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Hitman Talks to Barry Manilow · Classic Hitz with Hitman

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  Hey, Jeffes, Barry, mister Manelo, how are you today? Thirty
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  six years ago? It's been thirty six years since we've been we were two
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  years to a town. Wow, that's a long time. Nineteen eighty eight
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  was the last time you came to Corpus Christy. Isn't that crazy? Isn't
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  that just something? I'm so glad that we put you on the list.
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  I'm so happy that we can come back and say hello and goodbye. It's
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  just great that we're going to call this Christie. Oh I am. I've
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  been to such a huge fan of yours for so long. I'm actually a
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  little nervous talking to you today because, in fact, I went on social
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  media on Friday to let everybody know I was talking to you, and everybody
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  went crazy. They were like, oh, oh my gosh, you're talking
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  to Barry Manelo. It's crazy. Oh good, good good. That's exciting.
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  So was it I wanted to bring up. Of course, you're a
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  National Treasurer. You've had fifty one forty singles, thirteen hits of hit number
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  one, twenty eight appeared on the top ten, thirty six reached the top
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  twenty. You have thirteen platinum and six multi platinum albums. You are.
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  You are who I consider if anybody thinks of a superstar of the seventies and
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  eighties, it is of course you. How does it? And now you
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  besides your residency in Las Vegas and now you've extended your stay at Radio City,
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  how do you feel? Well? I feel just great. I'm waiting
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  for the other shoe to drop. You know, I'm like one hundred years
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  old, and you know, I look at people that are my age and
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  they might look much different than I do, and they have kind of stopped
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  or they've slowed down. And I think, if you slow down, you're
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  gonna stop. And so I don't slow down. And I think that's what
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  keeps me going. And you know, the audiences keep me going in my
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  band and my crew, and I'm still having a great old time. Now
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  I want to I want to actually personally thank you. On this part.
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  I read about the Manilo Music Project. I'm a form a band student and
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  how you're you're doing this great project with music teachers. Can you tell me
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  a little bit about that? Yeah, Well, if the Manner of Music
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  project started here. I live in Palm Springs and one of my neighbors said
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  that his daughter was looking for a sax because they ran out of saxes at
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  the school. I said, they ran out of saxes, so I got
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  I got a sax and then I looked up what's going on in high schools,
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  and sure enough, the government is stopped funding music and arts, and
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  now these schools are on their own trying to keep music instruments into in their
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  classes. And when they break, these great music teachers put them together on
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  their own time. And these but these kids, and these kids have they
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  send me videos of them playing these new instruments that we get them, and
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  it's just wonderful. These kids love their music classes, even playing thirty year
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  old instruments. They still love their music classes. They become their second family.
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  So we've been doing this for about fifteen years, getting instruments to schools
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  that are running out of instruments all around the country. They tell me we've
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  by this time, we've given about ten million dollars worth of instruments to schools
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  around the country, and I couldn't be happier. Wow, we're talking with
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  mister Barry Manilow, who will be hearing Corpus CHRISTI on August the twentieth.
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  Tickets are still on sale right now at ticketmaster dot com and of course,
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  at the American Bank Center box office. This will be the first time he's
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  been backed in thirty six years, since nineteen eighty eight. This is his
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  farewell tour. I just can what to me. I don't like calling it
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  fair well. I mean, that's a terrible word. You know. It's
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  just I've stopped. I'm stopping touring right Not because I'm tired or because I'm
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  bored. It's just because, you know, I've been on the road for
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  so many years, you know, to put together another month long tour it
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  was just too much. So this is the last time we're going to be
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  performing in these particular cities. And you know, you can come down to
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  the in Vegas. We're there at the Westgate and Radio City and you know
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  I'm still around. Well, I was going to ask you this tour,
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  is it a lot like what you're is at your residency? Is it pretty
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  much the same show that you do in Vegas? Bigger, bigger, longer?
