Barry Manilow Never Expected Fame and Fortune

Posted on Dec 4th 2009 4:00PM by Steve Baltin
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Barry Manilow is the biggest selling adult contemporary artist of all time and one of this decade's comeback kids with a string of No. 1 albums 30 years after he was one of the most familiar faces of the '70s. It turns out that no one is more surprised by this than Manilow himself.

"I never even thought Barry Manilow would have one album. I never thought in my life that I would have this career," the incredibly modest superstar tells Spinner. "I thought maybe if I were lucky I would be a songwriter or a musician or maybe an arranger or maybe a producer, like I did for Bette Midler and so many of the other singers that I worked with. But as a soloist, as a performer? No, never in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought this would be where I wound up."

Where Manilow has ended up is back in Las Vegas. The singer will begin a new two-year residency at the Paris Las Vegas on March 5, 2010, conveniently coinciding with the release of his 'Greatest Love Songs of All Time' album. As one would expect from the mix of Paris, love songs and Manilow, he promises a lot of romance. "I got the greatest love songs, Paris, the most romantic city and this gorgeous room in Vegas, so what I put together with this guy named Jeffery Hornady, who's a wonderful producer/director, is a beautiful, beautiful show," he says. "Every day we get together and the show becomes more and more beautiful. I think it's going to be one of my favorite productions."

While the love songs will be a part of the show, all of the Manilow standards will still make their presence felt. "It's all the classics, as many as I can, because we're talking about Las Vegas and these audiences really want to hear the hits," he says. "Certainly I would never take out things like 'Mandy, ' I Write the Songs,' 'Copacabana.'"

We know Manilow is a worthy addition to the rich Vegas legacy, the town made famous by the likes of the Rat Pack -- Sinatra, Sammy, Dean, etc. Is there anybody that he looks to in building a Vegas show? "I do my own thing. I just have to do what feels good for me," Manilow says. "The greats, well, they are the greats. I couldn't even come close to Sinatra, to Judy, to Elvis, I put them up on a pedestal and that's them."