You should hear how she talks about songwriting, which she learned early on from Paul Simon.



Carl Wiser (Songfacts): What does the song "Whenever I Call You 'Friend'" mean to you?

Melissa Manchester: The meaning of the song for me is an affirmation and an articulation of an enduring relationship. The word "friend" seems sort of diminutive about something that is so powerful in a person's life, and I think not enough songs have been written about friendship.



Songfacts: That song seems to toe the line between a friendship and a rich romantic love, how they can both be going on at the same time.

Manchester: That's a good point. You hope that a romantic relationship is cushioned in a deepening friendship, but as years goes by it is the friendship that often wanes. But I believe if you go into a relationship - romantic or not - with a friendship, it can not only endure but grow and deepen.

Songfacts: Structurally, it's a very interesting song.

Manchester: It's a very melodic song. It goes through every chordal progression we could figure out. When Kenny Loggins made the recording with Stevie Nicks, the opening vocalese was his tribute to Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys.

It took Kenny and I 45 years to get together to record it, and it was wonderful.

Songfacts: "Through The Eyes Of Love," I was surprised to see that is your most popular song on streaming services. Can you please share your thoughts on it?

Manchester: That was written by my dear friend, the late Marvin Hamlisch, and Carole Bayer Sager, my writing partner of several years. She called me one day. I was home off the road and she said, "Are you available Thursday to come to the studio and record a song? We've just written a song for a new movie called Ice Castles." I said, "Sure, I'm available. Do you need a band?" I brought my musicians down there and I sang this beautiful song, which turned out to be an official wedding song for many decades.

It really means so much to so many people. It was very often their first dance at their weddings.

It was particularly poignant to have Marvin explain to me how he was inspired to compose the melody when he and Carole were viewing the film before any music was set to it. It's about an ice skater who goes blind, and he was watching her on the ice doing these figure-eights all by herself in this enormous rink, and he started to hear that opening melody that was reflective to him of her figure-eight. That's how it started to show up.

The thing about songwriting is, you're serving the idea. It's not as if you're writing a concerto where it's all about structure. This is music to serve a literal idea, and you only have three-and-a-half to four minutes to make it worth anybody's while to listen.

Songfacts: Many of the songs you write are with a co-writer.

Manchester: I enjoy collaborations. I'm attracted to collaborators who think in interesting ways, who use language in a singular way to pull unusual, surprising metaphors out of thin air. And I like to talk to people to get to know how they express themselves before I start to hear music.

When I was 17 years old, I studied songwriting with Paul Simon, which was one of the great experiences of my life. He said to our little class, "All of the stories have been told, the way you express yourself is what separates you from the crowd." What I have learned is to follow that guiding light. To find that unexpected way to express an idea that is ancient and has probably been expressed hundreds of thousands of ways. That's what's interesting to me.

Songfacts: How did you end up in a class with Paul Simon teaching?

Manchester: I was at NYU School Of The Arts for one year, and there was a bulletin board with a scrap of paper in the corner that said "Songwriting and Record Production Taught by Paul Simon." My friends and I looked at each other thinking, Paul Simon of Simon and Garfunkel? Because Bridge Over Troubled Water was number one all over the world, and I thought, what would he be doing on East Seventh Street in Greenwich Village?

In fact, he was available for six months and he felt like teaching. He auditioned every one of us by himself and I was honored to be selected. The group was very disparate types of songwriters. Some wanted to write the Great American Musical, many were folk singers, and there I was in the midst of it.

It was a beautifully run class. It was very touching. We met once a week for a couple of hours and everybody had to come in with either an idea or a verse or a finished song, including Paul Simon. He talked about the life of the professional singer-songwriter, and it was dazzling. We were all wannabes and here he was in the trenches teaching us about what he was seeing up ahead.

He talked about "Bridge Over Troubled Water," the writing of that. He said the idea is based on an old gospel hymn, but the bridge, "Sail on silver girl," really had nothing to do with the song. He said he had a girlfriend who was going prematurely gray, and it was troubling her, but he liked the idea of it and it felt natural to the song, or at least organic, so he stuck it in there.

