“Of the almost 200 songs that [Burt] Bacharach wrote with the brilliant lyricist Hal David between 1962 and 1970, 34 amount, for me, to a crash course in alienation, especially when it comes to love, or the dream of love,” Hilton Als wrote, in 2013.
Illustration by Stamatis Laskos
Bacharach’s collaboration with David slowed down in the early seventies, but by then Bacharach had become a star brand in his own right, down to shilling for Martini & Rossi on TV with his then wife, that blonde with the oleo gleam, Angie Dickinson. By the time David died, in 2012, at ninety-one, the old friends hadn’t written anything together in twenty-three years, but their legacy was unassailable, even in the fickle music industry.
Riabko’s arrangements are a musical manifestation of his actor’s love of stories, in this case Bacharach and David’s melancholy tales of dread and hope. As he peels away the layers of the first song—and of himself—the other cast members rise from the chairs and sofas where they’ve been lounging and take their places behind him, singing backup and playing instruments. There’s something very sweet about this moment—like the Archies singing a song at the end of the seventies cartoon.
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