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BURT BACHARACH
SONG BY SONG
by Serene Dominic HOME SERENE CYBER SINGLES SERENE ACTION CARDS MORE BURT BOOK EXCERPTS IN THE LIBRARY |
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excerpt 8: Whilst Herb Alpert prepared for his April 22 CBS TV-special, he had two coups already sewn up; advance orders of over a million for his tenth album with The Tijuana Brass and $100,000 worth of sponsorship. What he didn’t have was a song to serenade his wife Sharon on the program, something that he could walk along a California beach and croon without breaking a sweat. As Alpert told A&E Biography, “There’s a question I ask all great songwriters that I’ve been privileged to be around ‘is there a song you’ve written that’s tucked away in a drawer someplace that you had a good feeling for but for some reason never surfaced. I asked Burt that question and he pulled out “This Girl’s In Love With You.” The melody was an anomaly for Bacharach in that it’s written between an octave and a fifth, but sounds like it’s only five notes. And there isn’t a three syllable word hidden in its simple lyrics. No wonder everyone with a five-note range rushed to record it. So who was “This Girl’s In Love With You” originally intended for? A good bet would be Dusty Springfield, whose own version came out later that same year in the UK on the Dusty Definitely album. The hushed singing style she employed on “The Look of Love” was utilized for her recording of “This Girl’s In Love With You” but she sounds far too laid back during the “I need your love/I want your love” section, as does the orchestra. This under-realized version must have predated Alpert’s since it’s missing so many elements of the hit arrangement. Who could’ve predicted a Help Alpert song that starts with an electric Wurlitzer, harmonica and strings and doesn’t get wind of a trumpet until two minutes have passed? Anyone hearing the trumpeter bleat out those words in monotone with a massive orchestra firing on all cylinders, and how vulnerable he sounds when they all drop out of the sonic picture, would have to agree with Noel Gallagher’s assessment that this is “the best love song ever.” Initially not meant to be a single, the volume of calls the television stations received the day after the broadcast convinced Alpert otherwise. Rush released, it went to number one six weeks later, a first for Bacharach and David in the US, and the first number one for Alpert and A&M Records. And like many of their Top Five hits, it contains whistling; the advice Darius Milhaud gave young Bacharach about a good melody is still well remembered. Amazingly, the song had enough staying power to become a Top Ten hit six months later when Dionne Warwick released it as a single. It also served as the title track of Aretha’s 1970 album, released around this time Aretha’s troubled marriage to husband/manager Ronnie White had unraveled and she began missing concert dates. Once her Las Vegas engagement was cancelled after only a few performances, the singer took a year off performing and recorded an album chock full of cover songs including “This Girl’s In Love With You.” Canadian journalist Ritchie Yorke was at the session and recalls “she sang, her hands clenched in fists in front of here. One forgot about the Herb Alpert version within four bars.” Also in 1970, Bacharach and David cut a fabulous version with B.J. Thomas, who demonstrates what the song sounds like when eight, nine or ten notes are applied. A hit in both genders, it was a natural for male-female duets, as demonstrated by James Brown & Lyn Collins and The Supremes and the Temptations. It even held a special power over cross-dressing Kevin Rowland, former lead singer of Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Rowland returned after an eleven-year absence of drug addiction and fallen fortunes to release an album of cover versions that was greeted with bewilderment and scarce sales. Although he could’ve gone the easy route, he chooses to overreach and complete the embarrassment.
If one pinpoints the
composer’s re-emergence as a pop icon with Oasis’ placement of a Bacharach
poster on the cover of the band’s debut album Definitely Maybe, the
first concrete evidence of an influence in Noel Gallagher’s largely Beatle
derived catalog is a song called “Half A World Away” which he readily admits
to having nicked the ultimate love song in the BBC documentary This Is Now:
“I must say it took me nearly two years to work out that song. We adopted the
key, swapped the chords put some words on top and I’m surprised he hasn’t
sued.” Quite the reverse: Bacharach invited Gallagher to perform “This Guy’s
In Love With You” with him on The Royal Festival Hall stage in 1996.
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 Herb Alpert. Some 50 songs were submitted for Alpert to sing on his 1968 TV special. This was the only one he chose to sing to his then-wife Sharon (pictured above). This guy later married Brazil ‘66 lead singer Lani Hall.
This Guy’s In Love With You. This Guy’s In Love With You.The first number one for A&M Records, it ranked number eight for the year 1968. Before that, the label’s biggest hit was We Five’s “You Were On My Mind” which ranked 18th for the year 1965.
Oasis (1998). The Masterplan collected all the group’s stray B-sides that never made it over to America. It included “Half a World Away” (reportedly Paul Weller’s favorite Oasis track) and “Going Nowhere,” a song with Bacharach inspired horns.
Kevin Rowland (1999). If a picture is worth a thousand words, two of them would have to be “oh my.”
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