For 35 years Barry Manilow was terminally unhip. Then, improbably, he became deeply cool. Alan Jackson met a troubadour entirely unafraid to say exactly what he thinks about finally getting his due. "Dave Grohl couldn't have been nicer. And Sly Stone? I could scarcely get a word in. 'You’re just so inspiring,' he said, meaning me! Hello? Then there was the rocker Slash, who stuttered when we were introduced, out of nerves. I’d no idea these people even knew what it is I’ve been doing these past 35 years, let alone that they’d think I’m OK. I always assume anyone younger or cooler will think I stink and that they’ll make fun of me behind my back."By nature, Barry Manilow is more bashful than boastful. How could he be anything other than thrilled, though, that within a matter of weeks a Foo Fighter, an R&B icon and the Guns N’ Roses axeman all paid their respects to him?
For four decades the man who gave the world Copacabana was widely derided as terminally unhip, a blot on the musical landscape. He himself jokes about having written songs that are Muzak-ed into lifts all around the world each day. Yet finally he appears to be getting his due. While tastemakers of the time believed progressive rock and punk would be the defining musical genres of the Seventies, history is intent on proving otherwise. Manilow’s hits have stayed alive on the airwaves and in the popular consciousness in the same way as those of the Bee Gees, Abba and the Carpenters have, and more and more people are listening without prejudice. Not that he’d ever pretend to be truly down with the kids.
"Stuff that was thought to be just throwaway back then is like Mozart compared to a lot of what’s out there now," says the oft-maligned star. "That’s why the Grammys were so difficult to watch this year (his industry clout even at 67 was signalled by front-row seating at February’s event). I’m all for young people doing their thing. But for an old guy who cares about George Gershwin to be listening to a No 1 song called "F*** You"? That was really hard. Don’t get me wrong: it’s the catchiest song I’ve heard in years. It could almost be an old Al Green or Detroit Spinners track, and that’s my absolute favourite kind of pop. Yet the way they (Cee Lo Green and guest vocalist Gwyneth Paltrow) got attention for it was by using the F-word? Call me old-fashioned, but I really wish they hadn’t."
He’s never employed the same tactic himself, but that didn’t stop Rolling Stone magazine, in a revisionist profile piece, from declaring Manilow to be "a giant among entertainers... the showman of our generation." And attesting to that fact here in Vegas is the steady stream of names knocking on his dressing-room door. "Vince Neil from Mötley Crüe has been here four if not five times. He’s such a fan. And his wife? She’s an über-fan. Who else? Well, Elton John, the Desperate Housewives cast. And, of course, Victoria Beckham." How was the woman whose policy seems to be to never smile in public? "Oh, she smiled when she was here, I promise. In fact, she was great – kind of giggly and said all the right things. I’m hoping she’ll bring David and the family with her next time."
It’s backstage after yet another sold-out show at Paris Las Vegas that Manilow greets me, an electronic cigarette in his hand: "I started smoking during rehearsals with my band and I’m having to wean myself off again," he says apologetically. A tall, angular man with a shock of feathered hair, he has the demeanour of someone who’d rather deflect attention from himself than impose. The famous face is pale without stage make-up, unlined, keen-eyed. A voice that was mellifluous and soaring in song just minutes ago is hoarse in conversation, though he insists it doesn’t need resting. Despite the common perception of him being a cheese-meister, sincerity is Manilow’s stock-in-trade.
"I used to take acting classes and I was taught how to break down every line of every song as if it were a script. Where am I? Who am I singing to? Why am I singing it? During 'Please Don’t Be Scared' from one of my early albums, for example, I was singing to my mother, who was dying in a hospital at the time. That’s a pretty heavy scenario, really hot emotionally... very hard to do, and with that scene in my head, the song exploded night after night. That’s what I do with every song. I’ve broken down every song as if it were a scene. You try doing 'Can’t Smile Without You' for 30 years. Believe me, you’d get bored. But I don’t get bored, because every time I sing that line, which comes up 15 times, I have to figure a way of making it sound sincere each time. If I didn’t do it like that, I couldn’t do 30 years of this. I’d just be throwing the songs away night after night, and audiences wouldn’t come back. I just call it finding the truth within a song."
