Bacharach is a
small man, and crabby after a show (in my experience). He owns
racehorses, one of which is/was named '
Heartlight.'
Neil Diamond used to sing 'Heartlight' to it before a race.
Bacharach toured widely for three years as accompanist-conductor for Marlene Dietrich's nightclub act. The following quotes are from a Vanity Fair interview, 1996:
I think the most amazing time was doing the concert in Israel with her. It was the early 60s, and it was just after the German tour. It was the first time she had gone back to Germany after the war. And we went to Israel after that. She sang in German, which was discouraged. No one was allowed to speak German onstage, no German films. And Marlene sang nine songs in German onstage in Tel Aviv. And it was one of the most emotional experiences ever. The dam broke. Everybody was crying. It was an emotional roller coaster.
(in regard to astrology) Anytime we flew anywhere, (Dietrich) had the dates checked out. I remember what convinced me was once we were in Brazil and she wanted to come back earlier, so she called the astrologer in California, and he told her not to take the earlier flight. Later we found out that flight had a crash landing in the Caribbean. That convinced me.
Bacharach and David scored 39 chart records in ten years with
Dionne Warwick alone.
As a child of the 70s, I heard most of Bacharach's songs on the radio and in movies. One of them gets me a little choked up, but then so does the Wall Street Week theme song.