Burt Bacharach – A Timeless Treasure

May 12, 1928 – February 8, 2023

“What the world needs now is love sweet love, that’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.”

Sadly, those words and sentiment are just as true the day the brilliant pianist, composer, arranger, conductor, record producer, six-time Grammy Award winner and three-time Academy Award winner, Burt Bacharach, passed away at ninety-four, as they were in 1965 when that hit song he wrote had everyone singing the imploring refrain along with Jackie DeShannon.

Here is “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” sung in 1969 by the incomparable Sammy Davis Jr. and Tom Jones.

Over the years, many artists recorded Bacharach’s songs, including Aretha Franklin, B.J. Thomas, Bobby Vinton, the Carpenters, Christopher Cross, Dusty Springfield, Herb Alpert, Roberta Flack, Sergio Mendes, even those of a much younger generation like Joss Stone, Simply Red, and Oasis.

Bacharach is regarded as one of the most influential songwriters of 20th century pop music—who composed hundreds of beguiling, sophisticated, complex compositions with lush melodies and harmonies, unusual chord progressions, and nimble, clever poly-rhythms that were influenced by his love of jazz, classical, and bebop music.

Upon hearing of his passing, well wishes started pouring in from musical icons too numerous to mention, including Dionne Warwick, Gladys Knight, Paul McCartney, Tony Bennett, Brian Wilson, Carole King, Sheryl Crow, Diane Warren, Carole Bayer Sager—Bacharach’s former wife and sometimes writing partner—and Elton John, who Burt and Carole honored by naming their son Cristopher Elton Bacharach.

Bayer Sager, who sent condolences to Bacharach’s fourth and current wife Jane and their two children, said of her ex-husband, “He was a great man, a great composer, and in the end a loving friend.  You’ve got a big piano up there Burt, and you’re free again to play every note, finally with ease. May you forever rest in peace, knowing how much your brilliant music touched the world, and how much your life touched ours.” xo Cris and Carole

Two Gifted Songwriters

Bacharach and Bayer Sager, a prolific songwriter herself, wrote some great songs together including, “Heartlight” for the 1982 film E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial, which is beautifully orchestrated and has such touching lyrics.

This black and white video features Neil Diamond, who sang the song.

I also had to include this video that shows clips from E.T. Though the movie was intended for kids, the message is for all of us—the world can be unkind to those who are different who long to get back home or create a new one. It touched me so deeply that I left the theater sobbing, and when we brought our new Weimaraner puppy home, we named him E.T.

At the height of the AIDS crisis in 1985, Dionne Warwick, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, and Gladys Knight recorded the Bacharach-Bayer Sager hit, “That’s What Friends Are For,” earning Bacharach his only “Song of the Year” Grammy. The message is we can get through bad times with the help of true friends.

In 1986, Bacharach and Bayer Sager, who married in 1982 and divorced in 1991, wrote “On My Own,” sung by Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald. It shot to #1 and was the most successful single for both artists. This song tears at all of our hearts, for who hasn’t experienced the disappointment and pain of a love that didn’t work out.

The Early Years

Bacharach, who grew up in Queens, New York, was drafted into the Army in the 1950s during the Korean War. While serving two years in Germany touring Army bases as a uniformed concert pianist, he met crooner Vic Damone, who was also stationed there. Back in the states, Bacharach was Damone’s pianist and conductor for three weeks before he was fired.

At the age of twenty-eight, he became the arranger and conductor for the Berlin-born singer and actress, Marlene Dietrich. Bacharach’s musical talents turned her cabaret nightclub act into a successful multi-year international tour throughout Europe, as well as a stint at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas.

Though Dietrich’s music wasn’t Bacharach’s style, he said he learned two important things from her.

“If you want to get something done, don’t delegate it, do it yourself. And always give 100 percent to whatever you do, which is in my DNA. Marlene rehearsed for nine days with a full orchestra in Paris before playing at the Olympia Theater. She wanted it to be perfect, as did I.”

Paul McCartney mentioned that early time in both their careers in his condolence message.

“Dear Burt Bacharach has passed away. His songs were an inspiration to people like me. I met him on a couple of occasions. He was a kind, talented man, and his songs were distinctive and technically more complicated than many others in the 60s and 70s. When we met not too long ago, he reminded me that he was the musical director for Marlene Dietrich when The Beatles shared the bill with her at the London Palladium in 1963.”

Over the years, Bacharach wrote hundreds of songs. He said when he first started out in the 1950s he sometimes wrote five a day that never became hits.