I really learned from him that there are two kinds of writing. I describe it as writing from the eyebrows up, or from the heart down. Writing from the eyebrows up is like typing, and writing from the heart down is where you start to find authentic language, and it's harder to access that, for me anyway. I've written with writers who are so brilliant that that tap is running all the time, but I can feel the difference in my body when I've hit that nugget of authentic language for me, and it's lovely.

Songfacts: I imagine if you're somebody like Paul Simon it would be very hard to articulate how you could access that heart down as opposed to the eyebrows up.

Manchester: Well, it's so natural for him, it's where he lives. He's so scholarly and does research to inform him about music styles that he's interested in. He spent a lot of time in South Africa. He resonates that kind of organic, authentic pursuit. It was a shining light.

It was really serious fun to be in his midst. I hadn't seen him for a very long time and then a couple of years ago when I was a presenter at the Kennedy Center Honors honoring my friend Bette Midler, he was there. I hadn't seen him in decades. I made sure that I got a chance to see him, and when I finally did, I sort of threw myself on him and kept whispering in his ear, "teacher, teacher, teacher." We hugged and hugged. It was beautiful.

Songfacts: You talked about how Paul Simon, through his travels and constant searching, is able to access that wellspring of creativity. How do you tap into that?

Manchester: It seems to come upon me when an idea or a phrase insists on being expressed and just niggles at me. I get that something is afoot and that I need to pursue it.

Sometimes it's synthesizing an observation or an experience or something that I overhear somebody say in a coffee shop, and the idea just takes hold.

Somebody said, which is so true, that songwriting is like peeling an onion from the inside out. Once you get an idea - it could be a title or something tucked into a second verse - you have to start putting it together from that clue. So you look for more clues and you look for the sort of tonality of the music and the rhythm of it. It's endlessly interesting and it's sort of the same as when I started such a long time ago. I just have a greater sense of discernment. I have more refined editing skills now.

Songfacts: Tell me about writing the song "Midnight Blue" and what it means to you.

Manchester: I wrote "Midnight Blue" with Carole Sager. We were writing partners for about five years. It's very conversational because all of our songs came out of conversations, and at the time we were young married women trying to navigate some stormy waters in our young marriages, trying to find language to help clarify our communication with our young husbands, and the way we would find clarity is through our songs.

And "Midnight Blue" is so touching for me. First of all, it was my first hit, and second and most importantly, there's a certain suggestion of world weariness in the song. We wrote it as such young women, and to be singing the song decades later and to have grown into that real-world weariness is interesting and touching. It's like those young women who wrote that such a long time ago knew about what was to come.

I have a particular tenderness for that song, and now that I've recorded it with Dolly Parton, it opened a whole other expanded inner world of the song.

Songfacts: Can you talk about how the song changed form when you recorded it with Dolly Parton?

Manchester: I had reached out after I recorded "Whenever I Call You 'Friend'" with Kenny. I reached out to Dolly before Kenny and I actually sent her "Whenever I Call You 'Friend'" because I thought two women singing would be really astounding on that song. She said, "Boy, this is fantastic, but it's too hard for me to sing it and to learn the harmonies and all that." She said, "You have something else? Because I'd love to be on your project."

None of the other songs were duets, but I thought about "Midnight Blue" between two women, because the conventional approach to duets is usually a man and a woman, but there's a certain deepening power between two women who sing about enduring friendship and what that means.

So I sent it to her and she loved it. I put all of the vocal parts on it so she could learn them, and she sent me back her vocal performance, which was so gorgeous. It was so tender that it sent me back into the studio and I re-recorded my vocal to match hers emotionally. Then I went down to Nashville and did the video with her.

Songfacts: In the video there's a great scene where you and Dolly are in the kitchen getting rather emotional.

Manchester: It was a made-up story to underscore a friend being in need. We are both actors, so we created that and I think it worked nicely. You hope everybody has friends where you can bang on a door in the middle of the night and say, "I need help," and they open the door to you and are there for you. That was the story.

Songfacts: I forgot that you were both actors. Very good actors.

Manchester: That's right.

