Barry Manilow is standing poolside at his Palm Springs residence, a spectacular, eight-bedroom hillside villa with far-reaching views of the Coachella Valley. He’s taller than one may count on — a bit of over 6 ft — and rail-thin, which makes him seem even taller. Manilow is relaxed this morning, tapping one spindly leg to a tune wafting via the audio system — not a type of easy-listening grooves that made him a music celebrity, however a thumping slice of techno known as “Love Regenerator,” by Calvin Harris. He has a complete Spotify library of that stuff. Manilow, it seems, loves dance music.
At 80 — he reached the milestone final June — Manilow is coming off of one of many busiest stretches of a constant, six-decade profession. In September, he performed his 637th present at Las Vegas’ Westgate Resort Lodge — beating Elvis’ file of 636 performances on that very stage (when it was the Las Vegas Hilton) again in 1976. (On and off since 2004, he’s performed two weeks a month there, three nights per week.) Manilow offered out 5 nights at Radio Metropolis Music Corridor in October and has one other 5 deliberate for April. He additionally has a residency booked for June on the London Palladium — what he payments as “the final, final U.Ok. concert events.”
His musical, Concord, about an actual Jewish boy band that turned well-known because the Nazis rose to energy in Berlin, debuted on Broadway in November after 25 years of workshops. (Bruce Sussman, Manilow’s longtime lyricist on songs like “Copacabana,” is his collaborator.) As if that weren’t sufficient, Manilow’s cowl of Mariah Carey’s “All I Need for Christmas” at present sits at No. 15 on the Billboard Grownup Modern Chart — three spots forward of Dua Lipa’s “Houdini.” Add it to the pile: Manilow has had 11 hits within the high 10 on the Scorching 100 (together with three No. 1s — “Mandy,” “I Write the Songs” and “Appears to be like Like We Made It”) and offered over 85 million information, making him one of many best-selling recording artists of all time.
Manilow performs 60 reveals per yr, and nonetheless finds time to compose and file in his residence studio: “I’ve an album’s price of authentic songs able to launch.”
Photographed by Joelle Grace Taylor
Nobody is extra astonished by all this than Manilow himself. “My household, most of them lived till 74 — so once I hit 74, I assumed, ‘That is the tip,’ ” he says. “Nevertheless it didn’t occur. It stored on going. I stored happening the highway. I stored on making information. I imply, when does my physique give in?”
Ken Thomas, his tour supervisor for the previous 15 years, sees no indicators of him slowing down. “I believe it’s an unstated factor that he’s going to go till he bodily can’t stroll out on that stage,” Thomas says. “He’s stated, ‘If I can’t do it proper, I received’t do it in any respect.’ ”
“I’ve a idea that your spirit is one age and your physique is one other age,” says Melanie Taylor, a backup singer for Manilow because the early 2000s. “Barry has a extremely younger spirit and a childlike thoughts. He’s curious and really engaged in life and really constant.”
Thomas credit Manilow’s endurance to 2 issues. “One, the highway is his household,” Thomas says. (Manilow is backed by a loyal crew and a 24-piece band.) “We take pleasure in one another’s firm and performing provides us a objective to get on the market each day. The opposite is Barry’s drive to all the time make issues higher. Up till 10 minutes earlier than showtime, he’s all the time altering, tweaking, enhancing. There are days when that places us nose-to-nose on issues — however on the finish of the day, he’s all the time proper.”
Barry Manilow in live performance at Hartford Civic Heart, Hartford, Connecticut, America. December 1981.
G Mayer/Mirrorpix/Getty Photos
For Manilow, that fine-tuning is the enjoyable half. “Altering issues round, working with the musicians and the lights and the video behind me, I really like that,” he says. “However the performing half, that’s the job for me. That’s the arduous half. It appears to be like like I’m having a very good time up there and there’s part of me that’s having a very good time up there — nevertheless it’s the job.”
