Dionne-Bacharach/David Review 1972

[BachtoBacharach]

Posted this a while back and thought it was worth revisiting:

Found this Rolling Stone review of Dionne Warwick's January 1972 "Dionne." The album, issued by Warner Brothers after her departure from Scepter for allegedly the most lucrative recording contract ever given a female vocalist to that date, was supposed to be a sure hit but peaked at #57 and yielded only one single "If We Only Have Love". Dionne always contended that WB didn't know how to handle the team and this is perhaps borne out in the fact that the Bacharach/David penned "Be Aware" or "If You Never Say Goodbye" were not released as singles;in the context of the times, "Be Aware" was fitting and might have been a hit had it been released. In the context of what we know now about the Bacharach/David/Warwick split shortly to come, the review is most interesting. Bacharach, by 1972 had become a star in his own right and was focusing more on his career, which may explain why only three original Bacharach/David tunes were introduced by Warwick here; "The Balance of Nature", "If You Never Say Goodbye", and "I Just Have to Breathe". "Be Aware" had been introduced by Barbra Streisand on a 1971 Bacharach special several months earlier, but she never recorded a studio version of it. Burt dusted it off, gave it a new arrangement sans the weird ending of the Streisand version and Dionne recorded a beautiful version. Dionne was released while Bacharach and David were beginning work on the score for Lost Horizon.

DIONNE-DIONNE WARWICKE REVIEW

At the end of "Don't Make Me Over," Dionne Warwick (this is in 1963) breaks out of the song twice to sing, to yell, with incredible fervor, "Accept me for what I am. Accept me for the things that I do," drums pounding and cymbals crashing around her. Being a black pop singer isn't easy. There are too many definitions, expectations and demands that have to be sidestepped, too many people wondering where you at. Dionne Warwicke steps rather nicely even if she never moves out of an area more than, say, five feet in circumference. I guess the space is comfortable.

On the back cover of her new album, Dionne is pictured head-to-head with Burt Bacharach and Hal David, her long-time producer/composers, one on either side of her like bookends that's her space; that's her niche. She moves in it gracefully, with assurance, even with a wonderful, if somewhat over refined, beauty. May be a bird in a gilded cage, but she's sitting pretty.

If it seems Bacharach and David have defined (confined) Dionne Warwicke, consider (1) that she has, to a great extent, defined them as well and (2) that they the three of them working as a team within a carefully circumscribed area, rather like a group of highly-trained technicians have together achieved a kind of elegant perfection. Warwicke is limited by her sophistication, her slickness, her restraint, her tendency to slip and say, "One less bell to ahnswer," etc: limitations that Bacharach-David seem to share. This prevents Dionne from being Miss Funk, but so what? In their chosen field, needless to say, the team's stylistic limitations are transformed into virtues of varying degrees. Once you come to terms with the word "sophistication" (as it is used in, for instance, the Copacabana), Dionne Warwicke can be sheer pleasure.

Can be. That brings us to Dionne, the latest chapter in a collaborative work that is both consistently fine and maddeningly unvaried. It's not that Warwicke-Bacharach-David haven't changed but that many of the changes seem like minor adjustments in an instantly-recognizable, trademark Sound. At times the style has been refined to the point of attenuation, like a Victorian novel. Listening to Dionne Warwick's Golden Hits, Part One (Scepter SPS565)–the essential work from the early years–and her latest offering, the first thing that strikes you is the amount of real feeling conveyed by Dionne in her early songs. Take "Anyone Who Had a Heart," which begins with the lines, "Anyone who ever loved/could look at me/and know that I love you./Anyone who ever dreamed/could look at me/and know I dream of you." Dionne sings with an amazing combination of lovely purity and aching, uncomprehending emotion; the song smolders with a just-under-the-surface intensity that comes pounding up with unexpected force at the end, the closing cries all the more powerful for the opening restraint.

