Burt Bacharach: Grandstanding?

From New York Magazine, December 2, 1996

Burt Bacharach: Grandstanding?

Size apparently matters to BURT BACHARACH. At the Rainbow Room last Sunday to tape a New Year's Eve special with psychic friend DIONNE WARWICK, the pianist was provided with the Yamaha piano specified in his contract. But while taping promos for the show, which will air on American Movie Classics, Bacharach, 67, had fallen in love with a seven-foot Steinway grand piano down the hall in Rainbow & Stars. Problem is, a Bacharach-in-the-making, 33-year-old STEVEN LUTVAK, was planning to use that piano the same night for two sold-out shows with DEE HOTY (of Will Rogers Follies fame). So Lutvak seemed a little unnerved when a frantic AMC producer burst into the room just hours before his concert to announce, "Mr. Bacharach wants your piano."

Sources say the producers tried to urge the resistant Lutvak to trade down in return for an unspecified amount of cash and some vague talk about meeting with a big agent. "You could almost see Lutvak starting to calculate how much he had left on his mortgage," the source continues, "when the first guy puts his arm around Lutvak and says, 'Now, Richard...'" That did it.

Lutvak, whose first name persists in being Steven, performed that night on the same seven-foot grand piano he'd used during rehearsals, and AMC scurried to find other ivories grand enough for Burt. "We called the music-supply company and said, 'You've got an hour,'" sighs an AMC spokeswoman. "[They] got the piano up there in about 58 minutes."