TUNESMITH KEEPS ‘LOVIN’ FEELIN’ ’ ALIVE

The Brill Building.

Even the name has a quaint sound now. It conjures images of a simpler, more innocent time in pop music--before Prince and Madonna . . . before Elton and the Bee Gees . . . before the Beatles and Dylan, even.

The Brill Building in the heart of Manhattan was the hub of the music industry in the early ‘60s, a place where the top songwriters of the day turned out hit singles for the leading artists of the day. “Up on the Roof” (Goffin/King); “Chapel of Love” (Barry/Greenwich/Spector), and “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” (Greenfield, Keller) were among the scores of tunes that came out of that era.

Many of the Brill Building alumni continued to turn out hits in the ‘70s, but no one else has moved into the ‘80s with the authority of Cynthia Weil.

Weil, who co-wrote such ‘60s classics as “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ ” for the Righteous Brothers and “On Broadway” for the Drifters, has co-written hits in the ‘80s for the Pointer Sisters (“He’s So Shy”) and James Ingram (“Just Once”), among many others. She’s currently in the Top 10 with “Love Will Conquer All,” which she wrote with Lionel Richie and Greg Phillinganes.

Sitting in the music room of her spacious Beverly Hills home, Weil at first downplayed her achievement in bridging pop eras and trends.

“There’s no reason a person shouldn’t write better 20 years after they start,” she said. “Writers know more and have more life experience to draw on. They should be better at what they do. There are certain things you can’t write anymore. I can’t write something for the Bangles. I couldn’t write ‘Walking in the Rain’ (a 1964 hit for the Ronettes) again, and I wouldn’t want to. But there are other things I can write now that I couldn’t write then.”

But Weil also acknowledged that it’s not easy to have a long-term career as a pop writer. “You kind of have to sit through the trends; live through bubblegum and disco and everything else we’ve lived through. You’ve got to be a creative survivor.”

Weil’s longevity and consistency have made her one of the most respected members of the West Coast songwriting community (she moved here from New York in 1973).

That may be why she was enlisted to co-produce a concert Saturday night at the Beverly Theater in which two dozen leading songwriters--including Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager, Michael McDonald and Jimmy Webb--will perform their songs.

The concert, which was first staged with a different cast a year ago, is a benefit for the 5,000-member National Academy of Songwriters, which represents songwriters’ interests on legislative and business issues.

Weil, who retains her New York accent and energetic manner, said she avoids career burnout by working with different collaborators and taking on new challenges.

While most of her pre-’80s songs were co-written with Barry Mann (whom she married in 1961), Weil has worked in recent years with various collaborators, including Richie, Tom Snow, David Foster and Michael Masser.

“Barry and I were joined at the hip for so long, it’s hard for us to forge separate identities,” observed Weil, who is in her mid-40s. “But we wanted to. That’s one way of staying interested musically.”

Another way, Weil noted, is writing screenplays for film and TV projects. “I’m moving into that area now,” she said. “I think I’ll move in on the strength of the music, and then after a while I won’t have to write songs.”

Weil, whose spikey hairstyle and jean-jacket outfit give her a contemporary aura, laughed slyly.

Is she seriously thinking of getting out of songwriting?

“More than a way out, it’s a way to stay in and keep interested,” she countered.

“I think people experience this feeling whenever they’ve worked in one field for 20 or 25 years. Even if it’s the garment industry, it’s another fall line: ‘Do you want corduroy or patent leather?’ ‘Do you want a ballad or an up song?’ ”

In the hectic Brill Building days, the record industry depended on teams like Weil and Mann to deliver a constant flow of hits because few pop recording artists wrote their own material. She estimates she averaged a song a week for four years.

Looking back on those days, Weil said, “When we were writing in the ‘60s, we never dreamed that 20 years later ‘Lovin’ Feelin’ ’ would be in a movie (“Top Gun”) and everybody would still be singing it. In a way, it gave us an insane kind of bravery because we thought it was all going to die in a couple of months anyway.

“Aldon Music (their publishing company) was a school for songwriters. We had our tests every week, except our tests were, Did you get (a song) on the Drifters’ session or did you make the Shirelles’ date?’ We would all write like crazy and sometimes we’d fail, and sometimes we’d pass. It gave us the opportunity to extend ourselves to write all different kinds of songs and to keep working.”

Today, Weil takes more time with each song.

“As you get older, you become more conscious of the fact that what you write will perhaps live on . . . and you don’t want to be too embarrassed . . . “