Burt Bacharach: Cilla Black had the BIGGEST heart

Bacharach had a lot of affection for Cilla

BURT BACHARACH is the world's most romantic songwriter and one of Hollywood's great seducers. But no singer quite won his heart like Cilla Black in the 1960s.

"There was nothing romantic," he insists.

"It was just her ability to capture the mood of a song.

"It was as if she was living the experience. She was known later as a TV star but for me she will be always be a memorable singer."

It was Bacharach, 87, who backed Cilla to record his song Anyone Who Had A Heart for a British release, after Dionne Warwick had a hit in America with it, when it made number eight in the charts.

"At one point it looked as if Shirley Bassey would record the song," he says.

"But The Beatles producer George Martin suggested Cilla and I agreed immediately.

"It was late in 1963 and Liverpool was taking over popular music with some great songs and great people. There was an awareness that things would never be quite the same again - and Cilla Black was part of that."

Burt (centre-left), with fourth wife Jane and children Raleigh (f-l) and Oliver

Bacharach, who had made his name in 1958 with co-writer, the late Hal David, by writing the number-one hit Magic Moments for Perry Como, was already one of the hottest songwriters around. He had written I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself, which later became a big hit for Dusty Springfield, and had delivered the classic Twenty-Four Hours From Tulsa for Gene Pitney.

And his instincts were right with Cilla. Her version of Anyone Who Had A Heart became number one and has now re-entered the charts since her sudden death in Spain at 72 on August 1. It was also the biggest selling single by any British female artist in the 1960s, at a point when record sales were in the millions.

"I did not meet many performers who sang my songs," Bacharach told me in an interview before Cilla died. "Dionne Warwick was my all-time favourite. Dusty Springfield, too, who had a remarkable voice.

For me she will be always be a memorable singer

Burt Bacharach

 

"But I was intrigued by Cilla. Although she was not the best technically, she could move an audience. She had a certain something " It led to one of the more surprising meetings when Cilla announced that she would only record his song Alfie (for the 1966 film starring Michael Caine) if Bacharach conducted the orchestra and was in the studio.

"It was a chance to work at Abbey Road, London, made famous by The Beatles," he reflected. "So I said 'Yes - I will do it.' That shocked her, apparently, that I had travelled from California to be there.

"She was perhaps trying to come up with an excuse not to do it. So we all got together and she did everything I asked. We did a total of 32 takes. I wanted perfection.

"George Martin, the producer, said at one point that we had got it right on the third take! Everyone was exhausted at the end of it. Cilla never complained, did what she was asked to do and delivered the song beautifully.

"I realised that day just what a big star she had become. She was funny, down to earth, had a lot of natural warmth and just had the biggest heart. But she was tough, too."

Bacharach should know. The senior star, with 70 worldwide hits, has had a powerful collection of women singers who have fallen for his songs and recorded them.

APART from Cilla, Dionne Warwick and Dusty Spring-field, the list includes Olivia Newton-John, Barbra Streisand, Gladys Knight, Gloria Gaynor and Sandie Shaw, who had a British number one with his (There's) Always Something There To Remind Me.

 

"The great thing about the British is that they've always 'got' my songs right away," he says. "They are also one of the most loyal audiences in the world. I think Cilla reflected that kind of ability. She understood the song and she had a kind of long-term stickability, which is so very hard to achieve in this business."

Bacharach's many hit songs, which include The Look Of Love, Walk On By, I Say A Little Prayer, Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head and This Guy's In Love With You, are almost shrugged off.

"It's a gift," he says. "An endowment, if you like. I write a song, record it with an artist, do the orchestration and make a record. After that, you need to let go.

"I don't ever think about the songs I have written or the effect they may have had on people. I am usually on to the next song, being haunted in the middle of the night with a melody in my head.

"I don't sleep well. I keep on hearing something, over and over. It wakes me up. I write it down and think 'Is that original - or is it something I have already heard elsewhere?'" It has not been good for his personal life. Despite being a master of romance with hit songs, he found that it was difficult to make his own love-life live up to that ideal.

"With my first wife (Paula Stewart) I married at 25 at a point when I was struggling to pay bills," he says. "I was on the road with Marlene Dietrich, doing her music arranging, and it was hard to keep a marriage alive."

Then came Angie Dickinson, who was rated as one of the world's sexiest women. The marriage lasted 15 years, till 1980. Angie, now 83, said that Bacharach's wandering eye was the reason for the divorce.

 

Singer-songwriter Carole Bayer Sager, now 68, was next, with whom he wrote hits like That's What Friends Are For. "I wrote with Carole, lived with Carole and made records with Carole," he says. "Perhaps it was all a bit too much."

He is now with fourth wife Jane [Hansen], a former ski instructor, who at 55 is 32 years his junior. They have two children, Oliver, 22, and daughter Raleigh, aged 19.

"I love women but never thought I would have been married four times," he tells me. "Had you told me that in my early 20s I'd have said you were crazy.

"I never fell out of love with marriage, though. This is why I am at my happiest with Jane. There was never any thought in my mind not to marry again once I had met her."

Bacharach also has a 29-year-old adopted son, Christopher, from Carole. But the daughter he had with Angie Dickinson, Nikki, committed suicide in 2007 aged 40.

"She suffered from Asperger's syndrome, which gave her so much pain," he says. "She wanted to escape the ravages caused by her illness."

Bacharach, who won Oscars for both best music and original score in the film Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969) and best original song Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do) for the film Arthur (1981), prefers silence these days.

"I have heard so many people say they've made love to my songs," he says. "But I have never wanted music in the background whenever I've had sex.

"And I don't play music at all at home. Even if I am out somewhere, with music in the background, I ask for it to be turned off. Immediately I start listening to whether the violins are being played properly or if the tempo of the song is wrong.

"It drives me crazy."

• The stage show What's It All About? Bacharach Reimagined runs at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London, until September 5.