Burt Bacharach

The Times Magazine, June 2000

Burt Bacharach's dog can walk on water. No, really. I've watched her do it. See, here she comes now, curly-black-coated and bubble-brained, an animal of mysterious, exotic pedigree, as pretty and pleased with herself as can be. Her name? Tazzie, a diminutive for Tazmanian Devil.

Through the French windows she passes, this Tazzie, and into the warm afternoon air. There's a stick between her jaws. She's going to bring it and drop it at her master's feet. Which means coming down the steps - two, four, six, eight, there! - and out onto the terrace, so that only the pool separates us. She approaches it at exactly its mid-point. Will she turn left and complete her journey by trotting around three sides of an oblong? Or will she turn right?

She does neither. She just keeps on walking straight ahead. Steps down on to the thick blue plastic sheet that floats upon the water's surface, protection for small children who might tumble into tragedy, and keeps coming right at us. Her feet begin to make funny squishy-squelchy noises as she traverses the now-undulating surface. Her tail wags as precisely as a metronome. But there could be the old deb-in-a-deportment-class book upon her head, so level does she hold it. I find that I am grinning like an idiot.

Suddenly, Tazzie is up and out and at our sides. She lays down the stick, looks expectant, snuffles around for praise. Burt looks pained. “Had a couple of dogs in my life before but just don't like this one,” he says. “She's really dumb. Stupid. Doesn't get it. Is just a pain in the ass.“ Unsurprisingly, the object of his disaffection allows herself to be distracted by a scent picked up from the nearby grass and drifts away. Even so, a pet that walks on water ... As one of the gods of 20th century songwriting, Mr. Bacharach deserves nothing less.

Together with his lyricist of the Sixties, Hal David, he who made possible some of the most sublime moments in popular recording history. Think of Aretha Franklin singing I Say A Little Prayer. Or of Dusty Springfield and The Look Of Love, Herb Alpert and This Guy's In Love With You, Scott Walker and Make It Easy On Yourself, Karen Carpenter and (They Long To Be) Close To You. But most of all, think of Dionne Warwick and the string of hits Bacharach & David fashioned for her ... Anyone Who Had A Heart, Walk On By, Trains And Boats And Planes, Alfie and Do You Know The Way To San Jose? represent just a handful of those pearls.

They were classics from the moment they were first written and recorded, of course, but a decade ago few under the age of 50 would have stood up and publicly attested to the fact. Back then, easy listening - or lounge music, to use its newer, deliberately ironic name - had yet to be rediscovered and rehabilitated. Oasis hadn't released a first LP, one that included an in-homage photograph of Bacharach on its sleeve (still later, Noel Gallagher would duet with his idol on a London stage). Elvis Costello had yet to collaborate with the master on an album of jointly written material, Painted From Memory. All kinds of new appraisals and tributes lay in store. And as for the idea of Burt Bacharach playing Glastonbury ...

Well, not this year, sadly. He broke his shoulder recently in a fall at an Indianapolis concert hall and subsequently was fitted with a prosthetic replacement joint. A slower-than-hoped-for return to full piano-playing capacity has meant his withdrawal from a festival bill that includes such acts as the Chemical Brothers, Ttravis and David Bowie. But that he should have been asked at all, and not just once but twice running (last year it was conflicting engagements in the US which prevented his participation) underlines his status as the Crossover King. Happily, he will be alongside Hal David at a charity concert to be held in their honour at the Albert Hall on June 30. There, performers as diverse as Cerys Matthews, Petula Clark and Lisa Stansfield will join Costello and Warwick in presenting one of the finest songbooks in all of pop, the proceeds going to the music therapy charity Nordoff-Robbins.

Now 72, the composer-arranger-conductor-producer has welcomed me into a Los Angeles home so conspiciously well-appointed it could be a movie set. Heightening the sense of unreality is the arrival home of the fourth Mrs. Bacharach, 39-year-old Jane Hanson, his wife of seven years. Slim and athletic, she waves and does the ‘Hi honey!' thing from the threshold of the house, then retreats inside to prepare for a meeting with her personal trainer. This little scene plays out so perfectly that we might all be characters in a film detailing upscale family life. The couple's two children, Oliver, seven, and Raleigh, four, are cute as buttons too. Only the casting of Burt as Burt jars. Were this Hollywood (it's not, it's Pacific Palisades), he might find himself replaced by an actor 20 years his junior and physically bigger - Jeff Bridges, say, or Kurt Russell. 

