Whatever age you are, in whatever era you grew up – wherever you grew up – you will know, perhaps unknowingly, a large handful of songs by Burt Bacharach, almost all written with lyricist Hal David. The two men met in 1957 in New York’s celebrated Brill Building, where the creative talents positively jostled for attention.
Some of the songs came from film soundtracks – Bacharach scored many major movies – and the songs have had many lives, Dionne Warwick and Dusty Springfield both enjoyed success with “Wishin’ and Hopin’” and “I Say a Little Prayer”, Warwick and Cilla Black with “Anyone Who Had a Heart”. George Martin commissioned an arrangement from Johnny Pearson for Cilla, producing the session himself as usual and it was this version that was the bigger success. Warwick was not pleased but Bacharach admired Black’s version and would soon work with her on “Alfie”, putting her through 31 takes – the most demanding of her life, the singer reported.
Both “Heart” and “Alfie” are clear demonstrations of what makes a Bacharach song several cuts above. The unexpected key changes, unusual chord progressions, syncopation and time changes, and phrasing that emphasise very particular words – all are hallmarks of the Bacharach style that is insultingly referred to as “easy listening”. Like another Brill graduate, Neil Sedaka, only more so, Bacharach’s songs are intricate, carefully wrought, bigger productions but still comparable with the composers of the Great American Songbook. The two Gershwin awards were well deserved.
The audience at the first of two nights at the Eventim Apollo were thrilled to see Bacharach. He’s 91 now, and walked slowly on-stage to a standing ovation. He’s got conductor’s hump and it looks as though he has a dodgy knee. The shoes were for comfort rather than style. But none of that mattered because Bacharach is in every other respect unimpaired, playing the piano, conducting and bantering with his fellow performers and the audience, obviously having a good time. There was an orchestra of around 30 players who probably hadn’t had long to rehearse but who carried it off well, despite the odd moment of sound imbalance. All credit to the wind and brass soloists. The three backing vocalists, all of whom took solos, were excellent: Donna Taylor, Josie James and John Pagano, the last also playing a fine bossa nova guitar.
Joss Stone was frankly surplus to requirements, easily outclassed by Taylor. She played with Bacharach in 2016 and presumably he found the experience agreeable. But “the white Aretha Franklin”? Her best moment came with “In Between the Heartaches”, a difficult song to pull off, with its high tessitura, tricksy time signatures and elusive harmonies, but which she’s been singing for some time – it featured in BBC TV’s all-star salute to Bacharach in 2016. Her other contributions to the evening included “Walk On By”, “Wishin’ and Hopin’”, “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself”, “Close to You” (one of the gloopier numbers forever associated with the Carpenters) and “A House is Not a Home”, which might have had Miss Peggy Lee spinning in her grave. Stone suffers (or did last night) from Cilla Syndrome: fine in the pianissimo moments but ear-rending when she lets rip. Part of the problem may be down to poor microphone technique which, in the 16 years since her Mercury Prize, she’s had plenty of time to learn.
Taylor and James acquitted themselves well, the former on “Falling Out of Love” and a medley of “Make It Easy” and “On Your Own”, the latter on “Anyone Who Had a Heart”. Pagano’s spotlight moments included “With a Voice” and “This House is Empty Now”, written with Elvis Costello.
Bacharach chatted engagingly about his songs (Ursula Andress inspiring “The Look of Love”, working with Aretha) and about waking up daily under “the cloud” of current American politics. His croaky performance of “Alfie” was touching, the maestro’s solo piano highlighting the song’s incredible musical architecture: the vocal line, often chromatic and full of challenging wide intervals; the harmonic palette as rich as can be; that whole-tone scale after “you’re nothing, Alfie” as the song moves towards its close, tonality arrested mid-flight. "That's What Friends Are For" followed by "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head", with which the audience was invited to sing along, provided the encores.
Bacharach learned classical piano as a child but preferred jazz, sneaking off to Manhattan clubs to hear such greats as Basie and Gillespie. He studied music at Montreal’s McGill University and New York’s celebrated Mannes School among other places and his teachers included Darius Milhaud, Henry Cowell and Bohuslav Martinu all of whom were adventurous boundary-pushers. He could have been a conservatory composer himself but instead he provided us with many of pop music’s greatest moments.