Songfacts: When you were talking about getting together with Kenny Loggins and how it took 45 years, I was thinking about when I was talking to Dean Pitchford and he told me about the saga he had to go through to track down Kenny to do "Footloose." One of the big songs that you had was written by Dean: "You Should Hear How She Talks About You." I'd like to get your thoughts on that song.

Manchester: That was written by Dean Pitchford and Tom Snow, dear friends of mine. It was presented to me at an interesting moment. Disco music was all the rage and the powers that be at Arista Records were trying to talk me into putting my toe in the water, because I was really known as a balladeer at that point.

But when I listen to songs, aside from the arrangement I try to listen to the composition and the lyrics and just see if there's something that I can justify investing my energy into, because if it's a hit, I'm going to be singing it for a long time. And I thought the song was really solid. It's very cheeky and adorable, and the rhythm and the sound of it aside, it's a solid composition, and I have the great privilege of having it produced by my beloved colleague Arif Mardin, who's one of the greatest producers of all time. And because of the song I won a Grammy for Best Vocalist.

But I was so full of myself in that moment. I thought, How am I going to grow old singing this tempo in this rhythm in this style of song? I put it away for a minute and then I tried to rearrange it for stage performances. Then I took a breath and I thought, What are you doing? This is a gift. Just say thank you and move along. So, of course, I re-instilled it at my concerts and the audience gets hysterical. It's great fun and I'm forever grateful.

Songfacts: So you went through a period when you didn't want to sing the song?

Manchester: Right. It was a very interesting moment because when disco showed up it changed the whole complexion of most of the music industry. Electronics were showing up, which meant producers had more toys to play with, and in my heart it made me feel like the singer was sort of secondary. The producer became the star. It was really different than the way I started off, and I was feeling lost for a while.

I tried to adapt, because I believe that artists live in chapters and you try things and you try to justify them and you see if they work or they don't work, and sometimes they do, sometimes they don't and you move on. It's really interesting because my students really like that electronic period from my body of work. I rarely listen to it, but every once in a while I'll listen to Hey Ricky [Melissa's 1982 album] or the Emergency album [1983], and the songs are good. It's just that the sound of the production was so electronic, so sugary, but it was reflecting that time.

Songfacts: Another song you didn't write but still pops up on the radio all the time is "Don't Cry Out Loud." The whole idea of keeping your feelings inside is so opposite to what you hear these days, which is all about just expressing yourself freely at all times, often with the help of social media.

Manchester: The song was written by Carole Sager and Peter Allen, my dear friends. I first heard Peter Allen sing it as a very quiet song, and I thought it was the most beautiful lullaby I've ever heard.

I walked into the studio that night and my friend, the late Barry Fasman, arranged it. There were 50 musicians playing this gigantic, anthemic version of this song, and it was so shocking to my system and not at all what I had in my head. My performance was fueled by frustration.

And the title of the song... Carole Sager and I were writing in the height of the burgeoning woman's movement. We were writing all about self-affirmation and finding your voice and all that, and suddenly here's this very loud song with the first word that says, "don't." I thought, What am I singing?

It took me a very long time, but I saw that audiences were responding to it so deeply, and I thought, OK, slow down. Why are people responding to this? And in the end, the central idea of the song is that one has to learn how to cope. That's what the mature soul has to do in life. And if you don't learn how to cope, you become a victim. You blame everybody else, you take no responsibility. There's a menu of immature responses that we have in life, but the central truth is, for a mature mind, one has to learn how to cope and you don't always get your way. But at least you know you tried.

Songfacts: Wow, that's a great insight into that song.

"Just Too Many People," another song on Re:View which you co-wrote, is really intriguing. Can you talk about that one please?

Manchester: Yeah. When we wrote the song and I recorded it, there were certain radio stations around the Boston area that wouldn't play it because they felt somehow that there was some inner anti-family message, which is ridiculous. But even then, people were struggling. People are always struggling, and sometimes you hope a song will help to unite people or bring clarity to their struggles, and that was one of those songs.

Songfacts: Tell me about the song "Come In From The Rain," which was popularized by Captain & Tennille.

