YouSaid · the spoken record

Barry Manilow

lines on the record: 50
first: 2009-09-27
most recent: 2009-09-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“A book by a guy named Bear Grills, and it's called Man vs Wild Survival Techniques from the Most Dangerous Places on Earth, and so I thought, well, this is the book for me.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do and you know, I get letters and people stop me all the time. Last night, cab driver right here. right here in London just bent my ear for a good ten minutes about what my stuff is done was great what I want.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This actually meant a lot to me. Peter Gabriel's Don't Give Up. I was down, man. I was down during that year. I heard this one. It helped. That's what I always hope my songs do for people. This one really helped me.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I hope that people remember me as somebody who made them feel. That's really all I've wanted to do, like my early records that you've asked me to choose Sinatra, Judy, Jerry Mulligan. These are people who made me feel. I hope that I was one of those guys that made you feel. That's what I'd like to leave.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You go I do I do. I will go to their concerts now and again. They invite me. I go to these high schools and they're terrible, but they're wonderful. But they're wonderful.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You want to hear a silly story. The Smithsonian asked me if they could have it. So I sent it to them. What am I supposed to say? This stupid COPAC manager. So I gave an interview to some radio station. I said, I always knew it was going to wind up in an institution someday. And they were so insulted that they sent it back.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm very proud of the work that I did. I look back at thirty-five years of albums, music, and I guess it was that Copa shirt. I could regret that Copa shirt or the shoes or those big platform shoes.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I like it. I like being with my band. I like being with my singers, their friends, crew, and I enjoy it. As long as I'm not on the road, the road was the thing that killed me.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it stings fragile. I thought we'd get out of the 50s and 60s finally and go to something more contemporary. And I don't think there's any bitter that can beat this song and him. I don't think anybody has ever topped fragile.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, you know that. Listen, my theory is that we all wind up doing what we were safest with when we were about thirteen to fifteen. I was comfortable making music and I felt safe then.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Us a little bit of all of that. I got Gardinias going, I've got loads of fruits and vegetables going. It's great down there. It still allows me to be quiet. It's very healing.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know I do. I actually am not bad at it. I wouldn't say I have the greenest thumb in the world. But, you know, by myself, it's a very meditative thing, you know. I put on my classical music and I go down there and I actually. Before I know it, things are popping up. So, what is it?”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do as much normal things as I know how to do. Really, I do. I've got a greenhouse and I've learned how to play around down there. I have. I like that. I look at you, look at me like I'm talking Chinese to you.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was the people around me that helped me to accept it. I was surrounded with love. My friend Linda, they didn't leave. They just waited for me to land. And I did. I would say about four years later. I landed and I started to make friends with this fame and call everybody that I ever knew and apologized to them for behaving badly. And little by little, I got a life. Maybe it wasn't the life that I lost, but I got a lot of it back. And, you know, I got everybody back that I wanted.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, it could have been a lot of different classical pieces. I chose Brahms because the melody is so just so gorgeous and I'm a melody guy.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess I am. What would it have been like? I don't know. I don't know any different. Willie was pretty great. I thought he was a decent guy. He had a life. He had a son. He had a wife. And, you know, I guess he was happy. I certainly am.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then the next time it was after Amanda had come out, he just snuck backstage and he opened the door to my dressing room. I had my girlfriend Linda there at the time. And he poked his head in and I recognized him immediately, you know, and he said, he did good. You did good out there And that was that, and they left.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first time when I was 11 years old, my grandmother and my mother and my grandfather, they had me scared to death of this man. He was a monster that deserted me when I was like one years old. And one afternoon I was walking by myself outside our little brownstone. And he introduced himself and he said, I know it's your birthday coming up and I got you a tape recorder. I remember standing there stunned. I was 11 years old, he handed me this big reel-to-reel tape recorder, and I could see Grandma coming out of the Brownstone apartment across the street. And he said, have a good time. He jumped back into his truck and pulled away because he knew she was going to just probably just holler at him. So he didn't seem like a bad guy to me. But that was it.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't like that expression, but I think you're right. It feels like a perfectionist is a little crazy man. Just a wild man who won't let the thing go, and I don't think that's me. I don't think that's me. But I do. Here mistakes, I do hear that where I can make it better. If that's a perfectionist, then I try to put the best work out that I can.