Burt Bacharach R.I.P.

As anyone who knows me well is aware, I've been a huge fan of Burt Bacharach since my teens and so it's inevitable that the news of his death at the grand age of 94 has saddened me. But my over-riding emotion is one of gratitude for all the happiness that his music has given me for so long. I first came across him by accident one evening, watching a TV special called 'An Evening with Burt Bacharach' when I was fourteen. I was amazed to find that so many of the songs I loved had been written by the same man. And I also found his obsessive passion for his work - whether writing, playing the piano, or conducting - enthralling. Equally obsessive, I set about finding every song he'd written, every scrap of information I could find. 

If ever I was depressed or stressed through studying for exams, playing his music was astonishingly therapeutic - and I continue to find that it does me a power of good in any times of trouble. In those days, to be an unapologetic and evangelistic Bacharach obsessive exposed me to a degree of mockery from the fashionable kids who favoured prog rock bands. It was water off a duck's back - I couldn't care less about fashion or being trendy. I'd already learned that you have to be true to what you care about, whatever other people think or say. 

When I sat my Oxford University entrance exam and was confronted by a question asking me simply to write about the twentieth century's greatest composer, I knew exactly what to write. When I was interviewed for a place at Balliol, to study law, things didn't go well at first. I felt completely overawed. Then one of the three tutors said in a rather baffled tone: 'You're the chap who wrote the essay about Burt Bacharach, aren't you?' 'That's me.' 'I thought you padded the essay with rather a lot of song titles,' he said. 'He's written a lot of very good songs', I retorted. 'I was making a case. Like an advocate does.' From that moment on, we got on extremely well and I duly became a Balliol man. Not entirely thanks to Burt, but he made a contribution!   

When I started to write novels, I decided to feature a Bacharach reference in each one. Sometimes there were several. 'The Look of Love' is one of those in the first book, All the Lonely People, and after I took my agent Mandy to watch his musical Promises, Promises, I featured a fictitious performance in The Devil in Disguise. There are even Bacharach references smuggled into The Golden Age of Murder and The Life of Crime. This was my way of acknowledging all the pleasure his work has brought me. The forthcoming Rachel Savernake book, Sepulchre Street, may be set in 1931 but it still has plenty of Bacharach stuff in it, albeit in disguise.

At one point, I thought about writing a book about him.I talked to an editor about the idea and as a first step I interviewed Johnny Hamp, the TV producer who gave Burt his first major TV break with The Bacharach Sound and whose reminscences were fascinating. But I realised I couldn't do the job as well as it needed to be done, so I gave up. I rather wish the ghost writer of Burt's autobiography Anyone Who Had a Heart had realised the same thing. The 1996 TV documentary  was far better.

On one occasion, my firm sponsored a classical concert at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and at dinner afterwards I had the pleasure of sitting next to the great conductor Vasily Petrenko. One of my partners cheekily (if unwisely) bet me that I couldn't work Burt Bacharach into the conversation. So I asked Vasily if he ever conducted while playing the piano. 'Too difficult,' he said. When I said Burt does it, Vasily grinned and said, 'He is a real maestro!'

The first LP I ever bought was Burt's Portrait in Music - decades later it was featured on the cover of the first Oasis album, Definitely Maybe. When the great man enjoyed a long overdue revival of popularity in 1996, I was present at that memorable night at the Royal Festival Hall when he played with Noel Gallagher. Each time he returned to Britain, I was there in the audience, watching him perform alongside and having his songs sung by the likes of Bob Geldof, Elvis Costello, Paul Carrack, Justin Hayward, Alfie Boe, Melody Federer, Yazz, Will Young, and many more - including, of course, his greatest interpreter, Dionne Warwick. Standing ovations time and again. 

