0:00:36
Hello and welcome to the show. I hope you’ve been enjoying a lovely few days since we last connected. I know I say this every week, but I’m going to say it again. I’m very excited to introduce you to today’s special guest. She’s a lady I’m sure you know well because her songs have been carried by radio stations since the 70s, right across the globe. She’s also appeared on TV, in films and on stage.
0:01:03
If I play you this, will you recognize the voice?
0:01:07
Don’t cry out loud just keep it inside learn how to hide your feelings.
0:01:19
If you thought to yourself Melissa Manchester, you’re absolutely right. Melissa was nominated for a Grammy for that song in 1980 and won one a couple of years later for Best Female Vocalist. She studied under Paul Simon, worked with Barry Manilow and Bette Midler and co wrote countless hit songs with Carol Bayer Sega. Today she’s still going stronger than ever 50 years later and has recently released her 25th album called Review.
0:01:52
Melissa Manchester has certainly been one hell of a busy lady.
0:01:56
C
I have. I found the pandemic to be extraordinarily dramatic, but it put me in a deeply thoughtful space. It came to mind that in celebrating my 50th year at this career, I would rerecord several of my charted hits so that a I could own The Masters, which, prior to this, the record companies have owned, and B, most importantly, to reflect what I have learned about these songs that have kept me company for so long, some of which I’ve written and some of which have been gifted to me by really talented friends.
0:02:36
C
But the thing that I also incorporated, which I’ve learned from the stage, is that none of these songs fade. None of them, they all end, just like being on stage. I just think it’s more satisfying. And I wanted that reflected in how these songs have evolved, because part of the unexpected gift of these songs is that they have become mostly vehicles to help reflect how I’ve grown. I know more about these songs, even though I’ve written some of them a very long time ago.
0:03:09
A
Baby cried the day the circus came to town cause she didn’t want parades just passing by her so she painted on a smile took up with some clown as she danced without a net up on the wire no. Cause you see baby is an awful lot like me don’t cry out loud just keep it inside learn how to hide your feelings fly high and fry and if you should fall remember you almost had you almost had it I.
0:04:22
C
Created videos that went along with each single that was released. And I thought, because I’m an independent artist, I thought it would be an interesting way to keep the narrative going by releasing one single per month. What I did not expect was how many of these songs have grown into this time. For instance, there’s a song that I wrote with Carol Sager a long time ago called Just You and I. And when we wrote it, it was really to reflect the Burgeoning women’s movement in 74, 75, 76.
0:04:55
C
And in this moment, I not only wanted it to pay homage to frontline workers who had been sort of marginalized workers, and then suddenly they became essential workers.
0:05:06
A
When your heroes go up in there’s nothing to hide and the ones you would count on to call they all fall down all around then you’ve got to believe there’s more it is a reason we’re put here for it’s just you and I when the legend we are just begun we can love to each other to see us just.
0:06:13
C
When I re recorded Midnight Blue, it was literally a musical conversation between present me and that girl who sang it such a long time ago through videos. When I re recorded you should hear she talked about you. It was all about the presidential election. Don’t Cry Out Loud was all about underscoring that every venue on the planet had been shut down and the impact it had on not only artists, but crews and musicians.
0:06:40
C
So you just never know about music. You don’t know what purpose it serves, and it’s such a mystical gift. Always.
0:06:51
D
You talk about how you’ve grown over the years. How would you describe the way that you’ve grown?
0:06:58
C
First of all, I’m really surprised at how wise I was when I wrote a lot of these songs. Because, honestly, when you’re very young and you’re starting off in a career, songwriting for me was like discovering a second language. It was such a release of points of views and clarity and use of language. And I had the great good fortune to study songwriting for a while with the great Paul Simon of Simon and Garfunkel.
0:07:28
C
And what really resonated for me when he was teaching was to say that all of the stories have been told. It is the way you tell your story that separates you from everybody else. And that’s always true. It’s just always, always true. And that’s what I teach when I’m giving a master class in songwriting as well.
0:07:46
D
So you actually took lessons from Paul Simon at university?
0:07:50
C
He was teaching at the time I did. He had a six month break from his world tour because Bridge Over Trouble Water was number one all over the world, and he felt like teaching.
0:08:04
A
When you weary feeling small when tears are in your eyes I will drive them I’m on your side oh, when times get right and friends just can’t be sound like a bridge of trouble water I will lay me down like a rich water I would lay me down.
