Anyone Who Had a Heart (27 page)

Mike Myers:
I was at a table read of
Some Lovers
in New York sitting beside Elvis Costello, and about three songs in, we caught each other being transfixed by Burt’s beautiful, beautiful songs. Elvis turned to me and said, “He’s
here
!” By which he meant all of the yummy, quirky inversions Burt does, all of the satisfying “a-ha!” contrapuntal melodies with a healthy dose of what I call his “boom-stick-boom-boom” songs like “Walk on By.” Burt was there, de facto conducting, and it was all in his body and his face. Every time it was satisfying and yummy, he sent out sheer delight like a sonar ping. And when it was clear that it wasn’t, the torture was there. It was so important to him.

Elvis Costello:
I went to hear
Some Lovers
in New York at a reading, and the thing that touched me about it so much was despite the fact it was being done by actors who didn’t have any props or costumes, no makeup or lighting, and were sitting around in a bright strip-lit rehearsal room with a pianist and a drummer, Burt was at the table looking straight at them and he was conducting. He was cueing and mouthing every word of every song, he was breathing with the singers, and it was just so inspiring to see. And the melodies were just incredible. At one hearing, there were five tunes that made you say, “I’ve got to hear that again.” What really struck me was that the language of the music was vivid and the signatures of Burt’s writing were there without it seeming like he had written all this before. There were still new permutations within the recognizable language he speaks in.

I was in New York for the workshop of
Some Lovers
and I hadn’t talked to Mike Myers for a long time so I called him up and said, “I’m going to be here for two weeks, Mike, and I’d love to see you.” We went downtown and had dinner that night and Mike said, “We’re going to do Austin Powers onstage as a Broadway musical and you’re going to write the music.” I said, “Mike, what if I hadn’t called you? Were you going to tell me?”

Mike Myers:
I was going to call Burt about a week before we had dinner together in New York but instead I just sat there and wondered, “Gee, should I call him now? I don’t want to bug him.” Then he called and said he was in town and I thought, “Do I say something to him tonight? Do I go through his agents?” And then I was telling my friends, “This is a find. He could say no. I should just ask him, right?” And after I told him, Burt said, “Yeah. Sounds great.” And I went, “That was easy,” and I was floating on air. I was just thrilled and twenty-five feet off the ground.

The concept is that these films were already musicals and I want the show to be a celebration of a time of music for which Burt is one of the major players, if not
the
major player. It’s a celebration of Carnaby Street and also of England and it’s about England swinging and Burt’s part in that. I’ve already spoken to him about some aspects of it and I said, “It’s the horns, it’s the horns, it’s the horns.” I want this to be a celebration of the Burt Bacharach horns and I want at least one of the songs to be front and center and see what happens with that. And he said, “Ah, I love it, Mike. That’s great, that’s great. Send me the words.”

Mike can sing and he’s really musical so he’ll probably end up writing half the lyrics with Elvis and me as we put together the score. Doing something for the stage is never as immediate as going in and making a record or doing a concert, but I’m really excited about working with Mike and Elvis, so that’s where my writing energies are going to go.

I’ve also become very friendly with Chuck Lorre, who has created some of the most successful shows on television, like
Two and a Half Men
,
The Big Bang Theory
, and
Mike & Molly
. I got to know Chuck through Grant Geissman, the guitarist who does the music for
Two and a Half Men
. Then Chuck called me because he’d had this idea for eight years about
Painted from Memory
and had decided there was a musical in this album.

Chuck has a story and is writing the book with Steven Sater. Chuck is very, very good and his instincts are terrific. Elvis and I could see that we didn’t want to restrict the plot line by being faithful to the album and just using the songs that are on it. So if five or six new songs are needed, we will write them.

I’ve also just worked with Bernie Taupin, who wrote the words for all those great songs by Elton John. Bernie and I tried to write a song for a picture years ago but it didn’t work out. From out of the blue, he reached out to me and sent me a couple of lyrics that I thought were really special.

I have also worked with Carole again. We wrote a three-way song, which was something I always liked to do with her. The other person involved was Babyface, Kenny Edmonds, a great musician, songwriter, and producer who has worked with many talented artists. I also feel really positive about the fact that I am now on good terms with all three of my ex-wives, and I’ve taken Angie out to dinner seven or eight times since Nikki passed away.