Not that he looks a septuagenarian. Here is someone tanned and lean, wearing almost as well as his songs. Burt is now sitting, feet up, wearing various layers of soft, expensive sports clothes, his eyes hidden by glasses with lenses the colour of iced tea. In one manicured, surprisingly young-looking hand, he holds a bottle of mineral water. The other clutches a purple Isoflex ball, as prescribed by his physiotherapist. The speaking voice is soft and expensive also. 

“I found it really repellent to come home from school and to be made to play the piano,” it is saying. “All of my friends were out playing sports, so I was a very reluctant student of music. Finally, my mother said, ‘OK, you've exhausted our patience. It's up to you now. If you want to continue, continue. If you don't, then stop.' This after they'd gotten me a Steinway. ‘Great!' was my first thought. ‘This is my chance for out!' But when it came down to it, I couldn't do it. Couldn't disappoint her and my father like that. I'd've felt too guilty. So I hung in there with the piano and, eventually, was very glad I did. And if I hadn't, you wouldn't want to be sitting here talking to me now.”

Bacharach grew up in Queens. New York, the only child of Jewish parents naturally anxious for his betterment. It was a household open to new influences (his father was a journalist) and in adolescence he developed a taste for jazz. This led to him studying musical theory and composition at university which, in turn, facilitated him finding work as a pianist, arranger and conductor on emerging from two years' service with the US Army. Among the artists who benefited from his preternaturally mature talent were the song stylists Steve Lawrence and Vic Damone. But it was with the mercurial Marlene Dietrich, then enjoying a rennaissance of popularity as a cabaret artist, with whom he was most closely associated. “We travelled the world together. And though she could be hard on those who worked for her, she was very generous to me. Treated me great.

“Introducing me on stage, she'd go, ‘Eye vish eye could say ‘eez my composer, but ‘eez going to be everyone's composer.' I hadn't even written my first really big hit yet. It scared the hell out of me. But that was her, as supportive as could be. Early on she called Frank (Sinatra) and tried to get him to record one particular composition of mine. ‘You'll be sorry,” she told him, when he didn't do it. And years later, when Promises, Promises (Bacharach & David's highly successful musical) opened on Broadway, she sent copies of the New York Times review to anyone who'd doubted, ‘I told you so!' written across the top.”

The most generous aspect of her patronage is one that Bacharach readily acknowledges. The more successful he became independently - by 1958 he and David had written minor hits for Marty Robbins and Perry Como - the more difficult it was for him to meet her global schedule. “But she didn't look to hold me back. And I kept trying to be there for her, of course. I remember us playing the Paris Olympia at a time when I had three songs on the R&B charts with Chuck Jackson, Dion and The Shirelles. Quincy (Jones, the legendary record producer) came backstage and asked me, ‘What are you doing, man? Why are you here?' “ The arrangment couldn't and wouldn't last.

Clearly, good times were had though - Magic Moments, to quote the title of his Como hit. Much of his work at the time was in Las Vegas and when I ask what the city was like during its Rat Pack heyday, Burt's expression dissolves into fondness. “Great girls,” he sighs. “Great girls.” Then, “Showgirls,” he clarifies. “There were 12 hotels back then and each one had its line of dancers. So it was fun. Yes, fun. I think I stayed there for six whole weeks once. Two playing with Dietrich and four getting a divorce (from a short-lived first marriage to a singer, Paula Stewart).”

Bacharach and David, two young pens-for-hire, forged their symbiotic partnership within the cramped confines of that famed songwriting factory, the Brill Building, on Broadway. The how and why was quite simple. They had complementary skills, respected each other's abilities and just clicked. The relationship was blessed in 1961 by their introduction to Dionne Warwick, then a young backing singer. Thus began one of the most glorious, mutually fulfilling alliances in contemporary music. While the likes of Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw and Adam Faith successfully hijacked their material in mid-Atlantic, enjoying hits here as a result, the trinity remained indivisible and unstoppable in the US. A second marriage followed for Bacharach, to actress Angie Dickinson. Instantly, they became one of America's golden couples, staples of the Democratic fundraising circuit, seen at all the right premieres and parties. 