Manchester: Yeah, that's been recorded by many people. Carole Sager and I wrote that song, and the afternoon that we wrote it, we wrote the first two verses. We said, "Let's marinate on it and I'll call you tomorrow," but I always felt because of the style of the song that it required a bridge. I love bridges. Bridges are not in fashion anymore, but I'm a real bridge writer. So I went home, and in the middle of the night I heard the bridge come over me.

Alas, in my music room lived my drummer at the time, who was chronically late and the only way I could make sure he would show up on time for gigs was to have him live with me and my then-husband. So one night at around 2 in the morning I climbed over where he was sleeping so I could get to my piano and I put on the damper pedal and I wrote the bridge:

It looks like sunny skies
Now that I know you're all right
Time has left us older and wiser

I brought that to Carole the next day and I played her that bridge, and she added "I know I am," which completed the idea, of course.

It was beautiful to write that. A gorgeous song. I am so grateful that so many remarkable singers have recorded it and performed it and that it endures.

Songfacts: One you didn't write is one of these saucy '70s songs called "Fire In The Morning." I'd like to get your thoughts on that.

Manchester: It was a song that was brought to my attention by the guys at Arista. It's a very nice song. It's very mellow.

You know, in the '70s, songs were still melody-driven, from Motown songs to the Philadelphia-sound songs, all pop music was still melody-driven. You could take everything away and just play it on the piano or guitar, and there you would hear the composition.

In the '80s with disco, things became percussive-driven, which changed the shape of popular songs. It made the phrases shorter, it made ideas repeat and repeat and repeat so you never really developed melodies or lyrics. It required a shorter and shorter attention span of the listener, which was interesting and odd and kind of sad because I really believe that the heart and the soul longs for melody, and when it shows up, people remember things that they didn't realize they had forgotten, which is how to feel. A melody makes you feel deeply. It releases tears, it brings back memories.

So anyway, "Fire In The Morning" was a lovely song and melodic, and people cozied up to it.

Songfacts: So these melodic songs are different lyrically than the more percussive songs you would get in the '80s, and it sounds like you feel that you could express more of a story when you have a more melodic song.

Manchester: Yeah. You can develop an idea. We learned that from the Great American Songbook. Cole Porter and Irving Berlin and Ira Gershwin and all of those incredible writers, they wrote long melodic lines, which allowed you to write long lyrical ideas. And the titles of those songs would support the long lyrical ideas.

These were gorgeous writers who wrote for gorgeous singers. I guess it started in the '40s maybe with Woody Guthrie, but in the '60s and '70s when the singer-songwriters started to show up, songs still had longer melodic ideas. They may repeat more but the ideas were long. And also, popular music was still coming off of the stages of Broadway. That all changed really in the '70s, and then in the '80s it just changed forever and then hip-hop showed up and then rap and then everything changed. But pop is still musical and there's always space for a great melody and a powerful lyric to show up.

Songfacts: Another song that shows up on Re:View is "Just You And I." Can you talk about that one, please?

Manchester: One of the interesting things that happened in the re-recording of these songs is that many of them unexpectedly grew into the moment. "Just You And I" was written by Carole Sager and I. It was written in the early '70s at the point of the burgeoning woman's movement, so it was written about women's solidarity in that time. And when I re-recorded it, we were in the height of COVID. The album wasn't going to be released any time soon and nobody was going anywhere because all the venues on the planet had shut down.

When I created the video to go with "Just You And I," I wanted to pay homage to those marginalized workers who in the time of COVID became essential workers - postal workers, nurses, doctors, pizza delivery people - all those people who glued our society together while we were stuck inside. So "Just You And I" suddenly had a different inner life and I found it very powerful and very unexpected.

Songfacts: You said that the song was originally intended as a song of women's solidarity?

Manchester: Yeah.

Songfacts: Is that an interpretation most people picked up on?

Manchester: I don't know. Carole and I found ourselves having several of our songs cited by women's groups. One of our songs, "Home To Myself," was used on the first Ms. magazine special that was aired on PBS. We were two women writing together, which in those days was pretty rare.

Songfacts: Tell me about "Confide In Me," the song you wrote that was most famously sung by Diana Ross.

