Las Vegas Weekly

March 29, 2010 · 10:14 AM

Photos: Barry Manilow says he would perform in Las Vegas ‘forever’

By Robin Leach

Barry Manilow at the Paris on March 6, 2010.

Photo: Denise Truscello/WireImage

If superstar entertainer Barry Manilow has his way, he’ll continue performing on the Strip “forever!” Barry told me: “You can’t call this work really -- it’s such a joy! I am having the best time of my life here in Las Vegas.

“When I started at the Hilton, that was only an original year deal. Look what happened. It led to five years. Now we’ve signed for two years here at the Paris, so maybe that will go twice as long, too?

“This is the best show I’ve ever done. I couldn’t be happier with it, so I’m just going to keep doing it until audiences get tired of me. I’m just crazy about what we’re doing here at the Paris.”

Barry chatted with me backstage in his dressing room after the media night opening Friday. Also there were director Jeff Hornaday (Flashdance, High School Musical), songwriters Marty Panzer (“Even Now”) and Adrienne Anderson (“Could It Be Magic”) and Holly’s World starlet Laura Croft.

Barry said jokingly that he’s now the oldest living singer in the world. “But I never get tired of doing this. I love singing these songs, the old ones and the new ones. The story of the lyric is so important, and I get the same joy singing them as the audiences do,” he said. “I enjoy it every time I sing ‘Mandy’ or ‘Copa.’ I really love them. This is what I do, and for me to keep getting all this love from the audiences, I couldn’t be more grateful.”

“Everything about this show is new, and I’m loving it. We’ve been able to completely change what I was doing. We have been able to add in lots of special effects. I absolutely love this theater at the Paris. It’s so intimate. The Hilton was a proper Vegas showroom, and this is like a jewelry box New York theater -- very classy!”

Barry says that when he was at the Las Vegas Hilton for five years, he used to fly back and forth from his Palm Springs, Calif., home nightly. Now he stays over on the Strip at the Paris. He explained: “I have the best, no, the greatest gig. I fly in Friday morning and then go home Sunday night. I’m going to get to know Las Vegas while I’m here. There’s a lot I want to do and get involved in.”

He’s already promised to expand his musical instrument donation program to local schools. “It’s so important for children to have music in their schools for their education,” he told me. “We were too poor when I was growing up to afford an instrument, so I know how important that is for children today. It’s where I came from, and if I hadn’t been encouraged all the way along, I might have never wound up here.”

Barry also revealed that although he’s given up touring, he plans to do symphony dates in between breaks of his Paris residency. Last year, one of his most successful sold-out concerts was at The Hollywood Bowl with a 66-piece orchestra, and he’d like to continue those occasionally at different global venues.

We laughed about his double opening in Las Vegas. His official premiere was KO’d just hours before curtain up when, as we reported, a power outage caused the instruments and lighting effects on the left side of the stage to burn out.

“That was pretty scary,” he said. “I’m just happy they fixed it all, and we could do the next night with a makeup show right afterwards. So, yes, in a sense the media night is our official opening now.”

I’ve commented twice now, including in my review posted Thursday from the early March performance, about how Barry’s voice is the best it’s ever sounded. He’s a perfectionist and insists on sound checks and rehearsals every afternoon at 4 p.m. before the night’s 7:30 p.m. show.

So I was baffled when some media critics tweeted during the media opening that they thought he was lip syncing. I can assure that it’s impossible for a sound engineer to turn his mic on and off in the middle of songs at that power level, and if you listened carefully, you knew his mic was hot throughout because it picked up the rustling of the dancers’ dresses when he did fancy footwork with them and also when he hit it against his chest a few times. Senior Editor John Katsilometes also discussed the ridiculous tweets in his The Kats Report.

Having had a long chat with Barry’s audio engineer in early March and at the media event, I can assure that Barry never lip syncs! One fan emailed me that Barry would start to talk to the audience instead of trying to match the recording. In fact, the next morning, his longtime manager and producer Garry Kief added in an email to me: “Barry doesn’t lip sync. He holds the mic away from himself because his in-ear monitors are too loud. Years ago, he lip synced once for a German TV show because they had no house sound. It was so terrible that he’s never wanted to ever repeat that again. Trust me. He doesn’t lip sync.”

Barry, who hosted a group at Mon Ami Gabi in the Paris over the weekend, summed up: “I couldn’t be happier about the show, being here in Vegas and knowing we have such fantastic audiences. I look forward to singing the songs I love in Vegas for a long, long time to come.”

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

Follow Robin Leach on Twitter at Twitter.com/Robin_Leach.

Follow Vegas DeLuxe on Twitter at Twitter.com/vegasdeluxe.

Follow VDLX Editor Don Chareunsy on Twitter at Twitter.com/VDLXEditorDon.

Share This