What The World Needs Now, a well-oiled and diverse musical machine celebrating the work of Burt Bacharach in cities across the U.S. and beyond, comes our way this week.
What do you do when a 20-minute Zoom meeting turns into a deliriously musical hour-long conversation? First of all, you welcome it with open arms – time is fleeting, and in-depth chats with friendly, experienced creatives are worth all of it. Then, you pull the highlights – even if there are many, which there were – and condense them into subject-based snapshots that hone in on the original purpose of the interview. In this case, that was What The World Needs Now: The Bacharach Songbook Live, which is a glowing and expansive tour that looks at one of the most celebrated names in popular music of the 20th century. Bacharach’s heartfelt catalog spans generations, and even now, two years after his death at age 94, memories are still being made to his songs and careers are still being kicked off with his influence in mind – a testament to his late, great melodic power. A reason this tour and these shows are celebrating him, of course.
“You’re gonna get all that you expect,” music director Rob Shirakbari tells us of the concerts hitting the States this spring season, which is being fronted by legendary singer-songwriter Todd Rundgren. “If you know the Burt Bacharach catalog and you’re deep into it, you’re gonna be happy, as well, because we’re keeping everything authentic from the hits to the deep cuts. It’s also gonna be fresh and alive, too, because I think the collaborations with the tour’s individual voices and artists is what keeps it fresh. What I challenge people to do when they come to the show is this: count how many times you go, ‘I didn’t know he wrote that song,’ or, ‘Oh my gosh, I forgot about that song. It’s been years since I heard that one!’ There’s gonna be a lot of that, and the reason I’m not really speaking a lot about what the actual setlist is – other than it’s a lot of songs and we go deep into the catalog and arrangements – is that I don’t wanna deprive people or cheat anyone out of that experience when you come to a show.”
Shirakbari is a true pro, so one must take his word for it (and accept his challenge upon attending the Bacharach Songbook Live tour). He is a highly regarded music director, producer, composer, multi-instrumentalist (particularly a profound keyboardist), engineer, mentor, and more. His acclaimed work spans from the stage with Bacharach and our hometown hero Dionne Warwick, to the studio with the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, to his wife, the folksy Brit-pop starlet Rumer. He is a joy to talk to – open-minded and creative, knowledgable beyond belief with an overflowing well of outstanding stories, and is essentially a human jukebox who can (and will) break out into the song being discussed. If anyone can lead a show dedicated to the work of Burt Bacharach, of whom we all miss dearly, it is Rob Shirakbari, who saw Mr. Bacharach as the influential figure he was, while also connecting with him on a deeper professional, respectful level. (Similar to that of Ms. Warwick, who his connection to is still very strong… like, Jersey level strong.)
On his longtime working relationship with Dionne Warwick: “I love her. She’s like family. I ride or die with her. She’s been hugely supportive of this. I mean, she’s been supportive of me and pretty much all the things that I do, and all I’ve done with Burt and everyone else, because it all really comes back to her. She was the one when I was really young that saw something in me and gave me that opportunity to sort of grow and learn my way around under her wing. She was very patient. I imagine that you’ve got to probably have some talent to get in the room to begin with, but to stay in the room is down to people’s good graces and willingness to sort of put up with that. I was young, but she must have been sure that I would learn, and then to be able to start writing arrangements and do studio stuff with her… Gosh, I’ve been producing her off and on for years now, too, so at the end of the day, she’s been sort of a benefactor, I guess, in some way. I love her.
