Barry Manilow interview: "Being on stage is the hardest thing!"

So, it seems fitting that Barry Manilow has now chosen to craft a love letter to the place that made him the man he is today. 

Barry’s new album This is My Town features songs about New York, the city he was born and raised in and where he began his incredible rise to fame.

When I meet him in a suite at a London hotel, he is kind, funny, honest and every bit the superstar I imagined him to be. He exudes the calm self-assurance of a man who has seen it all, done it all, and earned his place as a bona fide legend. 

Our interview comes a couple of weeks after Barry, 73, spoke for the first time about being gay and talked about his 40-year relationship with his longtime manager Garry Kief, whom he married in 2014. 

The couple now live in California, but Barry’s still a New Yorker at heart.

“I’ve lived in California longer than I was in New York, but when you’ve come from New York you are always a New Yorker. I talk fast, I walk fast, I think fast, and when I get back to New York I’m home. So this album was deeper than I thought it was going to be – I got emotional and had to stop the tape when we were recording the title song.” 

I ask whether he feels New York played a part in his success and the man he has become. “Absolutely – New York and my family that comes from there. There’s an energy and there’s an honesty that people in New York have. You might call it blunt,” laughs Barry.

“That was very valuable to me when I got out to Hollywood and the show business world. It was very valuable to have this capability of knowing who’s telling you the truth and who’s not.

“I came from a real bad neighbourhood; Williamsburg, Brooklyn. These days it’s one of the most expensive areas in all of New York, the apartments go for millions of dollars. The same apartments that my aunts and uncles lived in, the same place that the taxi drivers wouldn’t take me to it was so dangerous, now is the hippest and most expensive area in all of New York. But when I was there it was very dangerous,” laughs Barry.

He has certainly come a very long way. Barry is one of the world’s biggest selling artists, with more than 85 million albums sold worldwide and 50 Top 40 singles, as well as a shelf-full of awards.

Barry’s career started when he was 19. He composed The Drunkard, a musical that ran off-Broadway for eight years. He then became a pianist, producer and arranger, writing music for TV and commercials, a major brakk coming with his work as pianist, musical director and arranger for Bette Midler.

Record bosses seized on his incredible talent and singing voice and he released his debut album in 1973. Yet despite his amazing success, Barry doesn’t consider himself a natural performer.

“I never wanted to be a performer; I wanted to be a musician and if I were lucky I would be a composer or an arranger or a conductor. I went to school for that and that’s what I did for the first 10 years. 

“I accompanied singers, I arranged music for them, I went on the road with them. So when I began to make records, it was crazy. But it was successful, so I wound up standing on a stage trying to figure out what to do and how to hold a microphone and how to talk to these people. That was kind of strange.

“I’m more of a musician and an arranger than I am a performer. I figured out how to do the job on the stage but I love producing my show or other people’s shows, or creating things. The standing up on stage and singing – that’s the hardest thing for me to do.”

He also found adapting to fame a challenge.

“When it hit me I was 29 years old. It nearly knocked me down. It knocked me over but it didn’t knock me down. I was shocked and terrified. I didn’t know what was happening. 

“The only thing that saved me was looking around one afternoon and everybody around me were people I was paying. My publicist, my agent, my assistant, the guy that was cooking for me. I said, ‘Where did my life go? Where are my friends? Where was my family?’. There was nobody there.

“There were all these people and I was paying them. They were nice people and they had turned into family and friends, but it was different, they treated me differently than my friends and family would have because I was Barry Manilow – in capital letters. 

“I was (working too much), I hadn’t been home for a while, they didn’t know when I would call them, they didn’t know where I was. So I had to go back and reconnect with my roots and things got better after that, but there was a moment there, jeez, that really threw me.”

Barry admits that therapy has played a huge part throughout his life.

“I love therapy, everybody should do that. You guys over here make fun of it, but that’s why you’re all crazy,” says Barry, bursting into laughter. 

“It’ll change your life for the better. Open up doors that you were afraid to open up, but when you do you’ll find out who you really are and what you really want. 

“I went to therapy even before that fame thing happened but I went because I knew that I needed to talk to somebody about stuff, even when I was younger.”

Which leads me to the question, why has he chosen now to talk about his sexuality? .

“I knew that my fans would be fine with it, because they have always wanted me happy. I’ve had nothing but positive response and I would not expect anything less than that”.

Barry’s says his desire for stability has led him to reduce his live performances.

“I’ve stopped touring. I was touring for 40-somewhat years and that was enough for me. But I will do one-nighters. They’re easy for me. I go to New York, I do the show, I go home. Then I go to Chicago about five days later and I go home. That I can do, but going away on tour from city to city to city and being away from home for weeks at a time – I’ve done that, it’s too hard.”

The singer did a stint as a mentor in the US on American Idol. His advice to new stars is, “They’ve gotta do the work.”

And if they do, perhaps they could have a 40-year music career too. So what’s the secret to Barry’s success?

“I was just lucky. I don’t know. It shouldn’t have happened. They told me that if I was lucky I would have five years and I’m still here,” he laughs. 

* This Is My Town: Songs of New York is out now on Decca