Barry Manilow

• Born: June 17, 1946
• Place of Birth: Brooklyn, New York

SINGER, MUSICIAN, SONGWRITER, AND ENTERTAINER

Manilow’s music, which he writes, plays, and sings, is acclaimed worldwide. A consummate performer, Manilow has been popular on stage since the 1970s.

Early Life

Barry Manilow is the only child of Harold Kelliher, a truck driver, and Edna Manilow, a secretary. Her parents refused consent for the marriage until Kelliher legally changed his name to Pincus, his paternal grandmother’s maiden name. However, Manilow’s name was changed legally before his Bar Mitzvah. His parents divorced when Manilow was a baby, and he grew up living with his mother and her parents, who had emigrated from Russia. As a child, Manilow liked to sing along with the songs on radio, and at age seven he started accordion lessons. When his mother remarried, her husband, William E. Murphy, introduced Manilow to jazz music. According to Manilow, jazz sounded silly on the accordion. He easily learned to play a neighbor’s piano and convinced his mother to purchase an eight-hundred-dollar Wurlitzer. Playing that piano was, according to Manilow, the beginning of his life.

Encouraged by his mother, he became proficient at the piano and began creating his own arrangements. During his sophomore year in high school, he organized a band, and music became his passion. During high school, he met Susan Deixler; they married in 1964. The marriage was annulled a year later. Following graduation in 1961, Manilow determined music was not a career option and decided on advertising. He got a job at an advertising agency and enrolled in evening classes at City College. When the ad agency failed, Manilow started working in the mail room at the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). There he made contacts and started playing piano at the CBS recording studios. Manilow developed a reputation as a pianist and began creating arrangements for singers. He and a friend, Marty Panzer, began writing songs. At that point, Manilow decided against pursuing a career in advertising and enrolled in the New York College of Music; he would later take evening courses in orchestration at the Juilliard School.

Focused on a career in music, Manilow seized any opportunities to come his way. He met Bro Herrod, a director at CBS who was reviving an old melodrama, The Drunkard (1934). Herrod hired Manilow to play piano for the rehearsals; however, Manilow wrote additional songs, turning The Drunkard into a musical. He also started playing piano with a jazz trio and began coaching singers. One of those singers was Jeanne Lucas. She and Manilow created an act, and when Lucas was offered a job singing at the Holiday Inn in Richmond, Illinois, Manilow left his job at CBS to take a chance on a career in music. After two days, they were fired. Back in New York, Manilow eked out a living playing piano for various singers. His skill at sight reading and his ability to arrange music made him a popular choice. Various jobs, including playing piano in Chicago and a gig with Lucas at the Downstairs at the Upstairs nightclub, kept him busy.

During the day, Manilow was the musical director for the WCBS-TV series Callback. He also arranged music for Ed Sullivan Productions. To earn money, Manilow began writing jingles for commercials; some became classics, such as the State Farm commercial and his catchy Band-Aid advertisement.

Life’s Work

Late in 1970, Manilow was hired to play piano for an auditioning singer at the Continental Baths, an openly gay Turkish bath. There he met singer Bette Midler, who was at the beginning of her career. Although initially engaged as a rehearsal pianist, Manilow became her accompanist, arranger, and music director, beginning an association that lasted three years. Her sold-out concert in Carnegie Hall in 1972 was Manilow’s first chance to conduct an orchestra hired to play his own arrangements. He also coproduced an album that won a Grammy Award for Midler as best new artist.

In October 1972, Manilow sang three of his songs on a demonstration tape. Irv Beigel, president of Bell Records, heard the tape and offered Manilow a singing contract. To promote his first album, Manilow toured with Midler. Never sure of himself as a performer, Manilow began to develop a stage presence and received his first standing ovation for “Could It Be Magic” at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. Although Manilow’s principal job during Midler’s 1973 tour was music director, his twenty-minute spot became popular with audiences. The next step in his career was a solo tour that began in March 1974, in Boston. Manilow was also working on his second album for Bell, but changes at Bell resulted in new personnel and a new name: Arista. Clive Davis, the new president, was less interested in Manilow’s “quality” songs and more interested in reaching a young audience and making the Top Forty. Davis suggested that Manilow record “Mandy.” It became the number-one record in the country in 1975 and launched Manilow’s career.

