When
 |
Where
|
Articles/Reviews
|
| October 15, 1989 | Morning Call | "Barry Manilow Grows Up In Public 'On Broadway'" by Amy Longsdorf |
|---|
| A few years ago, it seemed that Barry Manilow was as dated as bell-bottoms and shag haircuts. So he decided to try to re-invent himself and revitalize his moribund career. He began working out. He took to wearing designer duds and a mousse-managed haircut. And he recorded "Swing Street," a classy collection of jazzy pop that won him some of his first good reviews. A successful tour and an autobiography, "Sweet Life: Adventures on the Way to Paradise," followed in quick succession. Now, two years later, comes "Barry Manilow On Broadway," a musical retrospective that recaps the reign of the self-described "King Of Commercial Music." His two-hour extravaganza, which pulls into Stabler Arena in Bethlehem on Wednesday night, ran for eight weeks this spring at Broadway's Gershwin Theatre. Originally, the singer planned to bypass a full-fledged American tour. "I received thousands of letters from people around the country who were unable to travel to New York to see the show," says Manilow. "So, I figured I would bring it to them." "On Broadway" ran for four days in early October at the Schubert Theater in Philadelphia and every show was sold out. The crowd at the Oct. 3 performance was made up of mostly women and men in their 40s, with a sprinkling of people who were younger. The concert is, in the singer's words, "a backward musical journey on the way to 'Mandy.' " All his pop hits are there, including "Daybreak," "Weekend in New England," "I Write the Songs" and "Tryin' to Get the Feeling." In the show Manilow reflects on his growing-up years, sharing anecdotes about his musical influences, his run-ins with an uncooperative accordion, his experience as an audition pianist and being musical director for Bette Midler. In remembering his love of harmony groups, he imagines himself as a male Supreme and as one of Gladys Knight's Pips. The 42-year-old Manilow even takes a page from Liberace's book when he invites an audience member onstage for a lengthy sing-along. The finale was a show-stopper. The 30-minute medley featuring snippets from more than two dozen of his Top 40 hits had most of Manilow's fans at the Schubert on their feet. To the unconverted, the musical content of "On Broadway" will seem clogged with cloying inspirational sentiments, one big, long blur of Barry. But visually, the high-tech show is a stunner. Created by Joe Gannon (who previously staged shows for Alice Cooper, among others), "On Broadway" features 60-slide projectors and a variety of stage sets, including a re-creation of the Brooklyn apartment in which Manilow was raised by his mother and grandparents. Manilow's popularity is based as much on his personality as his music. He has accumulated one of the most loyal networks of fan clubs in pop-rock history. Thousands of Manilow devotees follow the singer's career with fervent interest. They publish newsletters, maintain hotlines and attend semi-annual conventions. "He makes people feel good," says Tori Ancharski, president of the Pennsylvania Barry Boosters. "When I go to his shows, I could be feeling down - everything could be going wrong. But when I leave the theater, I feel as if I can face the world again. A lot of his songs have the message 'don't give up.' He blends all that into the show." Ancharski, who's attended more than 20 Manilow concerts, enjoys the fully- scripted "On Broadway" because it celebrates Manilow's status as a survivor. Many of Manilow's female fans consider the singer a sex symbol. "Sometimes when you're at a concert and he's singing, you feel as if you're the only one he's singing to," says the 41-year-old Ancharski, a medical technologist. "I like that feeling." "Barry Manilow On Broadway" will be presented at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Stabler Arena, Lehigh University, Bethlehem. Tickets are expected to be available at the door. For information, call 867-8202. |
| July 31, 1987 | Washington Post | "Just Wild About Barry" by Marjorie Williams |
|---|
