For the past seven years, Barry Manilow's life revolved around his Las Vegas residency, first at the former Las Vegas Hilton, and then for nearly two years at Paris Las Vegas.
In December, a day after wrapping his tenure on the Strip, he underwent hip surgery, a painful, complicated procedure from which he has recovered "about 90 per cent." Now, the mega-selling Manilow (80 million records worldwide and counting) is back on the road playing three dates every other weekend - enough, he says, to keep his band together and keep him fresh without sending him back to the operating room.
As for those Vegas years, Manilow, 69, paused briefly when asked if he misses his regular gig.
"It was great. But do I miss it? It was fun and I don't remember one bad show or moment. We would come off the stage and celebrate every night," he said in a phone interview this week. "They had warned me that Vegas audiences would be different, but I never had one of them. We had beautiful shows in both casinos."
Any chance of a return?
"When we were done at Paris, that was as good as I could do. We had put together a beautiful production. If I had gone to another [casino], I don't think I could have topped that, so no ... I don't think so at this point," Manilow said.
The singer behind many of pop music's timeless lite-pop classics - do we really need to name Could It Be Magic, Mandy, Copacabana, I Write the Songs, Looks Like We Made It or his other 42 Top 40 hits? - has an unusually robust catalog to draw from. But while those swoony gems are the core of his concerts, he's still eager to write and create.
Last summer, Manilow released 15 Minutes, a concept album about a young musician who wants to be a star, finds fame and then experiences the crests and indulgences that lead to a free fall.
It's a sharp musical commentary on stardom and saturation in our media-obsessed times.
"Nick (Enoch) Anderson, my lyricist for many years, is a great storyteller, and he looked around and saw all of these entertainment shows going on, making stars out of young people overnight and you just count the moments until they wind up on TMZ," Manilow said. "I thought it would be an interesting thing to write about because I've been down that road. No matter how mature you think you are, when this thing hits, it knocks you over. I was 29 [when I got famous]. These kids are 15, 16, 19. How are they handling it? How is it not blowing them over?"
The closing song on 15 Minutes, called Everything's Gonna Be All Right became a buzzed-about track on the U.K. version of his Live in London CD released here and overseas a few months ago. The song has been remixed and released as a U.S. single.
"How do you get a record on the radio these days? I don't know," he said. "But it's a wonderful single, and I think it says something that people need to hear."