There's nothing to compare to this–or "Walk on By," "Don't Make Me Over," "Make It Easy on Yourself" or "Reach Out for Me" on the new album. The emotion hasn't disappeared–draining a voice as good as Warwicke's of feeling would be near impossible–but what remains is almost smothered by Bacharach-David's damned delicacy of expression and a subtlety that approaches the obsessive. The fault is not Dionne's she's astonishingly effective within the more-than-usually limited range of emotions she is allowed to explore. The producers, who wrote seven out of the ten songs, have simply failed to give her the opportunity to get into anything heavier than the lament of "One Less Bell to Answer," which, I must admit, is quite effectively underplayed in this version.

The continued narrowing-to-perfection of the Bacharach-David sound also leaves me somewhat ambivalent. With few exceptions, the production work is classically simple, clear and brilliant. There are lots of violins, bursts of horns, but instead of weighing the songs down with great thick lumps of sound, they seem to have let even more space into their characteristically light, bright style–the violins float nicely in that space. Only once or twice is Dionne joined by a chorus and, even in understatement, which seems to be her mode throughout, she clearly doesn't need any support. And yet, when compared with the old sound, the new album feels slightly stiff. While the early sound was hardly rough or gritty, still it didn't have the polished and waxed finish it now has; they have more intelligence, more craft, now, but less to say.

On several cuts, however, everything comes together: The opener, "I Just Have to Breathe," is built on a clear, precise piano line and surges of violins, Warwicke's singing, from the beginning, very quiet, very direct, beautifully effortless. She seems to grasp every phrase completely and with understanding, bringing it to full expression. The lyrics are among the best here: "For me to love you/I just have to breathe," and the song ends with the plea, "In this world where nothing stays the same/stay with me." Dionne delivers the last three words one at a time, imploringly, somehow managing to capture in that small space more intensity than many singers gather in an album.

"The Balance of Nature," which follows, is potentially a vacuous, silly love song about love which begins, "Once/to every bird there comes along/the one bird that sings her a sweeter song." But it's sweetly irresistible, saved by the old team restraint: the music, mainly what sounds like a lightly-strummed banjo, is so fragile it feels like it might blow away and, on the surface, the vocal gives the same illusion, but Dionne's control keeps even the most tenuous elements anchored. She never lets one word, one lighter-than-air inflection escape.

"Close to You" is even sillier than "Balance of Nature": "Why do birds suddenly appear/every time you are near?" (the aviary motif again)–why do I like it? There are more floating-on-a-cloud vocals but when the violins seem to be unreasonably loud in a particular swell of orchestral emotion, Dionne rides their crest without even appearing to raise her voice.

Even the cuts which are resistible are eminently listenable (it does get a little cloying, though, on the final cut, a bit of ephemera called "Hasbrook Heights"). The elegant display of social consciousness in "Be Aware" is saved by a strong arrangement (but understated, always understated–it begins and ends with a series of insistent knocks: the real world trying to get in? or the Po-lice?) and interesting phrasing, a strong point throughout. The whole package is so fucking "tasteful" it threatens to disappear in a cloud of perfume (or perhaps an odorless spray), but there is something that Dionne Warwicke does even when she's singing about going away for the weekend that I'll never really understand. I just like it. (RS 102)

VINCE ALETTI

[Blair N. Cummings]

I think I`ve posted my assessment of the album before, too. I always thought that it was unaccountably subdued (That was the word that came to mind), over-padded with covers, and of very short playing time. However I was so glad Be Aware had been included that I forgave the rest of the sluggish thing its faults.

[BachtoBacharach]

Blair, I agree. Be Aware should have been released as a single...I Just Have to Breathe is stunning and If You Never Say Goodbye is more traditional Bacharach/David fare a la Odds and Ends etc but good. One Bell to Answer is good but subdued...and there is something I really love about the effort althought I can't explain...but too many covers and the album just had a really skimpy feel. In the context of what was about to happen to the team, you can see the beginning of something that is hard to describe setting in...maybe boredom? The fact that Dionne could take even some mediocre material and make it so damn compelling is incredible...and maddening...yet I loved it. An anomoly this album is for sure but what is it about anything Warwick/Bacharach/David did that made it so compelling....you could hear the "specialness" of their collaboration even in their material together even in this material, as polished and precise as it was...I just can't put into words how hearing those three together was like nothing else heard before or since...that collaboration was that unique.

