Melissa Manchester on the 50th anniversary of her breakthrough Arista LP, ‘Melissa’
Melissa Manchester was part of the beginnings of Clive Davis’ Arista Records in the mid-‘70s, charting seven singles in the Top 40 from 1975 through 1982, debuting with the Top 10 hit “Midnight Blue” from the 1975 album ‘Melissa,’ ending the Arista string with the Top 10 Grammy winning hit “You Should Hear How She Talks About You” in 1982, and with another Top 10 hit in the middle, the big ballad “Don’t Cry Out Loud” in 1979. We look back to Manchester’s breakthrough album for Arista, Melissa, which had Richard Perry as the executive producer, who passed away late last year shortly after our interview and was featured in our monthly In Memoriam series for December. We discuss a few more songs over Manchester’s career and her latest album, RE:VIEW, where she has re-recorded some of her biggest hits and compositions. She found time to spend with Goldmine after an appointment with Locks of Love, the Florida nonprofit charity who provides custom-made hair prosthetics to disadvantaged children who have suffered hair loss as a result of medical conditions, and before getting back on the road in the touring production of Funny Girl.
Melissa Manchester, 2022, melissamanchester.com, photo by Sasaphotos
GOLDMINE: Welcome back to Goldmine. Congratulations on the 50th anniversary of Melissa. It is good to see you today, right after your generous gift to a child in need.
MELISSA MANCHESTER: Thank you. Yes, this is my short hair, after donating 10 inches to Locks of Love.
GM: Let’s begin with the second Top 40 single from ‘Melissa,’ “Just Too Many People.” It is catchy, has a bouncy chorus, and is the song from the album that you co-wrote with your producer Vini Poncia.
MM: On my first two albums, Home to Myself and Bright Eyes, recorded for Bell Records which was absorbed by Arista, Hank Medress and Dave Appell were the producers. With Melissa, Vini was the producer, Richard Perry was the executive producer, and my band played on it. I wrote “Just Too Many People” with Vini. It was widely accepted except for a few markets who refused to play it, feeling that there was an anti-family message crazily concocted from the lyric lines, “too many lonely people, living in a house divided by loneliness and sorrow.” Be that as it may, the song has endured.
GM: The flip side of the single, that is also on the album, was “This Lady’s Not Home,” which you wrote with Carole Bayer Sager, like almost half the album. It is soulful and bluesy. I like James Newton Howard's organ on it, too.
MM: James was part of my band in the early stages of his career. He went on to be a spectacular film orchestrator. “This Lady’s Not Home” followed the ephemeral character who Carole and I wrote about for “We’ve Got Time,” “This Lady’s Not Home,” and more, and all seemed to come out of this made-up woman’s experience which was reflecting our experiences at the time.
Melissa Manchester
Fabulous Flip Side: This Lady’s Not Home
A side: Just Too Many People
Billboard Hot 100 debut: September 20, 1975
Peak position: No. 30
Arista AS-0146
GM: Let’s move on to “We’ve Got Time,” since you mentioned that one. It is a wonderful opening song for the album, with great harmonies that you create with yourself.
MM: I was trained so well, being a background singer and recording jingles so that I would have money for my early demos. I learned to stack different harmonies. “We’ve Got Time” is a song of youth where you think you have all the time in the world to work things out. It’s a solid song and I’m proud of it.
GM: “Party Music” is certainly fun, which you co-wrote with your guitarist David Wolfert, and it was also covered by The Rhinestones from Chicago, formerly The Fabulous Rhinestones, that same year.
MM: I didn’t know that. Thank you for letting me know. I love it when people cover my songs, hearing a different interpretation, perhaps something you hadn’t thought of, and any interesting angles.
GM: Like many people, the first time I heard you on the radio was with “Midnight Blue,” spending most of the summer of 1975 in the Top 40 with a beautiful balance of tenderness and power and the combination of your piano and James’ electric piano. What is neat about the new version on RE:VIEW with Dolly Parton is that her gentle delivery matches your voice so well, keeping it true to the original with an extra touch.
MM: With RE:VIEW, which is my 25th album, it is really a thank you to the fans who have followed me for such a long time and have told me that the songs have become emotional life rafts for them during their troubled youth, difficult relationships, a stint in the army, or even a jail sentence. Songs are magical in that way. I reached out to Dolly and pondered what would be an interesting duet that wasn’t conceived of that way. I thought that “Midnight Blue” between two women would be very touching. The conventional wisdom is that it is between a man and woman and indeed it was written about Carole and my young marriages many years ago. The thought about an endearing friendship between two women seemed to have an unusual and beautiful depth to it. When I sent Dolly the track with the vocal parts that I wanted her to sing on, she went off, recorded it, and it came back so beautifully that I went back to the studio and re-recorded my vocal performance to match her emotionally. She is just spectacular to work with.
