TVGuide.com: It seem like you're busier than ever.
Barry Manilow: Just when I think I'm done it explodes again, I'm just amazed. I go out on the road and sing my songs and say my goodbyes on a farewell tour and then the next thing I know I open in Las Vegas. There I am 35 stories high on the side of the Hilton Hotel and I think, "That'll be about all," and before I know it my album (Greatest Songs of the [Fifties]) is entering at No.1 — it just keeps going.

TVG: Is your favorite thing getting up onstage every night?
BM: My favorite thing to do is producing, I like putting things together. I like being in the background, if it was up to me I'd be accompanying other singers and arranging and producing, or putting shows together for other people. The last thing I ever aspired to was being a performer and to get up onstage, it's the biggest surprise in my life that this is where I wound up.

TVG: Is performing uncomfortable for you?
BM: Now I'm very comfortable. For years I was very uncomfortable and didn't know how to do this and the critics saw that and tried to annihilate me. I agreed with them — I did not know how to be a performer in the spotlight. But the audiences were there and didn't care that I was an awkward amateur on that stage; they kept coming back. They knew I was learning on the job.

TVG: What do most people say to you if they see you out at a restaurant or the airport?
BM: Well, the odd thing is when I walk through an airport they all yell, "Hi, Rod!" They all think I'm Rod Stewart. It's nice. I talk in a gruff voice and sign his autograph. I wonder if he gets "Hi, Barry" as much as I get "Hi, Rod."

TVG: Who do you like on the music scene today?
BM: My favorite rock and roll groups are Nickelback and the Foo Fighters. I don't know how to make stuff like that, but I like it; I hear their passion and craft. The next album I'm doing is a guitar-driven album and when I get ready to make the record I'm going to make phone calls to some great rock and roll people to ask if they want to work with me.

TVG: Well, that sounds like a change from your new Christmas CD.
BM: I work with a great jazz trio on this album. I love finding new facets to songs people already know, but this is my third Christmas album and if I have to do a fourth one, I may be down to the bottom of the barrel for songs. I was going to do a Hanukkah song on this CD, but they are so awful [Laughs], they just don't work. What am I going to do, an arrangement of "The Dreidel Song"?

TVG: You should think about doing that. How was singing this season on Dancing with the Stars?
BM: I was very lucky that they even got one shot of me with the way the cameras swirl around the dancers; they didn't pay any attention to me singing my heart out [Laughs]. But those people are working their asses off, I'm just happy I had a couple of songs they could dance to.

TVG: Next season might we see Dancing with Barry?
BM: Not in a million years, not on a bet.

TVG: But you do have a new PBS special.
BM: Yeah, this is more like a VH1's Storytellers because it's very intimate. I get to do songs from that decade like "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother," "You've Got a Friend," and "Bridge Over Troubled Water," beautiful songs we all know, and then my old stuff, which is fun.

TVG: I see they just released some of your classic '70s variety specials on DVD, I'm sure you enjoy looking back at those.
BM: Oh god, I wish they would have released those after I died so that I didn't have to see myself in that friggin' Copacabana jacket ever again.