Burt Bacharach's name is rightly associated most closely with that great lyricist Hal David, but his collaborators include Bob Hilliard, Carly Simon, Elvis Costello, Brian Wilson, Neil Simon, Daniel Tashian, John Bettis, Tim Rice, Carole Bayer Sager, Paul Anka, Bernie Taupin, B.A. Robertson, David Foster, Sally Stevens, James Kavanaugh, Neil Diamond, Anthony Newley, Richard Marx, Gerry Goffin, Norman Gimbel, Diane Warren, Cathy Dennis, Dr Dre, and many more. I had the pleasure of meeting his lyricist Steven Sater when I saw their new musical Some Lovers  a few years ago. Diane Warren has just described Burt Bacharach as the Beethoven of the songwriting world, and it was Burt's performances of Beethoven and Rhapsody in Blue in a couple of those early TV specials that helped me to discover the joys of classical music. 

I'm so glad I saw Burt on his last tour, back in 2019, when he performed with Joss Stone. That evening I met up again with some of the friends I've made who are fellow Bacharach enthusiasts, notably Davide Bonori (who some years ago got Burt to let me have his autograph) and Roberto Pinardi, who has compiled a fantastic 4 CD set of the instrumentals. Here we are, outside the Hammersmith Apollo on a wonderful sunny evening - one of the many magic moments I associate with the man who actually wrote Magic Moments. That night, Burt was on stage non-stop for just over two hours, playing piano, conducting, even singing (not his forte, but in his younger days the 'rumpled baritone' had an indefinable appeal). His stamina was extraordinary. And he was 91 years old...

One of the things I find inspiring about Burt Bacharach is that he kept his creative fire burning to the end of his life. He was nominated for two Grammys after passing the age of 90 - absolutely incredible. His last music video, released less than a year ago is charming. Maybe it was his last public performance; if so, a suitably poignant note to end on.

Since my books often feature death, naturally I think about it from time to time. I long ago came to the conclusion that since everyone dies, what really matters is what one achieves in life, not how that life ends. I've spent more than fifty years looking forward to the next new Burt Bacharach song. Now there will be no more - although happily, some of his previously unreleased work with Elvis Costello is due to come out next month - but I'm hugely thankful for the endless pleasure he's given me. Without his music my life would have been significantly less joyful. And his catalogue is so extraordinary, extensive, and eclectic that there''ll always be something there to remind me. 

The Maestro

There are some opportunities in life that are simply not to be missed. As soon as I discovered that Burt Bacharach was returning to Britain to appear in concert with Joss Stone, I knew I had to grab a ticket. The great man is 91 years old now and even if I managed to get to that age with faculties intact, I'm sure I wouldn't be contemplating two hours non-stop in concert. But that's exactly the treat that was in store for last night's audience at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith.

It's often struck me that Bacharach has something in common with Agatha Christie. Both were great innovators with the gift of taking a form of popular culture and reinventing it in a unique way. Both have enjoyed phenomenal and lasting success (Bacharach's first two number one hits are now more than 60 years old). Both have had their work sneered at and dismissed as uncool,. And both are now recognised, perhaps more widely than ever before, as having achieved something very special in a hugely competitive field, with a body of work that continues to exert global appeal.

Burt Bacharach was in fantastic form last night. As well as many of the famous songs, we heard newish ones (last year's anti-Donald Trump song With a Voice and this year's anti-gun violence song Live To See Another Day) and less familiar ones such as Falling Out of Love, a terrific song which was a minor hit for Aretha Franklin, and the film song Something Big. Joss Stone's best contributions were also relatively unfamiliar songs, In Between the Heartaches and Are You There With Another Girl? She's no Dionne Warwick, but she did a good job.

It was a feelgood occasion, even though the venue was markedly inferior to the Royal Festival Hall (different tickets had different start times for the concert, and the staff didn't seem to know much about the timings). I was delighted to meet up with a group of Italian fans who had come over to London specially for the concert. They included my good friends Davide Bonori and Roberto Pinardi, and it was amazing to recall that we've been sharing rare Bacharach tracks for upwards of twenty years now. As he often does these days, Burt introduced his young son Oliver, who performed on the keyboards for a couple of numbers. His band and the background singers were excellent, as always. One reviewer preferred the three singers to Joss Stone, whereas another took the opposite line, and allowed one or two of the old cliches about this kind of music to slip into an otherwise reasonable assessment. For the fans, it was an utterly memorable occasion. Whether we'll see Burt Bacharach on these shores again, I don't know, but he fully deserved the ecstatic standing ovation he received at the end of a wonderful night.