GM: “Midnight Blue” was your first hit for Arista. You mentioned the Bell to Arista transition and singing jingles, which is what I also think of with Barry Manilow.
MM: Barry Manilow and I were two of the three original artists in the mid-‘70s who moved from Bell to Arista along with Tony Orlando and Dawn. We were the three keystone artists who Clive Davis thought were suitable to build his new label, Arista. My pair of early ‘70s Bell albums had a college following, which was fun, but when Arista was created, you felt that there was a huge engine behind you. Barry and I have remained friends for such a long time.
GM: Every time I have heard the beautiful “Could it Be Magic,” that he produced with Ron Dante, when he sings “sweet Melissa,” I think of you.
MM: It is very touching that Barry used my name.
GM: On your new RE:VIEW album, a couple of song versions really stand out to me. “Come in From the Rain,” decades later, sounds almost like an emotional reunion with your vocal and piano delivery. When I spoke with Toni Tennille about the Captain & Tennille’s version of it, we both felt it should have been a huge hit for them, and our theory is that the people at A&M spent all their promotion money on Peter Frampton at the time instead, which worked well for Peter but hurt the Captain & Tennille and the Carpenters that year. I also enjoy Jane Olivor’s version of your song.
MM: The song has become a standard, which is lovely. For me, that is more important than being a hit because that tells me that it will endure and is not just of the moment. I was delighted to finally be able to do a version that is stripped down, with just a string quartet and my dear colleague Bill Wood recreating the bassoon solo that my late father played on the original version.
GM: “Through the Eyes of Love,” from the film Ice Castles, which my wife Donna and I saw in the theater when it came out, has such gentle beauty. It is another one of those songs that I thought should have been a big hit on the level of Debby Boone’s “You Light Up My Life.”
MM: I was gifted with that song by my late friend Marvin Hamlisch, who co-wrote it with Carole Bayer Sager. In those days, they would call me up and ask something like, “What are you doing Thursday afternoon, we’ve got a song that we would like to record?” I brought in some of my musicians. Marvin played on it, too. It is a gorgeous song. I was a singer and songwriter in a period where melody was still driving a song. Percussion started to show up heavily with disco and hip-hop and the consequence was that melodies and lyric ideas were much shorter and repeated as opposed to being developed. Much of my music brings comfort to the ear and to the heart because they are based on long melodic lines and long lyrical thoughts. Re-recording all of these songs on RE:VIEW was lovely because I made a stand that none of the songs ended with a fade. They all came to an ending, because that is what I have learned onstage all these years. It is satisfying for a song to come to an end, the audience can applaud, and we can both move on to the next song.
GM: You mentioned the disco era. I heard Lisa Dal Bello’s “Pretty Girls” on Canadian radio in 1978 and I bought that single. The following year I heard your version and bought that too. I think you did a wonderful job.
MM: That was a period when the music industry was changing. Disco was becoming a major force and the powers that be wanted to see you in that lane so that you could attract a new audience and reinvigorate your career. I said I would give a new style and chapter a try, even though I was a songwriter of mostly ballads, if the composition of the song was interesting enough, because if you are successful, then you must sing that song for a very long time, so you must find something to justify all that energy. It was a lot of fun.
GM: You also reached back in time. On the day our daughter Brianna was born in 1983, I headed back from lunch to the hospital, and I heard your version of “My Boyfriend’s Back,” which also is appended with “Runaway” on your Greatest Hits album. That is fun and took me back to your early days with Bette Midler and the ‘60s covers.
MM: There is nothing like reaching back and seeing if you can revive a song that you grew up with, taking a slightly different point of view or harmonics, or just pay tribute to an artist. I did my version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s composition “Walk on By” on my Tribute album, as a tribute to Dionne Warwick. The songs in the ‘60s were generally peppy with bright tempos. I slowed down “Walk on By” to make it an epic aria. I saw Barbra Streisand do that to “Happy Days are Here Again” and experienced what that did to the internal life of the song, which I found interesting. Songs are vehicles and you can do whatever lights your fancy with them.
GM: Speaking of Barbra Streisand, that takes us to your Funny Girl tour.
MM: Yes, this is year two with me playing Mrs. Brice in this magnificent production of Funny Girl which in 1964 made a star of Barbra. Funny Girl has never had a national tour until now, so this is historic, and audiences have been packing the theaters. Young children, young musical theater students, families, and grandmas and grandpas who either saw it on Broadway or know it from the film, are all coming to see it. We will be on tour through mid-April, and it has been a great success. Thank you very much for our time today and your support for my music over the years. I appreciate it.
Related links:
Goldmine 2024 In Memoriam beginning with producer Richard Perry
Fabulous Flip Sides is in its tenth year
goldminemag.com/columns/fabulous-flip-sides
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