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it's not an easy relationship. We fight constantly. But year after year, I become more and more amazed at this man's talent. And I tell you, I am the grateful recipient of this guy's abilities. I mean, I've done, I would say three albums in my career that I didn't care about the public's taste. I mean, he represents the public's taste. Paradise Cafe was one of them. I didn't care whether anybody bought that. An album called Here at the Mayflower was another one. And there's one that's coming up. But the other ones, I say, well, what am I killing myself for if it's not going to land somewhere?”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lor Nero When I heard Laura's album, I stopped writing songs for a year. It stopped me from writing songs. It was so brilliant.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't. They did. The people that worked for me did. But I didn't stop them. I knew it was happening. I didn't know how to handle success, not that kind of success. And I had to figure out that this life that had disappeared was not coming back. I really wanted it to come back. My small life back, but it wasn't coming back. And I just had to learn how to accept this.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I looked up four years later and I didn't have any friends. I was somewhere on the road in some hotel room. I didn't even know the area code, and I was alone.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was some I think all of us go through it when this hurricane of success hits you. The worst of your personality comes out. That's what happens. And it hit me too. It hit me too after Mandy came out and I had a million people fawning over me and guessing me and the life I knew just disappeared and I was thrust into another universe. And I don't know how to behave. I just didn't know how to behave.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I still am. I've pride myself in being a gentleman. I like it. I feel the same way about my career. I take responsibility for this career that these strangers have given me. I don't do things that will wind up in the front page of the tabloids. I don't say things that could get me in trouble. I take it very seriously.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now Edna was more sophisticated. She was in Manhattan, she was a secretary, she was wearing spike heels, and she was not the typical Jewish mother.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very proud. She was a funny girl. I was his first producer. She would run around saying, and my grandparents were there. The whole family were very proud.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is the final piece from one of the most brilliant Broadway scores that Leonard Bernstein ever wrote, the musical called Candide. I mean, the last cut on Candide is Make Our Garden Grow. The end of that one is the one that rips your hair out. It's this gorgeous, gorgeous music, so go to it.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, Radio City. Oh man, yeah. My family took me to the Christmas show. Radio City. Very big deal. Orchestra is Galore. They would come up from the bottom. They'd come in from the top. Musicians, like all every musician in the world was on that stage. Oh, yeah, so it was a big deal when I stood up on that stage for rehearsal. And I stood on the stage of radio study looking at the seat that I used to sit in way up in the fourth balcony, standing on the stage and looking at the seat up there. Yeah, that was a big, big deal.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really didn't connect with learning what I learned at Juliart. I'll tell you what, the biggest education I could ever have was when I was doing commercials. I mean, I learned the rudiments of music when I went to school and I needed to do that. But after a while, it got pretty boring because they were going in the classical music area and I just didn't find that that was not my thing. But I needed to learn the language.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, it was such an honor. It was a thrill. When I met him, you know, he was one of my first phone calls when I decided that I was going to take a chance and get out of the pop record world and just do one for me. Michelangelo said one for the Pope, one for myself. So I did one for Clive Davis, the Pope, and one for me. So the one for me was my first jazz album.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Willie took me to my first jazz concert, and it was to Town Hall to see Jerry Mulligan Quartet. And again, it was just like Judy. It was another epiphany to hear that kind of talent coming off the stage from instruments this time. That's what I mean when you're talented and you tell the truth, it doesn't matter whether you got a saxophone in your mouth. It still was doing it to me.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was where I was the most comfortable, just like when I told you about my younger household, when the music was playing, everything was good. Well, when the music was playing, when I was 13 or 14, everything was good. Same thing happened with Edna and Willie. Edna and Willie, when they got married, they were always arguing they were alcoholics, you know. But when the music was playing, everything was better.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When Willie brought home this stack of albums, Willie Murphy was my stepfather, my mother remarried. And he brought with him a funny little stereo system which I'd never seen. It was a little square with speakers that I thought were like the greatest speakers ever. Now I know. It must have been awful. And he brought with him a stack of albums from jazz giants like Bill Evans and Chet Baker and Jerry Mulligan to singers like Judy and Frank and loads more of Broadway musicals. These were like a stack of gold to me. I mean, I was stuck with the accordion play in Haven Agilla, and suddenly here was Willie, and he said, what's he doing with an accordion? Get him a piano. And they got me a piano. And that was the beginning for me.