“A really nice lady. And beautiful,” he says. “My mother and father knew her and kind of introduced us. Well, it wasn't hard to be attracted to Angie. And yeah, we looked good together. We're both doing good still. It was fun (there is a daughter Nicky, now in her thirties from the union, but no grandchildren). Fun for a while. Any time you've got a dual career thing going on, it can work against you.

“I think - I know! - that this lady I'm married to now, Jane, is great. I mean, not in a comparative way, ‘cos she's very different to anyone I've been involved with before. She's not in the business, not an actress, not a songwriter. But she's very real, very honest, very straight. And kind of beautiful. An athlete. I like that. Wonderful skier. And a great mother.”

I sense that I have lost Burt's attention and turn to look over my shoulder, following his own line of vision. Daughter Raleigh is playing with a member of the household staff. The wretched dog-that-walks-on-water is in attendance. ‘Hey, Louise. Careful there! I just saw her dumping. There! Back up a little bit and it's right behind you. See! See? I don't want anyone stepping in it.”

Clearly, Louise is out of earshot. She is wondering who did it and, indeed, what ‘it' is. “Me! I did it,” says Burt, exasperated. “No. Tazzie, of course. Tazzie did it.” There is a fruitless search, during which the alleged offender sidles from the scene. “OK, maybe I was mistaken,” he allows eventually, thus ending much walking around in circles, eyes lawnwards. “Maybe she was just making a wee. Sorry. Now, where were we?”

I was asking how Hal David, six years Bacharach's senior, handled all of this. Of course, the music man is miraculous at what he does - the complexity of his melodies, the elaborate time structures (re-play Alfie in your head) that only singers as proficient as Warwick can negotiate with grace and ease. But the urbane perfection of David's lyrics is too often overlooked. Nor had he any public profile, or famous wife. “In retrospect, do I think it was a little off? A little uneven? Yeah. I understand that now. But at the time you're not thinking, ‘How will this affect Hal's feelings? What will Hal's kids make of this?' You're just fixing on the next deadline. I guess we could have spoken about it more, but hey ... To be singled out, to be thought the better-looking, the better-known? To have all of that and say you didn't like it? You'd be lying. Everyone's competitive.”

But I am not levelling accusations, merely questioning why a once-solid, commercially unassailable and creatively peerless working partnership might unravel. 1972. Buoyed by Oscar nominations for their work on the films Alfie, Casino Royale and What's New, Pussycat? and, eventually, two statuettes for their score to Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, Bacharach and David accepted the brief to write a soundtrack to what would be a disastrous remake of the 1937 Frank Capra classic, Lost Horizon. It bombed at the box office and the music bombed with it (thought to this day Bacharach claims If I Go Back, which the late Peter Finch sang, “or pretended to sing”, is better than anything he has completed since). Then everything fell apart. “This is a tough town when you're down, but I took a really poor way out. Basically, I went down to the beach and just hid out for a whole year.”

Buried your head in the sand, almost literally? But was that so terrible? Why not? You needed time to lick your wounds? “A whole year? Come on ...”

The relationship with David floundered. So too, the one with Warwick. The marriage to Dickinson ended also, shortly afterwards. And while the following decade may have held no financial worries for Bacharach, it was aimless and creatively barren. At that time, easy listening was deeply unfashionable, but not yet sufficiently so to be ripe for rediscovery. Overall, the outlook was bleak. “Then I met Carole (Bayer Sager, the fellow songwriter who would later become his third wife) and we started to work together. She was tough on me. She'd say, ‘Nice, but you can do better.' We wrote three Number One hits together (Arthur's Theme for Christopher Cross, On My Own, a duet between Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald, and That's What Friends Are For, the AIDS-awareness fundraiser that eventually reconciled him with Warwick, who shared vocals on it with Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder and Elton John). Perhaps we could have written more ...”

