Anyone Who Had a Heart: My Life and Music

by Burt Bacharach

  A long time ago Neil Simon told me, “You know, athletes peak at a certain time but as long as we’re alive and creative, we can still write. That doesn’t go away.” That’s his theory but maybe it does go away. What I do know is that you can’t stay put. If somebody asked me now to sit down and write a song like “Don’t Make Me Over,” I couldn’t do it, because I don’t live in that ballpark anymore. It’s not a language I still speak. Having said that, I do feel really proud of the work I’ve done over the past ten years.

  In 2003, Mo Ostin, who was the head of DreamWorks Records, called me with the idea of taking my standard repertoire and reinventing some of my trademark songs by doing them with Ron Isley, the former lead singer of the Isley Brothers. DreamWorks had a lot of money at the time and Ronnie would come to my house in a white stretch limo so we could work together. Then we went into the studio to cut an album called Here I Am.

  Ronnie is a great, great singer but when he told me he wanted to do “Raindrops,” I thought the idea was ridiculous until I played the opening chord for him. He sang one bar and I thought, “Oh, I see where I can go with this. I can make a very soulful, totally very different kind of interpretation of the song with him.” At this stage of my life, I find it hard to write yet another arrangement of “The Look of Love” or “Make It Easy on Yourself” or “A House Is Not a Home,” but Ronnie wound up singing all these songs so beautifully on Here I Am.

  We went to cut the album in Capitol Studios, which has always been a very magical place for me. Vic Damone’s managers took me there for the first time when I was just starting out so I could watch Sinatra record. I didn’t get to meet him then but it was great just to see him work, and to this day there is no place in L.A. that sounds as good to me.

  I put the string section in Studio B so they could see me conducting from the piano through a window. The first song we did was “Alfie.” I was at the piano, Dean Parks played the intro on a classical guitar, and then Ronnie came in. As he was singing, I was calling out cues and saying stuff like “I’m not hearing enough piano. There’s too much drums in my ear.”

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but everything I was saying was also being recorded. Ronnie nailed the song on the very first take and they were able to edit out my remarks so we could use the track the way we had cut it that day. Ronnie Isley is one of the great natural singers. He doesn’t have a bunch of ad libs stored in his closet. When Ronnie sings, he is totally free.

  There was so much buzz and excitement about Here I Am before it was released that I really thought we had something. But the day the album came out, DreamWorks was taken over by Universal. They had artists like Dr. Dre and Eminem and this was just not their kind of music, so the album got no real promotion.

  Ronnie and I did do a show together for PBS in Chicago and then we played a couple of showcases in theaters in L.A. and New York. Ronnie was absolutely fearless onstage and did some of the greatest singing I have ever heard in my life. I put him right up there with Luther Vandross as one of the great singers of all time, and I still love what we did together on that album. I don’t know how many copies Here I Am has sold over the years but it has become a cult record. I also know Ronnie has never sung that kind of material before or since.

  Two years later, I did an album called At This Time. Dr. Dre and I had talked about working together and he had given me six or seven drum loops that I wound up using, and Elvis Costello and Rufus Wainwright did some vocals for it as well. The more I got into the album, the more I realized how badly things were going in America and the world and the more angry and frustrated I became. So I decided to get involved in writing some of the lyrics with Tonio K., who was terrific and really easy for me to work with.

  I took the heartbreak I felt about what had happened on September 11, 2001, and about all the young men and women who were getting killed in a useless war in Iraq and put it into some of the songs. On “Who Are These People?” one of the verses goes, “Who are these people that keep telling us lies? / And how did these people who get control of our lives? / Who’ll stop the violence because it’s out of control? / Make them stop.” Elvis Costello used the word “fucking” on the last line of the song, and although we had to take it out for the American release, you can hear him sing it if you download the import. I also did a song called “Where Did It Go?” which is about me riding the subway to Times Square on New Year’s Eve back when I was a kid growing up in Forest Hills.