In the spring of 2012 I did a tour of Australia, working with five symphony orchestras, and it went really well. In the fall, I did five concerts in three days with my band and my singers at the Tokyo Jazz Festival. We played in a huge concert hall and did two shows a night at a place called Billboard Live, a five- or six-hundred-seat venue where they serve drinks.

It was interesting being in Japan this time. I had been there seven times before and the audiences were always appreciative but very polite. When people applauded, it was almost like someone in the audience would signal “Cut!” and then everyone would suddenly stop clapping at the same time. This time, however, the reception was really wild, and I kept thinking, “Does this have something to do with everything they’ve all been through here in the last year with the tidal wave and the meltdown at the nuclear plant?” I’d never seen Japanese people act like this before.

Long after I was done playing at the concert hall, a beautiful young girl saw me and started to sob uncontrollably, so I went over to her. She could hardly speak so I just put my arms around her. Her reaction touched me so much that I thought, “Boy, if I can make music that can make her feel like that, well, that’s really something.”

Before each show at Billboard Live I had to come through the house. As I did I was shaking hands all the way to the stage. When I came offstage, people were grabbing me and I had never experienced anything like that in Japan. My son Oliver was running security for me and he found the girl from the concert hall trying to get through the crowd to give me a present along with a note. She wrote very good English and said my music meant so much to her that she hoped one day I would return to Japan. She never gave me an e-mail address or a way to contact her, so I’ve never been able to tell her how much she really touched me.

The fact that people still care enough about my music to want me to play onstage is a blessing. Getting to write new songs with Elvis and Bernie Taupin and Carole and Kenny Edmonds is also a blessing. I mean, how lucky can you be? It’s a gift, and when I look at what is now happening in my life, I’m extremely grateful.

Chapter

28

The Gershwin Prize

O
ne day during the summer of 2011 I got a message from Sue Main telling me I should be near my home phone to get an important call from Dr. James Billington. Sue never told me who he was, and when I asked her what the call was about, she said, “You’ll find out.” When Dr. Billington got on the line, he introduced himself as the Librarian of Congress and told me that Hal and I had been given the 2012 Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, an award that had only been won before by Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, and Paul McCartney.

I had never in my life dreamed I would win the Gershwin Prize, so it was incredible news. Because the Library of Congress had given another award to someone who had talked to the press about it before the official announcement, Dr. Billington also told me, “You cannot tell anyone about this.”

When someone says something like that to me, I’m very good about it. Although I did tell Jane, I also really wanted to tell my son Oliver, who was about to go off on a trip to India, but I couldn’t do it. Dr. Billington had told me he was going to call Hal, so I did get in touch with him right away. When the Library of Congress made its announcement at the end of September, I was finally able to tell Oliver.

The award was going to be presented at a luncheon at the Library of Congress on May 7, 2012. I had been in Australia doing concerts with symphony orchestras for nearly three weeks and then I flew back to Los Angeles. I was there for about two days and then I flew to Washington with my daughter Raleigh and Sue Main. Jane was going to meet me there the next day after stopping off in Ohio to pick up her mother and her two sisters, and Cristopher and Oliver were going to fly in on their own.

The first night we were in Washington, Jane arranged a great dinner at a French restaurant right across from our hotel. Her family was there, along with some friends who had flown in from all over the country. It was a wonderful evening. Although I didn’t know it at the time, all the artists who were scheduled to perform at the Library of Congress and then the White House were also staying in the Ritz-Carlton, but I never ran into any of them. I knew Phil Ramone was producing the shows but I didn’t know who would be appearing because the only person I had asked to be there was Mike Myers.

At eleven-thirty the next morning, we were driven to the Library of Congress on East Capitol Street for a congressional lunch in the Members Room for about eighty people. It was hosted by Buffy Cafritz, a terrific person who is a member of the board of the Kennedy Center. I had never been to the Library of Congress before, but it is so large that you would really have to spend five or six days there to see it all. The place was really overwhelming.

I was sitting with Raleigh and Oliver and Jane when Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, came in and spoke. I was very happy to see her because the two of us had met four years earlier when I had taken Oliver and Raleigh on a tour of the House.

Dr. Billington also spoke at the luncheon, and then he presented me with the certificate for the Gershwin Award. Later on I was also given an engraved box holding an American flag that had actually flown over the Capitol, which I thought was stunning. The only sad part about the luncheon was that about six weeks earlier, Hal had gone into the hospital for surgery and had then suffered a stroke. He couldn’t come to Washington for the ceremony, so his wife, Eunice, was there to accept the award in his name.

