BARRY MANILOW VOWS NEVER TO RETIRE
Today’s the day that Hilton headliner Barry Manilow’s new album, “Greatest Songs of the 70’s” is available in stores – and it triggers a massive multi-media frenzy in advance of the remaining 36 concerts for this year at the resort.
Barry, who performs at the Hilton theater where Elvis Presley once reigned, returns tonight for one week. Manilow, who has sold 65-million albums and notched up 28 platinum records with 3,000 performances, says he has absolutely no intention of retiring.
“It’s just not in my vocabulary. They will have to carry me off the stage in a body bag when that day comes,” he vowed.
Today he appears both on Barbara Walters’ “The View” ABC-TV daytime talk-fest and tonight on “The Colbert Report.” Tomorrow he’s on the Early Show, Thursday he’ll be with Martha Stewart, and Friday with Jimmy Kimmell.
Barry’s barrage and blitz began Friday on the Today Show and followed through at the weekend with The Insider and Entertainment Tonight. During a concert from Boston, broadcast on the QVC shopping cable channel, he sold a staggering 40,000 copies of the new album – making it a record for the highest single-day sales by a musical artist in QVC history.
His new CD features 18 songs, plus first-time-ever acoustic versions of six classics including, “I Write the Songs” and “Looks Like We Made it.” He admitted that singing the new version of “Mandy” was the toughest track of all.
“It took me right back to the start of my career. It’s the song that made me and I’ve never changed it from the giant hit that it was – until now,” he said. “Just the first line made me stop and cry. It was about the life we have and the life we face. I didn’t know what ‘life’ meant when I recorded it 40-years ago. Now I do and I can look back on my life and what it means. It made me stop and reflect and realize how grateful I am for a wonderful life.”
Asked about his hip and knee injuries that almost permanently crippled him just over a year ago, he commented: “I had to go under the knife. The surgery was life-saving. The discomfort will never ever go away completely, but today I am a million times better than I was with the nonstop agony.”