0:09:18
C
I had gone to New York University for a year, but I was working as a jingle singer at the same time. And my friend signed me up for this course. And this is long before social media, so this is just a scrap paper on a bulletin board in a hallway that said Songwriting and Record Production by Paul Simon. And we all looked at each other and saying of Simon and Garfunkel, could that be? What would he be doing on east 7th street in the Village?
0:09:43
C
And it was an astounding. Six months he was off the road and he auditioned everybody and he ran the class brilliantly. It was just 2 hours every week you come in with an idea or a verse or a song, including him, and he was working on ideas as well. So it was really luscious.
0:10:05
D
How could he audition you for songwriting? The first instance was, Write something for me and show me.
0:10:11
C
Well, before the class started, he would audition whoever was in the hallway waiting to go into the class. Young singer songwriters, from those who wanted to write the great American musical to those who were finding their voice. And it was a brilliant class. Brilliant because it was very simply run. The assignments were always the same. Somebody come in with a new idea or a finished verse or a whole song or a title, something to be discussed and presented.
0:10:43
C
And he was talking about record production, he was talking about songwriting and the value of it and the secrets of it. I was very grateful and honored to be one of his students.
0:10:57
A
Hello, darkness my old friend I’ve come to talk with you again because a vision softly creeping left its seeds while I was sleeping and the vision that was planted in my brain still remains within the sound.
0:11:32
D
Of silence what an incredible opportunity there was never any doubt for you that that’s what you were going to be. You were always going to be a songwriter, a performer, weren’t you?
0:11:42
C
Well, you know, I came from a musical family. My father was a pathunist with the Metropolitan Opera. So he was either practicing something or listening to an opera, or we were listening to jazz or Broadway music and everybody sang. There was just music all the time, all around the house. My mother was a pioneer in the fashion industry. She was a designer. So my sister and I were sort of raised with a festive version of normal.
0:12:13
C
But because radio was so fantastic, the local Am stations would play Sinatra and Tony Bennett and Nat Cole and Judy Garland and Rosie Clooney. So the greatness was literally in the air. When I first heard Ella Fitzgerald, that turned the light on for me. I was only five years old, but I knew that that was the road for me. I just wanted to live in that world and I had no sense of what it would require.
0:12:41
C
But I just wanted to be around that and around creative people to help me pass the time until I could get up there.
0:12:49
A
Star shining bright above you night breezes seem to whisper I love you bird Singing in the thicker, more tree dream a little dream of me say night and night and kiss me just hold me tight and tell me you miss me while I’m alone and blue as can be dream a little dream of me.
0:13:39
C
During the early, early 70s, pop radio was changing. It was exploding. The actual song form was shifting. It started with the Beatles writing obla d, obla DA. They were making up language and yet you didn’t worry about it because you sort of understood what it was. Fly in the Family stone was writing all these anthems james Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, and my personal muse was Laura Nero. These were people that were suddenly infusing what had been Moon June Spoon kind of songs, or songs that came off of the Broadway stages with psychology and poetry and different shapes to the melody line.
0:14:25
C
It was a thrilling time to learn and it struck me so deeply that that’s just what I wanted to do. That’s all wanted to do.
0:14:36
A
There’s my own in the marketplace. All the things I do wanna get I like your place I know, I know I go by the light goes.
0:15:08
D
On you were in your early twenty s then when you started playing around on the Manhattan Club scene and you became friendly with people like Barry Manlow and Bette Midler who were doing same, I believe.
0:15:21
C
Yes. Well, Barry and I were jingle singers. That’s how we met. And the jingle singing experience was a really great education for performing because you have to learn how to think on your feet because the client for the jingle frequently doesn’t know how to convey what they’re actually trying to get as a result. So Barry and I were jingle singers. The great Patty Austin was a jingle singer. Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson, the great songwriters of Motown, were jingle singers. And we made a good living so we could all make our demos, so we could submit them to the record companies. And it took me seven years to get a record deal, but I was paying hard dues, like you said, I was playing in all of the clubs. I was playing in all the coffee houses of the colleges in the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware area.
0:16:13
C
And frequently I was playing with my back to the audience on a broken upright piano. Yes. And I met Bette through Barry.
0:16:23
D
Did you ever feel like giving up during that time? I mean, seven years is a long time to try and achieve what you’d set out for. It must have been hard.