Football Fever and other celebrations

As England celebrates an improbable run of success in the World Cup, the British Library publishes tomorrow a novel that is surely the best of all classic mysteries with a football setting, Leonard Gribble's The Arsenal Stadium Mystery. Great timing! I'm delighted to see this book back in print, and even though I'm not an Arsenal fan, it's an enjoyable fair puzzle mystery that was turned into an equally entertaining film.

England's unexpectedly convincing win against Sweden came as a happy extra birthday present on Saturday. I just got back home in time for the match, following a quick trip to London to watch Burt Bacharach in concert at the Royal Festival Hall. In keeping with the mood, the great man wore an England football shirt throughout. It was a wonderful evening, quite well reviewed here, and we were treated to three new songs, including a very good one that has never been publicly performed before. The standing ovation was utterly deserved, after more than two hours of non-stop melody. Few 90 year olds could compete with this stunning performance, that's for sure.

After the match on Saturday we headed to North Wales for an enjoyable dinner at a nice hotel before on Sunday I achieved a long held ambition. When I was a small boy, we often went on holiday to North Wales, and I became fascinated by an island off Anglesey called Puffin Island. For many years, rats took over from the sea birds, but now they are gone and wildlife boat trips to Puffin Island from the historic town of Beaumaris are available.

I've wanted to take such a trip for a while, and the perfect weather yesterday made it a memorable occasion. It was fascinating to see at close quarters the island which intrigued me so much when I was small. There were seals, as well as innumerable birds. And the puffins are back - it was fun to see them flying around. All in all, a marvellous weekend.  

Some Lovers at The Other Palace - review

It doesn't seem that long ago to me, but in fact it's 21 years since my agent Mandy and I went to see a London revival of the musical Promises, Promises! at the fascinating Bridewell theatre. I knew the soundtrack very well, but was intrigued finally to see the show in performance, and really enjoyed it. And the outcome was a scene in The Devil in Disguise, with the theatre transferred to Liverpool and given a fresh guise. Suffice to say that in the book, Harry Devlin loved the show as much as I did.

This week I went back to London to watch another musical, Some Lovers, at the Other Palace (so named because it's very close to Buckingham Palace - great location and a very appealing venue). The show was on a very short run, as part of a festival of new music. And I found it irresistible because it's the first musical Burt Bacharach has written since 1968, when Promises, Promises! was a big hit on Broadway and in the West End. Promises, Promises! had lyrics by the great Hal David, and a book by the very witty Neil Simon. I once went to a concert at the Royal Albert Hall where Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice explained how much they were influenced by that show. I don't suppose Some Lovers will prove quite as influential, but you never know.

What I do know is that I had a great time. The venue was very intimate, and on the front row, we were within arm's reach of the performers. The four cast members play two people. The book adapts O. Henry's story "The Gift of the Magi", and presents a couple when their relationship begins and then, twenty years later, after it has fallen apart. Yes, they are older - but are they any wiser?

The lyrics and book are by Steven Sater, best known for Spring Awakening. He was in the bar at the start of the show and I was glad of the chance to have a brief chat with him/.I thought the four performers did a good job, and I enjoyed listening to so many new songs by the great man, who is still writing terrific music. Some of the songs have already been recorded or tried out in live performance. For example, here is Rumer singing Some Lovers, and Karima singing Just Walk Away. The Italian version of Every Other Hour has already been a success for Karima and Mario Biondi. Among other excellent tracks, I'd single out  the terrific Welcome to My World, which was the highlight for me of a very enjoyable night. Will Some Lovers find its way into another mystery novel one day? Don't bet against it!

Roaming Around

One great advantage of no longer being a full-time lawyer is that I have the chance to fit into my calendar more fun trips and events than used to be the case when I was commuting five days a week. In recent times I've been making the most of this,and today's post rounds up just a few of the enjoyable events that have occupied me recently.

