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Funny interview with Barry promoting Mohegan Sun concert
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Suzan
May 6, 2013, 2:40:02 PM5/6/13
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Barry Manilow Brings His Greatest Hits Show To Mohegan
Barry Manilow performs Friday, May 10, at Mohegan Sun.
As Barry Manilow approaches 70, a milestone for anybody but especially for showbiz superstars, the singer/songwriter, who's sold more than 80 million records worldwide, is as passionate about his music as ever.
And without a doubt, this apparently forever young performer, who says he never really wanted be a singer but only an arranger and a songwriter, retains one of his great but perhaps most sorely underestimated talents: his quick sense of humor.
Manilow, who recently did a telephone interview with The Courant to promote his latest touring show, which plays Friday, May 10, at 8 p.m. at Mohegan Sun Arena, was even funny when faking shock and outrage when I confessed to him that I've never seen one of his fabled, live, in-concert performances.
"You've never seen my show!" he says with facetiously withering incredulity, lightly seasoned with mock shock and faux awe.
"You've only seen me on YouTube, and you're in Hartford! I've been there a million times, and you've never seen my show!" he says in a tone righteously rising to a subtly scathing ironic crescendo.
Next comes a slight pause worthy of a master of comic timing like George Burns. Then comes the zinger:
"What are you, 12 years old!"
Again a Burns-like pause:
"And now you're asking me if I do patter between songs?" again with his carefully calibrated fiery ire rising to exactly pitch-perfect comic effect.
Then again, after another Burns-like pause, comes yet another deathlike, mano a Manilow zinger.
"What do you think? I sit at the piano and play 'Mandy' all night long!"
If you've ever read Manilow's 1987 memoir, "Sweet Life: Adventures on the Way to Paradise" — a warm, sometimes amusing chronicle of a poor kid from Brooklyn laboring away obscurely in the CBS mail room who, almost reluctantly, skyrockets to stupendous superstardom — you know that his patter, whether on the page, on the stage or on the phone is leavened with humor. Self-deprecating, not vituperative, it's a bit reminiscent of Woody Allen's, but without Woody's intellectual allusions to God, existentialism and the metaphysical meaning of life and death.
Recalling his poor, rundown boyhood neighborhood in Flatbush, for example, Manilow, the memoirist, writes: "The only time a limousine made an appearance there was when somebody died."
Or when asked in his memoir in an imaginary interview with himself if there are rules to follow in order to write a hit song, Manilow replies: "Yes. There are three very important rules to writing a hit song. But nobody knows what they are."
Humor has been Manilow's shield over the decades against the slings and arrows of critics. They've savaged him mercilessly while, much like Liberace, yet another lifetime piñata for critics, Manilow, blessed with his pop music Midas touch, has laughed all the way to the bank.
Asked about the source of his Woody Allen-like, self-chiding sense of humor, Manilow wryly replies:
"Well, we all come from Booklyn where you need a sense of humor to get by. Mel Brooks went to my high school. So there you are. That explains it," he says.
While humor is a recurring feature in his concerts, Manilow's Mohegan Sun show, instead of being rooted in promoting the concept of his latest album as in past tours, caters to an audience that "really wants to hear the songs that they know."
"As I grow into my hundreds — I'm a hundred years old already and I'm still working," he jokes, "I know that audiences have come to hear the songs that either they grew up with, or their parents played, or they fell in love with recently.
"I stick in some of my album cuts and, you know, they're really polite. They indulge me. And then I do 'Ready to Take a Chance Again,' and the roof caves in. So, I know what they're looking for. I know what they want. And I'm happy to do it," he says.
"I'm one of the lucky guys. I can actually do 90-minutes on stage, and every song I do is something that they (audience members) know. I don't know how many people can say that. I've got this incredible catalog of well-known songs so that I can actually do a full show, and every song is something that the audience knows. So that's what I'm doing these days, and that's what this show really is about," he says.
Even now almost three decades after his then rather premature memoir was published, Manilow is still somewhat mystified by his enormous success, still pondering how fame came his way and its enormous, sometimes dizzying impact on his life.
"It's astounding," he says, still sounding a bit like the musically talented, piano-playing, song-addicted musician (accordion was his first instrument), insecure teenager from Flatbush.
"I am still amazed. They told me in the beginning that, if you're lucky, a pop career lasts for five years, and I believed them. But after all these years, I'm still here. I give all the credit to the audiences, of course.
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"I never started out wanting to be a singer or a performer, or anything like this, or making records. I was going to be a musician. That was my goal. On my passport, it doesn't say entertainer. It says musician. That's who I am in my heart," he says.