0:16:31
C
It was very frustrating because I could not figure out what I was missing. I auditioned for everybody. And in those days, of course, there were lots and lots of record companies and that was the conventional wisdom that you signed with a record company. They sort of become your bank, they help you fashion a career, they help to create your image, which, of course is very antiquated thinking these days, but it is what it was. It was like the old movie studio system.
0:17:01
C
That’s right.
0:17:03
D
And they held all the power company. You’d made it.
0:17:07
C
That’s right. And I finally met Hank Madris and Dave Apple and they agreed to become my first producers and they set up an audition with the late Larry Utah, who was the president of Bell Records. And I auditioned in a little room on an upright facing a wall and all these guys, always men, were in the room and listening to song after song after song after song. And I remember being particularly tired that day.
0:17:33
C
So when my audition I did my best and when the audition was over, mr Utah was at the door to bid me a fund farewell. And he said to me, he stopped me and he said, so how important is this to you, this career thing? I said, I will do this with you or without you. Have a nice day. And the next day, I got a contract.
0:17:52
B
Melissa Manchester was finally on her way, but to find out what happens next, you’ll have to hang in just a SEC.
0:18:01
A
This is a Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy K. It’s a beautiful day.
0:18:08
B
Thanks for being here. I hope you’re enjoying Melissa Manchester’s story. The recording contract was a huge breakthrough and set the young artist on the path to produce her first album.
0:18:20
D
Was that at the same time that you became a member of The Harlett? The backup singers for Bet Midler?
0:18:24
C
Yeah, I was actually the founding member of The Harlots because Bett and her new music director, Barry Manalo, worked across the street from a club where I worked and Barry knew that I was a performer and he brought Bet in to my club to see me on one of her nights off. And she had just, I think, had her third performance on the Johnny Carson Show and she was fantastic. So after my set, I was introduced to her and I said, we’re all so excited for you. Congratulations on all of this. What are you doing next? And she said, I’m getting ready for my Carnegie Hall concert, my first one.
0:19:03
C
And I said to her, wow, are you going to have any background singers? And she took a beat and she said, I don’t know, would you like to sing in back of me? And I thought to myself, well, actually, I’d like to sing instead of you, but in the meantime, I’ll be happy with Barry and I. We created the Harlettes, and I was the toots in the middle, and I worked for her for about six months, and it was it was so stunning to walk because she was still on the ascendant. Right? And so stunning to see her brilliance just shine.
0:19:37
C
And in that moment, I’m sure you know how she welcomed in this marginalised gay community and sang to them, and this is right before AIDS. And it was a spectacular moment to be a part of.
0:19:52
A
He was a famous chomping man Chicago way and he had a boogie top and no one else could say he was a top man and he was on the draft he’s in the army now he’s on reverie he’s a boogie woogie bugle boy company it really brought him down because he could not jam the cap. He no one does damn because the next day the cap went out and dropped to the band and now the company jumps when he plays reverie he’s a boogie woogie boogie boy you’re still.
0:20:23
D
Friendly with her today?
0:20:25
C
Yes, I am. I was one of a few guests that paid tribute to her on the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, DC. And it was so touching to see how brilliant she is and how brilliant her career has been.
0:20:39
D
How did you break through then? Because the record company signed you when your first album, Home to Myself, came out in 1973. You actually wrote a lot of those songs with Carol Bayeseger, didn’t you? You’ve been friendly before that with her.
0:20:53
C
Yes. Well, Carol actually saw me at the last Bet Niddler concert I performed in as a Harlette, and she hired me to sing on a demo of hers. And at the end of the demo session, she said, do you write? I said yes. I’ve been writing. I had become a staff writer at Chapel Music before it became Warner Chapel when I was 17 years old. So I’ve been writing for several years, and Carol asked me to come by her place and see if maybe we could write together.
0:21:20
C
And we became writing partners for five years. And what I had really only recently learned is that I was the first artist that she wrote specifically for. She was a writer for hire, so she was just writing songs. But to actually write for an artist was new for her, and we wrote some beautiful songs, and it was very interesting to write with her in that moment. We were young women. We were in young marriages.
0:21:51
C
The women’s movement as a backdrop was in its burgeoning state, and we really wrote these songs. They sound very conversational because they came out of conversations, and that’s why there’s a certain intimacy about the lyrics.
0:22:12
D
Point us to your favorite one that you wrote with Carol.