On the music he grew up listening to, and how it plays into how he works now: “I grew up in the South, in Arkansas in the seventies, so a lot of what we call classic rock, that’s what I was listening to. There’s a progressive side, too, like Emerson, Lake & Palmer, some of that stuff. My uncle, who passed away, was a dj back in the old days where whoever was sitting in the DJ chair could decide what they would play. He had a massive vinyl collection that I got when he sort of got older and out grew it, so all of a sudden I was given all this stuff from the early seventies. I had all this great, great stuff to pull from. There was a lot of rock at the time, bands like Boston and Journey and Styx and that kind of stuff was the one side. Then there was the classical side, because I was studying, as well. And then there was just the pure pop stuff that I loved – Elton John and Barry Manilow and the Carpenters and all that. I didn’t really discriminate, and I still don’t. I just loved all that stuff, and, for me, it was all the same. The jumping from all the different things that I have my hands in at times just seems second nature to me now because of that. I don’t really think about it. When a new guest artist comes in, if it’s an R&B artist, a solo artist, a rocker, or a country act, it’s all the same. It’s good. It is really just down to the songs and the singer, and that’s the thing that really matters that’s the thing I’m always concerned about as a producer, as well: if you have a great song, you’re trying to build the right frame around that, which highlights the singer and the song. That’s what I love. I’m not interested in like wonky, overplaying, trying to impress stuff. Falling into where I landed, I think some of that taste I grew up with set the stage for me to then be a good fit when I fell into Dionne’s world and Burt’s world, because all that is, really, is taking great songs with great singers and trying to frame it… and not screw it up so it gets across to the audience. I think like that when leading bands, as well. You know, my job up there leading the band is not to be clever and try to reinvent the wheel every night; it’s to put the artist in a great frame of mind where they can connect with the audience and sell the song and stay in that place. You need to direct the traffic behind them, so it’s not distracting to them. That’s the job of the music director and the band leader at that place: facilitating the moment, the song, the singer. In other music genres like hardcore jazz or Bebop or something, that is all about how impressive we can be as musicians. I appreciate it, but I don’t live in that world. That’s not my center of interest. I don’t go to music for that. I go for it for the songs, really. […] You can’t escape your own taste, I don’t think. You have to work really hard to do that. That was the thing, too: even though the genre’s different, why they brought me in when Tony Visconti sort of left, was to be bring that taste back in – sort of be that open-minded facilitator. I think after Tony Visconti had been doing the records, it was like, ‘We now we need to get another adult in the room again to sort of help oversee things in his absence, but also bring a new taste to it.’ Even with the genre changes, you can’t escape the taste that makes you, so all that taste that’s in me, all that taste that was built in through all those years with Dionne and Burt, it all comes to a head with appreciation for the song, appreciation for the melody, appreciation for not overdoing it, like we were talking about earlier You don’t have to throw the kitchen sink in this stuff. You can do things in a clean way, in a pure way. That’s what I loved, and that’s what Dionne does and what Burt did.”
On his wife, Rumer, who did an album of Burt Bacharach covers: “You can listen to the Bacharach album we did, which was an exercise and a little deep dive in the catalog – there are some deeper Bacharach cuts on there. We also stripped down all the histrionics and all the singing around to get the core back. She does that brilliantly and reminds us of the core of these songs. That’s that thing about having the same values, having the same shared taste – when you have a great song, you don’t have to fluff it up. You don’t have to do all that stuff; you just lay it out there nice and clean and let the song speak for itself. Rumer does that better than pretty much anyone, I think, and if you like that approach, you’re probably also a fan of Bread and the Carpenters, and, of course, original Burt.”
Speaking of The Carpenters… “Tori Holub, who I brought into this current tour with us, has been kind of billed as the second coming of Karen Carpenter, because she sounds so much like Karen. So many people are fans of hers in the industry, and I think she’s gonna break out on this tour. I think this is gonna really put her in the national light to get that going. She’s be so great, and she has that same sort of seventies soft rock aesthetic of this that we’re talking about. I’m so excited about her being on the tour. I also know that Burt would be thrilled that his music is also helping launch the career of new artists, because he did that. His songs broke a lot of artists all the way back to Dionne. The Carpenters, too, and Herb Alpert, and so many debut hit records of that time for artists. I think the fact that his songs are still, in a viable way, helping build careers… I know he would be thrilled about that.”
