Vegas on the road

Barry Manilow takes his Sin City showcase beyond the desert

By Doug Pullen

Barry Manilow says he doesn't know how much longer he'll continue his residency at the Las Vegas Hilton. "They would like to have me for a couple more years, but I'm still debating if I want to do this another year. I probably will," the singer says. "I'm made for this Vegas thing, not because it's cheesy or full of neon lights. It's not that. I love connecting with the audience and this place at the Hilton is just the right size for me. I can play around with it every night. It's like my sandbox."

His Sin City run started in February 2005, and he has shows scheduled there through the end of next year. But Manilow increasingly has been playing outside of that 1,700-seat theater in the Nevada desert.

He performed three arena versions of his "An Evening of Passion and Music" Vegas show earlier this year, with two more on the docket for this weekend, Friday in Cleveland and Saturday at The Palace.

It caps a busy, sometimes controversial period for the superstar of soft pop, who is promoting a new album, "The Greatest Songs of the Seventies" and a new DVD, "Barry Manilow: The First Five Television Specials" (from 1977-88). He recently taped a guest appearance on the "Brian Boitano Skating Spectacular," airing Dec. 22 on NBC.

Manilow also canceled an appearance on "The View" last September because of philosophical differences with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck. He didn't discuss that during a recent telephone interview, but he did promise a "blown-up" but not necessarily flashier version of the Vegas show when he hits The Palace.

"My focus, my goal, is to move people, is to connect with the audience and that really doesn't work if you've got 16 dancers and crap coming down from the ceiling," he insisted. "Other people love that and, frankly, it's kind of fun, but that's not my goal. My goal is a guy in a spotlight making you feel something."

It's something he's done effectively - not so effectively with critics, who typically loathe him - going back to his days in New York's bathhouses, where he toiled as a then-unknown Bette Midler's music director. Manilow was the first artist signed to Clive Davis' Arista Records and in 1974 scored his first No. 1 hit, "Mandy."

Since then, the man often credited with inventing the power ballad has racked up more than three dozen Top 40 hits, including "Could It Be Magic" and "Copacabana," the latter of which inspired a musical that's toured the world.

But the 61-year-old singer, songwriter, arranger and producer tired of touring, which led to the 2004's "One Night Live! One Last Time!" farewell tour and, he said, a life free of hotels.

Like Elton John and Celine Dion, Manilow found that Las Vegas offered a chance to perform in one place without the hassles of traveling far from his home in Palm Springs, Calif.

"I just can't stay in hotel rooms and stay away from home," he said. "I'm done with that."

But a handful of dates earlier this year in New York, Atlantic City and Chicago were so enjoyable, he said, that he decided to start adding the occasional one-nighter here and there. He's booked 11 more for January and February next year.

"We did Madison Square Garden and Atlantic City and Chicago and these audiences were, 'Geez, wow!' I told my management to just drop in some more one-nighters here and there," he said.

The Vegas run also has afforded him time to pursue another passion, writing. Manilow has 13 songs finished for a concept album that he won't describe in detail. "I'm not going to give it away," he said. "Someone will steal it."

But he did say it was in the vein of 1984's "2:00 A.M. Paradise Cafe," and 2001's "Here at the Mayflower," which veered into jazz and narrative songs. The new one has more of a rock edge to it.

"I like to do writing about situations and characters and putting the characters in a place instead of just writing a ballad called 'I Love You, Come Back,'" Manilow said. "To me, I'd rather give you a song where you can actually picture somebody in a place, but these are hard to write."

It could come out by next fall. That depends, of course, on what Clive Davis wants to do.

Davis is the one who masterminded the success of Manilow's last three thematic studio albums, 2005's "The Greatest Songs of the Fifties" (which sold more than 1 million copies, last year's "The Greatest Songs of the Sixties" (sold over 500,000) and "The Greatest Songs of the Seventies" (debuted at No. 4 this fall).

"It's all about Clive Davis. Obviously, this has had a huge response. It was brilliant," he said of the decades series. "I didn't get it when he suggested it to me, this '50s thing. I looked at the list of songs and said, 'Really, you think people would like this?' Being the brilliant, brilliant, brilliant record man he is - he is the No. 1 record man of our time - I just follow his lead and he's right. If he wants me to do an '80s album, I'll be right behind him."

With 75 million records sold, Manilow could easily quit and count his riches for the rest of his life. But he says he's never lost the motivation.

"I wouldn't know how to do anything else. I just love doing this. I just love doing this. People say, 'When are you gonna go on vacation?' I try to sit reading a book on a chaise lounge and it's TORTURE. It's torture.

I make it about 15 minutes, then I run back to my studio and I'm in heaven," he said. "I won't stop until they carry me out, and when they carry me out, I'll say I've got one more idea."