Let me start with Tuesday's CWA Daggers ceremony, and the award of the CWA Diamond Dagger to Catherine Aird. It was a huge pleasure for me to be with Catherine on this special occasion, and I don't believe anyone could deny that she is a worthy winner of this accolade. It's not easy for authors, however eminent, who lack a powerful publicity machine nowadays, but the outpouring of enthusiasm that has greeted news of Catherine's success illustrates that her many years of quietly producing fine mystery fiction are very, very, widely appreciated.

I've been catching up lately with a number of nice people whom I haven't seen in a long time. A week last Friday, I met up with two Italian friends I've been in touch with for about twenty years - but never actually met until now. Davide Bonori and Roberto Pinardi are delightful chaps who share my musical passion, and we met up at Burt Bacharach's concert at the Royal Festival Hall. The event was televised by the BBC, and will reach your screens before too long, no doubt. The great man starred at Glastonbury the following afternoon, and although he is now 87 years old, he was still in terrific form. I was equally glad to meet Davide and Roberto in person.

I've also had my first trip on Eurostar, spending a couple of days in Ghent. It's a picturesque city, on a par with lovely Bruges, and my son and I had a fine time seeing the sights. I've tried to conjure up a link between Ghent and detective fiction, but failed miserably. Perhaps Poirot or Simenon knew it well. Whatever. I can strongly recommend this lovely city.

Finally, I've looked round several exhibitions in London. Among other things, I popped in to the British Library shop, and signed copies of The Golden Age of Murder. I have to say that the piles of Crime Classics gladdened my heart.. They are still selling incredibly well.....

Cilla - ITV episode 3 review

Cilla, the final episode of which aired this evening, has been ITV's most successful drama since Broadchurch. It's not a crime show, but I've really enjoyed it, not least because it's offered a wonderful recreation of the Merseybeat era, which formed the backdrop for my personal favourite of the Harry Devlin novels, Yesterday's Papers. A framed cover of the book still hangs, I'm told, in the Cavern Club, and the original Cavern was where Cilla Black made her name in the Sixties.

The success of the show, scripted by Jeff Pope, owes a huge amount to Sheridan Smith's performance as Cilla. She's such a warm, entrancing actor, and her singing is fantastic. At the end of episode two, her performance of Cilla's first number one hit, Anyone Who Had a Heart, was stunningly good. So good, n fact, that it seems to have propelled Cilla's original version (itself a cover of Dionne Warwick's version, written and produced by Bacharach and David) back into the Top 40 after so many years.

The story is a simple one - a Liverpool girl with a powerful voice overcomes obstacles to find fame and fortune - but edge was added in this episode by the focus on her manager, Brian Epstein, whose life spirals out of control as he struggles to combine looking after Cilla and the Beatles with a sequence of personal disasters. Tom Stoppard's son Ed was very good as Epstein.

I loved the recreation of Cilla's famous recording of Alfie, with Burt Bacharach demanding take after take in his quest for the perfection he took for granted with Dionne .As the Youtube version of the original session at Abbey Road shows, it was quite an occasion. Cilla was certainly lucky to have the chance to record two of the finest pop ballads ever written, but she made the most of her good fortune.

At the end of episode three, I was left marvelling at the range and ability of Sheridan Smith. I'm often asked which actor I'd like to play Hannah Scarlett, in the (perhaps unlikely) event that the Lake District Mysteries ever make it to the small screen. After watching Cilla, I'd certainly say that Sheridan Smith would have a place on my list of ideal candidates. To quote from another great song, I can dream, can't I?.  

Writing a memoir

I've never had any urge to write a memoir or autobiography, but I've read a good many. Most of them leave something to be desired, often because the author succumbs to the temptation to write in a self-serving way. But there are some good ones around, including Time to be in Earnest, by P.D. James, which is (of course) very readable indeed. And I quite liked Agatha Christie's autobiography. Even there, though, one wonders about what has been left out, for instance because the author found it too difficult to write about.