0:22:15
C
Well, I have a tenderness for Midnight Blue because it somehow, even at our young age, captured a sort of weariness that just is a part of life. We just didn’t quite know that in that moment, we were very young women, and it just sort of peeped through whatever it is.
0:22:37
A
It’ll keep till the morning haven’t we both got better things to do? Midnight blue even the simple things become rough haven’t we had enough? And I think we can make it one more time if we try one more time for all the time for all of the times you told me you need me needing me now is something I could use midnight blue it’s.
0:23:53
D
Amazing how those songs still hold up today.
0:23:55
C
That’s right. That’s why this review project is a love letter to fans that have let me serenade them over these years. And they share their memories, some of which are just heartbreaking, and some of them are sweet as can be. We’ve been in each other’s lives for a very long time, and I think that’s worth celebrating. Absolutely.
0:24:17
D
Does it surprise you that 50 years later, here you are, still doing it and doing it well?
0:24:23
C
Well, I had no plan B. This this was what I was going to do. And the thing that’s so interesting about being an artist and it’s so not for everybody, because unless you think the unsteadiness and the unsecure part and the unsafe part and the unsane part sounds like a really good version of normal, this is just not for everybody. But it’s a good fit for me. My no two days are alike. Every time I think of a creative adventure, I’m fortunate enough to have a manager to say, okay, well, let’s try that. And it’s been very interesting to see how the industry has changed so radically.
0:25:09
C
Like we were saying before the old convention is you signed a great big contract with a record company and they essentially own you and you use them. But now I am in the golden age of being an independent artist, which I learned about from my students when I was an adjunct professor at USC. They taught me and my manager all about crowdfunding and all about what that new marketplace is. And it’s wild.
0:25:37
C
Being an independent artist is great because I’m the executive producer. Whatever you hear has come from my ideas or my collaborators. I don’t have to wait for the improvements from the suits, and yet I have to create the funds or I pay for this myself. And you do four times the amount of work. And yet it’s fascinating because it’s literally the reinvention of the wheel. But it’s not round the way I knew it.
0:26:06
C
It’s a different kind of round. Fascinating.
0:26:10
A
I know it’s late to call I don’t blame you if you’re angry but there are things that only old lovers understand. I remember rainy nights like this when we go to bed real early. Try to catch each other’s pains and wake up holding hands. We’d light up fine in the morning. Keep it burning outside. Could be stone, but we never felt so warm and trade the world for all of song we delight a fire in the morning and make love all day.
0:27:21
C
Have you actually crowdsourced?
0:27:22
D
This one?
0:27:23
C
No, not this one, no. But my album, You Got To Love the Life, and my last one, The Fellas, we had some crowdfunding and it was amazing. I didn’t really understand what I was getting into. And your fans, they just sort of lean in and become like this village of aunties and uncles. At one point I had to delay a release and I went on and I apologized and explained what was going on. And 201, they said, you just take your time, you just get this right. And I felt what village have I stumbled into? This is wonderful.
0:27:59
D
One that really believes in you.
0:28:01
C
Yes, it’s very touching, very sweet.
0:28:03
D
You mentioned the song come in from the Rain in 1976. That one went on to be covered by a whole lot of artists, including Captainil and Rosemary Clooney, Edie Gourmet, Cleo Lane, Peggy Leo, the list goes on and on. What was it about that song that they found so appealing?
0:28:22
C
Coming From The Rain has become somewhat of a standard, I think it’s my aria and it’s why? Well, because it’s like a play. The song is one side of a conversation and so the lyric has kind of an arc to it.
0:28:43
A
Well, hello there, good old friend of mine. You’ve been reaching for yourself for such a long time. There’s so much to say. No need to explain. Just an open door for you to come in from the rain. It’s a long road when you’re all alone and someone like you will always choose the long way home there’s no right or wrong I’m not here to blame it I just want to be the one to hear you from the rain from the red from the red and it looks like sunny sky now that I know you’re all right.
0:29:54
C
I am a member of what I call the bridge generation. We were familiar with those pop standards that came from Broadway musicals that could not have been written unless there was a musical and a character to write for. It’s just what it was. So it was in the tradition of Rogers and Hammerstein and all of that. And then when the singer songwriter started to show up, there was still a sensibility in the air of what a long melody sounded like and what a long lyrical idea sounded like married to that long melodic line.