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I tried to tell the truth in everything I do, but as far as a vocalist vote, that's the greatest vocalist. Sinatra and Judy, those are the two greatest voices that are telling us the truth that we ever had.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So far everything has been okay. You know, I just don't take it seriously. I take the audiences seriously. I take my work seriously. My voice. Because”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The next track you have is Judy's Over the Rainbow. And Edna, my mom, took me to see her when I was very young. And just even at that young age, I'll just never forget the emotions that were hitting me coming from the stage and coming from the orchestra. And I can actually remember because we were in the box seat, don't ask me how, looking down on the stage right there, right there, I could see Judy sitting on the stage singing over the rainbow. And it was an epiphany for a young musical guy. I never felt anything quite like that.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was it a happy household? When there was music there it was a happy household. When there was no music in the air, I'm not so sure. I think it was And a lot of work there was never any money. Everybody was always struggling. I'm not sure you can be happy when you're worried like that about putting food on the table and paying the rent for this little apartment that we were all squeezed into. But when the music happened, whether it was my stupid little accordion or when Edna was singing when the radio was on, yes, everybody was okay. Everything was okay when the music began.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wasn't born yet, so I don't She might have been bringing disgrace on the family because she was marrying an Irish truck driver. And my grandparents, they believed in a Jew marrying a Jew. And my mother was not doing that. And she was pregnant. So I don't think that that went over too well with them.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, everybody was afraid of grandma. I was not afraid of grandma. She loved me. She loved me. My mother had a work and support everybody. And so she was out working. And I was being raised by grandma and grandpa. I'll always remember them very fondly.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was my mother sang, and that was good. They got me an accordion. That was all they can afford. And my mother would sing, she would sing the songs on the radio, and I would accompany her. And that was it.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, a mouthful of braces. I wore braces from 11 till I was 16. Can you imagine? The worst years of any kid's life, 11 to 16, looking like that. It's one of the reasons that it pushed me in the background. I didn't ever see myself in the foreground. But I was musical. I was a musical kid and my family knew it. And they all didn't know what to do with me because they had no money. There was no money in the family. Suddenly emerged as having some kind of ability, some sort of talent. They didn't know what to do with it.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was confusing. Of course, it was hurtful. I'm a human being. You know, I would go and pull the covers over my head and feel sorry for myself. And then the next day in the paper, they would be like, you know, thousands of letters. The public has always been very much on my side, and they still are.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The public really loved what I was doing, but the critics didn't. But he came along and said, he's next. It really meant a lot to me right then.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you know he's in tune all the way, no editing, no engineers who are fixing his voice up. It's just him. It's a perfect vocal.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“which is Sinatra. Well, you know, he did a batch of albums that were very intimate, very intimate. And this particular track, he had nothing on. It was just a singer and the piano on a brilliant song, one for my baby. And here was this guy killing me with just a piano.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In my gut, no. In my gut, I feel much more comfortable conducting my band, rehearsing with them, giving them the notes to play, arranging the music. That's really what I do. Putting on makeup and walking out in front of an audience. It is not my favorite thing to do. But I do the best I can, and here I am.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, what happened was that I really wanted my songs to get out there. I really believed in them. And nobody wanted to record them. And so I would make demos myself. I would sing them only because I knew the words. And I sing in tune. But I didn't think I had a style or anything. And I made these demos to show my songs off and through various channels I got offered a record contract and I was about to turn it down. But I mean, the idea of getting my songs on a record. I couldn't. And so I said yes. And they slapped my photo on the front cover. That's how that happened.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I never did. I wanted to be a ranger, a conductor, a producer, maybe a songwriter if I was lucky, but I was very happy staying in the background. I wanted to leave all that performing to the crazy people that I used to accompany. They were all crazy. And that was not me. That was not me.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's exactly the way I feel, and on my passport, it doesn't say entertainer or showman or even singer on my passport, it says musician. I mean, I think all of us that came from Brooklyn, New York, like I come from, Barbara Neil, Melbrooks, we all seem to be shot out of a cannon and we go catapulting over the Brooklyn Bridge into a life. That's what it seems like it's.”
2009-09-27 · Desert Island Discs · Barry Manilow · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source