Memoirs of showbiz stars and politicians are especially dodgy. I am a huge fan of Dionne Warwick, whose voice at its best was almost unequalled in its power, range and sensitivity. Yet her memoirs were very disappointing as far as I was concerned. I learned little of interest and felt that she was too anxious to present herself positively.

Accordingly, I approached the brand new autobiography of Burt Bacharach, Anyone Who Had a Heart: my life and music (published by Atlantic Books in the UK) with trepidation. I admire the composer enormously, but I've heard all his anecdotes before. Or so I thought. I wasn't prepared for a book that was far from an exercise in self-justification. Bizarrely, it's more like an exercise in self-flagellation. There's a great deal about his failed marriages and other relationships (he was the perfect choice to write a movie song called Wives and Lovers, that's for sure) and a huge amount about the tragic life and eventual suicide of his daughter Nikki, If I had three ex-wives, I am fairly sure I wouldn't have the courage to invite them to express their views about me in my autobiography, but that's what we have in this book, and it sometimes makes for very bleak reading.

The ghost writer is Robert Greenfield, a long-time journalist for Rolling Stone, and in many ways he has done a very good job. It's an extremely readable book, with many witty and unexpected stories (I specially liked the one about Elizabeth Taylor's dining habits). More importantly, it casts light on what it is like to be an obsessive, someone so ferociously devoted to perfectionism in his craft that he allows other things to happen in his life that are a long way short of perfect. It's an extraordinarily human, warts and all portrait. For a novelist like me, this makes riveting reading, and it would do even if I had not loved the man's music for as long as I can remember.

I do, however, think that Greenfield could have produced an even better book with a bit more work. There's not enough analysis of the people, the fascinating world that Bacharach has moved in, or of the music. It's very interesting and entertaining, there's plenty of scope to read between the lines, and it must be one of the best showbiz memoirs for many a long year. But  I still wish Greenfield had shown some of the perfectionsm of his subject. Had he done so, he'd have contributed to an even better book.

A Night to Remember

One magic moment after another...after dinner last week in the company of P.D.. James, something very different last night, when I had the thrill of attending a truly fantastic concert at the Royal Festival Hall,. The RFH saw the return of Burt Bacharach, whom I last saw there in 1996, a legendary occasion when Noel Gallagher came on stage to sing while the great man played the piano.

As a lifelong Bacharach fan, I've included references to his songs in all my novels (except the book about Dr Crippen, needless to say) and aspects of the songs actually play a part in the plot in three of the Harry Devlin books. So I was always going to love the show, but to judge by the repeated standing ovations, so did everyone else. And although in the past, some critics failed to 'get' why this man's music will last indefinitely, things have changed, and I enjoyed the laudatory reviews in The Daily Telegraph and The Independent.

For a man of 85 to perform in concert for over two hours without an interval is a feat in itself - as he said, "at my time of life, this is the you've got to be kidding tour" -, but what was really striking was the huge affection as well admiration that the audience had for one of popular culture's iconic figures. Someone told me that when he arrived for a rehearsal and emerged from his limo he was mobbed by well-wishers. Quite something for a song-writer who started out as Marlene Dietrich's conductor.And he's still writing all the time. The current work in progress, he explained, is a musical co-written with Elvis Costello, and two new songs written with Steven Sater of Spring Awakening fame were included along with many of the classics..

I've seen Burt Bacharach in concert five times and, expecting this to be my last opportunity, I was determined to seize it. I'm so glad I did. There was also a nice moment when a young man came on stage to play keyboards briefly and, as  he departed, Burt announced it was his son, Oliver Bacharach. When someone shouted out, "Bring him back"", Burt said, "He only knows one song!" He did come back though, to share in a truly memorable occasion.

Hal David R.I.P.

