Barry Manilow is taking a victory lap in the form of a farewell concert tour that the 82-year-old pop legend jokes is his “see him before he croaks tour.”
With each concert, he’s saying farewell to a certain region, and on July 18 he says goodbye to Oakland and on Sunday, July 20, he says goodbye to San Jose. Those are the last scheduled dates on the current leg of the Last Concerts tour, but the always-working Manilow will resume his Las Vegas residency at the International Theater from September into December, so he’s not really done.
Speaking via phone before a Rhode Island show, Manilow looks back on an extraordinary career that exploded in 1974 when “Mandy” became a massive hit, and Brooklyn-born Barry Alan Pincus (Manilow is his mother’s maiden name) because an unlikely pop superstar.
Before “Mandy,” Manilow spent much of his early career, during the 1960s, writing and singing commercial jingles for such iconic brands as State Farm Insurance, Pepsi, Band-Aid, McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Some of his creations are still in circulation: The next time you hear the State Farm song (“Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there …”) know that you have Manilow to thank for it.
He also began working as a songwriter, conductor and arranger for a variety of television productions. But Manilow says he never really intended to be the guy in the spotlight but rather the pianist, the composer, “the guy in the background,” as he puts it.
“I had been playing piano for all these great singers, but I had made demos of my songs that I was sending around, and Bell Records wanted to make a whole album with me singing,” Manilow recalls. “I said that was ridiculous, but that’s what they wanted.”
Then came “Mandy,” after which the hits kept coming, and Manilow had to figure out how to be a performer.
“I had worked with Bette Midler, playing for her for a couple of years, and I learned a lot from her,” Manilow says. “She was the bravest performer you will ever see, and she just got into the craziest things. When I had to tour, I was not good at it. I remember at the Bijou in Philadelphia, I stunk. I was really terrible. I told my manager I didn’t want to do this anymore, but the audiences liked me.”
And Manilow was learning to like them back.
“I began to get comfortable talking to them, and my songs were solid, and my arranging was solid,” he says. “After a while, I could tell the audiences were having a good time, so I owe my career to these people who let me learn how to be a performer while I was being a performer.”
If music snobs turned their noses up at Manilow’s open-hearted love songs, audiences never did. As the blockbuster singles like “I Write the Songs,” “Copacabana” and “Could It Be Magic” continued to dominate the charts, Manilow never lost his everyman charm.
“People see me on stage and know this guy is real,” he says. “I’m not a phony. You know who I am. I’ve never figured out a way of not being myself on stage, and I think that has worked in my favor.”
In fact, this is the key to Manilow’s superpower. Take his 1977 hit “Looks Like We Made It.” The song starts quietly, rather ordinarily, with Manilow thinking about a former love and considering how they’ve both moved on from one another. But then the orchestra winds up, and Manilow goes from Clark Kent to Superman in one seismic step-up key modulation for the final, impassioned chorus. The song suddenly becomes arena-sized, and it’s undeniably Manilow at his most Manilow.
“Whether a song ends big or not depends on the song I’m singing. But you’re right. I do build a song and not just keep it on one level,” he says modestly. He also acknowledges that before he was a pop music master, he was steeped in Broadway musicals, where the calibration of emotion is engineered for optimal entertainment value and dramatic impact.
Manilow is, in fact, part of an esteemed club that includes George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Stephen Sondheim. He added “Broadway composer” to his resume in 2023 when his musical “Harmony” opened on the Great White Way. Getting there was a long, rough process, but in the end, Manilow says he’s proud of the score, which is preserved on the original cast album.
Manilow scoffs at the idea of some sort of jukebox musical based on his life and hit songs.
“I’m still doing it myself,” he says with a laugh.
And he’s not done creating, either. He’s finishing up an album of original songs that he’s been working on for years, continually tweaking arrangements here and there.
“They’re solid, solid songs,” he says. “I keep thinking of the word ‘old-fashioned,’ and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. Maybe ‘classic’ is a better word, but they’re the kind of songs you don’t hear much anymore.”
“I’m still doing it myself,” he says with a laugh.
Getting back to his current gig, Manilow acknowledges that he doesn’t really need to tour anymore. “I’ve got more money than I ever thought I’d have,” he says.
But Manilow does think it’s important to say a proper farewell.
“With this tour, it’s kind of bittersweet because we’re going places that have always been supportive of me,” he says. “People are coming to see their old friend Barry because I’m not coming back to their city, and they want to say goodbye. I love being with all these people, and I’m going to make them feel good. That’s my job. If I can make them forget for 90 minutes what they’re going through, what everybody is going through, then that’s what I’m going to be doing until I can’t do it anymore.”
Chad Jones has been writing about Bay Area arts since 1992; theaterdogs.net
BARRY MANILOW
The Last Concerts tour
When & where: 7 p.m. July 18 at Oakland Arena, 7000 Arena Way, Oakland; $31-$231; 7 p.m. July 20 at SAP Center, 525 W. Santa Clara, San Jose
Tickets: $31-$231 Oakland, $34-$183 San Jose, (both subject to change); ticketmaster.com.