| To spend time at the Grand Hyatt hotel this week has been to recognize once again that the world is divided into two kinds of people. There are those who look at Barry Manilow and see a sallow little guy with a big nose and a bad haircut, and there are those who look at Barry Manilow and see ... Barry. People in the first category classify Manilow as a sugary pop star -- something like Neil Diamond, only more so; when Barry Manilow croons, "I write the songs that make the whole world sing," Category One people grind their teeth and feel tantrums coming on. The women in the second category -- for they are almost all women, or girls -- speak of Manilow's music as a genre, an art form unto itself. They know all the lyrics; they have seen Barry in concert a minimum of 10 times; they know his official birth date (June 17, 1946) and what they say is his real birth date (three years earlier), and think the discrepancy is sort of cute. They will have you know that he is almost six feet tall. Some 1,200 members of Category Two are in Washington now for the third major convention of the Barry Manilow International Fan Club (BMIFC), gathered to share the magic of what they call "Manilove." These are some of the things that Barry Manilow fans do: They hold a competitive "country fair," in which they enter memorabilia collections, photographs of Barry taken at concerts and original renderings of Barry in almost every conceivable artistic medium: paint, pastels, pencil, collage, even stained glass. They raise money for charity through such events as Barry "watch-a-thons," in which a participant gets friends and family to pledge a certain amount of money for each continuous hour she watches Barry Manilow videos. They play Barry Manilow trivia games, including a game based on "Jeopardy" known as "Jepo-Barry." They hold parties on his birthday. They hold reunions of the lucky women Barry has plucked from audiences around the world to join him on stage for a song called "Can't Smile Without You." In the words of Paula Smolenski of Niles, Ill.: "We are loud. We are crazy. But we are harmless." Beyond Barry Cathy Voss is director of the Australian chapter of the BMIFC. She and Elizabeth Cocking both from Sydney, spent an estimated $3,500 to $4,000 each to plan their holidays around the convention, which, after all, only comes around every other year. They wear T-shirts featuring the Australian flag, a kangaroo and the legend "Barry Down Under." Also present are delegations from Japan, Britain, West Germany, the Netherlands and Canada. The latest country to create its first accredited international fan club chapter is Paraguay, though no one from Paraguay made it this year. But most of the fans are from club chapters in the United States -- from such chapters as the Mystical Memories of Manilow BMFC of Mobile, Ala.; the Hoosier Friends of Manilow of Clinton, Ind.; the B Team of Orlando, Fla.; the Manilow Maniacs of Maryland; the Koala Bears of the Miami Valley (for reasons that should be obvious, Barry's name has given rise to a plethora of bear memorabilia and allusion); the Barry Manilow Admirers Gathered in Cincinnati (that's Barry M-A-G-I-C, an allusion to a song title). The first thing most of them mention is friendship: They come to the convention not to worship Barry, they say, but to meet like-minded folk who happen to share a hobby. Says Wilma Anderson of Huntington, W. Va.: "The music is what brings you together, but the friendships are what keep you together." Janet Erwin of Charleston, W. Va., nods and agrees: "It's gone beyond Barry." Consider the bulletin board in the delegates' lounge. Posted there are notes to and from pen pals who struck up epistolary friendships through Barry Manilow fan clubs and now hope to meet. One serves notice of a " 'Mandy'-tory" meeting of a club called the Bagel Beagles to finish plans for the club's display table -- an announcement that only begins to make sense when you know that "Mandy" is the title of one of the biggest early Manilow hits of the '70s, and that Barry has a beagle named Bagel. Another note says simply, "Japanese girls from the last convention, I have pictures for you. Leslie." It begins to seem a lot like the first week of summer camp, when reunions are celebrated among last year's campers, and brand-new campers are provisionally welcomed. But these are not "girls," most of them. Mindy Sue Tumarkin, the founder and president of the Hot Tonight for Barry Fan Club of Country Club Hills, Ill., puts herself at the young end of the Barry-fan age spectrum. Carolyn Kalmus of Pompano Beach, Fla. joined a fan club when she turned 40 and realized that it would be "much more fun than a midlife crisis." Kalmus was presiding Wednesday over the display table of the newly formed club Manilove of South Florida, and distributing a sheet of cutout Manilow silhouettes with tabs that fold in to form a base (in order to achieve ballast, Barry lost his legs below the kneecap). Kalmus calls them "big-girl paper dolls." Love That Barry For every fan who says that Barry is simply a shared enthusiasm -- it could as well be fly fishing, or building ships in bottles -- there