Notes & Personnel Info |  | Digitally remastered by Bill Inglot & Ken Perry (KDISC, Los Angeles, California). | | Personnel: Barry Manilow (vocals, piano, background vocals); Barry Manilow; Dick Frank (guitar, electric guitar); Ron Dante (guitar, background vocals); Bob Mann (guitar); Stuart Scharff (acoustic guitar); Dick Frank (electric guitar); Stu Woods (bass guitar); Andrew Smith (drums); Norman Pride, Norman Pride (congas, tambourine); Jimmy Maelen (percussion); Robert Danz, Janette Stuart, Merle Miller, Sheilah Rae, Pamela Pentony, Gail Kantor, Kathe Green, Jane Scheckter, Adrienne Anderson, Laurel Mass?, Melissa Manchester (background vocals); Steve Gadd (drums). | | Audio Mixer: Elliot Scheiner. | | Audio Remixer: Arthur Friedman. | | Liner Note Author: David Wild. | | Recording information: A & R Sound Studios, New York, NY; Associated Sound Studio, New York, NY; Times Square. | | Photographer: Linda Allen. | | Arranger: Barry Manilow. | | Barry Manilow's 1973 self-titled album is the opening salvo from the man who would become one of America's most popular entertainers over the subsequent decades. BARRY MANILOW 1 is something of a hodge-podge: the singer-songwriter tries his hand at several styles, including country, rock, and swing, but what the album lacks in cohesiveness is compensated for with Manilow's confident performances and assured knack for melody. There are plenty of Manilow's signature characteristics in place too, especially on the ballads (like the album's stand-out cut "Could It Be Magic"), which prefigure the artist's gargantuan success as an adult contemporary crooner. The EXPANDED EDITION of the album, released in 2006, features remastering and four bonus tracks. | | In 1973, Barry Manilow's debut album presented the boy from Brooklyn as an unlikely pop hero. Emerging from the '70s showbiz shadows (he'd recently worked as Bette Midler's arranger/bandleader) Manilow was every inch the boy next door, with instant appeal to those uncomfortable in the more unkempt world of rock & roll but ready to move beyond Sinatra and Bobby Darin to the next face of American Popular Song. With his sophisticated, piano-based compositions and homey, intimate vocal style, Manilow merged the '70s singer-songwriter aesthetic with the aforementioned pop orientation, making romantic ballads like "Could It Be Magic" into the building blocks for a skyscraper soon to be dubbed "Adult Contemporary." | | Barry Manilow's debut album proves to be a far different animal than its glitzier successors; it's fairly raw and unpolished, though his dramatic vocal style is already well established here. The material roams from impassioned balladeering ("I Am Your Child," "One of These Days") to chunky country ("Sweetwater Jones"), driving rock ("Oh My Lady"), and '40s-style swing ("Cloudburst") -- and that's just side one. "Could It Be Magic," of course, is what pulled Manilow above the pack; it's a textbook summary of the dramatic orchestration and swooning vocals that have long marked his style. Some deft arranging doesn't hurt, either; the song glistens from an arrangement that keeps the backing band well in check, where other producers might have let them step all over it. The musical schizophrenia continues unchecked as the album progresses. Guitars surely never sounded so heavy again on as they did on "Flashy Lady," whose trebly, high-end leads could almost be mistaken for Kiss' own Ace Frehley. But just when you think you've got the artist pegged down, he comes back with the poppy R&B of "Friends" and the more familiar mid-tempo musings of "Sweet Life" -- a promise, of sorts, that Manilow will adjust to the hand that fame dishes out. He had the confidence to pull it off; anyone opening his debut album with a minute-long spoken-word track that featured his grandfather was obviously not laboring under anybody else's notions of hip. Judging by this unpolished outing, Manilow came across as having plenty to say, but without a clear roadmap of how he wanted to say it. Manilow and producer Ron Dante would clear up that problem on the next album, Barry Manilow II, but if you want a sense of where it began, here's where you start. [The 2006 reissue of the albums adds four bonus tracks including the previously unreleased "Caroline," "Rosalie Rosie" and "Star Children"as well as the rare "Let's Take Some Time to Say Goodbye", which was released as a single and sank without a trace.] ~ Ralph Heibutzki |
Producer: Ron Dante; Barry Manilow; Ron Dante; Barry Manilow; Al Quaglieri (Reissue) |
Engineer: Andreas Meyer; Elliot Scheiner; Jerome Gasper |
Musical Guests | | Steve Gadd |
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