Manchester: "Confide In Me" is a song I wrote a long time ago with Stan Schwartz. He was my pianist in my band at the time. And yes, Diana Ross recorded it and Raquel Welch performed it on The Muppet Show. I'd never recorded it, but I always liked it.

We wrote it as an old-fashioned torch song ballad, very slow, very vibrato and kind of sultry. And at one point Stan said, "Are you ever going to record this song?" So I listened to it again, and something was sort of peeking through the composition, and I felt it could fit in a kind of Latin groove.

Then as I was playing around with the harmonics, I thought it could use an opening verse, which is never written anymore, so I wrote this opening verse and it finally found its place. I just love the cheekiness. I love the suggestiveness about it.

Songfacts: You were on The Muppet Show yourself at one point, weren't you?

Manchester: I was indeed. It was a remarkable experience. I sang, among other things, "Whenever I Call You 'Friend'" with the Muppets. It was wild.

It was incredible to work with the late Jim Henson. He was just a genius. And Frank Oz and Jerry Nelson, all those remarkable creators. When you're surrounded on the stage with all of these Muppets and you're singing with them, you start to realize, "I'm in a relationship with these Muppets. They're singing back to me." It was just fantastic.

Songfacts: How did you feel about the character you played on Blossom?¹

Manchester: Well, that was a deep dive into a person that was not spoken of hardly at all, being the mother who leaves the family. She was a very free-spirited woman, Maddy Russo. She left her three kids with her ex-husband and she went off to pursue a singing career.

It was interesting and odd. My kids were very little at the time and I couldn't imagine doing that myself, but I've heard from women who were grateful that their plight was being portrayed. Some women just knew that they were not good mothers and it would be more beneficial for their children to be raised by the dads and the dad's family. It's heartbreaking, but there you have it.

I was just thrilled to be a part of that little family and working with 14-year-old Mayim Bialik, who was just astounding. All of the kids were great, but she was clearly a brilliant kid and well-raised.

And who knew that she was going to become a neuroscientist? She was poised and she had a kind of countenance about her, always prepared and highly professional. So it was great fun being a part of it.

Songfacts: In the Barry Manilow song "Could It Be Magic," are you "Sweet Melissa"?

Manchester: I think I am. It was written by Barry and Adrienne Anderson - we're all friends. I think they probably just liked the sound of my name.

Songfacts: What is a song that didn't make Re:View but is very important to you?

Manchester: Oh, there are legions of those songs. Re:View, these were charted songs. This is like a gift to the fans to celebrate my 50th year of my career.

But there are two songs. One is "Home To Myself," which was the title of my very first album. In that moment, that seemed to have resonated with a lot of young people. When I started, I was basically the same age as my college audiences.

And another song was the other Academy Award nomination, which is "I'll Never Say Goodbye." I was the first person to have two nominated songs on the Academy Awards. One was "Through The Eyes Of Love" and the other was "I'll Never Say Goodbye." This is such a beautiful song written by Michel Legrand and my dear friends, the late Marilyn and Alan Bergman.

Songfacts: Can you talk more about "Home To Myself"?

Manchester: It was written by Carole Sager and I. It was one of the first songs we had written together. It was in that moment in the early '70s when young women were starting to find their voice, learn that they could have a voice, learn that they could be separated out from the voices of men who were traditionally heads of families in that moment, heads of workplaces in that moment, designed the style of the workplace in that moment - all that stuff.

It was a very quiet song that talked about the difference between being alone and being lonely, and the key line is, "It's not so bad all alone coming home to myself again." At some point all of us, men and women, have to feel the ground underneath our feet and feel that we are on steady ground, even if we emotionally don't feel we are. Something deeper has to tell us we are standing, we're in our own life, we'll figure out tomorrow tomorrow, but for right now we're where we are supposed to be, and if the next step is trembling, we'll make it through that too. That's what the song is addressing.

March 25, 2024

Listen or buy Re:View at melissamanchester.com

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Photos: Nick Spanos

Footnotes:

• 1] Manchester appeared in 10 episodes of the show, first appearing in the third season. (back)

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