Speaker 1: This is Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast
Speaker 1: More what You Hear Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive.
Speaker 2: He's coming off of a huge celebration fifty years as
Speaker 2: a recording artists. On top of that, he's got his
Speaker 2: Manelow music project that we wanted to talk about and
Speaker 2: his upcoming show in Oklahoma City at the Paycom Center
Speaker 2: on August the seventeenth. I'm delighted to have Barry Manilow
Speaker 2: on with us today.
Speaker 3: Hi, Hiley, Nice to talk to you, and nice to
Speaker 3: talk to the folks there at Oklahoma City.
Speaker 2: Early in your career, this was a very important stop
Speaker 2: on your tour, was it not.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget it. It was one of the first
Speaker 3: big arena shows that I've ever done, and it was
Speaker 3: so fantastic for me, for my band, for my singers,
Speaker 3: and the audiences would be audience was just great that
Speaker 3: they actually brought us back like five or six months later.
Speaker 3: That was the first time that had ever happened. So
Speaker 3: they were telling me, the Oklahoma City people were telling
Speaker 3: me what was about to happen to my life.
Speaker 2: And I think that was at the old Civic Center
Speaker 2: Music Hall, which, by the way, is still standing and
Speaker 2: still hosting shows.
Speaker 3: Well, you know it was in nineteen seventy five. That
Speaker 3: was a long time ago.
Speaker 2: Man, Yeah, it sure was, and your music has been
Speaker 2: going strong ever since.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: One of your biggest influences was that nineteen forties kind
Speaker 2: of the big band American standards. That influences most of
Speaker 2: your composition.
Speaker 3: You think when you listen to it, you hear stuff
Speaker 3: like that In my pop song.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I did.
Speaker 3: Key change here were there? You know, a key change
Speaker 3: here were there? A big ending? Maybe I stole it
Speaker 3: from those great that came before me. Sure, you know,
Speaker 3: I think most of the stuff that I do, I
Speaker 3: think it's more influenced by the Broadway kind of music
Speaker 3: than it was the big band stuff.
Speaker 2: But I can hear that too. In your arrangements, do
Speaker 2: you arrange all the music yourself?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I consider myself an arranger first. When I started off,
Speaker 3: I wanted to be Nelson Riddle. That's what I went
Speaker 3: to school for. That. I arranged for any singer that
Speaker 3: needed an arranger. I did that for Bet Midler for
Speaker 3: many years, and that's what I was going to do
Speaker 3: with my life, you know. But Faith had other plans
Speaker 3: in store.
Speaker 2: For me, definitely. Barry Manilow is with us. His show
Speaker 2: is coming up and in August, and your tickets are
Speaker 2: still available, by the way, at the pay Comm Center
Speaker 2: box office as well as Ticketmaster outlets. Let's talk a
Speaker 2: little about your Mantelo music projects. I know I'm heartbroken
Speaker 2: when I go back to my alma mater high school
Speaker 2: and they've gotten rid of the chorus program, They've gotten
Speaker 2: rid of the jazz band, they've trimmed the regular marching
Speaker 2: band down to hardly anything at all. In my high
Speaker 2: school life, music made everything else so much more complete.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it really makes me sad to hear that,
Speaker 3: and I did hear about it. About fifteen or twenty
Speaker 3: years ago. One of my neighbors asked me if I
Speaker 3: could find sas for his daughter because the school was
Speaker 3: running out of instruments. And I said, ah, the schools
Speaker 3: are running out of instruments, and so I started to
Speaker 3: do a little research, and sure enough, because they are
Speaker 3: not funding music and arts anymore in high schools, yeah,
Speaker 3: the kids are playing broken down instruments or you know,
Speaker 3: they're running out of instruments. And so, from about fifteen
Speaker 3: years ago till today, I've been donating instruments and schools
Speaker 3: all around the country, and we call it the Man
Speaker 3: of the Music Project. And you know, I think they
Speaker 3: tell me that we've given away around ten million dollars
Speaker 3: worth of instruments over these years. And you know, I
Speaker 3: get thank you notes from these kids. And recently I
Speaker 3: got a picture and a thank you note from a
Speaker 3: kid who had just gotten a new tuba, so he
Speaker 3: was thanking me for his new tuber and the picture
Speaker 3: was with him and the new tuba and the tuba
Speaker 3: was fuller than he was. But it was a sweet,
Speaker 3: litte little notes from.
Speaker 2: Him celebrating fifty years in the business, comparable Barry Manilow's
Speaker 2: with us. And the way this works is is you
Speaker 2: go from city to city and offer to make these contributions,
Speaker 2: and you allow people to get online and vote for
Speaker 2: their favorite.
Speaker 3: Well, this time around, I always started to do something
Speaker 3: on every tour that we've been on, and this time
Speaker 3: round came up with this idea that the kids in
Speaker 3: each city would pick their favorite music teacher and when
Speaker 3: they do, we invite the teacher and a guest to
Speaker 3: the show. I give him a couple of bucks, and
Speaker 3: I make a big deal of them at the show.
Speaker 2: And I know that the voting has already closed for
Speaker 2: Oklahoma City, but it will be announced when you come
Speaker 2: through in August at your show at the Paycom Center.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, of course I've done this before and it's
Speaker 3: a wonderful moment in the show. I really look forward
Speaker 3: to it.
Speaker 2: Very Manlow joining us as he's coming through in August
Speaker 2: and tickets still on sale at the Paycom Center. It's
Speaker 2: going to be a great show. You put a lot
Speaker 2: into your shows, Oh, yes, always.
