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!

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 - 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 - 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.