Few artists are a fail-safe, across-the-demographics Vegas draw in these recessionary times, but he’s one of them, up there with Elton John, Celine Dion and Cher. Vegas began for him with a five-year run at the Hilton, where a combined audience of 450,000 generated ticket sales of some £43 million.
And so far he’s been at the Paris for a year. Given that he now declares himself weary of life on the road (May’s four-night stint at London’s O2 arena, backed by the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, marks a rare overseas excursion within his schedule), it may well be that the future for Manilow fans is Nevada or bust.
Manilow’s catalogue of hit records and over 35 years of touring the world to capacity crowds have brought him greater wealth than he could ever have envisaged when starting out. But, he says, he has learnt how to use it wisely. "My friend Hal Gaba, who owned Concord Records, taught me about having enough. Once you accept that you have sufficient to live on, you stop worrying about making money. You realise that there’s enough to share and to give. I’m glad that I have enough and now I’m able to fund the Manilow Music Project, help my family and friends and perform benefit concerts – for free."
Meanwhile, his lifestyle is hardly excessive by the standards of his industry peers. "Years ago I bought an old Spanish colonial house in the foothills outside Palm Springs. It rambles along the hillside, and though it’s a beautiful, large house and very private, it’s anything but palatial. You approach it via a dirt road, it’s surrounded by orange trees and has a wonderful view, but palatial? Not even close."
Still, it’s a far cry from Manilow’s humble beginnings in Brooklyn, New York. "My high school was voted the worst in all of America," he says from the Paris stage. "To get respect you had to either excel at sports – I didn’t – or join a gang. Can you imagine me in a gang?"
Instead he joined the school orchestra and, as the product of a broken marriage, found both hope and a way forward. It would lead in time to his enrolment at New York’s famed Juilliard School of Music, albeit while working part-time in the post room of the TV network CBS. "Over time I’d developed a really great, behind-the-scenes career writing ad jingles, but then I saw this terrific girl with so much potential, yet who was struggling. She had no real act to speak of, no piano player, nothing. And I said to myself, 'Whatever she wants from me, I’m going to give it to her and for free.' Which I did. I found songs for her and pulled it all together, because I believed she could be one of the greatest talents we have – as she so proved to be." He’s speaking of Bette Midler, whose pianist and musical arranger he became, aiding in her rise to stardom in the Seventies.
It was while working for her that he came to the attention of legendary label boss Clive Davis, mentor to talents such as Bruce Springsteen and Janis Joplin and the man who would go on to launch Whitney Houston, Alicia Keys and others. Davis felt Manilow had what it took to be an artist in his own right and supported his early solo recording career. But judging his self-written material to lack a standout track that radio might embrace, he set about finding one elsewhere. The ballad "Mandy" would change his protégé’s life for ever. At one point in the Paris show, footage is screened of a 31-year-old Manilow performing that breakthrough hit on U.S. TV.
"I look at my younger self now and can’t help thinking how brave I was going to have to be. No one can have gotten worse reviews or been the subject of crueller jokes than I did starting out. Every critic wanted to kick me. Every comic wanted laughs at my expense. The terrible crime? Sitting at a piano singing heartfelt songs."
He’d no idea he might be an easy target for the media? "Nobody could have been more surprised than I was to find I wasn’t hip. I thought I was the saviour of pop, the hippest musician ever. And I have to say the toughest on me of all was the British press. Oy vey! This to a guy they hadn’t even met. It’s not like I’d hurt their loved ones. It was a shock anyone could be so vicious. All I cared about was the music, but what they went after was my looks, and in an incredibly personal way."
