BJ Thomas, who crooned the Oscar-winning version featured in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, has always claimed that he was Bacharach's second choice as singer, Burt supposedly writing the song with Bob Dylan in mind.In 1996, Hal David told Mojo magazine that the three qualities he had always sought in his lyrics were believability, simplicity, and emotional impact. He was given cameos in 1997's Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery and its two sequels, and even aside from these movies' liberal use of his music, it wasn't hard to see why. "Mr Bacharach was wearing bright California clothes: a green jacket, rust coloured slacks, a brown and yellow striped tie, a dark blue shirt", ran a 1968 profile of Burt in The New Yorker.Visually at least, Burt was once Austin Powers with better teeth; a real-life playboy with a bachelor pad in Manhattan and racehorses that he named Alfie and Reach Out, after two of his best songs.Bacharach says that he didn't mind the Myers comedies presenting his work as high kitsch; the important thing was that they brought his music to a whole new audience. The gong served to underline pop's rediscovery of all things Bacharach: his "A House Is Not A Home" was recently sampled by Twista, Kanye West and Jamie Foxx, and he is a guest on the talent search show, American Idol.The Mike Myers-penned Austin Powers films were important for Bacharach. "When I played him "Who Are These People", it was right up his alley, because he's really anti the current administration."And Rufus? "I just think he's a wonderfully distinctive singer, an old soul, really. We got together in Italy and I asked him if he'd like to replace my temporary vocal on "Go Ask Shakespeare." I met with no resistance."Fittingly, Bacharach was honoured with an "inspiration" gong at last months GQ Awards. The Dre-produced Eminem has also worked magic with uneven bar-lines and the inventive use of scansion, and you can imagine him rhyming "pneumonia" with "'phone ya", as Hal David did in "I'll Never Fall In Love Again.""I can't profess to be a huge rap fan", says Bacharach, "but do I like Dre's sounds? Yes - I think he's a masterful producer.
Among those leading his standing ovation was Bob Geldof, who sang "Trains And Boats And Planes" with Burt at a benefit for Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy in 2000. As far as Eminem goes, for me the key to understanding his work was seeing 8 Mile, the movie that tells his story It helped me to understand that rap is a social necessity. It gave me respect for the genre.""You have to remember that working with urban artists is nothing new for me", he adds. "Think of Aretha Franklin, and bear in mind that it wasn't so long ago that I did a whole album with Ron Isley (2003's Here I Am: Isley Meets Bacharach). That wasn't exactly rap music, I agree, but it had the same roots."Dre aside, other collaborators on At This Time include Elvis Costello, and Rufus Wainwright, who has a songwriting style that owes something to Bacharach's flounce, and to the Brill Building's writing tradition in general."Elvis has been a friend for a long time", says Bacharach of Costello [the pair recorded the lauded Painted from Memory in 1998]. I think it was Dionne [Warwick] who told me the turn-around bar on 'Anyone Who Had A Heart' was in 7/8 time I couldn't believe it.
It wasn't intentional - that's just the way it came out."Back in 2005, Bacharach and Dr Dre no longer seem such unlikely bedfellows. "With 'What's New Pussycat?', someone said, 'This is an oompah-band waltz, how is somebody in a club in Paris going to dance to this?' I said, 'They'll find a way It feels right the way it is'. Working alongside the lyricist Hal David in a smoke-filled room in the Brill Building in the late 1950s, Bacharach was already taking liberties with the pop song's form. His fusing of bebop, classical, and Brazilica was one thing, but having studied modern composition under Darius Milhaud, Burt was also adept at lacing his work with time-signature changes, uneven bar-counts and asymmetrical melodies. The verse melody of the 1958 Perry Como hit "Magic Moments" finds Burt employing the latter device to admirably catchy effect, its notes coming in bunches of five and six."Occasionally there would be complaints", Bacharach said in 1978.