The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

I don't want to appear insensitive, but this news really has nothing to do with the career and current activities of Burt Bacharach.

Great news if it happens. I've been lucky enough to have seen two productions of PP; one a big, full-blown affair at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre which ran for the Christmas season four years ago, the other a fringe theatre production in London which had a three week season in summer '96. I enjoyed ...

Yes, as Bacharach once said himself, "You just have to love the Beatles". After Bacharach, Lennon & McCartney are my favourite songwriters of the past 40 years. I too have a preference for the earlier material from the time when they actually wrote together. I'm less keen on the materi...

As much as I admire DW I doubt if she's even recorded 100 Bacharach songs - well, maybe just. No, what I actually meant was Bacharach songs in general. When I started to investigate BB's career I was familiar with all the hits, of course, but it was the discovery of what I referred to in an earlier ...

Re Looking with my eyes: It was common on US tv in the 60 for artists to sing live on top of their records. This song has to be one of the most complex BB ever composed and it would have been a miracle if it had been a hit. Over the years I've found it's not the big hits of Bacharach I return to the...

Yes, if ever there was a composer defined by a particular decade it's Bacharach. His track record for at least eight years of the 60s is breathtaking. Equally, if his career had begun in 1980 I would not be a fan, he wouldn't be a household name and this site wouldn't exist.

Yes, it was poor and failed to do justice to the song and poor old Jonathan Cohen, the musicologist, was painful to listen to. Of course, someone else's personal feelings about a particular song or piece of music can never be the same as yours but I have to say that the woman they had on there who c...

The 'Soul Music' doc on 'The Look of Love' is broadcast today at 13.30hrs UK time, repeated Saturday afternoon. It will be available on the net via the BBC's Listen Again facility after today's broadcast. It features an interview with Hal David and lasts 30 minutes.

Fantastic and versatile musician. Two of his finest achievements must be his piano work on Simon and Garfunkel's 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' and the Harpsichord part on Richard Harris's legendary hit recording of 'MacArthur Park'.

Bob Morgan was the producer for the New York sessions in '65 from which both 'Everyone Needs Someone to Love' and 'Through the Eye of a Needle' came. As for Cliff's recording of 'Look in my Eyes, Maria' from the same year, I don't know but as it was almost certainly cut in London I should imagine it...

In answer to blueonblue's question, no, Bacharach had nothing to do with either recording or any other Cliff Richard session for that matter, although each track's arrangement, with both flugalhorn and alto sax to the fore, were obviously heavily influenced by Bacharach. I hope to have at least one ...

Yes, it was played on BBC Radio 2's Sounds of the 60s a couple of weeks ago. I've got it on one of the first of the collections of rare Bacharach material released in the mid-90s. Although not a natural Bacharach interpreter, Cliff Richard's half dozen or so recordings of BB songs are mostly excelle...

Yes, I also recently discovered Chris Montez's version of 'Where Are You Now'. Just listen to the chord progression and the change of key in the middle of the verses and I think it's fair to say that out of all Hatch's compositions this is the one that owes the most to Bacharach's influence.

Thanks for that, Chris, but you failed to mention Trijntje Oosterhuis. Didn't she make her scheduled appearance or was her performance so forgettable it completely slipped your mind?

Here's a terrific video of Pet Clark and 'Downtown', circa '65. The piano introduction and the way the female backing vocalists are utilised betray the powerful influence Bacharach had on Hatch at the time. Still, I'm sure Burt would have been proud to have composed this wonderful slice of pop eupho...