To assist him keep match, he has a private coach who works with him each morning (“I haven’t received a giant, muscular physique, however I prefer it”). Quitting smoking additionally helped. At his worst, he was as much as three packs a day of filterless Pall Malls. As of late he waves a white e-cigarette round as he speaks, like a magic wand. “I don’t eat and I don’t sleep. That’s additionally the trick,” he continues. “I typically discover myself trembling and assume, ‘Oh — I ought to in all probability get some energy in me.’ ” Manilow nods off round midnight every evening and is up by 4 a.m., at which level he’ll shuffle over to his desk and “make bother for Garry,” he says, referring to his romantic accomplice, supervisor of 45 years and husband since 2014: Garry Kief.
Manilow and Kief have lived full-time in Palm Springs for 25 years. Two days earlier than our assembly, Manilow wrapped “A Reward of Love VI” — a five-night stint at a Palm Springs theater for which he takes no paycheck and donates all proceeds to 25 charities within the space. I caught the ultimate date of these reveals and got here away astonished at Manilow’s showmanship and the way highly effective his pipes stay in spite of everything these years — significantly when certainly one of his bombastic and unabashedly emotional finales kicks in. (Sure, that’s him singing. “I’m a horrible lip-syncher,” Manilow says. “I don’t know how one can do it.”) Resistance is futile. Your mind is telling you it’s schmaltz, however your ears are telling you it’s essentially the most scrumptious schmaltz you’ve ever tasted. Earlier than you already know it, you end up levitating out of your seat and shouting, “Bravo, Barry, bravo!”
“He might make something humorous — or unhappy. He had an awesome ear and simply a lot attraction,” says Bette Midler, pictured performing with Manilow in September 1973.
Fred Sabine/NBCU Picture Financial institution/NBCUniversal through Getty Photos through Getty Photos
Manilow has been eliciting that form of euphoria since his earliest performances. “The second gig I ever did was in a spot known as The Bijou in Philadelphia,” he recollects. “Edna, my mom, got here right down to see it. Again then, performance-wise, I stunk. However they noticed one thing on this skinny man on the piano that they appreciated. The phrase was out: ‘This man has received one thing.’ At one level, everyone stood up. Edna thought there was a hearth. She began operating to the exit. However they have been applauding. These audiences believed in me manner earlier than I did.”
Manilow is emphatic that he was by no means presupposed to be the marquee draw. What he envisioned for himself rising up within the “slums of Williamsburg,” Brooklyn, from the second he first touched a piano at age 13, was a profession as an orchestrator and songwriter — a type of guys bent over the ivories behind the star. And that’s precisely what he was for the primary decade of his profession, making a dwelling within the daytime writing industrial jingles (“Like a very good neighbor, State Farm is there” is his — and he made solely $500 from it), whereas at evening offering accompaniment in smoky rooms to a protracted listing of feminine belters, all of them hoping to be the subsequent Barbra Streisand. None would — none, that’s, till a twister of untamed power and expertise swept into his life in 1971 within the type of Bette Midler.
“The proprietor of the Continental Baths was Steven Ostrow,” Midler, 78, tells me of the notorious homosexual New York bathhouse the place she received her begin. Positioned within the basement of the previous Ansonia Lodge at Broadway and 74th, the Baths have been envisioned by Ostrow, a former opera singer, as a cabaret-slash-sex membership the place something went. Careers have been launched from that stage — not simply Midler’s, however these of Peter Allen and Melissa Manchester, too — whereas only a few ft away guys have been getting off in an orgy room. There was a VD clinic on web site. The viewers sometimes stood round stark bare, until a girl was performing, wherein case they donned towels.
Discovering herself in determined want of an accompanist, Midler was despatched by Ostrow to satisfy Manilow at his residence. “He despatched me right down to No Man’s Land — Lexington, someplace within the 20s — and I went as much as meet Barry,” she says. “I shortly found he might play something. He might organize something. He might make something humorous — or unhappy. He had an amazing quantity of instruments at his disposal. He had an awesome ear and simply a lot attraction.”
Manilow carried out for Prince Charles and Woman Diana in 1983.
David Levenson/Getty Photos
Manilow had a distinct first impression of Midler: “She was each Jewish boy’s nightmare come to life,” he wrote in his 1987 memoir, Candy Life. “She was my mom, my grandmother, and all of my feminine kin rolled into one.”