[Blair N. Cummings]

I think Burt was still involved in post-production with Lost Horizon when he realised that he and Hal had to cobble something together for Dionne`s Warners debut - which may account for the "tentativeness" that the album exudes. I don`t know how close to a deadline they were, but it seems the album might have been better had it been delayed until more material (and time) could be made for it.
Burt, later, opined of this project that "I don`t think we delivered".

[BachtoBacharach]

Blair, the album was recorded before their involvement in Lost Horizon...not during. The album was released in January 1972 and Burt and Hal began their involvement with Lost Horizon a few of months after the album was released. Although Lost Horizon had a lot to do with their breakup, it had nothing to do with the quality of this album...if you look at the preceeding album, Very Dionne, it was also a little skimpy. Lost Horizon gets the blame for the breakup but I believe their is evidence of something setting in with the team as early as mid-1970. Burt had become a big star in his own right by time Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head finished its run up the charts and perhaps he just wasn't as committed to keep producing material for Dionne as he had been. Many critics point out that perhaps Dionne was as much responsible for for Burt's success as he was for hers and I think that point has some truth...I've always said that together they had something that none of them had apart from each other and the fact that all three of their careers tanked for a number of years after Lost Horizon hastened their split, tends to lend credence to that. Burt went to Malibu and disappeared into the sand for over a year after the brutal reviews...only in retrospect do we see that the score was pretty good...at the time the score couldn't be separated from the film as a whole and the entire thing was panned savagely. It was a bad decision in retrospect for Burt...the movie's traditional musical mounting didn't lend itself at all to Bacharach's music...this was to me like taking for example, the score of What's New Pussycat and transposing it on the film Oklahoma...they wouldn't mesh and Lost Horizon didn't mesh at all with a Bacharach score...I mean really, Bobby Van and Liv Ulman singing Bacharach? Give me a break.

[Blair N. Cummings]

Well, there goes the only excuse for "Dionne"`s tepidity that I could think of.
Yet, if Burt (if not Hal) was growing tired of playing Svengali for Dionne, how to explain the full roster of material lined up for `73 and ultimately given to Stephanie Mills? In my opinion, these songs were well up to B/D standards; and if there wasn`t a "Be Aware" among them, overall they were more substantial (and more numerous) than those on "Dionne."

[BachtoBacharach]

Bruce, I think there is some question about the Mills material...I had always assumed that Burt intended those for Dionne as well. What is interesting is that Burt was shockingly insensitive to Dionne's plight when they split. He didn' t tell her...she had an album due out and he was AWOL. He was contractually obligated to her to produce 5 albums...she was contractually obligated for those albums to WB...Mo Osten at WB told Dionne to talk to Burt to either get back in the studio with her and Hal or let her out of the contract she had with Bacharach that he had to approve any recording project she took on without him as producer (really Blue-Jac Productions which he and Hal jointly owned) so that WB could get an album or WB would sue Dionne for breach of contract...well Dionne met with Burt, explained her plight and Burt basically told her he didn't care....he wasn't going to produce her and he wasn't going to allow her to work with anyone else. He finally relented and Dionne called in a favor from Holland-Dozier-Holland (longtime friends) who threw together some tracks they had recorded previously, inserted Dionne's vocals and Just Being Myself was born. Burt could have taken Dionne back into the studio and cut those Mills tunes in 1973, but to do so he had to involve Hal and he was not speaking to Hal and couldn't produce Dionne contractually without Hal's participation...this was a real cluster!!! So what did Burt do? When there was talk about a revival of Promises, Promises, he wrote four or five tunes with Neil Simon and took Dionne back into the studio to record three of those tunes...this was in 1973-74 period...and then Burt abruptly pulled the plug after that session...he said his magic with Dionne was gone. Those tunes remain in the WB vaults. Seconds was given to Gladys Knight. My observation is that Burt's animosty was directed at Hal and Dionne only secondarily and that there was likely no way Burt could get Dionne back into the studio to record those Mills tunes without Hal so Burt said no go. Dionne sued Burt and Hal successfully for $5 million for breach of contract and the suit was settled in 1979. Burt was furious and said he would never speak to or work with Dionne again...fortunately he ate his words!!!!