Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 165

Record label: A&M

Produced: Burt Bacharach and Phil Ramone

Recorded: A&M Studio, New York; 1968

Released: June 1969

Chart peaks: None (UK) 51 (US)

Personnel: Burt Bacharach (v, ar); Phil Ramone (e); with orchestra

Track listing: Promises, Promises; I’ll Never Fall In Love Again; Knowing When To Leave; Any Day Now; Wanting Things; Whoever You Are I Love You; Make It Easy On Yourself; Do You Know The Way To San Jose; Pacific Coast Highway (S); She’s Gone Away; This Guy’s In Love With You

Running time: 35.32

Current CD: Universal 394188

Further listening: The Look Of Love: The Burt Bacharach Collection (1998)

Further reading: The Little Red Book Of Burt Bacharach (Serene Dominic, 2004); www.bacharachonline.com

Download: iTunes

As a composer, producer and arranger of hits by Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, Tom Jones, Herb Alpert and scores of other eminent ’60s popsters, it was only a matter of time before Burt Bacharach stepped into the spotlight himself. Especially given his twinkling good looks and soft-spoken charisma. But he insists he had to be coaxed into his star turn.

‘I was very insecure about singing,’ he says. ‘It’s one thing to do it in a live performance onstage. It’s like yesterday’s newspaper. It’s forgotten. It wasn’t so good, okay. But when you go onto tape, it’s there forever. I try to sing the songs not as a singer, but just interpreting it as a composer and interpreting a great lyric that Hal [David] wrote.’

On his second solo LP, he surrounds his voice (the liner notes call it a ‘rumpled, earnest baritone’) with all the energetic components of what became known as the ‘Bacharach Sound’ – honey-dipped flugelhorns, bossa nova sidesticks, breezy flutes, molto fortissimo strings and cooing female voices – and interprets hits such as I’ll Never Fall In Love Again, Promises, Promises and Make It Easy On Yourself.

‘I didn’t want to make the songs the same way as they’d been done,’ Bacharach says, ‘so I’d split vocals and instrumentals and try to make it interesting to me, and hopefully interesting to the listener. For me, it’s about the peaks and valleys of where a record can take you. You can tell a story and be able to be explosive one minute then get quiet as kind of a satisfying resolution.’

His co-producer and engineer Phil Ramone recalls how the dynamics originated from Burt himself: ‘The whole room would come to life with his conducting – the way he would look over at the drummer and with just the flick of his finger, things could happen. Once the groove was happening in the room, forget it, there was nothing like it. And everything, including the strings, responded to the kind of body movement that Burt had. He brings an incredible amount of life to the studio. He’s probably one of the most amazing musicians in the world.’