Yes, I admit it. I am a Fanilow.
In fact, I’ve been one since the days I dated my first real girlfriend, LK, who also liked many of Barry Manilow’s songs. [1]
This was in the sunny, wonderful, joy-filled era before disco music cast a pall over the otherwise civilized world in the late 70′s.
And this very cultural tragedy forms, for me, the clear demarcation line in the Manilow Songbook.
1977 reared its ugly head and spit the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack at us, infecting our ears. The Brothers Gibb pounded disco into our brains. It was as relentless as it was repulsive.
But, I consoled myself, there is always Manilow… the romantic crooner… the master of the love song… the one who writes the songs that make the whole world sing.
E tu, Barry?
Even a betrayal of this magnitude was not enough to shake my love of his love songs.
I adopted a strict policy of active ignorage. I simple refused to acknowledge that Barry Manilow had anything to do with the song ‘Copa Cabana’ or other such musical abominations.
And yet, however dark a year 1977 was, for me the silver lining was that the year ended with Barry Manilow’s ‘Just Another New Years Eve’…
…a song I’ve sung to myself on each of the 35 New Years Eves since.
So yes… I am a Fanilow. Listening to ‘Weekend in New England’ is my idea of a good time.
And to this day, every once in a while I will put on an old Manilow love song… and maybe I’ll even sing along…
“And maybe the old songs will bring back the old times,” if even for a few minutes.
His music was such a part of me for so many years… and still is.
And yet to a part of me, he will always be that skinny, awkward Jewish kid at the piano. [2]
It makes him even more likeable… and me an even bigger Fanilow!
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[1] I’d gone on dates before LK but she was my first official ‘going steady’ girlfriend.
[2] Barry Manilow (Barry Alan Pincus) born June 17, 1943.