0:30:35
C
And that was when songs were still melody driven. And coming from the rain is a melody driven song. What has happened over the years, starting in the early eighty s, is that songs became rhythm driven. And in that spirit, melodies got shorter, phrases got shorter and repeated and repeated and repeated. Which is fine. It’s just harder to develop ideas. There’s a lack of lusciousness and depth, I dare say. Too.
0:31:05
C
Exactly right. Exactly right. So that, I think, is the driving force of coming from right.
0:31:11
D
The 70s continued and you got to collaborate with Kenny Loggins and write his song with the Stevie Nicks Whenever I Call Your Friend, which was a smash. His yeah, an amazing song that turned out to be give us the backstory of that one. Who are you talking about?
0:31:27
C
Well, Kenny and I, in those days, televised award shows were showing up with alarming regularity. It was not just the Academy Awards or the Grammys. It then became the American Music Awards and the People’s Choice Awards. But Kenny and I were frequently invited to present and we were always paired up. And we would meet in the makeup room and we would sit in barber chairs, and we were meeting every two weeks.
0:31:53
C
And he finally turned to me and said, can we meet in a room without a powder puff in between us? So I invited him over to my home one evening. And in those days, you wrote on a cassette on a boombox. So I had the piano, he had his guitar, he brought a bottle of wine. We wrote this song. Whenever I call your friend he went into the night. I didn’t see him again for quite a while. And in the last couple of years, I learned what happened when he left my home.
0:32:21
C
He went to visit Michael McDonald from the Doobie Brothers. He played him his cassette of this song, and Michael’s reaction was, okay, that’s what I just learned because I brought my work cassette to the president of my record company, Clive Davis, and he listened to the song, and he said, It’s okay. And I said, Are you really kenny logging? It’s nothing. He said that song’s. Okay. And then Kenny went on and had this major hit with Stevie Nicks, and it was a blessing.
0:32:51
D
He proved them all wrong.
0:32:53
C
Yeah.
0:32:57
A
Whenever I call you friends I begin to think I understand you and I never I see myself within your eyes and that’s all I need to show the one everything I do always take me on my life given the moment we can see in every moment as a reason to carry on all Weaver midlife. Never sees such a beautiful fight I turn on a fever at night I know forever we’ll be doing it I’d have a face up the beautiful side I know forever we’ll be doing it whenever I call you friends I believe I only want to stand everywhere we are forever never the following year, you.
0:34:33
D
Put out your version of Peter Allen’s don’t Cry Out Loud, which you got a Grammy nomination for.
0:34:40
C
Yes, I did. It was so odd in retrospect because I would write with Carol Sager, then I’d leave her apartment, and then Peter would come in because they were writing partners as well. It never occurred to me to turn around and say, why don’t we write together? Idiots. That beautiful song was a gift to sing. Those lyrics are so dense and so rich and the melody is so beautiful. And when I first heard it, peter was singing a very quiet version of it and I thought, well, this is the greatest lullaby that’s ever been written. And then when I went into the studio, there were 50 people playing in this symphonic version of the song. So the performance that you hear is one of frustration and rage. But it serviced the song partly because all of the songs that Carol Seger and I had written around that time, they were all about affirmations and standing on your own 2ft and finding your voice. And suddenly I’m singing this magnificent song where the first word of it is don’t. And I’m thinking, how is this ever going to reflect?
0:35:47
B
Well, Melissa couldn’t have been more wrong. That song, written by Peter Allen and Carol Bayer sega proved to be Melissa Manchester’s biggest selling hit. Stay tuned, so much more to come.
0:36:01
A
This is A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy K. It’s a beautiful day.
0:36:08
B
So glad you’re still with me melissa Manchester has been telling us how she got her start in the music business and how she’s been blessed to have had the opportunity to work with artists like Paul Simon, Bette Midler, Kenny Loggins and Carol Bayeseger. She says her Grammy win for the song you should hear how she talks about you was one of her biggest thrills.
0:36:30
C
The most unlikely song, is that right? Oh, my gosh. It was gifted to me by my friends Tom Snow and Dean Pitchford. They are spectacular writers, but I never saw myself as a disco kitten. It was the height of those mirror balls and all of that stuff from the early eighty s on when electronics started to insinuate itself on making records. I just became the girl singer because I couldn’t figure out what my place was because the sounds, they were less and less anthemic.