is a fan who utters the word "love." Paula Smolenski is one of those. Smolenski has a seven-volume Barry scrapbook. She has been to all three of the BMIFC conventions. Talking about Barry, over a matter of minutes her emotions run a visible gamut from mirth to passion to sadness -- the last of these, when she describes her fiance''s death in an accident two years ago. Barry Manilow's music, she says tearfully, is what got her through. "He was my psychiatrist for those two months," she says. The more his fans describe what it is like to listen to Manilow's music, the more they describe a feeling that he is listening to them: Barry knows what you're feeling, Barry has been through it himself, Barry can tell you why you're blue. Says Hazel Bell of Texarkana, Tex., "It's musical acknowledgment. People die to get acknowledged, and he does that." Another thing -- perhaps best expressed by one of the few males at the convention who came under his own steam, rather than under duress from his wife -- is Barry's ordinariness: Barry is "somebody who's up there," says Craig Miller, an audit clerk from Arcadia, Calif. "Who's far enough away to be an idol, and close enough to be a friend." The women, too, suggest that the Brooklyn-born Manilow is just enough of a schlub to stand as some sort of bridge between their real world and his achieved world of glamor and stardom and money. Carolyn McCullough of Sturgeon Bay, Wis., describes Manilow as "the average woman's man." Smolenski expresses openly, if unknowingly, the larger paradox inherent in any gathering of fans. The convention, she says at one point, is "a chance to talk all about Barry and meet each other." But she also says what the swooning-est fans and the knowing-est critics have always said about the most magnetic male performers: "He makes you feel that he's only singing to you." "I've known several girls who don't date because they think Barry is their one and only," says Trish Juechter of the Maryland Maniacs. Most of the fans say they know of such cases; none admits to being such a case. Tumarkin, a computer programmer and graduate student, shrugs and says, "Oh, yeah, everyone teases, 'I'm going to marry Barry.' And I'm as guilty as the rest." But it is only teasing, she stresses. "Our club treasurer is very happily married ... Her husband just has to understand that Barry holds a special place in her heart." Twelve hundred is not a huge number of people by the standard of Washington conventioneering, and Barry Manilow fans would not appear to pose a terribly challenging exercise in crowd control. But there is something rigid about this convention, down to the rule that no "delegate" will be admitted to any event unless she is wearing her regulation plastic bracelet, modeled after the ones that demoralize hospital patients the world over. It is as if the convention organizers shared the common misapprehension that all Manilow fans are teen-agers. It is hard to tell just who the convention organizers are. There is a BMIFC central committee (as it were) in Los Angeles, which accredits the smaller clubs around the world; it is run by an entertainment management company called Stiletto, whose employees at the convention appear to borrow their manner from the company's name. Questions about the costs of the convention are not appreciated (though the fans themselves will cheerfully tell you they paid $165 each for registration, before hotel, meal and travel costs). Nor are questions about how many members the club has, or what the club does, or what Stiletto is, or even how many people have registered. After all, they will finally tell you, this is a convention "by the fans, for the fans." One of them intones that "it just sort of happens by itself." (And because the character who has the official lock on memorabilia sales -- the avuncular "Madman Mickey" Morgan -- isn't giving any interviews, there is no telling what kind of profit just sort of happens into whose coffers.) Organizers had planned plenty of summer-campy activity for the early part of the week, including a costume party and lip-syncing competition -- an event that made surprisingly little reference to Manilow. The costume theme was "the '40s, '50s and '60s," and strict taboos forbade the lip-syncing of Barry songs. Instead, groups of fans performed inventive renditions of such oldies and goodies as "Sandman" and "Working in the Coal Mine." But this is all done in the name of killing time. The main events are a banquet, which took place last night, and a mysterious "Special Event," scheduled for this evening. In the past, these two events have been the locus for the