Tom Dunne: If David wasn't there, would we have heard of Bacharach?
Bert Bacharach and Hal David with Dionne Warwick in 2012. (Picture: AP Photo/Vince Bucci)
My father-in-law's greatest refrain was, “and Hal David”. If you said “Burt Bacharach” he would add “and Hal David” before you’d finished the “…ach.” They were two names that were never to be used apart. It was Bacharach/David, just like it was Lennon/McCartney or Lieber/Stoller.
I thought of him last week with the news of Burt Bacharach’s passing. If drink was taken, he would sometimes add that without David we’d never have heard of Bacharach. This was not 100% correct but, take their best years together (1962-1972) out of the equation and the picture changes very, very dramatically.
Bacharach’s main claim to fame, when he met David in 1957, was that he had been Marlene Dietrich’s musical director. David had started life as a journalist at the New York Post but had branched out into writing lyrics with the band leader Sammy Kaye.
By the 1950s he was writing lyrics at Famous Music, a publishing company in New York. There, one day, a producer suggested he meet Bacharach. It was a moment as momentous and life changing for both men as Elton John’s introduction to Bernie Taupin.
It was a song writing partnership of the purest form: two men sitting face to face. David described the process as being like Show and Tell. He would bring in lyrics and ideas for songs, Bacharach some opening strains or possible choruses. Then each would ask the other “Well, what have you got?”
In those days from 1957 to 1962, they did not write together exclusively. Despite early hits with Gene Pitney (24 Hours from Tulsa) and Perry Como (Magic Moments) they still split their days to work with other writers, sometimes even swapping over at lunchtime.
But, in 1962, that all changed. They used a young backing vocalist called Dionne Warwick to record some early demoes. She was peeved when the songs were given to other singers. “Should’ve been me!” she said, and she was right.
You know what happened next. Warwick went on to sing 60 of their compositions, with 19 of those making the top 40. Others who would have career changing success with their songs included Cilla Black, Herb Albert, Tom Jones, Dusty Springfield, Aretha Franklin and Sandy Shaw.
Cilla, as was a bit of a practice at the time, rush released her version of Anyone Who Had a Heart to clinch a UK number one before the Dionne version could get airplay.
It annoyed them greatly and they resolved not to let it happen with the other song they had written and recorded during the same session. That song was called Walk On By.
Hit after hit followed: Wishin’ and Hopin’, Always Something There to Remind Me, Say a Little Prayer, Do You Know the Way to San Jose, Raindrops Keep falling on My Head, Close to You, I’ll Never Fall in Love Again, It’s Not Unusual, Alfie.
In 1970 they won two Oscars, for Best Song (Raindrops Keep Falling) and Best Score for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. A year later Close to You would help launch the career of The Carpenters. It was possibly peak Hal and Burt.
It was BJ Thomas who sang Raindrops. There were those who thought it should have been Frank Sinatra. David laughed at the idea. “The music has to speak to you,” he said, “you look at that scene with Paul Newman on the bike, and its BJ’s voice you hear.” This was David’s enormous gift. Burt’s music spoke to him, and he heard the words it needed.
It’s a dynamic Bacharach seemed to appreciate. David was no musician and Bacharach a musical prodigy. Yet in the production, David reckons that, more often than not, it was his feelings, his view that got expressed and became the direction they followed.
They fell out over the recording of a film soundtrack called Lost Horizon in 1972. It was not a success and soured things. Dionne sued them, they sued each other, the hits were turned off overnight. Happily, they became friends again later and even wrote together again.
With Bacharach’s passing last week radios the world over spoke of the “songs of Burt Bacharach.” Every time I heard them, I heard that voice in my ear again: “The songs of Bacharach and David. Bacharach and David!” They are all together again now, the writing team and their number one fan and Hal David advocate.