0:37:10
A
She’s so very nice you should break the ice let her know she’s on your mind what you’re trying to hide when you know inside she’s the best thing you’ll ever find can’t you think she’s feeling the time? Oh I guarantee energy the water fall in your name you should hear I talked about you should have hear what you said she said she would be lost without she just can’t get enough she said she will be lost without Jump. She is really in love.
0:38:08
A
She’s in love with you, boy.
0:38:13
C
The gift of that song was besides the song and the recognition was that I had a chance to be produced by the genius Arif Mardine. He was so spectacular, his knowledge of any kind of music, his ability to go from one kind of music to another effortlessly. He understood composition, he understood how to make records, he understood the sound. We had worked on a song together. It was an odd duck of a song and before I got into the studio, he said, I made a couple of changes and let. Me know if you like it. Well, he had transformed the song. He made it make sense. He moved pieces around.
0:38:57
C
And I said, you need credit as a co writer. You made a better song out of all of these parts. He said, absolutely not. And he was just a complete gentleman.
0:39:06
A
Somebody told me a long, long time ago baby, I feel a change in me coming on I found strength I need to carry on something’s come over me at last we darling, don’t miss the favorite. I’m halfway home I can see brighter days before me though it’s been stormy at least I know I’m not alone just so many people in this world. Why aren’t these di, broken people afraid to take them? Father? Just so many people live there in a house.
0:40:15
D
So there you are on top of the world. That same year, in 1980, you became the first recording artist in the history of the Academy Awards to have two nominated movie themes in a single year. So they were through the eyes of love and I’ll never say goodbye and you performed them both.
0:40:32
C
It was beyond. I was wearing my first Bob Mackey gown, I was wearing very high heels. And the director thought it would be a really good idea if I sang one song after another while walking down two flights of stairs with no banister. And I thought, Please, God, hold me in your hands and hold me upright so I don’t fall in front of a billion people.
0:40:57
D
Amazing.
0:40:58
C
What do you think?
0:41:00
D
But you made it. You didn’t no, I didn’t know.
0:41:03
C
And I sang both of those beautiful songs written by my dear friends Marilyn and Alan Bergman and David Shire. And, of course, through the eyes of Love by Marvin Hamlish and Carol Sager. And it was a glorious night.
0:41:16
D
How many Bob Mackey gowns have you accumulated since? I have quite a few.
0:41:21
C
I bet you do.
0:41:23
A
They’re beautiful.
0:41:24
C
Yes.
0:41:25
D
Talking about through the Eyes of Love, of course, that’s the latest single that you’ve released from the new album, isn’t it?
0:41:31
C
Yes. Through the eyes of love became sort of an official wedding song. There are so many couples that have told me that they have walked down the aisle to that song or had their first dance to that song. And when I perform the video that I use is this astounding video of Marvin Hamlish conducting a symphony that I was singing with. So visually, I thought to myself, how do I top that? Because I wanted to make a new video for the song.
0:42:06
C
And I thought, Let me go 180 degrees in another direction and simply tell the story of some of the people that have meant everything to me from the time I was born. Not anybody, you know, just folks, family and family, friends and friends that have become family. And it seems that the song has once again now served a higher purpose, which is the mystery of songs. I’ve had lots of people calling and weeping.
0:42:39
D
Is that right? You’ve touched so many people’s lives with that song.
0:42:43
C
Yes, it’s been a real blessing.
0:42:48
A
Please don’t let this feeling end it’s everything I am everything I wanna be I can see what’s mine now finding out what’s true since I found you looking through the eyes of love now I can take my time I can see my life as it comes up shining, reaching out to touch. I can feel so much since I found you sucking through the eyes of love.
0:44:08
D
What were Marvin and Carol writing back in? Through the eyes of love?
0:44:12
C
Well, they had been assigned to write a song for the film Ice Castle, and it was the story of this ice skater and her boyfriend. And during the course of the story, the ice skater has an accident and goes blind. And at the end of the film, we see her on the ice skating rink, once again finding the courage to skate. And her boyfriend is there, and of course, he’s weeping, and everybody in the audience is weeping.
0:44:41
C
But Marvin told me because I was very fortunate to be friends with Marvin, and he was a tremendous fellow. But he said that in watching the film before they had scored it the image of her doing the skater, doing her figure eight, it made him hear the notes, and that’s the opening notes of melody. And of course, Carol. Part of the joy of writing with Carol is she has this uncanny ability to write a first line that makes the listener feel that they are listening in on the middle of a conversation.
