First recording of Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets

[geoff85]

"I was very conscious of people looking over my shoulder at Motown." - That's the quote I was remembering.

Serene was too polite and/or wise to press Burt for more details when Burt was a bit vague, which is too bad. But Burt seems like a guy who lived a very full life, in and out of music, and didn't spend a lot of time going back over his own past.

He also seems like a guy who was good at compartmentalizing, emotionally speaking. Carole Bayer Sager, for instance, told a reporter for The Telegraph:

‘I’m really all OK with it.’ Carole Bayer Sager talks amusingly in the book about Bacharach’s self-absorption – ‘nothing changes with Burt when he changes wives. The only thing that changes is his wife; his routine remains the same’

The same story digs up an Angie Dickenson quote that makes me think Bacharach had a way of tuning out unpleasant things:

Dickinson mentioned it in an interview that she gave to Vanity Fair in 2008, in which she also spoke of how she believed Bacharach had ‘no real connection’ with Nikki. ‘She was too difficult for him, but it was his loss....’

The fact that Burt had no real memory of when the lawsuit with Hal was resolved makes me think he wasn't that involved in the details after the initial wave of activity. It did take something like seven years to resolve. He might have been able to compartmentalize his feelings about the lawsuit, which was dragging on in the background, and work with Hal again at a time when they were both in something of a dry spell.

It is bizarre that, no matter when the songs were written, that they were cooperating at some level on an album project only 2-3 years after a pretty bitter fallout. That's some Fleetwood Mac level "show must go on" stuff.

Is it possible Burt may have been on the spectrum but extremely high functioning or maybe functioning higher than normal in certain areas?

[geoff85]

I'd always assumed that Dionne Warwick was the first to record 'Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets', but I've now discovered courtesy of Second-Hand Songs that a singer from New Zealand called Allison Durbin cut it a year before in 1969 for her album 'Soft And Soulful'. I can't find any information regarding who was responsible for the arrangement, but it's very similar to the one by Bacharach for Dionne's recording.


Also thanks to the Second-Hand Songs site I discovered that Liz Damon's Orient Express recorded the song in 1971.

Oriental Express sounds like Carpenters meets Friends of Distinction.