"Mandy" was a success all around the world. "At which point I realised nothing would be the same again and I wasn’t happy about it. I was grateful, sure, but I’d have been perfectly content to be a one-hit wonder and to have gone back to my old job. But time passed and suddenly I had 20 hits to my name. And I’ve always said success is harder to handle than failure. With success, you’ve got to make some really good choices or you’ll find yourself in deep trouble. If you fail, not many people witness it – nobody sees you if you fail as a non-famous person. If I could have just shoved somebody else out into the spotlight and gone home, I would have done so. But it was me selling out arenas and doing TV specials, so I had to keep on going, even though I was beyond uncomfortable and it showed. If I’d been a critic, I would have killed me too. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was learning on the job, taking support from family, friends and, most of all, the public. They liked what I was doing. It meant something to them. They encouraged me to keep going, so I did."
Despite his unease with public life, the younger Manilow found himself seduced by life in the fast lane. "I went through a being-an-***hole period, for sure. Fame really brings out the worst in you. You think you’re king of the world. Everyone agrees with you because they’re afraid that if they don’t, you’ll fire them. You find yourself being rude to them in response. And all the while I was in and out of a tuxedo, picking up awards left, right and centre. It was the best and the worst of times."
Then came an epiphany. "1979, five years into my success. I’d come off tour and had rented this house on the beach in Florida. So there I was, sitting outside under the stars with my first dog, Bagel – Bagel the beagle! – when I realised I no longer had any friends. No friends at all. Everyone around me was on the payroll. The people I’d grown up with, my real friends, had somehow fallen by the wayside. Where did they go? Where did I go, come to that – the real me? Yet how could I have expected them to reach me even if they’d wanted to, it being the pre-mobile era? I didn’t know where I was half the time – Utah one day, Idaho the next. It was my 'dark night of the soul' moment. Something had to change. Was I going to go ever further into this never-never world or get back to being a real person? I decided there and then to do the latter."
Little is known of Manilow’s personal life beyond the fact that there was a brief, failed marriage, before he was famous. "My life really is my music... my band, my singers, my family and friends," he says when asked if he shares his life with anyone. "I start each day at 6am and go through until at least midnight. I live for music, for the joy of writing, of being in the studio, of rehearsing on stage and sharing what I’ve learned with friends around the world. Am I in a relationship? Yes... and it begins with middle C."
This contradictory blend of showmanship and reticence appears to be the very essence of the man himself. Yes, his face features on posters the size of apartment blocks on the Vegas Strip, but he’s actually happiest out of the limelight, indulging his passion for music of all kinds. That’s why he was thrilled to be invited by BBC Radio 2 to assemble and present an intimate series of profiles of America’s great 20th-century songwriters.
"It’s a project that means more to me than anything else right now. It’s the first time they’ve given anyone ten one-hour shows. It’s a dream come true. The aim is for me to get the man or woman in the street interested in the men behind the Great American Songbook... Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein and so on. Each had a fascinating personal story. Did you know, for instance, that Gershwin was a hoodlum as a kid? He dropped out of school and his mother was fearful he’d end up in jail. I researched and wrote it all myself, chose the recordings we illustrate it with, sang and played a little myself. It’s Barry in your living room. I couldn’t have enjoyed it more."
A new Manilow CD is imminent too: a concept album, 15 Minutes, which carries the subtitle "Fame. Can You Take It?" What he describes as its "guitar-driven pop" sound may surprise fans who associate him purely with romantic balladry, which is why he’s planning to ease them into it via a trio of small club performances in Los Angeles, New York and London. "Just throw the doors open and let 'em in for free."
And that Warhol-ian title? "Well, it’s about how people handle success, but that’s applicable across all areas of life, not just showbusiness. Take the guy who runs the local grocery store. When he’s promoted to area manager, is he decent to those working under him or does he behave like a p****?"
Of course, success on a grand scale magnifies the issues, right? "Exactly. Think of Bill Clinton or Tiger Woods, guys who are brilliant at what they do. How do they handle all the craziness around them when all they’ve wished and worked for is delivered to them big time?"
We kind of know, of course, and that’s the point. "I think back to how I behaved and don’t know if I could handle it any better given the chance again. People were saying yes to me on every level. I could have done anything, smoked or snorted whatever I wanted. Insanity! Some individuals are really good at handling all of that, but not many."
Barry Manilow performs at London’s O2, May 4-7; theo2.co.uk. "They Write the Songs", Tuesdays, 10pm, Radio 2.