0:45:27
C
So you’re pulled in right away. Emotionally, it’s beautiful.
0:45:30
D
Is she still writing today?
0:45:32
C
She is, yeah. Not so much, but she is.
0:45:36
D
And you’ve maintained your friendship with her, too?
0:45:39
C
Yes, we have. But I don’t write with her anymore. I tried once to recapture something and we had both moved on. But she’s living a good life.
0:45:51
A
I stayed out late one night and you moved in I didn’t mind cause of the state you were in may I remind you that it’s been all year since today the landlady she said to me what did she say? Your looney friend just made a pass and me perhaps you might enjoy a cottage by the sea so that’s your toys awake you’re pretty boys awake you 45 away your alibaba wait spanish flies away you one more tries away your old tie dies away you’re moving out today.
0:46:46
C
I had so many wonderful collaborators. I wrote a couple of songs with the great Bernie Toppins. And like Elton John has said throughout his decades of writing with Bernie, you never sit in a room with Bernie. I remember receiving his lyrics. One was called for the Working Girl, and it was the ultimate theatrical piece. It was three vignettes about women who were working hard and the level of language was so fantastic that I thought to myself, honestly, why don’t I just put this in a lovely frame and hang it on the wall?
0:47:22
A
I work in the chorus doing three shows a night, wearing business and feathers under blinding white light. I swim short the hard hats who had booed on their lips, been bundled and lied at for an occasional tip and it don’t get no better but it can get no worse for the working girls world is the size of.
0:47:53
C
A also written with the great Paul Williams. And we would sit and chat and I would sort of fashion a melody and we would discuss the point of view and he’d come up or finish a first verse, and then he’d say, okay, I’ve got to go. I’ll finish it. I’ll get it to you. Give me a couple of weeks, okay? So everybody has a different temperament and process and you have to simply make room for all of it.
0:48:21
B
As the disco boom continued through the 80s, melissa took a break to raise kids. But it wasn’t long before she began to reinvent herself again, this time as a composer of film scores.
0:48:33
C
I had the opportunity to write for Disney. I wrote for The Great Mouse Detective, which was an animated film that reintroduced songs in animation. For some reason, Disney, who had built their empire on great animated films, starting, I think, in the with Snow White and Cinderella and Peter Pan great scores, they suddenly stopped putting songs in their animation. I thought, well, why was that a good idea?
0:49:05
C
So when they presented me with The Great Mouse Detective, I was the third composer up. They had tried two other songwriters and they just sent me little animated sketches. It was not fleshed out. You were looking merely at lines that were moving. And so from deducting What Could be There, I wrote a song that was used in that film. And then I wrote the score for lady in the Tramp, too, which was great because when you’re writing for film, it’s still writing a score. You’re writing for theater.
0:49:34
C
Each character has to have their own motif, and it was wonderful.
0:49:39
A
I never had this feeling before she gives me shakes and shivers I can’t ignore and I see that there’s more now than just running free I never felt my heart beat so fast I’m thinking of him first and of myself.
0:50:04
B
In addition to the film scores, melissa has starred in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Music of the Night, as well as Song and Dance on Screen. She was featured in the hit TV series Blossom, and she recently was inducted into the Great American Songbook Foundation’s Hall of Fame. Singing, however, remains her number one and has been the impetus for this latest album review.
0:50:29
D
What would you say is your absolute favorite song? Of all the ones that you’ve done, which one do you like singing best?
0:50:36
C
I don’t know. It’s impossible to answer, particularly now that I’ve re recorded all of these songs because they have been refreshed and grown into this moment, which I did not see coming. And so to be able to reconnect and recommit to these songs, there’s not one standout.
0:50:56
D
On that note, Melissa Manchester, I’ll let you go and thank you so much for being so generous with your time. It’s an awesome album. I love the way that you’ve reimagined all of these classic songs and I guess what you’re going to do is pick up a whole new league of fans that weren’t around when they first came out.
0:51:15
C
Thank you so much. It’s been a joy talking with you.
0:51:18
B
Thanks so much for your company today, too. If you’d like to check out any of the past shows, just search For A Breath of Fresh Air as a podcast on any of your favorite platforms. Time for me now to run. I’ll look forward to being back in your company again same time next week. Take care of yourself in the meantime, won’t you? Bye now.
0:51:39
A
Talk to Full Day you’ve been listening to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy K. Beautiful day that you’re gone away it’s a beautiful day close.
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