favorite fan club mind game: Will Barry come? During the earlier conventions, Barry has been on tour in the vicinity and has come to both nights' events -- chatting with the fans after the banquet, and performing the following evening. Asked whether Barry is coming this year, employees of Stiletto slightly adjust their faces in the direction of a smile and answer, "You know as much as we do." Early in the week, most fans responded to questions on this point with the motherly calm they muster for all questions that go to the thorny issue of reciprocity in their relationship with Barry. Of course they would understand if he couldn't come, they say; Barry is a very busy man. But the mood grew a little ugly last night when Barry Did Not Come. As the clock neared 1 a.m., some of the balconies that ring the Grand Hyatt atrium held handfuls of angry fans chanting "WE WANT BAR-RY," and "BAR-RY, BAR-RY." Janet Godziszewski and Roberta Beck, three-time conventioneers from Illinois, were more genteel in their dismay. "They never actually said yes, he's coming," said Roberta. "We just hoped." "Yes," said Janet, "a lot of hope." And with tonight's special event still to come, hope springs eternal. |
| February 20, 1982 | Billboard Magazine | Royal Albert Hall in London (January 11, 1982) |
|---|
 |
| January 23, 1982 | Billboard Magazine | "Barry Manilow U.K. Tour Stirs Ticket Controversy" by Peter Jones |
|---|
| Barry Manilow's first major tour of Britain this month may be generating SRO business and widespread media attention, and spurring the artist's record sales, but it's also seeing controversy over ticket pricing. The best seats at London's Royal Albert Hall for the first five nights of Manilow's tour were the sterling equivalent of $38 (£20). Promoter Andrew Miller has been obliged to counter charges of profiteering. He says, "People should look at the economics of booking an artist like Manilow. When he played Wembley in 1980, the top ticket price was around $24. But that's a much larger venue. The Royal Albert Hall is more intimate, smaller, and that makes the concerts more enjoyable for audiences. Additionally, we lose a lot of ticket sales at the Albert Hall because many of the boxes are privately owned." Miller adds that only 22 rows at the Hall were in the top-price bracket and that the rest of the seats were priced £17.50 (roughly $33) downwards. Support for this price structuring comes, too, from Ric Dixon, of Kennedy Street Enterprises in Manchester, co-promoters of the Birminham and Manchester Manilow dates, who says: "Maybe it seems expensive, but it does also cost a vast amount of money to put on a tour of this scale. No promoter makes a million out of this kind of schedule. The fact is that Britain has always had its concerts and its music too cheaply. It's unrealistic to expect to see a pop show for the equivalent of five dollars. The top price for Manilow is realistic, specially when you consider the travelling costs, the staging of a big production and the orchestra." Yet amid considerable industry talk about the £20 top prices - most of it critical even in these inflationary days - the fact is that all 13 dates of the Manilow tour, which also takes in Birmingham, Manchester, Brighton and Edinburgh, were sold out within hours of the tickets going on sale last fall. Of the 500,000-plus fans who applied for tickets, just 77,000 were lucky. Ticket touts in London have offered seats at £150 (roughly $300) each, and presumably found takers. And, there have been small advertisements in newspapers from Manilow addicts offering up to £100 a time for seats. In Edinburgh, hundreds of Manilow fans were turned away so some organized a dinner and "Manilow disco" evening on the same night as his concert in that city. Arista rush-released a new Manilow single, "If I Should Love Again" / "Let's Take All Night," and there's been national retail action on his most recent albums, "Best of...," "One Voice," "Even Now," "Barry" and "If I Should Love Again." That he's very much a one-man music industry in Britain is evidenced by the amount of Manilow memorabilia available on the tour dates, all handled by the U.S. company StarStruck. At the Royal Albert Hall, recordings for an upcoming live album were started, as was filming for a television spectacular. It's estimated that the five concerts in London will gross nearly $1 million. The press critics here have emphasized the Manilow schmaltz and sugar-coating, but the Daily Mail's Simon Kinnersley opined: "It would be easy to dismiss him, simple to poke fun at his nice-guy image and laugh at his cultivated blandness. But much of his