By 1968, when America (to say nothing of Europe and Asia) really committed to going berserk, the expectation grew that popular music should, or at least could provide the soundtrack to revolution, or at least protest, or at least unrest, or at least something that reflected the tumult of the times.
If your experience of history were limited to TV documentaries, you could be forgiven for believing that songs like “Street Fighting Man,” “All Along the Watchtower,” “Born to Be Wild,” “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag,” “In a Gadda Da Vida,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Say It Loud: I’m Black and I’m Proud,” and (the ironically counterrevolutionary) “Revolution” were pouring out of every radio, and that the previous year’s “For What It’s Worth” was the National Anthem.
This was obviously never the case. Though 1968 was a good year for protest-adjacent rock (even the Monkees got political), it was also the year of “(Sittin’) On the Dock of the Bay,” “Tighten Up,” “Respect,” “D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” “Stoned Soul Picnic,” “Everybody’s Talkin’,” “Harper Valley PTA,” “The Israelites,” “Tighten Up,” “MacArthur Park,” “Think,” and “Wichita Lineman.”
Among others.
Nevertheless, being, or at least seeming political was fashionable enough among musicians that not being political could almost be seen as something of a radical act.
Here’s a short list of what Burt Bacharach was up to between 1965 and 1968:
“What’s New Pussycat?,” “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me,” “Alfie,”
“Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” “”The Look of Love,” “I Say a Little Prayer,”
“Promises, Promises,” “This Girl’s in Love with You.”
The most political sentiment expressed in one of his big hits were the words that followed the title “What the World Needs Now.” It’s a noble sentiment and a very good song (not quite “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” but surely no “That’s What Friends Are For” either), but hardly the kind of thing you’d expect to accompany footage of cops turning firehoses on protesters or B-52s dropping bombs on Vietnamese villages.
Which is only to say that when you go see a Burt Bacharach show, especially in 2018, you don’t expect much in the way of commentary. And yet, last night, at the first of his four sold-out nights at Jazz Alley, the 89-year-old legend showed a side of himself that lots of people in the room didn’t expect.
About 30 minutes into his two-hour (!!!) set, he introduced his 1956 song “Mexican Divorce,” the 89-year-old composer noted that the last time he played in Seattle, in July of last year, he’d dedicated the song to the people of Puerto Rico.
In the wake of Hurricane Irma, he said, “people were dying, didn’t have any water, infrastructure, forget it.” And now, Bacharach went on, “it’s the same situation. Things haven’t gotten any better a year later. These are U.S. citizens that live there, right?” Applause—at first scattered, then enthusiastic—followed. “So maybe you could take some of the money that you’re using to build the wall and get some relief down there.”
The line brought the house down, and also achieved the seemingly unimaginable task of making you love him even more. (Also, he has apparently been a bit more outspoken since the great disgrace of George W. Bush.)
Burt Bacharach’s work has the power to be both miraculous and innocuous, sublime and saccharine. He’s written/co-written so many truly gargantuan, omnipresent hits that unless you’re a hardcore adept it becomes easy to lose track of how much his progressions, productions, and arrangements have shaped the past six decades of not just music, but of the whole dimension of sound. Of hearing.
In truth, I had no idea what to expect from a Burt Bacharach concert. He obviously knows his way around an orchestra, but Jazz Alley’s intimate space wouldn’t accommodate one. I secretly hoped it would just be him solo, a piano and a mic. In the end it was somewhere in between: A smallish ensemble, lots of keyboards to comp the orchestral manoevers, and three very skillful, if sessiony singers—two women and one man (who also played a bit of guitar on a few songs, and may have been the only one who did).
And it was marvelous, which is a word I never use, but how else do you describe Burt Bacharach?
The set ran nearly two hours and encompassed work from all throughout his career, including most of his major collaborators—from Hal David to Elvis Costello to Carole Bayer Sager—and some of his more obscure ones (I didn’t know he wrote with Jerry Leiber). The most ingenious thing about it was its reliance on medleys. When you have that many essential numbers to fit into an evening, it only makers sense to trim a few verses here and there. (The only other performer I ever saw do this trick quite so masterfully was Prince.)
This economy of arrangement made it so that 20 minutes into the show, you’d already heard a staggering array of stone classics—“What the World Needs Now” for an opener, into medley number one: “Don’t Make Me Over” / “Walk on By” / “This Guy’s in Love with You” / “I Say a Little Prayer” / “Trains, Boats & Planes” / “Wishin’ & Hopin’” / “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me” into “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” and onward to “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” the first of MANY cry breaks, and you’d barely unwrapped your straw.
Plus he did “Baby, It’s You,” which I didn’t even remember was his (PS cry break number two), and “This House Is Empty Now,” which I’ve always preferred to the Elvis Costello co-write people always calls on to justify their brief, intriguing partnership (“God Give Me Strength”).
The effect of all these beloved numbers was truly dazzling, but to my ears, the greatest treat of the night came when Bacharach sang. Even his speaking voice on the genial intros sounded pretty worn out, which made the singing—effortful, quiet, and affectingly fragile—all the more special. And his choice of vocal repertoire—a medley of songs from films, including “The Look of Love” / “Arthur’s Theme” / “What’s New Pussycat” / “The World Is a Circle” / “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” / “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” and “Alfie”—suggested an interesting way to think about his relationship to his songs.
Bacharach doesn’t have a conventionally strong voice, but I’ve always been drawn to singers like that. Like the David Berman line “all my favorite singers couldn’t sing.” A certain quality is awakened by a “weak” singer’s struggle to overcome some natural deficiency of pitch or projection or even confidence—the exact quality that gets smothered when young people are told not to quit their day job. I hear it in Leonard Cohen. I hear it in Elliott Smith. And last night I heard in in Burt Bacharach, on those few songs when he took lead.
There was real yearning in his vocals—not the actory yearning expressed by more technically competent singers with their gesticulating hands and superfluous note bends that wring applause from guileless audiences; I mean the yearning just to keep singing, to make it to the end of the song, the end of the line.
I sometimes wonder if the idea that he wasn’t a good enough singer (I mean, given the people he wound up writing for—Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield, Gene Pitney, Marty Robbins, Tom Jones, et al—who wouldn’t feel cowed) was conveyed to him when he was young, and contributed to his drive to become such a masterful and fastidious composer/ arranger/ producer.
Granted, he came of age before the era when artists wrote their own songs, but he achieved maximum fame and fortune in the midst of that era. He sang lead on a handful of songs throughout his career. “Make It Easy On Yourself” is particularly good, swerving between forceful vibrato when the orchestra swells and bashful singspiel in the verses.
In all, I can’t think of a better room in which to have seen a very peculiar, and probably endangered species of music giant take stage in a vital, vibrant fashion. The rest of the shows are sold out, and the tickets are INSANELY expensive at $150/per seat (I know—yikes—but then again, Bacharach’s not going to play for nothing, and you try running a venerable independent jazz club literally across the street from the aesthetic and moral encroachment of Amazon’s imposing glass balls; it’s a minor miracle that Jazz Alley hasn’t been turned into an app or something).
Still and all, if you’re of a mind, you won’t regret it.
