to pick up her pen again. This time around, it was a children’s book. Beautifully illustrated in lush color by artist Todd Schorr, the book is all about a little girl whose first spoken word was “More!”

  The Saga of Baby Divine was a huge success during the Christmas season of 1983. On December 1, its author celebrated her thirty-eighth birthday at a big bash thrown in her honor by Benoit. Among the guests were Johnny Carson, Barry Manilow, Rosemary Clooney, Martha Raye, Neil Diamond, Toni Basil, Burt Bacharach, and his new wife, Carole Bayer Sager. It was really a big Bette Midler reunion. Barry was her former musical director, Carole was her former writing partner (“You’re Moving Out Today”), and Toni (who had gone on to record her own hit record, “Micky”) was Bette’s often-utilized choreographer (Bette! Divine Madness). Also on hand were several of her former Harlettes: Charlotte Crossley, Ula Hedwig, Katie Sagal, and Linda Hart.

  In 1984, Bette was busy doing some heavy-duty regrouping. In January, her “Beast of Burden” video was released. Later that year she broke up with Benoit and tried to figure out what her next career move would be. To top it all off, by the end of the year she was going to meet and marry the man of her dreams.

  In 1984 the Paper Moon Graphics company in Los Angeles, California, debuted a line of greeting cards with the image of Miss M on the front. The specialty cards were entitled the “Greetings from Bette Midler” line. One of the all-occasion cards features a photo of Midler on a beach in a two-piece bathing suit bottom and a flower lei/feather boa on the front. On the inside the message reads: “To make your life a tropical blast you don’t need a snort or a toke. Just heed this fine Divine Advice: !@# ’em if they can’t take a joke! Aloha!” Another one featured Midler in a beehive hairdo atop a red Corvette convertible. On the inside it read: “You got gas or what?” The birthday card in the series depicted Bette in her Delores DeLago mermaid outfit. On the inside was inscribed, “Kiss My Bass! Best Fishes for a Happy Birthday!”

  August 20, 1984, marked the HBO debut of Midler’s latest TV special, which was called Art or Bust. Most of the footage was culled from Bette’s De Tour shows—taped in 1983 at the University of Minnesota. The footage was then enhanced and bridged by animation and special effects. Among the animation segments were stills of famous paintings—from Matisse to Warhol—all with Bette as the subject of the masterpieces. The TV special opens with Bette singing her version of Bruce Springsteen’s “Pink Cadillac.” It was a song she had hoped to put on her No Frills album, but Bruce wouldn’t grant her permission. He claimed at the time that it was a song for a man to sing, and he refused to let her release it on record. This special has the only version of Midler singing that song. She also managed to work a plug for her Saga of Baby Divine book into the special.

  The wheelchair disco medley of Dolores and the famed DeLago Sisters gets a prominent display here, with Jenifer Lewis getting to do an accordion solo of “Hold That Tiger.” The songs from her No Frills album were given an ample spotlight here, including “My Favorite Waste of Time” and “My Eye on You.” There is even a closing number that finds Midler wrapped in a stretchy Martha Graham-inspired garment, which she pulls over her ahead in a dancer-augmented segment. Her chilling version of “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon” is the centerpiece of this clever segment.

  According to John Corry of the New York Times, “Bette Midler takes risks that other performers do not. She attempts to be touching, bawdy, and funny, often simultaneously. When she succeeds she is brilliant, and when she fails she is done in by her own excess. On Bette Midler: Art or Bust! she succeeds more often than she fails; she is, in fact, close to being an absolute winner, and if she were an Olympic gymnast, going for a perfect 10, she would get a 9.9” (102).

  Art or Bust was later released on video with two “extra features.” There was a vintage clip of Bette at the Continental Baths in 1971. She is seen in grainy-looking black and white, dressed as Carmen Miranda and singing her famed hemp song “Marahuana.” She is also seen in a risqué halter top, singing the Glenn Miller classic “Chattanooga Choo-Choo.” The second bonus feature is a clip of Midler at the United Jewish Appeal telethon in 1973, stripping off her dress to reveal her slip when someone pledges $5,000, as promised on camera.