It wasn’t till their debut efficiency collectively on the Baths — wherein Midler launched into an ecstatic rendition of “Associates,” her signature track — that it absolutely dawned on Manilow what a monumental star this 5-foot-1 bundle of neurotic creativity actually was. “I used to be in shock,” he says in Candy Life. “She had given me no indication throughout our rehearsals that she had all that inside her. I felt as if I had caught my hand into an electrical socket.” They have been every good musical interpreters in their very own proper. However collectively, their mixed skills produced one thing akin to a miracle — the beginning of “the Divine Miss M,” as Midler’s stage persona was recognized.
I ask Manilow — who got here out formally in 2017 after a long time of public hypothesis — if the Continental Baths hastened any form of awakening in his personal sexual improvement.
“At that time I wasn’t certain about that,” he says. “There have been a whole lot of us on the earth that had but to determine it out.”
“I imply, the present was actually in a homosexual bathhouse,” I say.
“What do you assume, they have been fucking in entrance of us?” he asks. “They have been simply an viewers. A terrific viewers, too.”
“Effectively, it’s only a very uncommon venue,” I reply.
“It’s uncommon, I agree. However for me, it was a job for 75 bucks.”
Manilow received the 1977 selection present Emmy for ‘The Barry Manilow Particular.’
Jim Britt /American Broadcasting Firms through Getty Photos
The crowds have been certainly nice and grew bigger. Ostrow finally roped off a piece the place spectators who weren’t additionally bathhouse clientele might watch the present absolutely clothed. “Then we received some affords to go on the highway,” Midler recollects. “Barry put collectively a terrific band — the primary Harlettes have been jingle singers he knew — and we performed an entire bunch of little nightclubs everywhere in the nation. That was a tour I’ll always remember.” In addition they performed Upstairs on the Downstairs, a cabaret on 56th Road that featured singers and comedians like Joan Rivers and Madeline Kahn.
It was at a type of reveals that Atlantic Information co-founder Ahmet Ertegun caught their act. “Individuals have been standing on the tables,” Midler recollects. “And he determined, ‘I don’t know what that is — however I have to have it.’ So he signed me.”
Virtually instantly, issues arose. Midler selected Joel Dorn, producer of Roberta Flack’s album Killing Me Softly, to provide her debut. Dorn sidelined Manilow, who had obsessed over preparations on songs like “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and “Do You Wish to Dance?” Says Midler: “Barry and Joel didn’t get alongside, and it was very tense, and form of worrying. I form of took a again seat.”
Ultimately, Ertegun was underwhelmed by the airless and extremely technical album Dorn had produced. So was Manilow, who stormed into Ertegun’s workplace clutching a recording of Midler performing with him reside at Carnegie Corridor. On the energy of that tape, Ertegun agreed to let Manilow produce a completely new album that captured Midler in her free, reside factor. The outcome was 1972’s The Divine Miss M. “Fairly quickly I used to be on the duvet of Rolling Stone and I by no means regarded again,” Midler says.
The success of Divine Miss M, which went double-platinum and earned Midler the Grammy for finest new artist, calmed the discord within the air — however not for lengthy. Quickly, Manilow was supplied his personal file contract with Bell Information, residence to Nineteen Seventies pop stars like David Cassidy and Tony Orlando & Daybreak. The information didn’t go over properly with Midler. “After I advised her, ‘I believe I received a file deal,’ she stated, ‘Doing what?’ ” Manilow recollects. “I stated, ‘Singing!’ She stated, ‘You may’t sing!’ ”
Midler admits to being frightened of dropping him. “I felt it in my bones that I used to be going to be left excessive and dry as a result of he actually was so completed and was able to so many issues. I didn’t know the place I used to be going to seek out one other MD” — business shorthand for musical director — “and I actually couldn’t have made it with out him. He had a way of how one can current me and how one can current what it was that I used to be attempting to precise in these songs.”
His self-titled debut album, launched in 1973. 6 Manilow carried out for Prince Charles and Woman Diana in 1983.