Todd Rundgren and Kasim Sulton at The Wiltern in LA. 
Rob Shirakbari and band at The Wiltern in LA. 
Wendy Moten of ‘The Voice’ at The Wiltern in LA. 
Probyn Gregory at The Wiltern in LA. 
Else Trouw at The Wiltern in LA. 
Tori Holub at The Wiltern in LA. 
Lady Blackbird and Chris Pierce at The Wiltern in LA. 
Woody Mankowski at at The Wiltern in LA. 
‘What The World Needs Now – The Burt Bacharach Songbook’ Tour takes a bow at The Wiltern in LA.
All live photos by Mike Skillsky
On the man of the hour, the late and immensely great Burt Bacharach: “He left it all out there with his music. He gave everything for it. I saw it up close and personal. We would do soundchecks together, and as things went on over the years, it got to be where I would run rehearsals and he would sort of show up towards the end – and sometimes not even show up for the soundchecks or even some of the rehearsals! Still, he would get there at the piano when everybody was gone, as the band left the stage to go for a dinner break and everything. I would sort of hang around and wait for him to get there and make sure he was cool with the piano, cool with the way things were in the venue that night. I’d sit there for a couple minutes and he would sit down. ‘Hey, how are you doing?” He’d pop his jacket off and sit down. He would be working through something that he was writing, and I wouldn’t stay too long. I wouldn’t linger, but I’d stay for a few minutes just to make sure that he was good. Then I would go and give him some privacy so we could kind of get a feel for the stage, get a feel for the piano. I got to have two minutes of sitting there watching him play that iteration of the melody, then try it again with that little deviation, and that another one, and it was like he was fishing for that moment in a song, you know? I’m privileged that he was comfortable enough with with me sitting only six feet away to play around like that, and that didn’t mind doing that sort of thing in front of me, because It’s a private thing, you know? It was always there, though, and he was always going on with the music. It was just his life. He gave it all for that and there was nothing ever half-assed about any of it ever. I never heard him play one note that he didn’t mean. Only true greats do that.
A story about Rob, Burt, and Elvis Costello: “We were in the studio doing one of the sessions for the Elvis Costello record, This House is Empty Now. When we started playing as a band with Elvis, we were an hour or two away from really hitting the red button, doing tape. We were still learning the songs as a band. We were still working on stuff. Elvis was in the vocal booth, and every single time that we were practicing, he was singing his heart out like it was the official take. He was just really giving it. I remember sitting there thinking, ‘Is Elvis gonna have anything left at the end of the day? He’s just bringing it every single time.’ It’s just a way of life. When you live it, you practice like that. You mean every note you play, you mean every word you say, you mean every note you sing, and that becomes who you are. You just can’t get yourself away from it. In a sense, that is the smartest way to go about this: just bring it all the time. Many of the Beatles’ records were like that, too. They never knew if Take 27 was the one, but every single time – even when you listen to all the outtakes and stuff today, – they’re giving it their all. Even if they’re goofing around, there is still a level of, ‘We’re never just blowing this off, we want to be here.’ You’re always bringing your best all the time. That’s an old work ethic that I think is missing sometimes. I don’t see that as much in people today, but I know all these cats, and that’s how they brought it all the time. They opened their mouths, and whatever came out, they meant it, they were behind it. You sat down, you played a note, you mean it. It doesn’t matter if it’s soundchecked. I watched a clip that came up on my feed today, and it was Prince doing a soundcheck. The little clip’s headline was like, ‘And this was just soundcheck – look at the band!’ They were all bringing it. He was bringing it. He wasn’t saving anything for that night – no, if he was gonna do it, he was gonna do it. I think that even comes down to, and is deprecated by us, in the words we say. We are lackadaisical with all these things that are online. Don’t say things you don’t mean, because it just becomes you. Everything that comes out of you energetically, the thoughts that come out, the looks that come out your eyes, the words, the music that comes out of you, you mean it, you are it, and that’s that. That is your legacy right there. Prince knew he had to mean it, Elvis knew he had to mean it, and Burt knew he had to mean it. Everything matters.”