In 1961 he wrote “Any Day Now,” with Bob Hilliard, sung by Chuck Jackson.

He also wrote “Baby’s It’s You” that year with Luther Dixon and Mack David, which was recorded by The Shirelles.

Hal David and Dionne Warwick

Though Bacharach collaborated with several lyricists, he is best known for the songs he penned with the also brilliant Hal David, who died in 2012.

The two men met in 1957 at the famous Brill Building on 49^th Street, north of Times Square, uptown from the historic Tin Pan Alley, where composers, musicians, record labels and recording studios could be found under one roof—where people like Carole King and her then husband, Gerry Goffin, wrote some of the most popular hits of the 50s and 60s.

It was at the Brill Building that Bacharach discovered Dionne Warwick, who sang backup for The Drifters. He paid her $12.50 (the equivalent of $110 in 2021) to record some demos of his songs to pitch to record executives. Bacharach recognized Warwick’s vocal ability to sing loud and soft in a wide range that allowed him to compose more challenging tunes.

In 1962, Scepter Records released her first single, “Don’t Make Me Over”—the words Warwick supposedly snapped at Bacharach and David when she found out that another song she recorded as a demo that she wanted to be her first release was given to another artist. “Don’t Make Me Over,” went to #21.

From the early 60s till the early 70s, Bacharach and David wrote over a hundred songs— many that were hits for Dionne Warwick, including “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” “Walk on By,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” and “Do You Know the Way to San Jose.”

Film Soundtracks

Many of Bacharach’s tunes were part of the soundtrack in a number of films. Over the course of his career, he earned six Academy Award nominations and won three Oscars.

The first nomination with David was for “What’s New Pussycat,” the theme song of the eponymous 1965 Woody Allen screwball comedy whose cast included Peter Sellers, Peter O’Toole, and Ursula Andress. Bacharach admits he had no idea how to score a film back then. He also had to do some persuading to get Tom Jones to sing what Bacharach called a “bloody crazy song” that became Jones’ signature piece.

Alfie

When Bacharach was asked to write a song for a 1966 film about a Cockney womanizer named Alfie, played by Michael Caine, he knew Paramount wanted it to be sung by a British artist. So he approached twenty-two-year-old Cilla Black, who had a #1 hit in the UK with his song, “Anyone Who Had a Heart.”

When Black heard a guy singing on the demo, she told her manager, Brian Epstein, who also managed The Beatles, that she couldn’t record a song whose title was a name you would call your dog.

Instead of declining outright, Black said she would only sing the song if Bacharach played the piano, did the arrangement himself, and recorded it in London, never imagining he would agree to all three of her conditions.

“Alfie,” which Bacharach said is as close to the best song he and Hal David ever wrote, was recorded at Abbey Road Studios. The production was overseen by George Martin, the musical genius who many have dubbed ‘The Fifth Beatle.’

In addition to arranging the score and playing the piano, Bacharach conducted a 48-piece orchestra. His perfectionism drove Black to exhaustion. He asked her to do as many as 28 takes—always pushing to get it just a bit better—and he admits that George Martin took him aside and said, “You got it on take four.”

This video from that recording session is a gem. Notice the elegant movement of Bacharach’s arms while he is conducting—he looks like a bird in flight.

When the acclaimed jazz trumpeter Miles Davis told him that “Alfie” was a really good song, Bacharach said it drove his self-esteem way up.

“Alfie” will always be part of Cilla Black’s legacy. Four lines from the song were carved on her grave marker when she died in 2015.

After a third Academy Award nomination for “The Look of Love” from the 1967 film Casino Royal, Bacharach and David won two Oscars—one for best original score for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and the other for the best known song from the film, “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.”

Bacharach won his third and final Oscar for best original song for “Arthur’s Theme” (Best That You Can Do), which he co-wrote with his then-wife Carole Bayer Sager, Peter Allen, and Christopher Cross, who also sang the song. The film stared Dudley Moore, who died in 2002 and Liza Minelli.

My Best Friend’s Wedding

I love this 1997 rom-com with Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, Rupert Everett, and Dermot Mulroney (who I have interviewed) because it’s about romantic love, friendship, jealousy, and knowing when to let someone go because you want that person to be happy.

Austin Powers

Burt Bacharach had a huge impact on Mike Myers. As Myers told Rolling Stone in 1999, “The Look of Love” inspired the idea of Austin Powers. Bacharach made cameo appearances in all three Austin Power films.

