The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

GREAT article!! Thanks for posting it here. I liked this sentence: "modern rockistrocracy considers Bacharach an almost God-like figure." It's good to see that they "get it"! It's good to see that they understand and recognize this man's genius. It's about time that the Kennedy Center people recognized Burt as well!

Could anybody elaborate more on:

"and he doesn’t own the rights to some of his biggest hits (Alfie and The Look of Love among them)..." ?

I got surprised with that. What other hits are referred to?

Tom

While I don't have an album on hand to check if my suspicion is correct, I guess this refers to those film songs not being published by Burt's own publishing company, New Hidden Valley Music...I believe "The Look of Love" was published by Colgems, affiliated with the film studio..."Alfie" could have been the same situation. (Many of Burt's early tunes, too, were published by Famous Music, before he started his own publishing company.) When it's said Burt doesn't have the "rights", this refers to publishing rights, much like the Beatles don't own their publishing rights. Burt, like Lennon's estate & McCartney, still receives songwriting royalties on all of these songs.