As a writing team they were certainly efficient. Their work together can even wring a tear - Bayer-Sager had a killer commercial instinct. But always it is a glycerine tear, calculated to fall. Those songs are good but they are not Bacharach & David good. How could they be?

The marriage ended but the couple remain friends. His ex-wife lives close by and their 15-year-old son Christopher calls round often. “A terror,” says Burt, but then qualifies, “I mean, he's at a terror age. He shows up here with these little girls who are really cute. I say to him, ‘Christopher, if you're going to have sex, remember to use a condom', and he says, ‘Dad, I'm not going to have sex until I'm 17.' ‘Well, if you change your mind ...' He's a good kid.”

These days, life is quieter than it was with the second and third Mrs. Bacharachs. It is a family life and, though conducted in some style, is not ostentatious by entertainment industry standards. ‘I'm not a mansion person,” he shrugs. Racehorses are a major source of expenditure. He bought his first a full 30 years ago and now has over 40. Where are they kept? “Right here in the house. Up there on the third floor!” Of a two-storey house? No, the majority are in West Virginia, with the best of them getting brought out to California or wherever else to be raced. A few years ago, one travelled to Dubai and was runner-up in the World Cup there. Multi-million dollar profits, end of season, aren't unknown. “But right now it's slim pickings. To have your career doing great and your kids and your horses all at the same time ... Too much to ask for. Out of my control.”

As is this rresurgence in his reputation. “Which is exactly why it gives me such pleasure. I have absolutely nothing to do with it. I'm just fortunate to find myself at the centre of this great convergence of circumstances. “ He can give concerts or tour when it suits him to, and write songs as and when the mood takes him. A nice life, and it saddens him that singers aren't always as lucky. “It's such a hard course for them. If they sustain 10 years at the top, that's amazing. Whoever would have thought we'd see a day when Gladys wasn't a given at radio? When Aretha or Patti weren't sure shots for the charts? Now it's all geared towards younger artists. ‘Here's our latest 15-year-old sensation!' Certainly, the records are well made. But will they last?”

I remark that it's a shame I didn't have a proper encounter with Mrs. Bacharach. Perhaps I could have asked her a question or two. “Then come upstairs,” commands Burt, up and off and leading the way (he chooses not to walk across water, so I'm not called upon to swim). After our ascent, he propels me towards a doorway through which only one trainer-clad leg is visible. The back of a young male body obscures all else and I panic involuntarily. What are we interrupting? “Honey, Alan from the London Times wants to ask you something,” projects Burt from behind me.

“Why sure,' comes the reply. Christopher, the trainer, lets go of the other, hidden leg, the one he has been stretching out, flashes a super-handsome, super-healthy grin in my direction, then stands back to reveal Jane Bacharach in mid work-out, prone upon the floor. Feeling suddenly like the man from Hello! magazine, I search for something to ask.

Er, you're married to this God of Musical Romance. But how romantic is he in real life?

“Oh, totally, totally ...”

What was the last romantic thing he did for you?

“Just this morning, I found I needed to be in two places at the same time. We had Raleigh's parent-teacher conference, then Oliver got this jagged baby tooth cutting into his lip and had to be taken out of school ... I went, ‘Honey, could you cover for me?' and Burt didn't so much as say boo. He just said, ‘Sure thing. I'm here for you Janey!', and went with Raleigh to her school.”

I thank her profusely and exit backwards. As we head towards the stairwell, Burt takes the opportunity to show me the marital bedroom, all vaulted ceiling, exposed beams and football field-sized bed. “Not that Janey's spending much time in here at the moment,” he notes, after I have expressed my admiration. Whoah! Definitely a case of too much information. But then one explanatory finger is pointed at one poorly shoulder. A-ha! Of course. “And over there's the massage table upon which my therapist keeps giving me hell.”

There's probably no such thing as the perfect family. Not anywhere. Not in the USA. Not even this close to the movie-making capital of the world. We should know that. I mean, we've all seen American Beauty, right? But life with the Bacharachs ... It looks so seductive and sexy and safe. You'd pay to see the movie. And the best thing about it? You could be sure that the soundtrack would be just great.

Copyright © 2020 Alan Jackson

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