"And yet I have got this career as a singing performer. And it's the biggest surprise ever…ever," deliberately repeating the word "ever" twice for dramatic effect.
"I've learned to accept it, but I resisted it for the first couple of years. I guess I just didn't understand it. I didn't know how to do it. Everybody else, I thought, was better than me. And they were. But I've learned to accept it, and I think I've gotten good at this job."
Reflecting on his legacy, Manilow acknowledges that he's not "the greatest singer," but, with a note of pride, rates himself, as "a decent songwriter."
"My goal would be to be remembered as somebody that made you feel. That's what my goal is on stage every night — to make the audience feel something. There are so many of these performers these days who don't care about that. They really don't
"The people that I grew up loving, made me feel something when they interpreted a lyric, or when they talked to me from the stage, or when they sang on records. I actually felt something. My goal is to make people feel better by the time they leave than they did when they came in."
Manilow, who was already in his late twenties when he experienced his giant breakthrough, urges caution and common sense on young performers swept up in today's instant stardom, unknowns miraculously transformed overnight into household names.
"I'm very proud that my feet are still on the ground. This fame thing is really dangerous. If you're not grounded, it's going to blow you over.
"How are these kids going to deal with what I dealt with? I was already an adult. These kids are in their teens and they're wearing Gucci, Armani and lipstick, and being treated like stars. How are they going to deal with this hurricane of fame at that young age?" he asks.
Almost from his first steps as a professional singer, Manilow faced a special showbiz hazard when critics began using him as an easy free-fire zone, unloading what they considered to be their most clever, cruelest cluster bomb barbs.
"I had a real tough time in the beginning," he acknowledges, "but they've eased off on me over the years. But I've got broad shoulders. You know, Ethel Merman once said, 'Screw the critics! I know when I'm good.'
"That's how I feel."
Despite his longevity as a performer (he turns 70 on June 17), Manilow has no secret method of preserving his pipes, no special training regimen or miracle diet to recommend for Manilow wannabes.
"I don't consider myself a singer. So I never even think about it. I forget to warm up. I just go out there and hope that it's still there."
And, although he no longer does mega-tours, he gives no thought to retirement, a word that doesn't exist in his vocabulary.
"I'm having a ball, and I still feel like the same person that I was. I've still got lots of ideas. I'm still hungry, and I've still got passion for the work that I do. If that leaves, then I'll retire. But I doubt very much that that's going anywhere," he says.
The subtitle for Manilow's 1987 memoir was "Adventures on the Way to Paradise."
Asked if, after all his adventures in what he has called his roller-coaster career, he is now, at long last, in an earthly paradise, he says quite contentedly and utterly free of all irony:
"Yes. I would say I am."
BARRY MANILOW performs Friday at 8 p.m. at Mohegan Sun Arena, 1 Mohegan Sun Blvd. Uncasville. Tickets: $175, $75 and $55. Information: 888-226-7711 and www.mohegansun.com.
http://tiny.cc/b1doww
Barry Manilow performs Friday, May 10, at Mohegan Sun.
As Barry Manilow approaches 70, a milestone for anybody but especially for showbiz superstars, the singer/songwriter, who's sold more than 80 million records worldwide, is as passionate about his music as ever.
And without a doubt, this apparently forever young performer, who says he never really wanted be a singer but only an arranger and a songwriter, retains one of his great but perhaps most sorely underestimated talents: his quick sense of humor.
Manilow, who recently did a telephone interview with The Courant to promote his latest touring show, which plays Friday, May 10, at 8 p.m. at Mohegan Sun Arena, was even funny when faking shock and outrage when I confessed to him that I've never seen one of his fabled, live, in-concert performances.
"You've never seen my show!" he says with facetiously withering incredulity, lightly seasoned with mock shock and faux awe.
"You've only seen me on YouTube, and you're in Hartford! I've been there a million times, and you've never seen my show!" he says in a tone righteously rising to a subtly scathing ironic crescendo.
Next comes a slight pause worthy of a master of comic timing like George Burns. Then comes the zinger:
"What are you, 12 years old!"
Again a Burns-like pause:
"And now you're asking me if I do patter between songs?" again with his carefully calibrated fiery ire rising to exactly pitch-perfect comic effect.
Then again, after another Burns-like pause, comes yet another deathlike, mano a Manilow zinger.
"What do you think? I sit at the piano and play 'Mandy' all night long!"
