We last saw Barry Manilow in April 2016, when he played Xcel Energy Center on a tour dubbed One Last Time! On Friday, the man born Barry Alan Pincus will return to the St. Paul hockey arena to perform what he’s calling The Final St. Paul Concert.
“I don’t like the road,” Manilow said in a recent phone interview from his Palm Springs home. “I’ve got to get off the road. Look, I love working with my band.
I love working with my crew. I really love the audiences. But I don’t like touring and it finally got to me.
So this time, I mean it. This is the end of my touring.” But don’t think that means the 81-year-old is ready to retire.
While he has been playing these final concerts in cities around the country, Manilow still has ongoing residencies in Las Vegas and at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. He also has a new album, his 30th overall, on the way. The New York native began his career writing advertising jingles for the likes of State Farm Insurance, Band-Aid, Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald’s.
In the early ’70s, he famously played piano for Bette Midler at the Continental Baths in New York and produced her first two albums. While his 1973 self-titled solo debut found only modest success, Manilow’s single “Mandy” topped the charts the following year. He went on to rule that decade with “Could it Be Magic,” “I Write the Songs,” “Daybreak,” “Can’t Smile Without You,” “Ready to Take a Chance Again” and “Copacabana (At the Copa).
” By the ’80s, pop radio had moved on from Manilow, although he continued to record and tour as well as pursue other projects. In 1997, he wrote the songs for the musical “Harmony,” which tells the true story of a Jewish vocal group in 1920s Germany. A new revival of the show ran Off-Broadway in 2022 and moved to Broadway the following year.
Manilow also founded the Manilow Music Project to support high school music teachers and bands around the country. He has gifted more than $10 million in instruments and scholarships, including a recent $10,000 grant to Daniel Perelstein, a music teacher at St. Paul’s Washington Technology Magnet School.
Here’s what else Manilow had to say during our chat. The last time you were here in St. Paul, in 2016, it was billed as your final tour.
But even at the time, I think it was clear that it wasn’t going to be the last time we saw you. Well, I don’t know how that happened. I meant it at that time and we took off for a while.
But I got bored. I just don’t like sitting around watching television. So I told (my husband and longtime manager) Garry (Kief) I wanted to keep going, just a little bit more, just a little bit more.
So I have two weeks of concerts in the middle of the summer, so I don’t get bored. I’m not retiring. But I think that’s the end of the show.
I’m done with the hotel rooms and airplanes and room service. But we’ve got a residency in Vegas and a new one at Radio City. So I’ll get my rocks off performing those two, but I think I’m just about done with the touring.
You said you get bored when you’re not working. Is it still a pleasure for you to perform live? I wouldn’t call it a pleasure, it’s a gig. But it’s a really good one.
And I like it. And I like the audiences. I love my band.
I love the people that I work with. I’m not ready to say goodbye to all of that. But I am going to be saying goodbye from being away from home.
I happened to see online that on this day, in 1977, “Barry Manilow Live” kicked Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” out of the No. 1 spot on the Billboard albums chart. Oh, no kidding.
Is that true? Wow, that’s amazing. Do you remember that? I don’t, that was a long time ago. That would be my first live album.
Yeah, I do remember that my first live album was a real big hit. And do you know why? Because I put a medley of a whole bunch of the commercials I wrote on that album. And that was the hit single from that album.
The response was surprising. I think if you ask people about that album, they’ll mention the commercials. Throughout your career, you’ve always sort of been your own thing, like you exist in your own corner of the industry.
Do you see it that way? I do. You know, I don’t listen to the pop radio. So I don’t know how to make a pop record these days, and I never have.
I would just do what I did. And maybe that’s why, I just go my own way. And sometimes they like it, and sometimes they don’t.
As I mentioned, you were here in 2016. The following year, you came out of the closet. What prompted you to do that, in 2017? I think one of the magazines was going to out me anyway.
So I thought I’d do it before they did. Actually, it turned out to be a non event. I thought, “Oh, my God, it’s going to ruin my career,” and it turned out to be no big deal.
It was actually great. You know, we got a lot of mail and congratulations. People were so happy for me and Gary.
We’ve been together 46 years, holy moly. Did part of you wish you would have come out decades earlier? No. I think everybody knew I was gay, they all knew that Gary and I were a couple.
I don’t think anybody would be surprised even 10 years before that. Back in the ’70s and ’80s, that was a different time. You couldn’t come out without it affecting your career.