  At This Time won a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental album in 2006. As I was coming through the press line after receiving the award, someone asked me why I had chosen to make such a political album at this point in my career. I said, “Because I don’t like being lied to. I don’t like being lied to by a girlfriend, an agent, or my president.” And so when Rahm Emanuel asked me if I would do some fund-raisers for the Obama campaign in 2008, I was happy to say yes.

  The reality is that most composers sit in a room by themselves and nobody knows what they look like. People may have heard some of their songs but they never get to see them onstage or on television. I’ve been luckier than most because by performing and being on television, I get to make a direct connection with people. Whether it’s just a handshake or being stopped on the street and asked for an autograph or having someone comment on a song I’ve written, that connection is really meaningful and powerful for me.

  In 2009, I was given an honorary doctorate of music by the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Paula Cole sang five of my songs. To thank everyone, I took off my cap, robe, and hood and sat down at the piano to perform “Alfie.” After the show was over, this guy I did not know who turned out to be a big fan of my music came up to me and said, “Burt, this will only take a second.” And then he hugged me.

  Whenever somebody takes the trouble to tell me how much my music meant to them when they were going through a divorce or having chemotherapy, I think to myself, “Just take that to the bank and store it and remember it.” Because it’s so real, I never take that kind of thing lightly. After she’d had a few drinks, a good-looking woman who was sitting next to me on a plane once said she couldn’t make love unless she put my music on. I thought that was pretty great, too.

  When I was younger, I would dismiss that kind of adulation immediately. After getting a standing ovation at the end of a show, I would be back in some hotel room by myself an hour later, turning on the television to watch CNN and ordering room service. So it wasn’t like I was sitting around and wondering, “Where did all the applause go?”

  I remember playing the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles during one of my hot periods. We sold out the place five nights in a row and set the house record, which stood until Neil Diamond came in and broke it. I had never even thought about having a limo written into my contract, so I would drive myself to the show and after it was over every night, I would go to Du-par’s and eat a melted cheese sandwich or some scrambled eggs by myself, which was really weird after having played in front of all these people. This was so long ago that no one even knew about egg whites.

  What got me onstage in the first place was not that I could sing or tap-dance. It was the music I had written, and there is definitely a healing element to playing that music in public. Two weeks after the twin towers fell in Manhattan, I was booked to play a show in New Jersey. After I checked with the promoter to see if he really wanted to go ahead with the date, I canvassed my band and singers and crew and said, “How do you feel? Do you want to do this?”

  They all said they did, and the last five songs we did that night were “Alfie,” “A House Is Not a Home,” “That’s What Friends Are For,” “The Windows of the World,” and “What the World Needs Now Is Love.” Everybody in the band was crying, and so was I. For all of us as well as the people in the audience, it was a kind of real catharsis and a powerful emotional release.

  I really don’t think age has anything to do with how long someone can keep on performing.
It’s just a number, although I do find myself checking on people like Toots Thielemans, the great harmonica player. He’s ninety and he’s had a stroke but he’s still playing in Antwerp and three nights later he’s in Tokyo. Nobody ever said you have to stop making music at a certain time in your life and I can tell you from experience, doctors don’t know about this, either. They really don’t.

  Everyone knows the record business is now dead, but I believe a musical called Some Lovers, which I’ve been working on with Steven Sater, who won two Tony Awards for Spring Awakening, is going to have a life. The show begins on Christmas Eve as a woman calls the songwriter with whom she used to be in love. Then it goes backward through their lives to look at their romance. There are lots of references to the classic O. Henry story “The Gift of the Magi” in the show and although we need to do some rewrites and another workshop, the audience really loved the show when we did it at the Old Globe in San Diego at the end of 2011, which is the most important thing. We’ll get it into another regional theater and then hopefully bring it to Broadway at some point.