  “The Divine Miss M” is what Bette Midler became known as in the early 1970s when she began her singing career in a Manhattan gay club, the Continental Baths. (Courtesy of Kenn Duncan / Atlantic Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  Baby Divine! Bette Midler as a baby in Honolulu, Hawaii. She was named after actress Bette Davis. (Courtesy of Photofest)

  Adrienne Barbeau, Bette Midler, and Tanya Everett in the Broadway cast of Fiddler on Roof in the 1960s. (Courtesy of Photofest)

  With her clunky 1940s-styled platform shoes and her retro repertoire of songs—like The Andrews Sisters’ “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”—Midler had the ability to make everything old seem suddenly new again. (Courtesy of Atlantic Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  Bette Midler trucked her way across America in the early 1970s, and became known as one of the hardest-working live performers in the pop and rock music realm. Here, the diva is seen clowning around outside the Atlanta Civic Center. (Courtesy of Tom Hill)

  Midler carved out a unique niche for herself in the music world in the 1970s. She was part chanteuse, part comedienne. (Courtesy of The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle / MJB Photo Archives)

  Bette’s signature song, “Friends,” was one which she began singing very early in her career at the Continental Baths. (Courtesy of Atlantic Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  Melissa Manchester was the first member of Bette’s background trio, the Harlettes. Manchester, too, became a successful solo singing star. (Courtesy of Arista Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  Barry Manilow was Midler’s first musical director. He was able to use his experiences with Bette as a springboard to launch his own singing career. (Courtesy of Arista Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  “Make me a legend!” was what Bette Midler told her first manager, Aaron Russo. He made several shrewd career moves possible for her, yet it was clear from the start that her own drive and talent were even more important to her achieving star status. (Courtesy of Atlantic Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  Bette’s 1975 stage show, Clams on the Half-Shell Revue, was a roaring hit on Broadway and on tour. In the act she awoke in
King Kong’s hand and sang the 1930s hit song “Lullaby of Broadway.” (Courtesy of Atlantic Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  In her Clams on the Half-Shell Revue, Midler’s repertoire covered a wide array of music, from David Bowie’s “Young Americans,” to her own classics like “Hello in There” and “Chapel of Love.” (Courtesy of Playbill / MJB Photo Archives)

  In addition to her retro 1940s fashions, Bette in the 1970s also had a flair for off-the-wall funkier clothes like this eclectic rock & roll creation. (Courtesy of Atlantic Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  Elton John, Cher, Flip Wilson, and Bette were the stars of the visually spectacular Cher TV special in 1976. Dressed by Bob Mackie, Bette got her first taste of Hollywood glamour on this show. (Courtesy of CBS-TV / MJB Photo Archives)

  In September 1984, Bette and Dan Aykroyd hosted the First Annual MTV Awards show, broadcast live from Radio City Music Hall. Bette was in rare form that night, and as she said, “It’s been great exposure for me.” At the end of the show she wore a black-and-white striped gown with a floral brassiere on top of it. For the second half of the show she wore what looked like an orange prom gown that billowed out at the waist and had huge shoulder pads. Instead of several costume changes, she simply changed her hats. Her chapeaus included a 1940s mesh hair net, a bow of black gauze, a sequined black mantilla covered with glittering rose blossoms, a metallic-orange turban, and even an electronic contraption in black and white that spun around like the blades of a feathered helicopter. Describing this last hat, she announced, “This is what is called a special effect. I have named it ‘Turd Curls from Outer Space!’ ”

  At the beginning of the show Bette referred to the telecast as “This Night of at Least Half-a-Dozen Stars.” She then proceeded to add her own commentary on the guest stars whom she introduced to present awards. After announcing ZZ Top, she added, “Nobody knows what lives beneath those beards or lurks behind those sunglasses.”