Speaker 3: But you know, I've learned my lesson over these years.
Speaker 3: When I started out, the audiences used to love me
Speaker 3: doing the album cuts, the stuff that wasn't the big gest,
Speaker 3: But as years have gone by, the audiences have told
Speaker 3: me they want stuff that they know they want, the
Speaker 3: hits they want. And I'm one of the lucky guys
Speaker 3: who has got a big catalog of songs that everybody
Speaker 3: is familiar with. So that's what I do. I'm happy
Speaker 3: to do it, and you know, by the time we
Speaker 3: get to Cocoa Cavada at the end, the audiences are
Speaker 3: lighting themselves on fire, so it's always a great show.
Speaker 2: Along those lines, I've often wondered how you felt, and
Speaker 2: where you were when you first learned that. Frank Sinatra
Speaker 2: proclaimed Weekend in New England the greatest song ever written.
Speaker 3: Well, you know that, and he said something that was
Speaker 3: very encouraging. He said he's next. And you know, you know,
Speaker 3: Sata had a way of just doing you know, you
Speaker 3: take a look at his quotes, and he used to
Speaker 3: have really quick, little one liners and they were always great. Anyway,
Speaker 3: when he said that, I was right in the middle
Speaker 3: of getting the worst three views anybody has ever gotten
Speaker 3: in their entire career, and here came Sinatra saying he's mixed,
Speaker 3: and that made me feel real good.
Speaker 2: Barry Manilow is with us. By the way, next time
Speaker 2: I'm in New York City, where's the best place to
Speaker 2: get good locks and bagels?
Speaker 3: Catches deli?
Speaker 2: Okay, keep that in mind and his show coming up
Speaker 2: in August. You can get your tickets at Ticketmaster also
Speaker 2: at the Paycom Center box office August seventeenth, seven pm.
Speaker 2: And I've often wondered, because I'm musical, Barry, your music
Speaker 2: is meant a lot to me because it's very singable,
Speaker 2: it's very catchy. Do you dream in music?
Speaker 3: Not often? But I did one This is an interesting one.
Speaker 3: I woke up with a full song in my head,
Speaker 3: lyric and melody, and I took to my little cassette
Speaker 3: machine from the concept machine, and I whispered the melody
Speaker 3: and the lyric into my cassette machine. It was a
Speaker 3: song that turned out to be one voice. It's a
Speaker 3: lovely song that I put on an album back then,
Speaker 3: and that was the only time I ever dreamed a song.
Speaker 3: The rest of the time, sometimes I come up with
Speaker 3: a melody, a little fragment, but that was a full
Speaker 3: song with a full lyric that I just whispered into
Speaker 3: that concept machine the whole thing.
Speaker 2: I've done it before. I've woken up with a tune
Speaker 2: that I didn't think i'd heard before. I'd hum it
Speaker 2: into a recorder of some kind, and then I'd find out, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not exactly like something you've heard before, but it's
Speaker 2: probably so close you'd be sued. So I've never brought
Speaker 2: in any further than that very manlow with us. Do
Speaker 2: you still include the very strange medley in your act?
Speaker 3: Boy? You know my that no, because they stopped playing
Speaker 3: most of the ones that I used to I used
Speaker 3: to do. I used to call it my very strange memory. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but there's two that they still use. One is I'm
Speaker 3: stuck on a band aid and the other one is
Speaker 3: like a good neighbor. Yeah, yeah, they still use that,
Speaker 3: those two. So sometimes I actually talk about those two.
Speaker 2: I've had to deal with advertising agencies before and advertisers,
Speaker 2: and often when they come to me with what they
Speaker 2: are looking for in an advertisement, they always have more
Speaker 2: information and are closer to the product than they need
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: And maybe you found that too when you were writing jingles.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they would give me the lyric, and the
Speaker 3: lyric used to go for two pages. You can't write
Speaker 3: a catchy song with two pages of work. But I'll
Speaker 3: tell you one interesting thing. That safefarm insurance commercial which
Speaker 3: has been running for a what forty years? Forty years,
Speaker 3: forty years my greatest hit. So I got five hundred
Speaker 3: dollars for that for writing that, which was very good there,
Speaker 3: which was very helpful during those years. But you know,
Speaker 3: the composer doesn't get royalties. So that's it now forty
Speaker 3: years later. The girl who sang it is out of
Speaker 3: Third Rose roy because she was on the spot. As
Speaker 3: long as you get on, whether you're talking or whether
Speaker 3: you're singing, you get royalties, you get reiduals, but the
Speaker 3: composer doesn't. But like I say, five hundred dollars during
Speaker 3: those days, you know it was great and it should
Speaker 3: have lasted a month. That's what most commercials do, but
Speaker 3: that one as lasted as a forty years amazing, Rent
Speaker 3: Very Manlow.
Speaker 2: His show is coming August seventeenth, seven pm at the
Speaker 2: pay Comm Center. Tickets on sale a ticket Master in
Speaker 2: paycom box office. Your Manelow Music Project. Is there a
Speaker 2: website for that?
Speaker 3: Barry? Yeah, I think it's going to just go online
Speaker 3: the Landlot Music Project and tell you everything about it.
Speaker 2: And learn more about that and how important music is
Speaker 2: to our high schools. And thank you for taking some
Speaker 2: time with us today and we look forward to seeing
Speaker 2: you at the pay Comm Center.
Speaker 3: Thanks please, bye bye everybody.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee
Speaker 1: Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live
Speaker 1: weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation