London Times, February 18, 2023: Difference between revisions
m (fix image links) |
(add remaining tags) |
||
Line 23: | Line 23: | ||
So began a friendship that continued when the two worked on God Give Me Strength, a song for the 1996 drama ''Grace of My Heart'', based loosely on the life of Carole King. “I took the unusual step of writing the top-line melody an faxing it to him, which is a presumptuous thing to do,” Costello says. “He’s not known to be collaborative on his music, but I wanted to tip the song towards his older material. When I was young his songs made me feel strange, I think because there was tension in them. They became more genial as he got older, and although nobody wants to go back – if someone says, ‘Can you write another Oliver’s Army?’ I’ll show them the door – there are certain things in rhythm and harmonic disposition that are classically ‘Bacharachian’. I wanted to acknowledge that musical grammar he once did as second nature.” | So began a friendship that continued when the two worked on God Give Me Strength, a song for the 1996 drama ''Grace of My Heart'', based loosely on the life of Carole King. “I took the unusual step of writing the top-line melody an faxing it to him, which is a presumptuous thing to do,” Costello says. “He’s not known to be collaborative on his music, but I wanted to tip the song towards his older material. When I was young his songs made me feel strange, I think because there was tension in them. They became more genial as he got older, and although nobody wants to go back – if someone says, ‘Can you write another Oliver’s Army?’ I’ll show them the door – there are certain things in rhythm and harmonic disposition that are classically ‘Bacharachian’. I wanted to acknowledge that musical grammar he once did as second nature.” | ||
Bacharach’s musical grammar had a big impact on the young Costello. His father, Ross McManus as well as being the voice of the Secret Lemonade Drinker on an unforgettable 1973 advert for R White’s lemonade, was a performer | Bacharach’s musical grammar had a big impact on the young Costello. His father, Ross McManus as well as being the voice of the Secret Lemonade Drinker on an unforgettable 1973 advert for R White’s lemonade, was a performer with the light entertainment-focused Joe Loss Orchestra. McManus was a glamorous but unreliable figure, only intermittently in his son’s life, “a great guy, but a terrible example as a husband and father,” according to Costello. | ||
In the accompanying booklet to ''The Songs of Bacharach & Costello'' there is a photograph of McManus hanging out with Bacharach at a 1963 Royal Variety performance. “Not just Bacharach, but also the Beatles, Harry Secombe, Marlene Dietrich … they’re all there.” Costello says. “I had a lot more access to Bacharach than the average kid because my mum was friends with Michael Holliday, who had a hit with Bacharach’s The Story of My Life in 1958, when I was four, and Dad was bringing the songs home to sing on the Joe Loss Pop Show. As a teenager I was hearing torrid songs like Anyone Who Had A Heart and I began to understand the emotional moments in life they represented. Then I learnt a few chords on guitar and discovered how they were completely beyond me to actually play. | In the accompanying booklet to ''The Songs of Bacharach & Costello'' there is a photograph of McManus hanging out with Bacharach at a 1963 Royal Variety performance. “Not just Bacharach, but also the Beatles, Harry Secombe, Marlene Dietrich … they’re all there.” Costello says. “I had a lot more access to Bacharach than the average kid because my mum was friends with Michael Holliday, who had a hit with Bacharach’s The Story of My Life in 1958, when I was four, and Dad was bringing the songs home to sing on the Joe Loss Pop Show. As a teenager I was hearing torrid songs like Anyone Who Had A Heart and I began to understand the emotional moments in life they represented. Then I learnt a few chords on guitar and discovered how they were completely beyond me to actually play. | ||
Line 43: | Line 43: | ||
You wonder, given that Costello’s wife is the Canadian jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall and her sultry rendition of The Look of Love is almost as celebrated as the Dusty Springfield version, whether the challenge of tackling Bacharach is a regular topic around their kitchen table. “Not really, and I don’t argue with her about time signatures,” he says. “That would end badly because she has the greatest sense of tempo of anyone I have ever met. We all have different gifts. I can look at a page of type and see song titles within it, yet I can’t play Scrabble.” | You wonder, given that Costello’s wife is the Canadian jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall and her sultry rendition of The Look of Love is almost as celebrated as the Dusty Springfield version, whether the challenge of tackling Bacharach is a regular topic around their kitchen table. “Not really, and I don’t argue with her about time signatures,” he says. “That would end badly because she has the greatest sense of tempo of anyone I have ever met. We all have different gifts. I can look at a page of type and see song titles within it, yet I can’t play Scrabble.” | ||
Costello faced the challenge of writing lyrics of a quality to match those of David, but in his own, typically evocative way. Painted from Memory features songs about trying to get back with someone (In the Darkest Place), infidelity (Toledo) and loneliness (This House Is Empty Now). The director Chuck Lorre, mastermind of the hit nerd sitcom The Big Bang Theory, saw the potential for the songs to be threaded into a Broadway musical about an artist who leaves his wife for a model, and demanded that Bacharach and Costello write another 12 numbers to flesh it out. | Costello faced the challenge of writing lyrics of a quality to match those of David, but in his own, typically evocative way. Painted from Memory features songs about trying to get back with someone (In the Darkest Place), infidelity (Toledo) and loneliness (This House Is Empty Now). The director Chuck Lorre, mastermind of the hit nerd sitcom ''The Big Bang Theory'', saw the potential for the songs to be threaded into a Broadway musical about an artist who leaves his wife for a model, and demanded that Bacharach and Costello write another 12 numbers to flesh it out. | ||
