Partner in Rhyme : Celebrated Lyricist Alan Bergman Takes the Stage to Croon the Songs He Penned With His Wife, Marilyn

Songwriters may not always be the best singers in the world, but it’s hard to argue with their interpretations. A few weeks ago, Jimmy Webb gave the stamp of authenticity to his greatest hits at the Cinegrill, and Saturday Alan Bergman will make a rare appearance at the Jazz Bakery singing selections from the extensive catalogue of lyrics written with his wife, Marilyn.

Although the Bergmans--who have worked with Michel Legrand, Johnny Mandel, Marvin Hamlisch, Dave Grusin and Henry Mancini, among others--are both accomplished musicians as well as lyricists, performing has not been a frequent activity.

“It was always a fantasy of mine to do this,” explains Bergman, “but I didn’t get up enough nerve to actually do it in public until a few years ago. It all began with the fact that when we demonstrate songs, I’m usually the one who sings them. And a lot of people have said, ‘Gee, you sing so well, why don’t you sing them in public?’

“So when Ruth Price of the Jazz Bakery, an old friend of ours, asked me to do a night in her room, I said sure, and the response was very nice. Since then, I’ve done the Russian Tea Room Cabaret in New York a couple of times, and when Ruth asked me to come back to the Bakery, I was happy to do it.”

Bergman will use the booking to present a few numbers that weren’t included in his last appearance, among them the theme from “Brooklyn Bridge,” written with Hamlisch.

Does the slender, bespectacled lyricist--who looks more like a friendly English professor than a Hollywood player--ever get nervous, given the rarity of his public performances?

Bergman laughs. “What I really get nervous about,” he says, “is forgetting the lyrics. Since we’re working and writing continually, what’s going through my mind at any given moment is what we’re working on now, not what we did 20 years ago.

“So, not really trusting myself, I keep a book of lyrics in front of me. The audiences don’t seem to be bothered by the fact that I refer to it--not too often--and it makes a great security blanket.”

Bergman knew that he wanted to be a songwriter from a remarkably early age. “I’m one of those really odd people,” he says. “When I was 11 or 12 years old, I knew writing songs was what I wanted to do. In the beginning I was writing both lyrics and music. Then I started writing with people who wrote better music than I did. Fortunately, I didn’t have the kind of ego where I had to do it all. I felt, and I still feel, that it was the song that counted.”

Bergman was also fortunate to have two important mentors.

“There was a three-year period,” he recalls, “a great period, in which I got to spend time with Johnny Mercer. He would pick me up on a Friday, take me down to his beach house and say, ‘OK, let me hear what you’ve been writing.’ And he’d say, ‘This is good, this is terrible.’ It was like studying with the master. And I also spent some time with Leo Robin--not as well-known to the public as Mercer, even though he wrote with everyone from Vincent Youmans to Harold Arlen. But, for me, he was a valuable influence.”

Bergman’s creative partnership with his wife has been exclusive since the mid-’50s, when they met while both were providing lyrics to composer Lew Spence. Alan was writing with him in the morning, and Marilyn was writing with him in the afternoon.

“One day,” Bergman recalls, “he decided that the morning lyric writer should meet the afternoon lyric writer. So we got together and wrote a song that afternoon. It wasn’t very good, but we sure enjoyed the process. We went on to write ‘Nice and Easy’ with him. Then, when I decided to ask Marilyn to marry me, I still didn’t have any money. So I wrote a song with Lew for her called ‘That Face’ as an engagement present.”

The alliance that emerged from that unconventional beginning has become one of the most dependable and highly praised songwriting teams of the last few decades.

“The Bergmans are the best,” says singer Michael Feinstein. “I’m including a song of theirs called ‘For the Boys’ on my new album, and I’m absolutely thrilled to be the first person to record it.”

Most of the best-known Bergman lyrics have been written for films. Their first big picture was “In the Heat of the Night,” directed by Norman Jewison.

“Norman is one of the few directors,” says Bergman--”Sidney Pollack and Mark Rydell are a couple of others who come to mind--who are really knowledgeable about music, and about how to use songs in pictures. It was great luck that we got to work with him early in our careers.”