This video clip from International Man of Mystery shows Mike Myers driving down the Las Vegas Strip with Elizabeth Hurley when he introduces “Mr. Burt Bacharach,” and the musician appears in a tuxedo sitting at the piano on top of a double-decker bus singing, “What the World Needs Now Is Love.”

Bacharach made another appearance in the second Austin Powers film, The Spy Who Shagged Me, performing “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” with Elvis Costello.

Elvis Costello

In the video below, Elvis Costello speaks lovingly about Burt Bacharach during a performance in New York, saying “It’s been a tough day. A really great man left us.”

He said “I first heard the songs of Burt Bacharach when my family was still living in a basement flat in London in the late 1950s. Never would I have imagined that my admiration for him would grow into a 25-year collaboration and friendship.”

In 1998, the two men collaborated on the album, Painted from Memory. It was the first album Bacharach made in 21 years, and they won a Grammy in 1999 for one of its songs, “I Still Have That Other Girl.”

Social Activism

Politics was what spurred Bacharach to write later in his life. In 2006, he won another Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Album for At This Time, in which he expressed his growing despair at the state of the world.

Bacharach never penned words to any of his previous songs, but he co-wrote the lyrics to “Who Are These People,” which was sung by Elvis Costello.

“Who Are These People?”

Who are these people that keep telling those lies?
And how did these people get control of our lives
And who started the violence ‘cause it’s out of control
Make them stop

Who are these people that destroy everything?
And sell off the future for whatever it brings
And what kind of leaders can’t admit when they’re wrong
Make them stop

This stupid mess we’re in just keeps getting worse
So many people dying needlessly
Looks like these liars may inherit the earth
Even pretending to pray
And getting away with it

Who are these people that keep telling us lies
And how did these people get control of our lives
And who’ll stop the violence ‘cause it’s out of control
Make ‘em stop

See things really have to change
Before it’s too late

In his acceptance speech—with his daughter Raleigh, then ten, and his son Oliver, then 13, by his side—Bacharach said:

“Vietnam was bad, but I’ve never seen times like we’ve got right now, and I’m really upset. This is the future I’m leaving behind for these kids, and we’ve really made a mess of it. If the president (George W. Bush) had just gotten up and said, ‘I made a mistake. I take full blame for it. Our information was wrong. There are no weapons of mass destruction. Bear with me and we’ll get through this together.’ But to stonewall it! I never like to be lied to by a girlfriend or an agent, and certainly not by the president of the United States.”

It seems symbolic that the night Burt Bacharach spoke those words at the 48th Grammy Awards in 2006 was February 8—the same day he died 17 years later.

A friend of mine, the Grammy-winning singer, keyboard player, and songwriter, David Joyce, who has worked with many great artists, including Burt Bacharach for over twenty years, and is the Vocal Department Chair at the Los Angeles College of Music, told me that Bacharach lost a few gigs because some venues didn’t like that he was so outspoken. They wanted him to play and keep his mouth shut.

That surprised me. I didn’t know that about him. In doing some research, I learned he would often do things like dedicate songs to the citizens of Puerto Rico, and explain to the audience that they were United States citizens, and they didn’t have any water or infrastructure.

He never mentioned Donald Trump by name, but I can’t forget the image of Trump throwing rolls of paper towels into the crowd after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017.

Bacharach was also very angry and outspoken about gun violence in schools.

In 2019, he and the internationally acclaimed, “Latin Hitman,” Rudy Perez, wrote “Live To See Another Day. Here is the video for that song.

Bacharach must have been psychic, because in 2019 he spoke about the anguish of living in Trump land. “We have twenty Democrat candidates running for president—there’s never been anything like it in my lifetime. We must pick someone who is capable of getting rid of this guy. I’m not sure he’ll leave even if he loses. They’ll have to drag him out—unless he starts a civil war. He’s very dangerous. He ignores every subpoena. He’s guilty of so much obstruction of justice. The good guys—the Democrats—have to start impeachment. We have to pick the right person. Keep your fingers crossed.”

In his nineties, he was still writing, performing, and speaking about how gratitude and attitude went hand in hand.

In 2020, Bacharach sat down at the piano yet again, and played his 1981 wistful hit “A House is Not a Home,” made popular by Luther Vandross. His voice is gravely, as he sings, “A chair is still a chair even when no one is sitting there. But a chair is not a house, and a house is not a home when there’s no one there to hold you tight, no one there you can kiss good-night.” But you can see that the notes are indelibly imprinted in his memory as his fingers caress the keyboard like an old lover.

Rest in Peace Mr. Bacharach. You are home now. Here’s wishin’ and hopin’ you are experiencing great joy making music with a heavenly choir of angels.”