The musical never got off the ground, but gems such as Stripping Paper – a poignant ballad in which a wife strips away layers of wallpaper in her family home only to be reminded of happier times when she sees a pencil mark of her daughter’s height – did come out of it. | The musical never got off the ground, but gems such as Stripping Paper – a poignant ballad in which a wife strips away layers of wallpaper in her family home only to be reminded of happier times when she sees a pencil mark of her daughter’s height – did come out of it. | ||
“The songs were too good to be languishing in a drawer,” Costello says of Taken from Life, the | “The songs were too good to be languishing in a drawer,” Costello says of Taken from Life, the album formed from the extra material. “And I can’t be sad that [the musical] never happened because I got to write another 15 songs with Burt Bacharach. Besides, I’m not a great fan of musical theatre because the quality is so poor unless you go back a bit. How can you talk about Leonard Bernstein and Andrew Lloyd Webber in the same sentence? It is like the difference between Beethoven and the 1910 Fruitgum Company.” | ||
Bacharach’s work has been dismissed as lounge music, not least after he appeared in the first ''Austin Powers'' movie. He and Costello even wrote a song called Lie Back and Think of England for a proposed Austin Powers musical and it appears on the box set, sung in affectingly broken tones by Bacharach. “It was a wonderful gag that Burt was in Austin Powers, but it did put him in that world of kitsch,” Costello says. “The problem was when you got moderately talented musicians attaching themselves to lounge music and it dragged everything their way.” | Bacharach’s work has been dismissed as lounge music, not least after he appeared in the first ''Austin Powers'' movie. He and Costello even wrote a song called Lie Back and Think of England for a proposed Austin Powers musical and it appears on the box set, sung in affectingly broken tones by Bacharach. “It was a wonderful gag that Burt was in Austin Powers, but it did put him in that world of kitsch,” Costello says. “The problem was when you got moderately talented musicians attaching themselves to lounge music and it dragged everything their way.” | ||
The sadness of the interview, given what happened a few days later is in the enthusiasm with which Costello talks about working with Bacharach. “I’m always pleased because every time I think ‘Is there going to be another opportunity?’” he says, suggesting there most likely would be. | The sadness of the interview, given what happened a few days later is in the enthusiasm with which Costello talks about working with Bacharach. “I’m always pleased because every time I think ‘Is there going to be another opportunity?’” he says, suggesting there most likely would be. | ||
Even at 94, Bacharach seemed too much of a songwriting giant and a figure of superhuman elegance to succumb to plain old death – until he did. He has left behind a body of work that informed 20th-century song. Remarkably, a chunk of it was recorded with the man behind Pump It Up, I Don’t Want To Go To Chelsea and other, frenetic punky classics. They are as far away from Bacharach’s glamorous cocktail party world as you could imagine, but Costello has since aligned so closely to him that the two are now for ever interlinked. | Even at 94, Bacharach seemed too much of a songwriting giant and a figure of superhuman elegance to succumb to plain old death – until he did. He has left behind a body of work that informed 20th-century song. Remarkably, a chunk of it was recorded with the man behind Pump It Up, I Don’t Want To Go To Chelsea and other, frenetic punky classics. They are as far away from Bacharach’s glamorous cocktail party world as you could imagine, but Costello has since aligned so closely to him that the two are now for ever interlinked. | ||
Line 64: | Line 65: | ||
{{cx}} | {{cx}} | ||
{{tags}}[[Burt Bacharach]] {{-}} [[The Songs Of Bacharach & Costello]] {{-}} [[I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself]] {{-}} [[My Little Red Book]] {{-}} [[I'll Never Fall In Love Again]] {{-}} [[Painted From Memory]] {{-}} [[100 Songs and More]] {{-}} [[Gramercy Theatre]] {{-}} [[God Give Me Strength]] {{-}} [[Grace Of My Heart: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack|Grace Of My Heart]] {{-}} [[Carole King]] {{-}} [[Oliver's Army]] {{-}} [[Ross MacManus]] {{-}} [[Secret Lemonade Drinker]] {{-}} [[Joe Loss Orchestra]] {{-}} [[The Beatles]] {{-}} [[Anyone Who Had A Heart]] | {{tags}}[[Burt Bacharach]] {{-}} [[The Songs Of Bacharach & Costello]] {{-}} [[I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself]] {{-}} [[My Little Red Book]] {{-}} [[I'll Never Fall In Love Again]] {{-}} [[Painted From Memory]] {{-}} [[100 Songs and More]] {{-}} [[Gramercy Theatre]] {{-}} [[God Give Me Strength]] {{-}} [[Grace Of My Heart: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack|Grace Of My Heart]] {{-}} [[Carole King]] {{-}} [[Oliver's Army]] {{-}} [[Ross MacManus]] {{-}} [[Secret Lemonade Drinker]] {{-}} [[Joe Loss Orchestra]] {{-}} [[The Beatles]] {{-}} [[Anyone Who Had A Heart]] {{-}} [[Hal David]] {{-}} [[Aretha Franklin]] {{-}} [[Dionne Warwick]] {{-}} [[Philharmonic Hall]] {{-}} [[Concert 2022-06-10 Liverpool]] {{-}} [[Cilla Black]]{{-}} [[Diana Krall]] {{-}} [[The Look Of Love]] {{-}} [[Dusty Springfield]] {{-}} [[In The Darkest Place]] {{-}} [[Toledo]] {{-}} [[This House Is Empty Now]] {{-}} [[Chuck Lorre]] {{-}} [[Stripping Paper]] {{-}} [[Leonard Bernstein]] {{-}} [[Andrew Lloyd Webber]] {{-}} [[Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me|Austin Powers]] {{-}} [[Lie Back & Think Of England]] {{-}} [[Pump It Up]] {{-}} [[(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea]] | ||
{{cx}} | {{cx}} | ||
Revision as of 20:52, 18 February 2023
|
External links
- TheTimes.co.uk - paywall
- Wikipedia: The Times