Courtesy Picture
They struck up a deal. Manilow agreed to again Midler on her first area tour — the massive leagues — and, in change, she agreed to let him carry out three authentic songs from his 1973 debut album, Barry Manilow, earlier than the beginning of her second act. “Individuals began coming to see him,” Midler recollects. “After all, there was a specific amount of jealousy on my half as a result of I didn’t know what was going to occur to me.” The tour allowed Manilow to seek out his stage legs. However the album — its greatest hit was the seven-minute soft-rock suite “Might It Be Magic” — didn’t promote.
Enter Clive Davis. The sleek lawyer turned business wunderkind had been fired from Columbia Information in 1974, with Columbia proprietor CBS citing “$94,000 in expense report violations” — an accusation Davis has repeatedly denied. However Davis quickly landed on his ft: Columbia Photos invested within the founding of Arista, his personal label. Columbia additionally advised Davis he might take any artist from Bell Information, which it additionally owned and was about to shutter. On June 24, 1974, Davis caught Manilow opening for Dionne Warwick at Wollman Rink in New York’s Central Park.
“I didn’t know from songwriting or not songwriting,” says Davis, now 91. “I used to be simply very impressed together with his showmanship — or the mix of his voice and his showmanship.” Says Manilow: “He got here backstage and he shook my hand and stated, ‘Welcome to Arista Information.’ ”
It was whereas pulling collectively materials for Manilow’s second album, Barry Manilow II, that Davis broached the concept of protecting different songwriters’ materials. “I assumed he was an actual good songwriter,” Davis says. “However what I stated to him was, ‘I don’t assume you may have a primary single right here.’ ” Manilow was initially shocked by the suggestion. He had envisioned himself as a singer-songwriter. “Would Paul Simon conform to cowl another person’s track?” he requested himself. Undoubtedly not. So why ought to he?
Undeterred, Davis introduced Manilow a track by a U.Ok. artist named Scott English known as “Brandy” that had seen some success on the British charts in 1971. He advised him to take a stab at protecting it, however to vary the woman’s title to “Mandy,” as a result of Trying Glass’ “Brandy (You’re a Nice Woman)” was a success on the time. Nonetheless resistant however desperate to humor his new boss, Manilow spent the day attempting to seize the track’s folk-rock grit. Davis hated it. “Then I performed him a sluggish model with the brand new chord modifications and the modulation,” Manilow says. “And he stated, ‘Simply try this.’ ” The track went to No. 1 on the Billboard Scorching 100 on Jan. 18, 1975, turning Manilow right into a celebrity.
“When ‘Mandy’ went to primary, we got here to an settlement,” Davis explains. “He would write and produce the majority of his album — and he would give me two songs per album of different writers’ work.” Davis’ golden ears would proceed to repay, and Manilow would have additional smashes with covers — “Weekend in New England,” “Can’t Smile With out You,” even “I Write the Songs” have been written by anyone else. However he additionally composed a lot of his personal hits, together with “Might It Be Magic,” “Even Now” and “Copacabana,” the final of which received him his solely Grammy, for finest pop male vocal efficiency, in 1978. In 2002, he was inducted into the Songwriters Corridor of Fame.
“One of many proudest elements of my profession is Barry’s longevity,” says Clive Davis (pictured, heart, in 2016 with Manilow and his husband, Garry Kief).
Larry Busacca/Getty Photos
• • •
In Manilow’s present stage present, “Mandy” begins with a projection of a efficiency of the track from that period. There younger Barry is, in all his satin and sequined glory, his fluffy blond mane hanging right down to his shoulders, his puppy-dog blue eyes promoting each lyric. Then Manilow emerges onstage and observes for a couple of moments, earlier than taking a seat on the piano and dueting together with his youthful self.
“What are you enthusiastic about whenever you’re that display?” I ask.
“Effectively, he was a cutie,” he says. “I didn’t assume so on the time. I wasn’t enthusiastic about issues like that. However once I take a look at him now, he should have had one thing. That man shouldn’t be harmful. However he looks like a pleasant man who is absolutely into the track — and I used to be.”
Popping out was by no means an choice for Manilow — till it was the one choice. “I didn’t need my profession to go away. I find it irresistible. I’m grateful for it. Nevertheless it was a burden to maintain it quiet,” he says. “I used to be all the time nervous. Each interview: ‘They’re going to ask me whether or not I’m homosexual or not.’ No one ever did, by the way in which. They by no means requested me the $64 query.”
