{"id":24611,"date":"2023-02-10T14:37:04","date_gmt":"2023-02-10T13:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/?p=179860"},"modified":"2023-02-10T16:35:17","modified_gmt":"2023-02-10T15:35:17","slug":"the-american-songwriter-and-composer-burt-bacharach-has-died","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/the-american-songwriter-and-composer-burt-bacharach-has-died\/","title":{"rendered":"The American songwriter and composer Burt Bacharach has died"},"content":{"rendered":"

The legendary songwriter was 94 <\/p>

By Hannah Nepilova\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Friday, 10 February 2023 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Burt Bacharach, one of the world\u2019s most legendary songwriters, has died at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 94. In a career spanning seven decades, he scored more than 50 chart hits in the US and the UK, recorded by artists including Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, Barbara Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Costello, Cilla Black, Tom Jones and Dusty Springfield.<\/p>\n

Working mostly in collaboration with the lyricist Hal David, Bacharach composed music that \u2013 as his late daughter Nikki once put it \u2013 was \u2018like going to heaven on a velvet slide\u2019: smooth, whistleable melodies couched in lush orchestrations, in the tradition of the Great American Songbook. Among his most popular songs were \u2018Raindrops Keep Fallin\u2019 On My Head\u2019, <\/i>\u2018The Look of Love\u2019, \u2018Do You Know the Way to San Jose\u2019 and \u2018What\u2019s New Pussycat?\u2019 <\/i><\/p>\n

\u2018I have no rules apart from one,\u2019 Bacharach once said. \u2018Don\u2019t make it difficult for the listener. Just the singer.\u2019<\/p>\n

It was a rule that he followed to the letter, combining surface simplicity with compositional sleights of hand that seemed designed to test the performer. His music is filled with asymmetrical bars, unexpected rhythms, shifting time-signatures and complex, highly distinctive harmonies. That\u2019s because Bacharach, who embraced all sorts of genres, from jazz and rhythm to blues and traditional pop, knew his craft through and through, having devoted himself to it from his infancy.<\/p>\n

Growing up in a non-practising Jewish family in Missouri, he was encouraged to take up the piano by his mother \u2013 an amateur painter and songwriter \u2013 and by the age of eight, he was already a skilled pianist. He discovered his love of jazz in his teens, using a fake ID to see sets by Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, then studied music at McGill University in Montreal where his teachers included the composers Darius Milhaud. Even when he was called up to the US army in 1950, he toured army bases as a uniformed concert pianist.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On returning home he toured with Marlene Dietrich, and became her personal conductor. Later he was hired to work in New York\u2019s Brill Building \u2013 the centre of the music industry \u2013 where he met Hal David, and soon afterwards wrote his first UK number one hit with him: \u2018The Story of My Life\u2019. He would go on to write several more hits with David, which were then often performed by the American singer Dionne Warwick. But the relationship eventually soured to the point where Bacharach and David ended up suing each other: \u2018For ten years we just saw each other in law offices,\u2019 Bacharach later recalled.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A long fallow period was broken in the 1980s, when Bacharach met and married the singer-songwriter Carole Bayer Sager, with whom he wrote another string of hits, among them \u2018Making Love\u2019 for Roberta Flack and \u2018That\u2019s What Friends Are For\u2019, recorded by Rod Stewart. Later successes included an appearance in the second Austin Powers film, performing \u2018I\u2019ll Never Fall in Love Again,\u2019 as well as the score for John Asher\u2019s indie drama \u2018Po\u2019, which explores the impact of autism on children.<\/p>\n

His personal life, however was somewhat more rocky. Famous for his boyish charm, good looks, suave dress sense and womanising tendencies, he had four wives and several affairs. Contributing to his 2012 autobiography, his second wife, the actress Angie Dickinson called him a \u2018sonofabitch\u2019 who could \u2018charm everybody\u2019, while Bayer Sager, his third, wrote: \u2018Nothing changes with Burt when he changes wives; his routine remains the same. The only thing which changes is the wife. \u2019 Bacharach also suffered from tragedy in 2007 when his daughter Nikki, who had been born prematurely and suffered from Asperger\u2019s Syndrome, committed suicide at the age of 40. In his autobiography, Bacharach\u2019s frustration at how he handled her illness jumps off the page: \u2018No matter how much I had tried to give Nikki,\u2019 he says, \u2018I still wound up hitting the wall.\u2019<\/p>\n

A self-confessed perfectionist, Bacharach was an insomniac, kept awake by the music in his head, who was known to make some singers, including Warwick and Cilla Black, do 30 takes of the same song. That perfectionism won him three Oscars, two Golden Globes, and six competitive Grammy Awards. It also won him hordes of devoted fans, among them Cherie Blair and Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher, who once admitted to lifting the chords for \u2018Half the World Away\u2019 from Bacharach\u2019s \u2018This Guy\u2019s In Love With You.\u2019 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Paying tribute to Bacharach on Twitter, Gallagher posted: \u2018RIP Maestro. It was a pleasure to have known you.\u2019<\/p>\n

Bacharach is survived by his fourth wife Jane Hansen, their children Oliver and Raleigh, as well as his adopted son Cristopher from his marriage to Bayer Sager.<\/p>\n

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