As Barry Manilow dethroned The King at Las Vegas, beating Elvis Presley’s 636-show run with a rendition of Hound Dog, you have to wonder: how does he do it?
I think I know. Back in 2018 the perma-tanned purveyor of kitsch took a break from his spiritual home in the Nevada desert, where he had been performing regularly since 1985, to do a quick world tour that took in a night at the 02 Arena. “Age doesn’t matter, unless you’re a banana,” he bellowed, a 75-year-old vision of show business dazzle with his sparkling tuxedo and bizarrely shiny visage, to a no-longer-young audience. “And my banana’s doing fine!”
Las Vegas is a land of reinvention, fantasy and, above all else, the making and spending of money. Manilow, an extremely sophisticated songwriter, pianist and arranger with a deep understanding of melody, appeared to decide about four decades ago that dedicating himself to the values of Las Vegas was a noble calling.
At the 02 any real emotional expression was exchanged for big key changes and elongated notes, any off-the-cuff banter replaced by a well-worn patter. There was no danger of unfamiliar songs from the latest album, no unexpected jazz odysseys or unwanted new directions; just reassuring singalong hits like Mandy, Bermuda Triangle and Copacabana. You could see how this would go down a storm in Vegas, where schmaltz is the order of the day and the best place for expressing your feelings is at the bar after a losing streak on the roulette wheel.
There is a layer of sophistication to back up Manilow’s sentimental spectacle. The Brooklyn-born son of a lorry driver, he studied musical theatre at the Juilliard in New York, learnt the value of a catchy tune from working as a commercial jingles writer, and got to grips with the rudiments of gay culture firsthand by accompanying Bette Midler on piano during her early Seventies stint at the Continental Baths, Manhattan’s premier gay bathhouse. His 1973 hit Could it be Magic borrows elements of Chopin’s Prelude in C Minor and 1978’s Copacabana puts a complex Latin beat to a disco tune about a showgirl whose lover is shot in a bar brawl. Manilow has succeeded at Las Vegas, however, because he knows what is expected of him.
As his record-breaking run was officially recognised last Thursday, with the Clark County commissioner Tick Segerblom presenting him with the keys to the Las Vegas Strip, Manilow, 80, pointed out that Las Vegas was changing.
“You take a look at the casinos and you take a look at the billboards, these are young people that are playing Vegas. These are big acts!” He’s right: U2, not exactly young but certainly big, are about to launch The MSG Sphere, an immersive video and audio dome that has just been completed to the tune of $1 billion.
With Barry Manilow, however, the old spirit of Las Vegas — cheesy, flash, fantastical — lives on. That’s why Manilow’s signature tune will always be I Write the Songs. The fact that it was actually written by Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys says it all.
Oh, grampy
Manilow found himself in a nostalgic mood at his 637th Vegas performance, telling the audience how his grandfather encouraged his early interest in music (Keiran Southern writes in Los Angeles).
“Grandpa wouldn’t give up,” he said, according to the Daily Mail. “Every Saturday afternoon, he would take me across the Brooklyn Bridge and into Times Square and he would put his quarter into this thing and eventually I figured out what he was trying to get me to do and I sang something for him and I liked it.
“It wasn’t so much the singing part that I liked, it was the music. Even at that young age, I kind of understood it. If you ask my musician friends, they say the same thing: I was terrible at sports and maths but I kind of understood music.”
Manilow was writing commercial jingles before he made it big. His first No 1 single was Mandy in 1975 and he has since sold more than 85 million records. Before that he worked with BetteMidler as her pianist, producer and arranger while they were both trying to break into showbiz.
Midler was invited to perform during Johnny Carson’s Las Vegas shows in the 1970s but her act was not well received at first. “She died there; they just hated her,” Manilow told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “They were offended by her dirty jokes, they didn’t know what song she was singing, they didn’t understand what she looked like. Then Johnny would come out and tell them how wonderful she was.”