Hal David, the American lyricist, has died at the age of 91. It's extremely sad news as far as I'm concerned, as he wrote the lyrics to a great many of my absolutely favourite songs. Hal David has often been described as 'legendary' - Paul Gambaccini, speaking to BBC News, has just described him as a 'giant' - yet he was a modest man, content by and large to remain in the shadow of his main songwriting partner, Burt Bacharach, to whose complex and sophisticated melodies he supplied words that were, in contrast, straightforward, yet somehow equally distinctive and memorable.

David had an extraordinary gift - the ability to make a very challenging form seem remarkably easy. His approach to writing offers a shining example not only to other lyricists, but to anyone who uses the written word for artistic purposes. He used to say that it's easy to write something complex - what's really difficult is to write something simple, something that sounds so natural that it seems as though nobody 'wrote' it. The more I've learned about writing, the more I've realised how true this is. 

The only time I saw Hal David in the flesh was at a Royal Albert Hall tribute concert, when Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice paid glowing tribute to the influence that he and Bacharach had on their writing of musicals, and this admiration was shared by countless people all over the world. Only a couple of months or so ago, Barack Obama lauded David's work when he and Bacharach became the first songwriting duo to win the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize. There's even a video of Obama on Youtube singing the opening words of 'Walk on By'.

Hal David conjured up crisp phrases in his lyrics - phrases such as 'walk on by', 'make it easy on yourself', 'what the worlds need now is love', 'do you know the way to San Jose?' 'what's it all about, Alfie?', 'anyone who had a heart' and many others - that stayed in the mind. The lyric to '24 Hours from Tulsa' offers a brilliant, heart-rending story about adultery in a few lines - and I used that lyric as a reference point in a rather dark short story named after the song which was included in Best British Mysteries a few years back. He can even be forgiven for rhyming 'phone ya' with 'pneumonia' because the lyric to 'I'll Never Fall in Love Again' is such a concise - and witty - masterpiece. It was written for the musical Promises, Promises, a show which provides part of the background for the Harry Devlin novel The Devil in Disguise.

A Hal David lyric provided a clue to the solution of the mystery in my very first book, All the Lonely People,and another led to a key revelation of the fourth, Yesterday's Papers. I'm pretty confident that his work features more often in my novels than that of any other novelist, and that's simply because I love those Bacharach and David songs so much. In the 60s, it was their work, even more than that of the Beatles, that gave me my love of music. For that I shall forever be grateful. Thanks, Hal, for all those countless magic moments. (And yes, he did write 'Magic Moments'.)

Forgotten Music - Jackie Deshannon

Jackie DeShannon is a very good songwriter, but perhaps even better as a singer, certainly in her heyday in the 60s and 70s, and my contribution today to Scott Parker’s series of Forgotten Music is a selection of obscure recordings Jackie made that deserve to be remembered.

Her most famous song is What the World Needs Now – definitely not forgotten! It was written by Bacharach and David, originally with Gene Pitney in mind, but Jackie’s version is definitive, especially since it featured in the closing scene of the movie Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice. This success prompted the songwriters to team up with DeShannon on a number of other records. For all her class, she wasn’t really Dionne Warwick, and none was a big hit, but I like, among others, Windows and Doors and Come and Get Me.

In the late 70s, with his career temporarily in the doldrums, Bacharach collaborated with Paul Anka on the soundtrack for a rather strange film called Together. The music is excellent, but again little known. I’m delighted that YouTube has come up with videos of Burt and Jackie performing two of the songs she sang for the film, Find Love and I Don’t Need You Any More. A bit of Jackie trivia from Wikipedia: she was apparently once Elvis Presley’s girlfriend.

Forgotten Music - Loneliness Remembers

My latest entry for Scott Parker’s series of Forgotten Music is an evocative song which is one of the more obscure entries in Dionne Warwick’s extensive catalogue. It was subsequently recorded by Stephanie Mills on her debut alburm, but for some reason it never made any real impression on anyone other than the keenest fans of Bacharach-David songs.

Dionne Warwick has always been my favourite female singer and I’ve seen her in concert several times. Her voice was, in the 60s, quite incredible for its range, and although age (and smoking) have not improved it, she still sounded pretty good when I heard her perform in Manchester a couple of years ago. Burt Bacharach recognised her special gifts when she was a young background singer, and she became the definitive interpreter of his work.