If you've ever read Manilow's 1987 memoir, "Sweet Life: Adventures on the Way to Paradise" — a warm, sometimes amusing chronicle of a poor kid from Brooklyn laboring away obscurely in the CBS mail room who, almost reluctantly, skyrockets to stupendous superstardom — you know that his patter, whether on the page, on the stage or on the phone is leavened with humor. Self-deprecating, not vituperative, it's a bit reminiscent of Woody Allen's, but without Woody's intellectual allusions to God, existentialism and the metaphysical meaning of life and death.
Recalling his poor, rundown boyhood neighborhood in Flatbush, for example, Manilow, the memoirist, writes: "The only time a limousine made an appearance there was when somebody died."
Or when asked in his memoir in an imaginary interview with himself if there are rules to follow in order to write a hit song, Manilow replies: "Yes. There are three very important rules to writing a hit song. But nobody knows what they are."
Humor has been Manilow's shield over the decades against the slings and arrows of critics. They've savaged him mercilessly while, much like Liberace, yet another lifetime piñata for critics, Manilow, blessed with his pop music Midas touch, has laughed all the way to the bank.
Asked about the source of his Woody Allen-like, self-chiding sense of humor, Manilow wryly replies:
"Well, we all come from Booklyn where you need a sense of humor to get by. Mel Brooks went to my high school. So there you are. That explains it," he says.
While humor is a recurring feature in his concerts, Manilow's Mohegan Sun show, instead of being rooted in promoting the concept of his latest album as in past tours, caters to an audience that "really wants to hear the songs that they know."
"As I grow into my hundreds — I'm a hundred years old already and I'm still working," he jokes, "I know that audiences have come to hear the songs that either they grew up with, or their parents played, or they fell in love with recently.
"I stick in some of my album cuts and, you know, they're really polite. They indulge me. And then I do 'Ready to Take a Chance Again,' and the roof caves in. So, I know what they're looking for. I know what they want. And I'm happy to do it," he says.
"I'm one of the lucky guys. I can actually do 90-minutes on stage, and every song I do is something that they (audience members) know. I don't know how many people can say that. I've got this incredible catalog of well-known songs so that I can actually do a full show, and every song is something that the audience knows. So that's what I'm doing these days, and that's what this show really is about," he says.
Even now almost three decades after his then rather premature memoir was published, Manilow is still somewhat mystified by his enormous success, still pondering how fame came his way and its enormous, sometimes dizzying impact on his life.
"It's astounding," he says, still sounding a bit like the musically talented, piano-playing, song-addicted musician (accordion was his first instrument), insecure teenager from Flatbush.
"I am still amazed. They told me in the beginning that, if you're lucky, a pop career lasts for five years, and I believed them. But after all these years, I'm still here. I give all the credit to the audiences, of course.
Get Our iPad App!
"I never started out wanting to be a singer or a performer, or anything like this, or making records. I was going to be a musician. That was my goal. On my passport, it doesn't say entertainer. It says musician. That's who I am in my heart," he says.
"And yet I have got this career as a singing performer. And it's the biggest surprise ever…ever," deliberately repeating the word "ever" twice for dramatic effect.
"I've learned to accept it, but I resisted it for the first couple of years. I guess I just didn't understand it. I didn't know how to do it. Everybody else, I thought, was better than me. And they were. But I've learned to accept it, and I think I've gotten good at this job."
Reflecting on his legacy, Manilow acknowledges that he's not "the greatest singer," but, with a note of pride, rates himself, as "a decent songwriter."
"My goal would be to be remembered as somebody that made you feel. That's what my goal is on stage every night — to make the audience feel something. There are so many of these performers these days who don't care about that. They really don't
"The people that I grew up loving, made me feel something when they interpreted a lyric, or when they talked to me from the stage, or when they sang on records. I actually felt something. My goal is to make people feel better by the time they leave than they did when they came in."
Manilow, who was already in his late twenties when he experienced his giant breakthrough, urges caution and common sense on young performers swept up in today's instant stardom, unknowns miraculously transformed overnight into household names.
"I'm very proud that my feet are still on the ground. This fame thing is really dangerous. If you're not grounded, it's going to blow you over.
"How are these kids going to deal with what I dealt with? I was already an adult. These kids are in their teens and they're wearing Gucci, Armani and lipstick, and being treated like stars. How are they going to deal with this hurricane of fame at that young age?" he asks.
Almost from his first steps as a professional singer, Manilow faced a special showbiz hazard when critics began using him as an easy free-fire zone, unloading what they considered to be their most clever, cruelest cluster bomb barbs.