Jewison’s technique for working with “source music”--music that is played on radio, television and “live” in a film (as opposed to background scores)--provided the Bergmans with a particularly educational experience.

“Norman believes that when you use source songs that the public already knows and recognizes,” explains Bergman, “the viewer is taken out of the drama of the piece.

“So, for instance, there was one song relating to the man who was really the killer in the story. He was a short-order cook who worked in a diner, and every time he was seen, he would go to the jukebox, put in a nickel and play this same song. Norman wanted us to write a song that would reflect his character--subliminally, since the audience wouldn’t know the song--by indicating the kind of music he would listen to. So we wrote something we called ‘A Foul Owl.’

“Then there was another song,” Bergman continues, “that was identified with a cop who was in a car most of the time. What kind of music would he listen to? So we wrote a kind of Roger Miller number we called ‘Bow-Legged Polly and a Knock-Kneed Paul.’ Like the killer’s song, it added to his character each time it was played, in a way that familiar music might not have done.”

Like most songwriters, Bergman is constantly asked which comes first, the words or the tune. Although the process can vary from song to song and composer to composer, he is very clear about the method he and his partner prefer.

“No question about it,” Bergman says. “We prefer to have the music first.”

But it’s not always quite that simple.

“Hank Mancini and Dave Grusin like to write the melody first,” Bergman says. “With Michel Legrand, it’s actually difficult for him to write to a lyric. With ‘Windmills of Your Mind,’ he had written eight melodies for that spot in the picture, ‘The Thomas Crown Affair.’ The three of us listened, over and over, and picked one. When we did the lyrics, we didn’t have to change a dot of the music.

“In the case of two other songs we did with him, ‘What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?’ and ‘How Do You Keep the Music Playing?’ we just gave him the first lines, and he wrote the entire melodies from those lines.

“Marvin Hamlisch, whom we’ve been writing a lot with lately, also likes to have a few lines. But Johnny Mandel writes the melody first. ‘Where Do You Start?’ was done that way, but I think most composers prefer to have some kind of a line or two to start with and then take it from there.”

Bergman feels that good songs are not written, they’re rewritten--both words and music.

“The more you write,” he says, “the more you find that the alternatives are endless. It’s rewriting--I think--that separates the amateur from the professional, because that’s the hardest part. Sometimes you have to be ruthless with what you’ve done. Even though you feel you’ve written something terrific, it just may not be what you should end up with.”

But for Bergman, the real key to writing lies in his belief that the music and the lyrics are inherently connected.

“Yeah, I really feel that way,” he says. “I really feel that the melodies have the lyrics within them. There are words on the tips of those notes, and it’s our job to find them. It’s like solving a puzzle, with the melody leading the way to the solution.

“Without the melody that Johnny Mandel gave us for ‘Where Do You Start?’ we would never have written the song. On the other hand, without that specific scene in ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ and without the specific assignment from Norman Jewison--he said he wanted a song that underlined the anxiety the character was feeling at that moment--we would never have written ‘The Windmills of Your Mind.’ Because anxiety is circular, the flying of the glider in that sequence is circular--all circular images--which resulted in a circular kind of song.

“In addition, sometimes it’s the point of view of the character, the scene or the function that triggers the song. ‘The Way We Were,’ for example, was not a title song. Its function was to be a corridor back into time--to take you back to when the characters went to college.”

“And, of course,” he adds with a smile, “ we’re part of the music too. Because you can’t escape the fact that, on some level at least, what you write is what you are.”

What the Bergmans actually are is a successful, happy and apparently well-adjusted partnership--in marriage as well as in music. Their daughter, Julie, is a thriving motion picture producer (“King Ralph” and “Major League”), and the duo have loads of assignments--including a pending Broadway musical--on the horizon.

And do they have the same problems that plague most partnerships or marriages? Apparently not.

“It’s really been kind of effortless,” Bergman says. “We don’t even think about it. We certainly don’t care who has written what. By the time we’re finished with something, we usually don’t even know. I guess it really comes down to the fact that a good collaboration’s like a good marriage. That’s what it’s about.

“The way I see it,” concludes Bergman, “we lead a charmed life. We love to write songs. And when you do something you love with somebody you love, you really have the world in a very nice place.”