Loneliness Remembers is no Walk On By, or Anyone Who Had a Heart. Yet I think it’s a good song, and it did feature in a very interesting segment of a television special about 40 years ago. Happily, the clip has now cropped up on Youtube and it’s still interesting as a portrayal of a composer introducing his muse to his latest creation. Enjoy!

Forgotten Song - Waiting for Charlie to Come Home

My latest entry in Scott Parker’s series of Forgotten Music is a song that dates back almost half a century. ‘Waiting for Charlie to Come Home’ was recorded by Etta James and Jane Morgan when first written, but it was never a hit, and it might have faded from sight completely but for a couple of things.

The words were written by Bob Hilliard, a terrific lyricist who died more than 40 years ago, but was responsible for some great songs, including Any Day Now, Please Stay and Mexican Divorce, as well as comic tunes like Three Wheels on My Wagon. He could do humour or high drama equally well.

But the reasons for the song’s survival are twofold. One, it comes from Burt Bacharach’s back catalogue, and Burt’s longevity has helped the song to find fresh life, most recently in jazzier versions by two fine European artistes - Traincha, from Holland, and the Italian Karima. And two, it is quite simply a very good song.

Forgotten Music - On the Flip Side

In my quest to find something else of interest and great obscurity for Scott Parker’s monthly series about Forgotten Music, I’ve tracked down some very rare footage from a genuinely forgotten musical written in 1966 for television called On the Flip Side. The musical featured former teen idol Ricky Nelson, who sought to mark his transition to entertaining a more mature audience by the cunning device of changing his name to – Rick Nelson. Joanie Somers co-starred.

The musical was written by (you guessed it) Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and, although a few of the songs – notably the excellent ‘They Don’t Give Medals to Yesterday’s Heroes’) - survived and were covered by the likes of Dionne Warwick, Chuck Jackson and Jackie De Shannon, the musical itself promptly disappeared from sight and even diehard Bacharach-David fans were mostly unaware of it until its rediscovery a few years back. The soundtrack is now available on CD, and the music is enjoyable, as you might expect from two songwriters who were at their peak. Some years ago, a friend sent me a grainy VHS recording of the show, and it has to be said that the performances (let alone the clothes) have not stood the test of time as well as the music.

But it’s a curiosity, and I’ve now discovered a link to a good quality Youtube
clip which features three of the songs. Enjoy!

Incidentally, although On the Flip Side was no masterpiece, it paved the way for Bacharach and David’s one and only stage musical, Promises, Promises. That show was enormously successful, and it’s just about to be revived on Broadway. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice say that Promises, Promises changed the way in which stage musicals were written. But perhaps it might never have happened but for the groundwork of On the Flip Side.

Forgotten Music - The Fool KIiller

Helen Eustis wrote a stunning debut crime novel, The Horizontal Man, a fine work of psychological suspense, but she did not attempt to build on that success by carving out a career as a novelist. She did, however, in due course write a second novel, The Fool Killer, which was turned into a film in 1965 starring Anthony Perkins.

In the 60s it was common for movie-makers to commission songwriters to produce a song to promote a forthcoming film. Often, the song did not appear in the film. A famous example is Gene Pitney’s 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance', another is Jack Jones’ 'Wives and Lovers', and yet another (though Cher’s version did appear in the US version of the movie) was Cilla Black’s 'Alfie'. Those three songs were enormously successful, and each of them was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

The duo were, it seems, hired to write a promotional song for The Fool Killer, and Gene Pitney (who recorded many of their songs, and was actually the intended performer of ‘What The World Needs Now is Love’, ultimately recorded by Jackie De Shannon) was asked to sing the song. But it was not a hit – it’s too unusual to have been a hit - and very few people are aware of it.

Yet it is an extraordinary piece of work. 'The Fool Killer' is to be found on Youtube and the observation is made in the comments that it’s a unique song. I agree – it’s a haunting melody, yet quite unlike any of Bacharach’s other tunes, just as the enigmatic lyric is far from typical of Hal David’s work. This is a song that should not be forgotten.