  Mike Myers: I was at a table read of Some Lovers in New York sitting beside Elvis Costello, and about three songs in, we caught each other being transfixed by Burt’s beautiful, beautiful songs. Elvis turned to me and said, “He’s here!” By which he meant all of the yummy, quirky inversions Burt does, all of the satisfying “a-ha!” contrapuntal melodies with a healthy dose of what I call his “boom-stick-boom-boom” songs like “Walk on By.” Burt was there, de facto conducting, and it was all in his body and his face. Every time it was satisfying and yummy, he sent out sheer delight like a sonar ping. And when it was clear that it wasn’t, the torture was there. It was so important to him.

  Elvis Costello: I went to hear Some Lovers in New York at a reading, and the thing that touched me about it so much was despite the fact it was being done by actors who didn’t have any props or costumes, no makeup or lighting, and were sitting around in a bright strip-lit rehearsal room with a pianist and a drummer, Burt was at the table looking straight at them and he was conducting. He was cueing and mouthing every word of every song, he was breathing with the singers, and it was just so inspiring to see. And the melodies were just incredible. At one hearing, there were five tunes that made you say, “I’ve got to hear that again.” What really struck me was that the language of the music was vivid and the signatures of Burt’s writing were there without it seeming like he had written all this before. There were still new permutations within the recognizable language he speaks in.

  I was in New York for the workshop of Some Lovers and I hadn’t talked to Mike Myers for a long time so I called him up and said, “I’m going to be here for two weeks, Mike, and I’d love to see you.” We went downtown and had dinner that night and Mike said, “We’re going to do Austin Powers onstage as a Broadway musical and you’re going to write the music.” I said, “Mike, what if I hadn’t called you? Were you going to tell me?”

  Mike Myers: I was going to call Burt about a week before we had dinner together in New York but instead I just sat there and wondered, “Gee, should I call him now? I don’t want to bug him.” Then he called and said he was in town and I thought, “Do I say something to him tonight? Do I go through his agents?” And then I was telling my friends, “This is a find. He could say no. I should just ask him, right?” And after I told him, Burt said, “Yeah. Sounds great.” And I went, “That was easy,” and I was floating on air. I was just thrilled and twenty-five feet off the ground.

  The concept is that these films were already musicals and I want the show to be a celebration of a time of music for which Burt is one of the major players, if not the major player. It’s a celebration of Carnaby Street and also of England and it’s about England swinging and Burt’s part in that. I’ve already spoken to him about some aspects of it and I said, “It’s the horns, it’s the horns, it’s the horns.” I want this to be a celebration of the Burt Bacharach horns and I want at least one of the songs to be front and center and see what happens with that. And he said, “Ah, I love it, Mike. That’s great, that’s great. Send me the words.”

  Mike can sing and he’s really musical so he’ll probably end up writing half the lyrics with Elvis and me as we put together the score. Doing something for the stage is never as immediate as going in and making a record or doing a concert, but I’m really excited about working with Mike and Elvis, so that’s where my writing energies are going to go.

  I’ve also become very friendly with Chuck Lorre, who has created some of the most successful shows on television, like Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, and Mike & Molly. I got to know Chuck through Grant Geissman, the guitarist who does the music for Two and a Half Men. Then Chuck called me because he’d had this idea for eight years about Painted from Memory and had decided there was a musical in this album.

  Chuck has a story and is writing the book with Steven Sater. Chuck is very, very good and his instincts are terrific. Elvis and I could see that we didn’t want to restrict the plot line by being faithful to the album and just using the songs that are on it. So if five or six new songs are needed, we will write them.

  I’ve also just worked with Bernie Taupin, who wrote the words for all those great songs by Elton John. Bernie and I tried to write a song for a picture years ago but it didn’t work out. From out of the blue, he reached out to me and sent me a couple of lyrics that I thought were really special.