"I had a real tough time in the beginning," he acknowledges, "but they've eased off on me over the years. But I've got broad shoulders. You know, Ethel Merman once said, 'Screw the critics! I know when I'm good.'
"That's how I feel."
Despite his longevity as a performer (he turns 70 on June 17), Manilow has no secret method of preserving his pipes, no special training regimen or miracle diet to recommend for Manilow wannabes.
"I don't consider myself a singer. So I never even think about it. I forget to warm up. I just go out there and hope that it's still there."
And, although he no longer does mega-tours, he gives no thought to retirement, a word that doesn't exist in his vocabulary.
"I'm having a ball, and I still feel like the same person that I was. I've still got lots of ideas. I'm still hungry, and I've still got passion for the work that I do. If that leaves, then I'll retire. But I doubt very much that that's going anywhere," he says.
The subtitle for Manilow's 1987 memoir was "Adventures on the Way to Paradise."
Asked if, after all his adventures in what he has called his roller-coaster career, he is now, at long last, in an earthly paradise, he says quite contentedly and utterly free of all irony:
"Yes. I would say I am."
BARRY MANILOW performs Friday at 8 p.m. at Mohegan Sun Arena, 1 Mohegan Sun Blvd. Uncasville. Tickets: $175, $75 and $55. Information: 888-226-7711 and www.mohegansun.com.
http://tiny.cc/b1doww
marvin
May 6, 2013, 4:18:48 PM5/6/13
to
It is a wonderful article- particularly for the young readers that may not know about Barry's roots as an arranger and behind the scenes history.
I find it unusual that after all his success, Barry still does not consider himself a great singer. I love the sound of Barry's voice; he holds notes as well or better than most of his peers and just as important, puts as much emotion in his lyrical phrasing as most singers. At age 70, Barry sounds better than most singers his age. I am not sure why Barry does not think of himself as a great singer,he really is, but I think he is harder on himself than he has to be. Marvin
I find it unusual that after all his success, Barry still does not consider himself a great singer. I love the sound of Barry's voice; he holds notes as well or better than most of his peers and just as important, puts as much emotion in his lyrical phrasing as most singers. At age 70, Barry sounds better than most singers his age. I am not sure why Barry does not think of himself as a great singer,he really is, but I think he is harder on himself than he has to be. Marvin
Brenda M
May 6, 2013, 4:48:56 PM5/6/13
to
Very cute interview! I loved the limo comment.
But ... And I'm gonna get murdered for saying this ...
I always laugh out loud when Barry talks about how crazy fame makes people ... Which he then follows up with a comment about how "grounded" he is.
I have been lucky enough to have met quite a few "grounded" people in my day.
But...
I would never consider Barry to be one of them. He has many fine attributes ... But "grounded?"
Not in my opinion (which is, admittedly, based on my very limited knowledge of the man). I still believe Barry often suffers from an artistic/changeable temperment, probably more than he'd want the world to think.
I will say, though, that he seems to be a bit more "grounded" than he used to be.
Brenda
But ... And I'm gonna get murdered for saying this ...
I always laugh out loud when Barry talks about how crazy fame makes people ... Which he then follows up with a comment about how "grounded" he is.
I have been lucky enough to have met quite a few "grounded" people in my day.
But...
I would never consider Barry to be one of them. He has many fine attributes ... But "grounded?"
Not in my opinion (which is, admittedly, based on my very limited knowledge of the man). I still believe Barry often suffers from an artistic/changeable temperment, probably more than he'd want the world to think.
I will say, though, that he seems to be a bit more "grounded" than he used to be.
Brenda
laughandlea...@gmail.com
May 6, 2013, 5:30:43 PM5/6/13
to
Chris
Suzan
May 6, 2013, 9:11:51 PM5/6/13
to
My favorite joke was "There are three very important rules to writing a hit song. But nobody knows what they are."
I don't remember him saying this at the New York Theater Barn event, but it would have been perfect!
I don't remember him saying this at the New York Theater Barn event, but it would have been perfect!
marvin
May 7, 2013, 2:29:19 PM5/7/13
to
On Monday, May 6, 2013 9:11:51 PM UTC-4, Suzan wrote:
> My favorite joke was "There are three very important rules to writing a hit song. But nobody knows what they are."
>
>
>
> I don't remember him saying this at the New York Theater Barn event, but it would have been perfect.
> My favorite joke was "There are three very important rules to writing a hit song. But nobody knows what they are."
>
>
>
The quote was from Barry's book "Sweet Life". Marvin
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