After the luncheon, Mark Horowitz, the senior music specialist at the Music Division of the Library of Congress, took us all downstairs. Set out on a long table for us to look at were original scores and music manuscripts by Beethoven, Hoagy Carmichael, George Gershwin, Bernard Herrmann, Mozart, and Richard Rodgers. There was also an arrangement Benny Carter had done of “Alfie” from the Ella Fitzgerald Collection and original compositions by my three great teachers, Darius Milhaud, Henry Cowell, and Bohuslav Martinů.

I also got to look at the sheet music for what they told me was my first copyrighted composition, a song called “A Soldier’s Prayer,” which I had written with William Stephen Quigley when I was in the Army in 1951. I was clueless when I first saw it but then I remembered that Bill Quigley had been a chaplain and I must have written the song with him when I was playing piano on Governors Island. We were on a pretty tight schedule so it wasn’t like I had enough time to pick something up and say, “Let me see what’s going on in the fifth bar here.” I just had to keep on moving.

Jane and I were then escorted to the Capitol, where we were to meet John Boehner, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, in his office. He smelled from cigarette smoke just like Hal used to do in our office in the Brill Building, but much worse. I was there for about fifteen minutes but we didn’t really talk about much. Boehner was trying to make a connection to the world of music so he asked me if I knew Tom Snow, who wrote “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” from
Footloose
as well as some other good songs. Tom Snow’s family is Republican so I guess that was how Boehner knew him. It was all very pleasant but I made sure to steer clear of any talk about politics.

I was still really jet-lagged but I was also energized by what was going on because Jane and my three kids were there to share the whole experience with me. That made everything so much more powerful for me than if I had flown in to accept the award on my own.

We were then taken back to the hotel so I could get ready for the show that night at the Coolidge Auditorium in the Thomas Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress. Before we left, Jane ordered up some champagne so we could all have a toast in my suite. Then there was a small reception for us in Dr. Billington’s office, where we all had some more champagne and hors d’oeuvres. Once everyone had been seated in the theater, we were taken inside.

The auditorium holds 485 people, and there were lots of dignitaries there that night as well as friends that Hal and I had invited. Jerry Moss and his wife, Anne, were there, and my cousin Frank Binswanger and his family came from Philadelphia. Phil Ramone and Sue Main had put the show together but they had kept it all so quiet that all I knew was that I was going to introduce Dionne to close the show.

Mike Myers opened by doing “What’s New Pussycat?” and ended the number by standing there in a white Elvis Presley jumpsuit with my first name in big letters on a rhinestone belt buckle. After introducing Stevie Wonder, Mike walked off the stage, only to be told Stevie was in the bathroom. Coming back out, Mike had five minutes to kill so he started doing improv and he was brilliant.

Then Stevie came out and did “Alfie.” Sheryl Crow sang “Walk on By,” Lyle Lovett did “Always Something There to Remind Me,” and Diana Krall played and sang “The Look of Love.” Michael Feinstein did “Close to You,” Rumer performed “A House Is Not a Home,” Sheryl Crow and Lyle Lovett did “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” and Shelea sang “Anyone Who Had a Heart.” Stevie came back on with Arturo Sandoval and did an up-tempo kind of reggae version of “Make It Easy on Yourself.” Then Mike introduced me, and I got up from my seat and walked onstage.

I hadn’t made any notes or written anything down but I thanked everyone and said that while I had been on tour in Australia, a journalist from the
Washington Post
had called to ask what this award meant to me and how would I compare it to other awards I had received. I told him that with the Academy Award, someone opens an envelope and pulls out a card with your name on it and that sends a spike up your spine that is an unbelievable feeling. But the Academy Award is for just one song or one score. This award was for all of my work, and so for me, it was the best of all awards possible, and I meant that with all my heart.

After people stopped applauding, I said, “I’m standing up here alone. I should be up here with Hal David and it’s so sad that Hal was unable to make this trip. You wait for something like this all your life and get one shot and then you don’t get to come to the dance and it’s sad. So it’s with a heavy heart that I feel kind of lonely up here tonight by myself. Hal is a great lyricist and he wrote great, great lyrics. And for Hal to write a lyric like ‘What’s it all about, Alfie? / Is it just for the moment we live? / What’s it all about when you sort it out, Alfie? / Are we meant to take more than we give? / Or are we meant to be kind?’—that’s one of the best lyrics anyone has ever written.”

