Burt Bacharach during his collaboration with Steven Sater
Music lovers across the world are mourning the passing of the legendary Burt Bacharach at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 94.
Widely seen as one of the most influential voices in modern music, the multi-award-winning composer, arranger, pianist and record producer’s glorious career spanned over seven decades.
Barbra Streisand was among the numerous stars paying tribute to the composer on Twitter, writing: ‘Burt Bacharach was as sweet as his songs. He left us with a long legacy of music we will never forget. RIP xo B’
Ileana Douglas, the actress who starred in director Allison Anders’ Grace of My Heart – a cult 1996 film about a female singer/songwriter in 1960s New York – posted a picture of the artwork for the powerful ‘God Give Me Strength’ written by Bacharach and Elvis Costello at the start of the songwriters’ successful partnership of 25 years, tweeting: ‘Allison Anders and I were obsessed with Burt Bacharach. We were in awe, and so blessed to work with him on Grace of My Heart. He and EC recorded this song on a winter day in NYC. He walked in the studio rocking a 60s Shearling coat, we just looked at each other and smiled. Legend!’
As the news of Bacharach’s death spread, Costello opened a 10-night run at New York City’s Gramercy Theatre by honouring his friend and collaborator, reportedly telling the sold-out crowd: “It’s been a tough day. You know, a really great man left us yesterday. And people say, when somebody leaves you who’s a great age, they say, well, it was a good ending. Yeah, but it’s never time to say goodbye to somebody if you love ’em. And I’m not ashamed to say I did love this man.”
In memory of his friend, Costello performed ‘Baby, It’s You’ (famously recorded by The Shirelles and the Beatles), the Bacharach, Hal David and Dionne Warwick classic ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ and one of the songwriter’s earliest hits ‘Please Stay’ recorded by the Drifters in 1961.
Bacharach’s timeless songs have been recorded by some of music’s biggest stars including Streisand, Dusty Springfield, Stevie Wonder, Cilla Black, Patti LaBelle and The Carpenters.
His song-writing partnership with lyricist Hal David produced many of the hits that provided the soundtrack for the 1960s and early 1970s. In 1961, Bacharach discovered a session singer called Dionne Warwick. A year later Warwick would make her professional recording debut with Bacharach and David’s ‘Don’t Make Me Over’ and so began one of the most prolific partnerships between singer and songwriters in pop music history.
The winner of six Grammys and three Oscars and the composer of over 500 songs, Bacharach’s forays into musical theatre included Promises, Promises in 1968. Based on the 1960 Billy Wilder film The Apartment, the musical featured a book by Neil Simon and music by Bacharach and David.
Bacharach’s second original musical Some Lovers written with Tony and Grammy Award winning Steven Sater, was Bacharach’s first new score for the theatre since Promises Promises. Described as a Valentine to New York, the musical played The Other Palace in London as part of the From Page To Stage festival in 2017.
At the time, Bacharach said: “Writing songs with Steven has been a different process for me because most of the time it’s the lyrics that come first and then I set them to music. Steven is a very musical lyric writer and it is always a pleasure to take his lyrics with consummate ease and set them and feel very good about the result.”
With Sater adding: “Love songs – that’s what I write. Burt and I had just written our first song together; and some months and any number of songs later I came to recognise how distinct our songs were from those ubiquitous pop anthems of young love. Ours seemed invariably to express a sort of disaffection, a disappointment, a dark joy, or the renewed determination of a more mature, mid-relationship romance. One day, in the heat of July in Los Angeles, as Burt and I laboured away on a Christmas song, I thought: what if we revisited that Depression-Era classic story, The Gift of the Magi? What became of those young Christmas lovers, 20 years after their happily ever after? And that was the beginning of Some Lovers.”
Angela Thomas
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