During the second half of the 1970s, Manilow toured, wrote music, and had a succession of top-ten singles, including the upbeat “It’s a Miracle,” “I Write the Songs,” “Looks Like We Made It,” and “Even Now.” He put together a television special that earned an Emmy Award in 1977. That year he also won a Tony Special Award for his sold-out concert Barry Manilow on Broadway. In 1978, five of his albums were simultaneously best sellers, and in 1979 he won the Grammy Award for “Copacabana.” By the 1980s, Manilow was popular worldwide. His 1983 open-air concert at Blenheim Palace in England attracted more than forty thousand fans. Manilow rediscovered his affinity for jazz and recorded 2:00 AM Paradise Café (1984). He wrote his autobiography in 1987, and his critically praised 1989 concert series, Barry Manilow at the Gershwin, was sold out. In the 1990s, Manilow continued to tour, record, and write. Manilow’s musical Copacabana, based on his hit song, premiered in Great Britain in 1994. His 1996 appearance on the Arts and Entertainment network’s Barry Manilow: Live by Request attracted an estimated 2.4 million viewers.

In the 2000s, Manilow experienced a resurgence in popularity. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2004, he signed a sixty-million-dollar contract with the Las Vegas Hilton that was renewed through 2007. His album The Great Songs of the Fifties (2006), the first of a series of “decades” albums, sold 156,000 copies during its first week, reaching number one on Billboard’s rankings in 2006, his first number-one album since 1977. In 2006, Manilow won another Emmy Award, this time for Barry Manilow: Music and Passion. His next album, The Greatest Songs of the Sixties, released in October 2006, sold 202,000 copies the first week. Appearances in 2004 and 2006, as guest artist and mentor, on the popular television show American Idol exposed Manilow to an entirely new audience. The tireless singer recorded another successful album, The Greatest Love Songs of All Time (2010), and opened a show at Las Vegas’s Paris Hotel and Casino in March 2010. The Greatest Love Songs of All Time was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album.

He released the album 15 Minutes, a meditation on fame inspired by the public struggles of singer Britney Spears, in 2011. It debuted at number seven on the Billboard 200 chart. Its lead single entered the top forty of the Hot 200 Singles chart, Manilow's forty-seventh single to do so. That year, he also hosted a radio documentary series on songwriters, They Write the Songs, for the BBC.

In 2013, Manilow performed a series of concerts on Broadway and performed at the US Capitol on the Fourth of July as part of the free annual concert "A Capitol Fourth," which is broadcast live on public television and radio. He released the album Night Songs, a collection of standards backed by only piano and acoustic bass, in 2014; it won a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. He followed this up with the album My Dream Duets the next year, which was nominated in the same category; this was Manilow's fifteenth Grammy nomination and the fourth in that category. Also in 2015, he embarked on a concert tour, which he stated at that time would be his last.

Manilow married his longtime partner Garry Kief, who also acts as his manager, in a private ceremony in 2014. They live in Palm Springs, California. Manilow donates frequently to various charities as well as administering his own, the Manilow Music Project, which donates musical instruments to public schools.

Significance

Manilow is a multitalented musician: accomplished pianist, award-winning arranger, popular songwriter, and entertainer. Success did not come immediately, and it was different from what Manilow, who never considered himself a singer, envisioned. His career, covering four decades, took off in the 1970s, and his music and personal style exhibited a staying power that astonished many. Having sold more than fifty million records worldwide, Manilow is a superstar.

Bibliography

Abramovitch, Seth. "Looks Like He Made It: Barry Manilow at 80." The Hollywood Reporter, 5 Jan. 2024, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/music-news/barry-manilow-career-marriage-broadway-show-1235778440/. Accessed 2 Sept. 2024.

Ali, Lorraine. “Barry Hot.” Newsweek, February 14, 2005: 56-57.

Butler, Patricia. Barry Manilow. London: Omnibus, 2002.

Manilow, Barry. Sweet Life: Adventures on the Way to Paradise. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987.

Manilow, Barry. "Icon Barry Manilow Talks About His New Album, His Charity And His First $1 Million Paycheck." Forbes, 11 Apr. 2017, www.forbes.com/sites/simonthompson/2017/04/11/icon-barry-manilow-talks-about-his-new-album-his-charity-and-his-first-1-million-paycheck/. Accessed 2 Sept. 2024.