I talked about the different ways Hal and I had written songs together and how all I ever wanted in the beginning was for him to give me a word that would sound good on the note and how we were never very quick, except when it came to “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” Then I said, “I salute you, Hal. I was very careful on my Australian tour with every step and every shower I took because I was determined that one of us had to get here. I am deeply honored by this award, as Hal will be, and it is great to have my wife and my three kids here to share this with me.”

Then they showed a short video with Paul Williams talking about Hal and an interview with Hal in which he said being a songwriter was the happiest thing anyone could do in the world. When the video ended, I introduced Dionne, who talked about having just seen Hal in Los Angeles and how strong he seemed. Then she closed the show with “This Girl’s in Love with You” and “What the World Needs Now Is Love.”

All the artists then joined the invited guests for dinner upstairs in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress, which looked spectacular with tables set all the way around. I sat with my family but I was up a lot and visiting people at different tables. After dinner ended, an elaborate dessert buffet was set up in the center of the room downstairs. They opened up the Reading Room so we could all go in there and take photographs. We were basically given the run of the place, which was pretty amazing.

The next day, I went back to the Library of Congress at twelve-thirty so I could be interviewed by Mark Horowitz. We talked for about forty-five minutes on camera and tape and the interview went into the Library of Congress archives, where it will be accessible to anyone who might ever want to do research on me. Then Sue and I got into a black sedan that had been security-swept because we had to go to the White House so I could rehearse for the show that was being taped that night for PBS.

The car dropped us off on Pennsylvania Avenue, and we had to get out and walk up to security so we could let them know we had an appointment. That was when I saw Robin Roberts, the ABC TV journalist, coming the other way. There was a lot of tension in the air and I knew something important was happening. I later learned she had just done the interview with President Obama in which he had come out in favor of gay marriage.

We went through security and then down the stairs into a room in the West Wing right below the residence. I only had about ten minutes to rehearse with the band before I had to go back to the hotel to get ready for the performance. Chairs had been set up so close to the stage that I knew it was going to be like playing a private show. I had played a lot of privates in my life but not with the president of the United States sitting right there in front of me. The setting felt a lot more intimate than when Carole and I had played for President Reagan.

The show began at seven, so we had to leave the hotel at five-forty-five because it takes quite a long time to get into the White House. Cristopher, Oliver, Raleigh, Jane, and Sue and I were all in a van. After we had come up Pennsylvania Avenue and parked, they opened up the doors so the dogs could sniff everywhere while the guards swiped underneath the van.

After they had cleared us, we went up to the gate and got out of the van and walked through security with our IDs. We were then taken into the White House through the main entrance and walked along the corridor beside the Rose Garden, where there were lots of photographs of President and Michelle Obama with their kids and their dog, Bo. Since we have Alfie, who is also a Portuguese water dog, we all had to look at those.

We were then taken into the Men’s and Ladies’ Reading Rooms, which are very elegant and beautiful and filled with books that anyone from the residence or the staff can take out. Then we went upstairs into another holding area where there was a reception for the artists. We were all drinking champagne and the Marine sentries were there in their dress uniforms with white pants. Everyone was milling around and talking to one another and then they pulled me away to put a little powder on my nose so I wouldn’t look shiny at the show.

We then went upstairs, where everyone was given a card so they could have their photograph taken with the president. Jane and I and the kids went in first. President Obama and Michelle were standing there and we all shook hands. The president was charming. I congratulated him on his decision to come out in favor of gay marriage, and then we had our picture taken together.

As the next group started to come in, the president said, “You stay here with me. You’re in all the pictures.” And that was really a kick, man. Standing next to the president of the United States for picture after picture. The two of us really couldn’t talk to one another while this was going on, because it was all happening so fast.

After we were done taking photographs, I walked with my family into the room with the stage. Jane and I sat down in the first row and the announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.” We all stood up as President and Mrs. Obama walked in. When they sat down, I realized I was sitting right next to the president. That created a nervous energy in me that lasted all through the show.

The artists had all felt comfortable the night before while performing in front of the audience in a big theater, but this was completely different. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Mike Myers so nervous. He was two feet away from the president and Michelle as he did his bumps and grinds but they loved it. Sheryl Crow was also really nervous, and when Diana Krall came on to do “The Look of Love,” I could see her hands shaking before she started to play. Once she got her fingers on the keyboard, the music pacified her because that was a place of comfort for her.