Forgotten Music - What Am I Doing Here?

Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books on Fridays is digressing into music today, and this gives me the chance to mention a song I really love which I’m sure few if any readers of this blog will ever have heard. And it has an indirect connection to one of my Harry Devlin novels. It’s a forgotten song because it was written for a musical, and then cut out of it. It’s common for such changes to be made to a musical, but a real shame that such a haunting ballad should be consigned to the vaults

My choice is ‘What Am I Doing Here?’ and I came across it thanks to a series of CDs called ‘Lost in Boston’ which collect songs that were cut from musicals. Liz Callaway’s version appears on ‘Lost in Boston 2’, and is quite marvellous – she is a very good singer.

The song was written for the musical Promises, Promises, which debuted on Broadway in 1968, but it was cut out at the last minute. The book of the show was written by Neil Simon, the music by Burt Bacharach, and the lyrics by Hal David. The show was based on that splendid Billy Wilder film The Apartment. If you don’t know the story, it’s about a keen young American who lends his apartment to his bosses so they can conduct their affairs. Our hero falls for Fran, who has been seduced by a senior executive, J.B.Sheldrake. In this particular song, Fran wonders why she keeps on with the affair, which she realises is hopeless.

Promises, Promises was enormously successful in its day. It won awards and yielded the famous song 'I'll Never Fall in Love Again'. However, the book is very much of its time, and the show hasn’t been seen much since (though I gather a revival on Broadway is forthcoming.) In about 1996 it was performed at the Bridewell Theatre in London, and I went to see it. I enjoyed it so much that I introduced a performance of the show in Liverpool, as a backdrop to one of the scenes in The Devil in Disguise. But although the Bridewell version did include one of the many songs dropped from the Broadway original, they didn’t find room for ‘What Am I Doing Here?’ Burt Bacharach continues to write great songs to this day, but he's never written another stage musical, and I suspect I remain destined to be one of the few people who think 'What Am I Doing Here?' is a masterpiece. A shame.

April Fools

25 years ago today, I became a partner in Mace & Jones, the Liverpool law firm where I continue to work. So my elevation came on April Fool’s Day – and by an interesting coincidence, I qualified as a solicitor on April Fool’s Day, back in 1980. Perhaps that says something about my legal career.

I also got married one April day, and – much to my Dad’s amusement – insisted that the celebratory music, nearly all of which was written by my hero Burt Bacharach, should include the theme song to an unremarkable movie that I’ve never seen, called… The April Fools. A very beautiful melody, by the way.

All of which leads me to a question which I hope the knowledgeable people who glance at this blog may be able to answer. I’ve never come across a story which had, as an important element of the plot, the fact that it was set on April Fool’s Day. I have such an idea in mind, but before I start writing it down, I’d be interested to know if anyone has beaten me to it…..

Janet Hutchings and EQMM

One of the real highlights of my trip to Baltimore was to be invited to lunch by Janet Hutchings, the editor of ‘Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’. We originally met ten years ago, when the first US edition of one of my novels was published, and I visited New York ahead of a trip to the Philadelphia Bouchercon, and it was lovely to see her again.

Janet has published a sizeable number of my stories in EQMM over the years and I’m grateful to have such a connection with a marvellous short story magazine that now enjoys legendary status within the genre.

Janet also introduced me to an American crime writer I hadn’t come across before – Melodie Johnson Howe (lower photo.) Melodie turned to crime (fictionally) after a career in acting, and I’m keen to check out her work.

Incidentally, Melodie is married, as she says, to a legend – the record producer Bones Howe. Bones produced one of my favourite sixties songs of lost love – ‘One Less Bell To Answer’, written by the great Burt Bacharach, who featured yesterday in an interview in 'The Guardian', and whose latest concert at The Roundhouse is to be televised on the BBC on Tuesday night (just as well because I couldn't get a ticket...) The title of that song, by the way, is one I fancy using for a crime story one of these days.