On this tour, the Bacharach Songbook Live show coming to BergenPAC this week: “This is not the first time I’ve done a show where I do a deep dive on a catalog and sort of rebuild a history of an artist. I’ve done it for Dionne a few times, and I did it with Burt. This time, in a sense, is that, but the training wheels are off. Because when I would do it with Dionne or with Burt, they sort of had the structure of how they wanted it to be in their show, what songs you could pull from, but all of that is gone. Now I can do it, and I can approach it now with a little more freedom. I can pull in songs that wouldn’t have made it into their shows. With Dionne’s show, of course, she’s got a whole body of work that’s not Bacharach related, so it’s only so far down with that catalog. She can go further, but it’d be a three hour show [Laughs]. Burt, though… he had certain things that he wanted to do and things that he didn’t. There were some songs that when, in the nineties when we were doing that songbook show together, I almost got in the show, but I didn’t One of them was ‘Hasbrouck Heights,’ which I ended up producing a version of with Dionne. And Rumer did a version of that, too, because it is a really great song. I tried to get that in Burt’s show back then, but it just would not make the cut. There are so many more songs to choose from now, so it’s been great. I was saying this to someone the other day, actually, but when you play these songs in real time, you experience it in one way, but because I’m having to rewrite new charts again since keys have to get changed and we’re doing different versions of some of the songs, I’m going back to them not in real time. I’m now dealing with them in less time than real time. I might spend all day on a chart for one song, and I’m going note by note, bar by bar. I’m really experiencing these songs differently, so I keep having these experiences of like, ‘My God, this guy was brilliant.’ Now I’m seeing that chord progressions go into the voice leading into some melodic thing happening against what the lyric is doing. It’s just brilliant. That’s why Burt was who was, and experiencing it like this with freedom and changes has a rejuvenation to it, and that’s what I’m wanting to get across into the show to people, too. I want to keep this music alive. You can’t hear Karen Carpenter singing “Close to You” with Burt playing at the piano anymore. If you didn’t see it back then you are not gonna get that opportunity, and that happens. So, how do you keep it alive, but true to source? So many people, when they do this catalog, they get it wrong. They make it sixties and kitschy and Austin Powers-y and cutesy, or it’s too Broadway, too heart wrenching, or they cover it and over orchestrate it. A lot of people think Burt is one of those Phil Specter types, the kitchen sink stuff. Bacharach is lush, but it’s not gonna have all that stuff in it. It’s very economical and it’s very much like the Eagles’ stuff, if you know that. They taught us that you don’t have to be the best guitar players in the world, but all those arrangements together? Wow. Like a Tom Petty song, too, the arrangements simply fit together like a perfect little puzzle. All of those parts matter, and they mean something. They’re not difficult to execute on their own, although it’s harder than you think! Same thing in Burt’s catalog – it’s harder than you think, but everything is in the right place. The beauty is in the exquisite little puzzle that you make out of it. So, for me, getting to go back and revisit all of it like that, and with bringing in all of the 40 years of taste that’s been developed in me, and through working with him, working with Dionne, and working with both of them together, that has made this process and this show what it is. I could really be in very authentic to the songs, because, and this might sound cheeky, I can bring some of the best that I learned from both of them into this. Burt would approach the music in a way that was very much as the composer, and I’ve still got that. but then I am living within it with Dionne, the artist, and what she additional energy she infused. Burt is still the composer, but they created this, you know? It’s got a different sort of aura to it. With me, I am sort of taking everything into account to create a show that goes back to source, and I think that that’s a good thing.”
FOR TICKETS & INFO ON THE CONCERT AT THE BERGENPAC ON FRIDAY, APRIL 11, CLICK HERE!
