It’s a slippery slope. Once you start on it, it leads on to other, worse things. Who knows what it could lead to? What will the neighbours say?

I am of course, talking about listening to the music of Barry Manilow.

This is the story of my first proper intense interest.

Regular readers of this newsletter may remember me mentioning my childhood obsession with Liverpool FC, then jokingly referring to my odd obsession as a teenager with all things Manilow. Sadly, I wasn’t joking.

The Joy of Cringe - by Ren Riley - Wavy Thoughts

One person's special interest is another person's ick and I really don't care anymore.

It starts with me, in my early teens, raiding the CD rack in our dining room. I had just bought an iPod Nano (which I promptly dropped on the floor and scratched because dyspraxia). I had been utterly taken in by those old iPod adverts featuring shadowy figures doing handstands while listening to hip hop - remember those? Maybe if I buy an iPod I’ll be cool, I thought.

(‘Maybe if I… I’ll be cool’ was a common thought pattern for me back then.)

This was the days of LimeWire, and I had already been burned badly, somehow managing to download a series of viruses onto our Windows ME desktop computer. Oops. I promised I would stick to ripping CDs.

After coming to the end of my own limited supply of music, which was nothing more than ‘Step One’ by Steps, Spice Girls’ Greatest Hits and a Top of the Pops ABBA tribute featuring Boyzone, I felt it was time to examine the collections of my parents.

It could have been anyone. David Bowie was right there, for god’s sake. How cool would that have made me? But I never did get into his music until I was an adult. This could have all been so different.

Instead, with the CDs now placed one by one on the floor, one album jumped out at me.

The front cover was of a man in a suit, his arms out-stretched, his collar without a tie. He appeared to have escaped a long corporate away day and was now looking forward to a pint with his mates. He seemed incredibly pleased to see whoever was in front of him, out of shot.

The title informed me that this was ‘Ultimate Manilow’, which made me wonder what a Substandard Manilow would look like. I remembered the name ‘Barry Manilow’, and as a connoisseur of the TV show Top of the Pops 2, I clocked that this was not 1970’s Baz, but older Baz.

I cannot tell you in all honesty what led me to become a Manilow fan (a… good lord… ‘fanilow’). It could have been his discography of what I’ll call ‘Underdog Tunes’. He ‘Made it Through the Rain’, he found his ‘One Voice’, yadda yadda1.

Maybe it was the serious musicianship that I admired - he had gone back to graduate school in his twenties while struggling to make ends meet in New York. He attended the prestigious Juilliard School of Music no less, after realising that he needed to follow his dream. I related to his story of growing up with a single mother, dirt poor and being obsessed with something. His something was music, mine was writing.

But I have a suspicion my intense interest in the artistry of Baz was down to a secret third thing that even I wasn’t aware of at the time.

High camp.

To paraphrase Christopher Isherwood, Barry wasn’t making fun of himself, he was making fun out of himself. There is a DVD of his that I watched religiously back then that soothed me like a comfort blanket (hello, autism). It’s called ‘Manilow Music and Passion: Live from Las Vegas’. My partner recently bought me a used copy of it because it is nowhere to be found on streaming services.

The next time someone asks me to define camp, I will simply place this DVD in their hands, bow and leave.

There’s the standard feather boas and confetti. There’s medleys because he simply does not have time to sing all his hits. There are two side stages set up to look like a piano bar and stand up comedy venue respectively. At one point he duets with a younger version of himself projected on a screen. It is corny and life-affirming and extremely self-aware. I love it with my whole heart. Teenage me, queer and oblivious, watched that DVD with religious reverence.

In the mid-oughts I even dragged a friend to watch Barry live in concert and it truly did not disappoint, despite me being clearly the youngest person in the arena.

Now, I know what you may be thinking.

‘Ren, you have tricked us into reading over 500 words about Barry Manilow. What does this have to do with Bette Midler?’

It has everything to do with the Divine Miss M.

I’d learned, through reading my copy of Sweet Life: Adventures on the Way to Paradise (aka Barry Manilow’s extremely vague autobiography) that he was Bette Midler’s piano player. She performed regularly at a gay men’s bath house in Manhattan called the Continental Baths in the early 70s.

At the height of my Manilow-mania, I listened to the record he produced for her, her debut LP, the Divine Miss M, and I didn’t really understand it. Meh.

Then I discovered an extra on a concert DVD called ‘Manilow First and Farewell!’2 It was an extremely grainy video of his first ever concert as a solo artist in the early 70s. Intrigued, I searched YouTube for any similar performances and found an even grainier clip of him accompanying Bette Midler at the Continental Baths.

Ok, I thought, I get it now.

If we take ‘Music and Passion’ as a high camp benchmark, then Bathhouse Betty was off the charts. Powerhouse. Force of nature. Dynamo. Off her rocker.

Commanding the room up on the tiny stage surrounded by towel-wearing dudes who clearly would have followed her to the ends of the Earth, such was their devotion to her.

Clutching the mic stand and bellowing, screaming, rocking out to what are originally quite tame tunes from a decade prior. ‘Chapel of Love’, ‘Do You Want to Dance?’ ‘Friends’.

And the jokes. The filth. The reads! This is a drag queen revelling in her glory. On those clips, she has the room in a chokehold. I had never seen anything like it.

There was something that truly mesmerised this suburban-Catholic-school-swot who’d never really suited any label placed on them.

So as with Barry, I became obsessed with the career of Bette Midler. For one summer my thoughts extended to nothing more than her Oscar-nominated film The Rose (parodied with glee in the sitcom 30 Rock through the character Jackie Jormp-Jomp), plus Midler’s surreal Vegas shows which feature comic creations such as a mermaid who tells dirty jokes and gets around using a motorised wheelchair. (Has to be seen to be truly appreciated).

Both of these artists grew up as misfits. Both of these artists are now legends.

Both of these artists made me feel seen, at a time when I didn’t know myself at all.

I hope you enjoyed this!

Thanks for reading. Have a great week and see you at the next one.

Take it easy,

Ren