Anyone Who Had a Heart: My Life and Music
This chatty autobiography (it feels like it was transcribed from tapes) tracks the famed composer’s life and career from childhood to the present day. Major success didn’t come immediately to Bacharach; he spent much of his early career as a pianist for such entertainers as Steve Lawrence and Marlene Dietrich. It wasn’t until he was nearly 30 when one of his songs, written with lyricist Hal David, became a number-one hit in 1957. Although he partnered with various lyricists, it was his collaboration with David that produced some of his most popular work, including a lengthy association with Dionne Warwick. Film work followed: the score for Casino Royale (the 1967 spoof, not the 2006 version) and his hugely popular song “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” (lyrics by David, of course), for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The list of artists who recorded Bacharach’s songs is impressive—Johnny Mathis, Aretha Franklin, the Beatles, Cher, Herb Alpert, and many more—and, during the 1970s and ’80s, he transitioned from industry star to elder statesman, seeing his early hits remade and rerecorded, making cameo appearances in television shows and films (the Austin Powers movies being perhaps the most well known). Because he’s primarily a composer and not a performer, Bacharach might not be as familiar to readers as, say, singer-songwriters like Paul Anka, who has also recently published an autobiography, but his career has been equally impressive, and his contributions to popular music of the twentieth century have been inarguably significant. --David Pitt