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  Wow? Wow, I'm in Vegas. You know they throw you off
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  the Stasia after seventy five minutes. They want those people back out of the
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  casinos. Oh my god. When we do, when we do concerts,
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  I can do as much as I want, and I do, and you
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  know I've got you know, I'm one of the lucky guy that have a
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  catalog of songs that I can go for over nineteen minutes and sing songs that
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  everybody knows every song. And you know, I'm telling you, I'm a
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  lucky guy to be able to do that. So you know, it's always
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  fun. You know, the audiences singing along with me. It's just great,
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  was it. I wanted to tell you a little story just shows how
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  much of a fan I was of yours when I was a child. Well,
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  actually when I was a teenager, my sister and I we had your
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  forty fives and we used to play them to the point where our needle was
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  a plastic needle, and it would the plastic would go into the grooves of
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  the record to where it would almost it would almost sound muffled a little bit.
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  But what we did was we did performances for our mother to your songs
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  and like what song, well, we did Copacabana. Man, it looks
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  like we made it. I mean even now, ready to take a chance.
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  We did all these songs for my mom, and it's one of the
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  best memories that I have with my sister and I doing this for our mother,
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  and you were a big part of it, and I really thank you
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  for that. I really do appreciate. So that's great, Jeff, That's
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  a great memory. So my question to you is, you know you have
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  You've done a lot of your beautiful songwriter, You've done lots of great songs.
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  You've even done a lot of great jingles. Was there a song that
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  you wrote that you love but it was never really released as a single.
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  The one that comes to mind is could It Be Magic? And that was
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  on my very very first album back in the eighteen hundreds. But the first
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  version of could It Be Magic was, like I say, on my first
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  album, I didn't know anything about making records. Certainly I didn't know anything
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  about singles because the first version of Could Be Magic was seven and a half
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  minutes. Now, as you know, as a radio guy, you don't
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  play a seven and a half minute single, and so but I loved my
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  seven and a half minute single. But well, finally radio actually began to
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  like the seven and a half minutes single, so the record company edited it
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  down to a three minute record, So that's the one that really didn't get
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  as much airplayers. I would have loved to get Cosette. You know,
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  that's a really great song. Wow, we're talking with mister Barry Manilow.
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  Who's going to be here. It's Corpus Christy very very soon. First time
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  in thirty six years. And you know, with a lot of the great
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  performers that are out right now, who would be your dream duet that you
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  would love to do a song with? Lady Gaga. She's a great singer,
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  Yeah she is. She's a great performer. I've gone to her concerts
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  and I tell everybody all the time, she doesn't put on a concert.
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  She puts on a show. It's entirely different. She's a great performer absolutely.
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  Like you said, you love working, you love you love performing.
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  What do you do on your off time? I go to my computer and
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  I write a song, or I saw my in an album. I'm always
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  doing something basically. Oh, I play with the dogs. Oh I just
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  came back. I just came back from a month in London. I did
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  a month at the London Palladium in London, and we sold out the whole
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  place. It was amazing And the only thing that I missed were the two
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  dogs that I have. We have two labs that are the kids. And
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  because I haven't been away from home for a while, and that's why we're
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  saying good bye to all these cities because touring just got me. It just
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  got me going going away from home as many for as many months as we
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  used to do. So, I mean, I think it got the band
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  and got the crew. I think it's time to stop touring, but it's
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  not time to stop performing. That's why we have Radio City and we have
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  the West Gate. Oh wow, we're Misster Marian alone. One one,
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  one more question I wanted to ask you, and I asked this to everybody
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  I always interview because I think it's such an important question. Is you know,
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  with people people like right now, they're up and comers, they're songwriters,
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  they're performers. What do they have to do to take it to that
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  next level to make it in this type of business. Nobody has the answers
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  to that. Nobody's got the answers to that one, Jeff, you know,
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  John Lennham once said, in order to write a hit song, make
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  sure You've got a melody and a good and a good lyric, and nobody
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  knows nobody knows the rest of it. And that's it. Make sure you
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  got a melody and a good lyric, and that's it. You just of
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  curse your fingers. Nobody knows the answer to that. Wow. Well,
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  it's it's an honor, it's an honor to talk to you today. This
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  has now been my highlight of my entire career, getting too glad to getting
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  sucked you and and I'm looking forward to seeing you on August twentieth, and
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  I'm going to say it happy birthday, by the way. Oh bye Fact,
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  Thanks, bye bye everybody. Bye.