Manilow Showbiz fans of 1993

Source: http://scootertalk.blogspot.com/2007/01/st_29.html

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
June 27, 1993

EVEN NOW, IMAGE HAUNTS MANILOW

By Mark Brown
Of the Orange County Register

Over the years, Barry Manilow has always taken ribbing about his image with a good sense of humor. But lately, he's had just about enough.

Now, it's time for respect. It's time for the jokes to end. It's time to own up; it's time for Manilow lovers to come out of the closet, as Bob Dylan, Arsenio Hall and Axl Rose have.

After all, someone bought those 50 million records, CDs, cassettes, and yes, eight-tracks that Manilow has been writing, arranging and performing for more than two decades. He will be at the Riverport Amphitheatre 8 p.m. Wednesday.

Rose admitted he's a big Mandy fan. Bob stopped Manilow at a party in 1988, hugged him and said, "Don't stop what you're doing, man. We're all inspired by you." Hall cites him as a favorite guest and admonishes his audience to give him respect for his work.

"They're brave for admitting it. I've gotten a bum rap," Manilow said in a telephone interview from his Bel-Air home. "It kind of capsulized this entire experience I've gone through for 20 years - people putting down what it is I do. When they finally investigate it, they change their minds."

As for the people and the critics who hold up his work as . . . well, everything that made the '70s bad? "The little weasels that take potshots at all of us? They're just little weasels. They get their jollies at the expense of others. I just don't take them seriously," Manilow said.

"Nobody was more surprised than me to find out I wasn't hip," Manilow said. "I believed in what I did so much, I couldn't believe there were people who couldn't hear it."

These days, after style changes, an album of show tunes and a critically hailed journey into jazz with 2 a.m., Paradise Cafe in 1984, Manilow himself is unsure of his image.

"I don't know what the public's perception is of me. I'm hoping there's a majority of them who know I am sincere in what I'm doing."

He's wary even about innocuous questions such as what he wears on stage. It's a cautious stance that's become second nature after years of being set up and knocked down. Or as Rolling Stone put it, "When your name is a punch line, you live in hell. Manilow lives in hell."

"I do press (interviews) when I feel it's necessary. Sometimes I'm lucky, I get an interviewer who's intelligent, who knows what I've done," he said. "Sometimes I get young people who ask me the same stupid questions about Bette Midler and the McDonald's commercials and how I wrote Mandy, which of course I didn't write."

While acquiring a reputation as a master showman in his exuberant concerts, Manilow, who is 47, gives hints of a much more private person who has had his fill of the spotlight.

"If I could, I would never leave this studio," Manilow said of his home recording base. "Touring always gets in the way. I love being creative. The part that is the job to me is going out on stage and putting on makeup and looking cute and being in good voice. A lot of entertainers live for the moment the spotlight hits them. I do enjoy it, but what I really enjoy is not shaving and writing music."

His lack of enthusiasm for the stage partly stems from having had it all. And having lost it once. In the early '80s, he found himself broke.

"They start to hand you checks in the mullions of dollars. If you're not on top of that, you begin to lose it. I hear these stories all the time," Manilow said. "I had $11,000 after selling 50 million records. I mean, I lost it all."

And though he has since gotten back on his financial feet, to a degree the bankruptcy didn't matter much. Seriously.

"Although I felt pretty stupid for allowing it to happen, it didn't stop me from being OK. I learned that money wasn't the real reason I got in this business." That coincided with his disillusioning early '80s hit, Read 'Em and Weep. He didn't write it or arrange it. He just sang it. While this easy success would thrill most artists, Manilow went into a funk.

"It was the most difficult thing to find out," he said. "That's what finally got me to stop making pop records and go into making Paradise Cafe. The thought of making another pop album just didn't appeal to me. One night in a dream, this happened. I woke up with the title and the whole concept very clear. I just followed my heart."

That's come around full circle, with Manilow now embracing his past after retracing it all to put together last year's four-CD box set. In the past 15 years Manilow hasn't done a traditional concert - playing full-length versions of his biggest and best-known songs the way other artists do. Instead, he's done medleys, he's done show tunes, he's done jazz tunes.

This time it's all-the-way-through versions of all the big songs, just like on the records. And respect or no, he keeps a sense of humor about it.

Manilow laughed and said, "For those guys who got dragged there by their wives and girlfriends, these hours are going to be agony."

Originally posted 1/29/2007 09:52:00 AM