Download Silverbird By Mark Lindsay
Eliana Pomerantz
Good thing Lindsay had experience with Jimmy Webb (very much influenced by Bacharach) and "Bookends," because he was more than prepared for 1971's "Something Big." The song was written by Bacharach and David for Cinema Center Films' movie of the same name, a western starring Dean Martin. (Cinema Center hoped the tune would do for Something Big what "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" did for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and even set "Something Big" to a horse-riding sequence in the picture, filling in for Butch's bicycles!) "Something Big" was egregiously overlooked by listeners of the time largely due to the movie's failure, but the song deserved much better. It's reminiscent of Bacharach's sound circa Lost Horizon, a different style than that of his groundbreaking hits with Dionne Warwick but with his trademark rhythmic sensibility very much intact. (Trivia time: For the second time, Bacharach abdicated scoring chores on a Cinema Center Films production to Marvin Hamlisch, after The April Fools; both Bacharach and Hamlisch would later be romantically involved with the lyricist Carole Bayer Sager.) The singer emulated Bacharach's drawling vocals and nailed the demanding phrasing, and D'Andrea's arrangement may even best Bacharach's own version, as heard on his album Living Together. Though Lindsay never again originated a Bacharach and David song (and in fact, the pair would be separated soon after "Something Big"), the team did produce the Lindsay/Butler song "Amanda" for Dionne Warwick to sing in the film The Love Machine. The B-side of "Something Big" brought another renowned songwriter into Mark Lindsay's circle, none other than Peter Allen, another collaborator of the aforementioned Ms. Sager! Allen and lyricist Hal Hackady (Broadway's Minnie's Boys) offered the wistful "Pretty, Pretty," later recorded by Allen on his own Continental American album.