Barry Manilow Interview (August 9, 1975)

Barry Manilow (born Barry Alan Pincus; June 17, 1943) is an American singer and songwriter with a career that spans seven decades. His hit recordings include "Could It Be Magic", "Looks Like We Made It", "Mandy", "I Write the Songs", "Can't Smile Without You", and "Copacabana (At the Copa)".

He has recorded and released 51 Top 40 singles on the Adult Contemporary Chart, including 13 that hit number one, 28 that appeared within the top ten, and 36 that reached the top twenty. Manilow has released 13 platinum and six multi-platinum albums.[2] Although not a favorite artist of music critics,[3] Manilow has been praised by his peers in the recording industry, including Frank Sinatra, who was quoted in the 1970s as saying, "He's next."[4]

As well as producing and arranging albums for himself and other artists, Manilow has written and performed songs for musicals, films, and commercials for corporations such as McDonald's, Pepsi-Cola, and Band-Aid. He has been nominated for a Grammy Award (winning once) as a producer, arranger and performer a total of fifteen times (and in every decade) from 1973 to 2015.[5] He has also produced Grammy-nominated albums for Bette Midler, Dionne Warwick, Nancy Wilson, and Sarah Vaughan.[6] Manilow has sold more than 85 million records as a solo artist worldwide, making him one of the world's best-selling artists.[7][8]

Early life[edit]
Barry Manilow was born Barry Alan Pincus on June 17, 1943, in Brooklyn, New York,[9] the son of Edna Manilow and Harold Pincus (who went by his own stepfather's surname, his birth surname being Keliher).[10][11] His maternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants, and his paternal grandfather was Jewish, though his grandmother was a Catholic of Irish descent.[12] His Irish roots trace back to Limerick, Ireland.[13]

Manilow grew up in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn and graduated in 1961 from the now-defunct Eastern District High School.[14] While in high school, he met Susan Deixler, and they later married for a short time.[15] He enrolled in the City College of New York, where he briefly studied before entering the New York College of Music.[16] He also worked at CBS while he was a student in order to pay his expenses. Afterwards, he studied musical theater at Juilliard Performing Arts School.[16]