welcome to our latest episode of being. a series where i spent time with people of influence and try to find out what it is like to be them. tonight, barry manilow. the 78-year-old icon is breaking records in las vegas and he is out with a new musical here in new york city. it is called harmony. he calls it his proudest achievement. i spoke with manilow about fame, criticism, and how he keeps it fresh out of all of these decades on the stage. what it s like to be barry manilow. you are a singer and a sunriser. you are a composer. you have been a household name for 50 years. you are about to break elvis presley s record here at the westgate in las vegas. what is it like to be barry manilow? i am just a regular guy. you say all those things it s like you keep forgetting i do those things but i consider myself a working musician. that s why am. i have a great personal life. i love my partner and my dogs. i love making music. so when you remind me there is this other part, barr
there s an element of alchemy in making music. almost a sorcery or a magic that, i don t necessarily understand, but i know that it moves me. i seen the lights go out on broadway i saw the empire state laid low and life went on beyond the palisades they all bought cadillacs and left there long ago to tell the world about the way the lights went out and keep the memory alive it s all these human emotions. for some reason, we can tap into that, musicians. when we came up with this idea of doing a series of in-depth interviews with really extraordinary people, we started thinking about whom we should try to get, and whom we should ask. and we thought about the usual political figures, obama, the dalai lama. and i kept coming back to the idea, of interviewing the person i really wanted to interview, and that was billy joel. and the reason is that i ve been in love with his music ever since i was a teenager growing up in india. billy joel has been a
broadway i saw the empire state lay low life went on beyond the palisades they all bought cadillacs left there long ago to tell the world about the way the light went out to keep the memory alive it s all these human emotions. for some reason we can tap into that as musicians. when we came up with this idea of doing this series of in-depth interviews with really extraordinary people we started thinking about whom we should try to get and whom we should ask. and we thought about the usual political figures, obama, the dali lama. and i come back to the idea of interviewing the person i really wanted to interview, and that was billy joel. and the reason is i ve been in love with his music ever since i was a teenager growing up in india. billy joel has been a rockstar for five decades. today he keeps up his nearly ten-yearlong residency at madison square garden playing the piano and belting out the lyrics that so many fans adore. he s sold more than 150 million reco
Twenty-two years into the slowest piece of music in the world, a significant musical development has taken place - a slight chord change. The 639-year organ piece by experimental composer and philosopher John Cage has added a single tone to the chord in the church where it is being continuously played in the German town of Halberstadt. The six-note chord, played in the Burchardi Church since February 2022, has now evolved into a seven-note one with the addition of a pipe playing a D note set to
So i changed the melody. anthony works in the grocery store i wrote a whole new song. so in a way, it was a motivator to write a completely new song. and when you talk about the ones that aren t that good, i m struck by how when you talk about captain jack. you say, well, it s only got two chords. and i don t understand, what do you mean when you say, for a layman, what does that mean? it gets boring. captain jack, you know, after having done it for 30 or 40 years, i ve demoted him to private jack. it s two chords. and then it s just saturday night and you re still hanging around tired of living in your one-horse town thank god there s a chord change.