  I have also worked with Carole again. We wrote a three-way song, which was something I always liked to do with her. The other person involved was Babyface, Kenny Edmonds, a great musician, songwriter, and producer who has worked with many talented artists. I also feel really positive about the fact that I am now on good terms with all three of my ex-wives, and I’ve taken Angie out to dinner seven or eight times since Nikki passed away.

  In the spring of 2012 I did a tour of Australia, working with five symphony orchestras, and it went really well. In the fall, I did five concerts in three days with my band and my singers at the Tokyo Jazz Festival. We played in a huge concert hall and did two shows a night at a place called Billboard Live, a five- or six-hundred-seat venue where they serve drinks.

  It was interesting being in Japan this time. I had been there seven times before and the audiences were always appreciative but very polite. When people applauded, it was almost like someone in the audience would signal “Cut!” and then everyone would suddenly stop clapping at the same time. This time, however, the reception was really wild, and I kept thinking, “Does this have something to do with everything they’ve all been through here in the last year with the tidal wave and the meltdown at the nuclear plant?” I’d never seen Japanese people act like this before.

  Long after I was done playing at the concert hall, a beautiful young girl saw me and started to sob uncontrollably, so I went over to her. She could hardly speak so I just put my arms around her. Her reaction touched me so much that I thought, “Boy, if I can make music that can make her feel like that, well, that’s really something.”

  Before each show at Billboard Live I had to come through the house. As I did I was shaking hands all the way to the stage. When I came offstage, people were grabbing me and I had never experienced anything like that in Japan. My son Oliver was running security for me and he found the girl from the concert hall trying to get through the crowd to give me a present along with a note. She wrote very good English and said my music meant so much to her that she hoped one day I would return to Japan. She never gave me an e-mail address or a way to contact her, so I’ve never been able to tell her how much she really touched me.

  The fact that people still care enough about my music to want me to play onstage is a blessing. Getting to write new songs with Elvis and Bernie Taupin and Carole and Kenny Edmonds is also a blessing. I mean, how lucky can you be? It’s a gift, and when I look at what is now happening in my life, I’m extremely grateful.

  Chapter
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  The Gershwin Prize

  One day during the summer of 2011 I got a message from Sue Main telling me I should be near my home phone to get an important call from Dr. James Billington. Sue never told me who he was, and when I asked her what the call was about, she said, “You’ll find out.” When Dr. Billington got on the line, he introduced himself as the Librarian of Congress and told me that Hal and I had been given the 2012 Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, an award that had only been won before by Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, and Paul McCartney.

  I had never in my life dreamed I would win the Gershwin Prize, so it was incredible news. Because the Library of Congress had given another award to someone who had talked to the press about it before the official announcement, Dr. Billington also told me, “You cannot tell anyone about this.”

  When someone says something like that to me, I’m very good about it. Although I did tell Jane, I also really wanted to tell my son Oliver, who was about to go off on a trip to India, but I couldn’t do it. Dr. Billington had told me he was going to call Hal, so I did get in touch with him right away. When the Library of Congress made its announcement at the end of September, I was finally able to tell Oliver.

  The award was going to be presented at a luncheon at the Library of Congress on May 7, 2012. I had been in Australia doing concerts with symphony orchestras for nearly three weeks and then I flew back to Los Angeles. I was there for about two days and then I flew to Washington with my daughter Raleigh and Sue Main. Jane was going to meet me there the next day after stopping off in Ohio to pick up her mother and her two sisters, and Cristopher and Oliver were going to fly in on their own.

  The first night we were in Washington, Jane arranged a great dinner at a French restaurant right across from our hotel. Her family was there, along with some friends who had flown in from all over the country. It was a wonderful evening. Although I didn’t know it at the time, all the artists who were scheduled to perform at the Library of Congress and then the White House were also staying in the Ritz-Carlton, but I never ran into any of them. I knew Phil Ramone was producing the shows but I didn’t know who would be appearing because the only person I had asked to be there was Mike Myers.