Burt Bacharach

After a grand total of 127 Top 40 hits both in the UK and the US, few people have earned the title of “songwriter’s songwriter” quite like Burt Bacharach has. He’s been one of pop music’s true lifers, after over half a century in the music industry he’s still performing live night after night and has done so for years now. He might have fallen in and out of style over those years, but he never lost the respect of those with a love for good, honest songwriting. Elvis Costello, Ben Folds, Noel Gallagher and Chrissie Hynde have all sung the praises of his songs. Gene Pitney, Tom Jones, Dusty Springfield and The Carpenters have all had hits with them, and with a pedigree like that, few people would have the gall to argue with his touch as a hit-maker.

Bacharach’s story begins Kansas City, Missouri, where he was born. Soon afterwards his family moved up to New York City’s affluent Forest Hills neighbourhood, where he grew up. Bacharach was fascinated with music at an early age, developing a passion for jazz music as a teenager. A lot of his adolescence was spent getting into clubs with a fake I.D to see legends like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker perform in the flesh, a site which inspired the young Bacharach to continue with his hated classical piano lessons all the same. These eventually paid off when he found himself studying at three immensely prestigious music colleges consecutively, and it was during his studies that he studied the music theory and Jazz harmony that would inform his songwriting, and by extension, pop music as a whole.

After graduating and following brief service in the army, Bacharach performed as a session and accompanying pianist before taking a job as the musical arranger and director for Marlene Dietrich. He stayed with Dietrich for a few years before he met the man that would change the course of his life in 1957, lyricist Hal David. They were introduced at New York City’s Brill Building, one of the hubs of songwriting at the time, and they began their partnership soon after that. In the same year their song “The Story Of My Life” had become a hit for Marty Robbins, peaking at number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100, and one of the most prolific careers in pop music was born. “The Story Of My Life” was followed up with Perry Como’s take on “Magic Moments” an even bigger hit for the pair, reaching number 4. Both of those songs hit number one in the U.K back to back, making Bacharach and David the first ever songwriters to have such an achievement.

Beyond this point, it’s hard to sum up Bacharach’s career without the use of a particularly large book. By the time the 60’s rolled around the songwriting pair had struck up a working relationship with Dionne Warwick, who over the next 20 years would have 22 Top 40, 12 Top 20 and nine Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 all written by Hall and Bacharach. As if that wasn’t enough, Aretha Franklin, The Beatles, The Shirelles and Jack Jones were all covering their numbers left and right, and that’s not even taking into account the amount of artists who didn’t make it into the history books having hits with their work. It was in the mid-to-late sixties that the pair got involved with cinema, having two of their most enduring hits, “What’s New, Pussycat?” and “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” come from the soundtrack to the film of the same name and Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, respectively.

To call their 60’s “succesful” is to sell them slightly short, Bacharach and David had the kind of omnipresence that The Beatles had, with none of the outrageous fame. So comparatively the rest of their career feels kind of barren at first glance, but considering that it wasn’t until the mid-seventies that he started playing live at all, that’s saying quite a lot. However, it wasn’t without it’s downsides, the critical and commercial disaster of the film Lost Horizons split the duo up in a flurry of lawsuits and bad blood, and he had a comparatively quiet seventies. Come the 1980’s, and a personal and musical partnership with lyricist Carole Bayer Sager however, he had a second wind. Hits for the likes of Christopher Cross, Neil Diamond and Patti LaBelle followed, but the 90’, and the patronage of Noel Gallagher and Elvis Costello, would do what was thought to be impossible. They made him cool again.

Burt Bacharach is the kind of artist who hasn’t so much had a career as left a legacy, he’s still gracing us with his music night after night and for that we should be incredibly grateful. For a night of some of the greatest pop songs ever written, you can’t go wrong with Burt Bacharach.