“I wouldn’t want to write songs for the music of today.”
This is a bittersweet summer for Burt Bacharach. The time-defying music legend is back out on tour, this time with an orchestra, but he’s also waving his youngest child off to college.
His 18-year-old daughter, Raleigh, who he had with fourth wife Jane Hansen (they also have a 21-year-old son), is going to South Carolina University on a riding scholarship. The state is on the other side of the country from the Bacharach family home in Los Angeles.
“It really shakes me up seeing my youngest going off to college,” Burt admitted. “I’m so used to having her at home. She’s been riding since she was five. It takes my breath away I’ve seen her come off too many times and that’s scary.”
He continued: “Having relatively young children is different. Spending time with them is very valuable. Before I began this European tour, we went on a family vacation to Croatia. With my daughter going away it was the last time we could do it.”
Burt has his own band with him, but the orchestra is made up of musicians from London.
“Economics are hard, so we can’t travel with an orchestra. It’s not that I haven’t done it before I went to Japan with an orchestra, but I don’t think I made any money from that one!
“I’m glad to be coming back to Edinburgh again. I played there last year and I wanted to come back with a different format. I like going out on tour as it’s a way of meeting people. It’s direct contact and I try to give them as much music as I can play.
“I take it a day at a time and I enjoy it. That’s the big factor why just sit at home and write?
“I keep in touch with music every day, even if it’s just going to the piano and touching base.”
https://youtube.com/watch?v=_F4wutgqYLQ
Burt isn’t a fan of today’s music.
“The radio in America is terrible it’s too limited in what it plays. I wouldn’t want to write [songs] for the music of today, it’s too rap heavy. It isn’t music we’ll remember in two years. We won’t hear it again.”
The same can’t be said for Burt’s back catalogue, and diamonds such as I’ll Never Fall In Love Again and The Look Of Love will sound as fresh as ever at the Edinburgh Playhouse on July 30.
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