He recollects a dialog with Davis within the Eighties. “He stated, ‘You realize — Elton John got here out as bisexual. No artist ought to ever try this. It’ll harm your profession.’ And it did harm Elton for fairly some time.” Manilow took that to be an oblique manner of advising him to not do the identical. Davis, nonetheless, doesn’t recall such an change. “I by no means had that dialog with Barry,” he says. “We by no means went there. Had it come up, to investigate what the influence could be, I’d have stated it’s a dangerous proposition to a profession. However we by no means had the dialog about whether or not he ought to come out as a result of he by no means stated to me that he was homosexual.” (Davis himself got here out as bisexual in a 2013 memoir.)
Clockwise from high: Manilow’s new Broadway musical, ‘Concord,’ tells the story of the Comic Harmonists, an ensemble of vocalists from Germany, a few of them Jewish, who shot to fame within the Nineteen Twenties. “I noticed her carry out at membership Bon Soir when she was 19 and I used to be 18,” says Manilow of pal Barbra Streisand. “She was good.” (“I as soon as advised her that story and he or she couldn’t give a shit,” he provides with amusing.) and Manilow carried out Nov. 29 on NBC’s ‘Christmas in Rockefeller Heart’ particular. The community aired his personal particular, ‘A Very Barry Christmas,’ on Dec. 11.
Concord: Julieta Cervantes. Rockefeller: ANGELA WEISS/AFP through Getty Photos. Streisand: Kevin Mazur/WireImage.
Manilow met his husband in 1978. He was in L.A. to work on a TV particular tied to his newest hit — the irresistible dance-floor saga “Copacabana,” impressed by a visit to Rio — and was launched to a younger govt at ABC named Garry Kief. Manilow had simply sunk hundreds of thousands into an enormous rental within the San Remo constructing on Central Park. “However I met Garry, and that was it,” he says. “I by no means went again.” Kief had been married to a girl since 1971, and their daughter was a 1-year-old on the time. (Manilow had wedded his highschool sweetheart, Susan Deixler, in 1964, however the marriage was annulled two years later.) “It was an actual difficult couple of years there,” Manilow says. “Nevertheless it was so actual. I knew this was it for the remainder of my life. This was going to be without end. Garry didn’t. However I did.”
They’ve been collectively ever since — 45 years, the primary half of which was spent between Bel Air and Palm Springs, the place they owned the Kaufmann residence by Richard Neutra, a midcentury fashionable masterpiece immortalized within the Slim Aarons {photograph} “Poolside Gossip.” Then they discovered their present residence and determined to maneuver to Palm Springs year-round. “My life is so noisy,” Manilow explains. “Nevertheless it’s quiet right here and it’s simply lovely. I wouldn’t reside wherever else.”
Manilow is fashionable round city. In April, he confirmed up in individual to look at Fashionable Males, the Coachella Valley males’s refrain, carry out Manilow! Songs That Make the Entire World Sing. He additionally stopped by the Instrument Shed, an area homosexual bar, to play a musical model of Bingo known as Singo, which was a Manilow sing-along. “They have been so nice to me, that crowd of fellows,” he says. “I liked it.”
It’s a snug existence. However retirement shouldn’t be but an choice — not as long as the muse beckons. Says Midler, “To be 80 and nonetheless taking part in Las Vegas and nonetheless placing butts within the seats. God is aware of, I wouldn’t need to do it. However, hey — Barry’s doing it. He’s nonetheless important, he’s nonetheless energetic, and he’s nonetheless Barry.
“We had a lot enjoyable,” she continues. “I want I’d taken extra footage. It was an awesome, nice time. So when he left me, I used to be bereaved. I used to be actually pissed off — as a result of I liked him. It turned out OK, however I nursed a grudge. I’m well-known for that. I believe we left on a word that wasn’t the best. However I’m a lot older now, and so is he, and we’re not what we have been. I need to guarantee that he is aware of how a lot I really like him.” Midler grows overcome with emotion. “And I’m so happy with him. I’m happy with the truth that he retains going and that his generosity has by no means faltered.”
This story first appeared within the Jan. 4 problem of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click on right here to subscribe.