Hal David
b. 25 May 1921, Brooklyn, New York, USA. David began writing lyrics during his service in the US Army. Following his discharge he collaborated with Don Rodney on the 1949 Sammy Kaye hit Four Winds And Seven Seas. Other notable David hit songs from the pre-rock ‘n’ roll era included Frank Sinatra's American Beauty Rose, and Teresa Brewer's Broken Hearted Melody. It was in 1959 that David found the perfect musical companion in Burt Bacharach. Their collaboration continued through the '60s and resulted in some of the finest and enduring songs in popular music history. Artists as accomplished as Gene Pitney, Dionne Warwick, Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield, Sandie Shaw, Aretha Franklin, the Walker Brothers, Tom Jones, Jackie DeShannon, Herb Alpert and B.J. Thomas; all enjoyed crucial chart hits, courtesy of the Bacharach/David pen. While Burt was the melodic genius, Hal provided lyrics that brought a fresh vocabulary to the love song. Many of the songs dealt dramatically with the emotional and psychological problems produced by intense relationships. The wish-fulfilling Tower Of Strength presents an imaginary scenario in which the lover rejects and berates his beloved, even forcing her down on her knees, before finally admitting that he lacks the courage to leave the relationship (‘for a tower of strength is something I'll never be’). In Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa, the narrator is haunted not merely by his own infidelity, but the fact that it occurred a mere 24 hours before he was to be reunited with his lover. That same niggling neuroticism can be observed in There's Always Something There To Remind Me, in which the very streets the singer walks provide haunting memories of a lost love. Anyone Who Had A Heart communicates a callousness of such unfathomable proportions (‘couldn't be another heart that hurt me like you hurt me…what am I to do?’) that the spurned lover is left to consider that literally anyone who had a heart would not fail to offer her love. The extraordinary Make It Easy On Yourself is presented in the form of an inner debate in which the defeated lover's nobility is so intense that it borders on masochism (‘Don't try to spare my feelings/Just tell me that we're through’). In Say A Little Prayer the woman is so obsessed with her object of devotion that she is incapable of putting on her make-up or enduring a second of her coffee break without the constant need to offer up a prayer in his honour. David's romantic intensity probably reached its peak on the last major hit provided by the collaboration Close To You. In this song, the central character is a lover of ultimate perfection, fashioned by angels using a peculiar alchemy of moondust and golden starlight to create a particular hair and eye colour. The very opening line invokes a being so attractive as to appear literally otherworldly (‘Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near? Just like me they long to be close to you’). In spite of the inherent drama in these lyrics, the songs seldom, if ever, take the form of doomed, maudlin dirges. On the contrary, many of the arrangements are breezy and it was Bacharach's neat handling of suitably contrasting melody lines that made the partnership so appealing. Sadly, the team separated acrimoniously in 1971 and each partner suffered commercially. David later became president of ASCAP and subsequently later enjoyed chart success with Albert Hammond with whom he wrote To All The Girls I've Loved Before (a 1984 hit for Julio Iglesiasand Willie Nelson). Although occasionally overshadowed by Bacharach, David's lyrics made the partnership work, a fact borne out by Burt's failure to register a single chart entry during the '70s.