By Alan Jackson
Last updated at 4:15 PM on 18th April 2011
‘I look at my younger self now and can’t help thinking how brave I was going to have to be. No one can have gotten worse reviews or been the subject of crueller jokes than I did starting out,’ said Barry Manilow
‘Dave Grohl couldn’t have been nicer. And Sly Stone? I could scarcely get a word in.
“You’re just so inspiring,” he said, meaning me! Hello? Then there was the rocker Slash, who stuttered when we were introduced, out of nerves. I’d no idea these people even knew what it is I’ve been doing these past 35 years, let alone that they’d think I’m OK. I always assume anyone younger or cooler will think I stink and that they’ll make fun of me behind my back.’
By nature, Barry Manilow is more bashful than boastful. How could he be anything other than thrilled, though, that within a matter of weeks a Foo Fighter, an R&B icon and the Guns N’ Roses axeman all paid their respects to him?
For four decades the man who gave the world Copacabana was widely derided as terminally unhip, a blot on the musical landscape. He himself jokes about having written songs that are Muzak-ed into lifts all around the world each day. Yet finally he appears to be getting his due.
While tastemakers of the time believed prog rock and punk would be the defining musical genres of the Seventies, history is intent on proving otherwise. Manilow’s hits have stayed alive on the airwaves and in the popular consciousness in the same way as those of the Bee Gees, Abba and the Carpenters have, and more and more people are listening without prejudice. Not that he’d ever pretend to be truly down with the kids.
‘All I cared about was the music, but what they went after was my looks, and in an incredibly personal way’: Barry on the British press
‘Stuff that was thought to be just throwaway back then is like Mozart compared to a lot of what’s out there now,’ says the oft-maligned star.
‘That’s why the Grammys were so difficult to watch this year (his industry clout even at 67 was signalled by front-row seating at February’s event). I’m all for young people doing their thing. But for an old guy who cares about George Gershwin to be listening to a No 1 song called F*** You? That was really hard.
‘Don’t get me wrong: it’s the catchiest song I’ve heard in years. It could almost be an old Al Green or Detroit Spinners track, and that’s my absolute favourite kind of pop.
‘Yet the way they (Cee Lo Green and guest vocalist Gwyneth Paltrow) got attention for it was by using