Saturday, February 11, 2023

This guy's in love with you

Burt Bacharach and Hal David were in my humble opinion (actually not humble at all) one of the greatest song writing partnerships of all time, but today must be about Burt. If you have ever sat down in front of a piano to play one of his things you will know that for all he made it all sound so natural you couldn't get it out of your head or stop whistling it, it was maddeningly complex. Advanced harmonies and chord changes with unexpected turnarounds and modulations. Unusual time signatures and rhythmic twists, often in uneven numbers of bars, that were still as comfy as your mummy humming an improvised lullaby.

I have got a crazy Bacharach story of my own. In 2008 BBC's The One Show filmed a report on the online auction system we ran for the police. I well remember going down to Brighton and watching them make it. 

When it was broadcast, about a month later, the segment finished and they cut back to the studio, Dom Littlewood was sitting next to Burt Bacharach on the sofa talking about it. Genuinely one of the most surreal experiences of my life.

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