I was just starting off and I didn’t want to take that chance. It’s no big deal anymore, thank goodness. Was it tough for you to watch the AIDS crisis unfold? Well, I was right in the center of it.
I lost half of my phone book, it was awful, awful, awful. We were all going to funerals every week. You know, Elizabeth Taylor called me and asked me if I would play for a (fundraising) dinner she was giving at her house.
And she said that every person that she asked turned her down. Every single artist had turned her down. And I said, “Of course, I’ll do it.
” And she burst into tears. She made a lot of money for the AIDS Project that night. I was happy to do it.
Speaking of charity, you’re very big on getting musical instruments into the hands of kids. Why is that important to you? About 15 years ago, maybe more, one of our roadies asked if I could get a saxophone for his daughter to play at school. So I got a saxophone for her and I started to look around and, sure enough, all of the music classes at all the high schools around the country were stopping funding for music and arts.
Music and arts are always the first to go. It’s the music teachers who are the heroes. And the kids love their music classes.
It’s so much more than just learning how to play a clarinet. It turns into a second family and kids walk out wanting to become a musician and learning how to interact with other students. They’re so proud of the bands they play in.
I’m so happy to be able to help the classes that I can. So you’ve probably noticed that age is a big discussion right now, particularly in presidential politics. You’re the same age as President Biden.
What’s your take on age? Well, you know, I haven’t changed. I’m one of the lucky guys. I look pretty much the same and I feel pretty much the same.
When you see me on the stage, I’m still running around. The day I can’t hit the F natural at the end of (my 1978 song) “Even Now” is the day I retire. But as of now, I can still hit the F natural at the end of “Even Now.
” So as far as I’m concerned, I’m still going. I do wonder when the other shoe will drop, but it hasn’t dropped yet. While I was prepping for this interview, I realized that over the past few years, I’ve seen the Stones, Diana Ross and Roger Waters live.
They’re all roughly the same age as you and they’re still out there performing. Yeah, well, some of us are luckier than others. And you see Phil Collins (who uses a cane and sits in a chair while performing), poor guy, he’s in terrible shape.
That could have been me, but it’s not, and thank goodness. There’s a handful of us that are still going at it. And I’m one of them.
Do you plan to make another record? Yeah. And I think it’s coming out at the end of this year. It’s my first original album in a long time.
We’ll see if anybody likes that. There are a lot of songs that never made it onto my albums that I’ve always loved. So we put those on there.
It’s a nice Barry album. If anybody still likes that kind of thing, they’ll like this album. How did you deal with the lockdown during the early days of COVID? Well, it was interesting, because those are the two years that (writer) Bruce (Sussman) and I were putting together “Harmony,” the musical that we wrote.
And we had meetings three times a week with our director Warren Carlyle. Going through the script, going through the story, I was pretty busy. One last question.
Do you have any specific memories about playing in Minnesota? I rehearsed (for a tour) at Paisley Park. I never got to meet Prince, but I rehearsed at his place. (In a 1990 interview with Rolling Stone, Manilow talked about seeing Prince live.
“He was amazing,” he said. “I remember asking a promoter who worked with him, ‘What’s Prince like?’ She said, ‘Never met him.’ I said, ‘Never met him?’ She said, ‘No, he came in a box.
’ He came to his shows in a box! They wheeled him off the truck and all the way to the stage in a box! Did the show, got back in the box, wheeled him back to the truck, and he was gone! Now that’s a star! It never got that bad for me. I never had a box!”) And I was there for the opening night of a tour that I called Showstoppers. Oh boy, I loved that tour and we played a really beautiful place (the State Theatre in Minneapolis).
That’s what I remember. Oh, and it was freezing cold. Oh my God, it was so cold.
When: 7 p.m. Friday Where: Xcel Energy Center, 175 W.
Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul Tickets: $295-$99.
50 via ticketmaster.com Related Articles Music and Concerts | At Upper Landing Park this weekend, a free jazz show on ‘world’s only floating performance ship’ Music and Concerts | The new Minnesota Yacht Club Festival enjoys breezy opening on Harriet Island Music and Concerts | The Black Crowes cancel Friday night performance at Minnesota Yacht Club Festival Music and Concerts | What to know if you’re headed to the Minnesota Yacht Club Festival Music and Concerts | High water forces changes to Lumberjack Days in Stillwater — but the floating stage is back Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to print (Opens in new window) Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) More Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Submit to Stumbleupon (Opens in new window).
