Burt Bacharach remembers Hal David
by Burt Bacharach
It was my great good fortune to have met Hal David, who was introduced to me by Eddy Wolpin — the man who ran Famous Music in New York's fabled Brill Building at 1619 Broadway.
I had been out on the road conducting and playing piano for the Ames Brothers and had decided to quit and come back to New York City to try and write pop songs. In those days, the Brill Building, also known as the Music Factory, was filled with songwriters playing musical chairs, writing with different partners each day. I worked with Hal maybe two afternoons a week.
Hal had been writing for a while and he had had some hits, whereas I was just starting out. Our early songs were rather ordinary. Musically, I gave Hal material that I thought was very commercial — nothing like what we would later write. We wrote some bad songs, songs you have never heard and never will. Songs like "Peggy's in the Pantry" and "Underneath the Overpass."
Even when we had our first two hits, "The Story of My Life" and "Magic Moments," we were well under the radar of where we would eventually go.
Our writing process was very interesting. We would sit in a room in the Brill Building and maybe Hal would have an idea — a couple of lines, a title — or I would have a music fragment. And we would go from there. It wasn't like we would sit in that room and finish a song. That never happened. Hal would take his story, get on the train, and go home to Roslyn out in Long Island.
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http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-hal-david-burt-bacharach-appreciation-20120904,0,2503388.story
