COURTESY PHOTO

Hits on parade

Burt Bacharach can turn out
a love song as well as hip-hop

If you listened to each one of Burt Bacharach's Top 40 hits -- there are 66 -- while driving from Los Angeles to San Jose, about a five- to six-hour drive, you'd arrive with several songs left to be played.

Burt Bacharach Performs with the Honolulu Symphony Pops; Joan Landry conducts Where: Blaisdell Concert Hall When: 8 p.m. today and tomorrow Tickets: $30 to $75 Call: 792-2000, or Ticketmaster at 1-877-750-4400 Note: Parking may be limited on Saturday because of the "Rumble on the Rock" event in the Blaisdell Arena. Other parking options include Straub Hospital, Honolulu Club, Hawaiian Electric and Young Street facilities. Street parking is available on King, Young, Victoria and Kinau streets.

With a hit-single track record spanning four decades, Bacharach, who performs tonight and tomorrow with the Honolulu Symphony Pops at the Blaisdell Concert Hall, has become one of the most important composers of popular music in the 20th century, nearly equal to classic tunesmiths such as George Gershwin and Irving Berlin.

Bacharach's sophisticated yet breezy productions borrowed from cool jazz, soul, Brazilian bossa nova and traditional pop, virtually defining adult pop in the 1960s.

Bacharach compositions typically boast soaring melodies, unconventional time signatures and striking chord changes. Lyricist Hal David, Bacharach's primary collaborator, supplied melodrama with bittersweet lyrics that often contrasted with Bacharach's lilting melodies.

Tell Bacharach that his Top 40 hits, including 28 Top 10s and six No. 1s, represent musical genius and the 76-year-old composer/ musician quickly deflects the compliment.

"The music was daring then but maybe not so much today," he said in a telephone interview from his Pacific Palisades, Calif., home. "I was young, I was driven, I felt I had a lot to say. The only way I knew how to talk was through music."

Music didn't come easy for him.

"I believed I had no talent," he says. "I figured I'd end up in the clothing business, but I knew in my heart I was born to write music."

Bacharach studied cello, drums and piano as a child, then moved to New York City with his family. New York gave him a chance to sneak into clubs to watch bebop heroes Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.

Bacharach studied music at several schools while serving in the U.S. Army in Germany. He arranged and played piano for a dance band and in nightclubs, backing Steve Lawrence, the Ames Brothers and Paula Stewart. When he returned home, he began writing songs for Lawrence, Patti Page, the Ames and others.

His first chart buster in 1957 was "Story of My Life," sung by country-western singer Marty Robbins; in 1958 came the campy theme from "The Blob," Steve McQueen's first motion picture. In the '60s, David helped Bacharach cement his pop reputation with songs like "Baby It's You" (The Shirelles), "(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance" (Gene Pitney), "Blue on Blue" (Bobby Vinton), "Wives and Lovers" (Jack Jones), "What's New Pussycat?" (Tom Jones), "The Look of Love" (Dusty Springfield), "This Guy's in Love With You" (Herb Alpert) and a whole slew of Dionne Warwick hits: "Don't Make Me Over," "Walk On By," "I Say a Little Prayer," "Do You Know the Way to San Jose" and "I'll Never Fall in Love Again."

His songs for other artists include "(They Long to Be) Close to You" (The Carpenters), "One Less Bell to Answer" (The 5th Dimension) and "On My Own" (Patti Labelle and Michael McDonald).

As for film scores, there was the notable "Alfie" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969), which won Oscars for Best Original Score and Best Theme Song for "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" (B.J. Thomas). In 1981, Bacharach collaborated with Christopher Cross, Carole Bayer Sager and Peter Allen on the Oscar-winning "Arthur's Theme."

"When you're starting out in this business, you're always being measured to what you've done before, not in quality of songs but whether you went top 10," Bacharach says. "Eventually, you mature and that stops being so important, especially when you have two little kids and you want to spend time with them." Bacharach is talking about his 8-year-old girl and 11-year-old boy.

WHAT'S MUSICALLY exciting for Bacharach these days is a new album he describes as "cutting edge."

"It's very different for me," Bacharach says about the untitled hip-hop venture with Dr. Dre. "Three of the four things I've already cut have Dr. Dre drum loops that he gave me.

"It's a challenging, freeing feeling, to take an existing format -- like these rigid, four-bar loops -- and to see what you can write on top of it. It's hard and challenging too because it does have some restrictions.

"It's kinda like Hal giving me the whole lyric on 'Alfie,' and then having to set that up around it."

Sony gave him complete creative control over the album.

"They didn't want me to write another hit song," he said. "Then (Dre) gave me the loops, and when I decided to do this album for Sony England, it seemed a natural fit."

Bacharach is doing the album to "refresh" himself.

"If you asked me to write a song just like one of my hits, I couldn't go there," he said. "That was my territory then, not now. But I'm still driven by perfection."

So what is his perfect song?

"How about almost perfect?" he says. "I guess it would be 'Alfie.'

"The second lyric, 'Is it just for the moment we live?' says it all for anyone. I think that's the greatest lyric that Hal or anyone has ever written."

Where does that sort of genius come from?

"I keep this little guy hidden in the closet then let him out when I'm stuck," Bacharach says, laughing. "There's never a major event. You're blessed with a gift, you're sponge-like and absorb all this stuff that comes along in your life. You use that."

Bacharach limits his concert appearances to about 35 a year.

"What got me on stage is my writing, so I have to give that as much time as possible," he says. "Writing is the hard part, not the stage, man. My job is to bring pleasure to the audience. That's why they're there, the reason alone to do this."