success stems from the good old-fashioned and often neglected show business qualities. He's discovered and exploited most successfully the highly unfashionable middle-of-the-road market." For the Times reviewer, Richard Williams, he is "Cliff Richard with an A-for-adult viewing certificate." The Guardian's Mick Brown: "You don't have to like what he does to recognize that he does it very well." And the Daily Telegraph's John Coldstream: "An engaging self-deprecating manner, appearance of total relaxation and unerring aim with songs that tug at the tear ducts." There were crowd scenes on Manilow's arrival at Heathrow Airport here, despite Arctic weather, and only a "tiff" with his fan-club organizers threatened the welcoming atmosphere. Lawyer's letters from the U.S. had accused Lynn Killick and Mollie Baldwin, who built up the 10,000-plus club membership, of putting out products which were "cheap and trashy" and "did not conform to the exacting standards Barry has set for his name and face to be used on products." It was said that Manilow had written personally to them to stop "selling low-quality products." This was technically an "unofficial" fan-club for Manilow and, in London, the singer said: "What we really wanted was to get the two affiliated to my international fan club. Then they'd get up-to-date merchandise instead of out-of-date information and old pictures." However, peace eventually came. The two Manilow fans will continue running his U.K. club, now with his blessing. And they'll be offering authorized Manilow merchandise. |
| August 16, 1975 | Billboard Magazine | Programmer's Artist Popularity Poll: New Artists ... Barry Manilow |
|---|
| "My first goal in life," Barry Manilow remembers, "was to be an arranger. I used to listen to the Beatles and Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand and say to myself, 'Hey, somebody behind them is putting that whole thing together!' And that's what I wanted to do." So he did it ... and a lot more, too. He's the man who, as musical director for Bette Midler, arranged, conducted and translated her music on stage and in the studio. He co-produced both of her million-selling albums; solely produced her smash single "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy"; produced and arranged four singles for Sally Kellerman; was musical director for the award-winning WCBS-TV series "Callback"; was musical conductor for a number of TV specials for Ed Sullivan Productions; wrote and arranged the music for the long-running, off-Broadway revival of "The Drunkard"; arranged a new theme song for "The Late Show" and wrote, produced and/or sang umpteen TV and radio jingles (his is the voice that sings "You deserve a break today..."). Born and reared in Brooklyn, Barry came from a musical family... "not a family of musicians, but a musical family." He began studying accordion at age 11, then switched to piano at 13. A year at City College (of N.Y.) majoring in marketing and merchandising proved to be a bore for him. So it was back to music. For real. He enrolled in the New York College of Music and then Juilliard, taking courses at night, and working in the CBS mailroom during the day. Now, at 28, as if that long list of impressive and prestigious credentials was a mere preparation, Barry Manilow is stepping out from behind the scenes and finding his own spotlight. On a recent cross-country Bette Midler S.R.O. concert tour, Barry performed some of his own material. "It was really frightening being on that stage, in that context. I had to follow an act I helped to create as un-followable." About his solo performance, the Anaheim (California) Bulletin reported: "Seated at the piano, tall, slim Barry Manilow, his long, blond hair cascading over his shoulders, not only conducts the great band of musicians for Bette's backing but he also sings his original tune, 'Could It Be Magic,' based on a Chopin prelude. The song and performance are a love story. They display more riches than all the wealth of the Duponts, Onassises, Gettys, Morgans and Bonnie and Clyde. Mr. Manilow, you are pure genius. Your song is headed for immortality." A record album was released, by Bell Records, succinctly titled "Barry Manilow." Barry tells us, "Right now, I'm doing everything I want ... performing, writing and producing in the studio, and I want to continue to do all of it and remain as diversified as I can." His career, which has been progressing in a steady, multi-faceted direction, seems to designate newer goals still with each accomplishment. No matter how you look at it, Manilow's style is always his own ... funky, gentle, multi-musical. |
|
