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The Broadway Album (1985)

Catalog Number(s):

• OC 40092 (LP, 1985)
• CK 40092 (CD, 1985)
• CK 85159 (CD, 2002)
• CK 5063612 (CD, 2002 U.K. version with Bonus Track)

(Below: The original Broadway Album LP contained a sleeve for the vinyl with lyrics and credits to each of the songs ...)

Tracks

1. Putting It Together [4:21]
   (S. Sondheim)
2. If I Loved You [2:38]
   (O. Hammerstein II / R. Rodgers)
3. Something's Coming [2:55]
   (S. Sondheim / L. Bernstein)
4. Not While I'm Around [3:24]
   (S. Sondheim)
5. Being Alive [3:24]
   (S. Sondheim)
6. I Have Dreamed/We Kiss In A Shadow/Something Wonderful [4:51]
   (O. Hammerstein II / R. Rodgers)
7. Adelaide's Lament [3:24]
   (F. Loesser)
8. Send In The Clowns [4:43]
   (S. Sondheim)
9. Pretty Women/The Ladies Who Lunch [5:10]
   (S. Sondheim)
10. Can't Help Lovin' That Man [3:31]
    (O. Hammerstein II / J. Kern)
11. I Loves You Porgy/Porgy I's Your Woman Now (Bess, You Is My Woman) [4:35]
    (I. Gershwin / G. Gershwin)
12. Somewhere [4:56]
    (S. Sondheim / L. Bernstein)

* “I Know Him So Well” — bonus track on CK 5063612 (2002, non-U.S. CD). Male vocal is Richard Page (from the group Mr. Mister).

Individual track credits:

(mouse and click on each song to reveal the credits...)

About the Album

• Released November 4, 1985
• Executive Producers: Barbra Streisand and Peter Matz
• Photography: Richard Corman
• Art Direction: Lane/Donald
• Liner Notes: Alan & Marilyn Bergman

Barbra Streisand said, “One reason I made The Broadway Album is that I felt I had to stop recording songs that any number of other people could sing as well if not better than I could ... It was time for me to do something I truly believed in. This is the music I love, it is where I came from, it is my roots.”

The Broadway Album received a “green light” to be made in late 1984. Peter Matz, the renouned musical director/arranger who worked on Streisand’s first few albums, said, “We were at her house at Christmas, and she said she was going to go ahead with the project. I always felt very strongly that she was right to do it and that it was a good idea.”

Shortly after that, Jon Peters (who was still acting as Barbra's manager instead of Marty Erlichman) sent a memo to Lee Solters (Streisand’s publicist):

Dear Lee,

Barbra and I are planning a very exciting project tentatively entitled “Barbra on Broadway”. The core of this project will be comprised of the following:

• Double album of Barbra singing the great Broadway show tunes.
• A live one-woman show at which the album will be recorded (possibly a charity affair with the tickets at $1000 each)
• The evening will be taped for pay-per-view cable sale.
• A program will be assembled for normal sale, i.e. HBO.
• The evening will be filmed for European theatrical release.
• Eventual further TV sale via syndication on network.
• Video cassette for commercial sale.

Since Barbra has not performed in 17 years, needless to say this will be a major event...

Although the plan to record the album live was abandoned, Barbra did spend eight months recording seventeen songs. “I’ve been making lists for this album for a long time,” Barbra confessed. “I love the songs we recorded, and left out as many as those that made the final disc.”

Peter Matz explained the process that he and Streisand went through choosing songs for the album: “When I got into it last March or April [1985],” he said, “she had already been going through material. She had a piano player come over, and she’d do some songs. She had already weeded out a lot, and there was a strange, abstract shape to it by the time I got involved.”

Streisand worked with Stephen Sondheim on several of his songs for the album. “Stephen, I’ll never forget the time I kept you prisoner in my Malibu house so you could write eight new rhymes for ‘Putting It Together,” Streisand recalled.

“She has always been fond of ‘Porgy and Bess’,” Peter Matz explained, “but was never able to make it work. We spent days and days and days on ‘Porgy and Bess,’ writing it out. But something always felt wrong. I’d go home and rearrange it and try again. I had to negotiate the different male-female roles and key changes.”

“We were well on the way [to creating a double album],” but I think Columbia just thought it was too much money. The record company wasn’t enthused about this project to begin with, so I’m sure the idea of a double album [was just too much].”

Sondheim & “Send in the Clowns”

The masterful Stephen Sondheim rewrote the lyric to his classic song, “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music for Streisand. “Barbra Streisand,” Sondheim wrote in his book Finishing the Hat, is “a performer who examines the lyrics she sings very carefully, and who questioned the dramatic connection between the two choruses (that is, the moment leading to the stanza that begins with the second iteration of ‘Isn't it rich?’).”

Sondheim admitted that, without the dramatic scene which occurred onstage during the musical—the character Fredrik apologized to the character Desiree, then left the room—“there is indeed an emotional gap” in the song. When Streisand brought this to Sondheim's attention, he agreed that “it seemd a logical request rather than the whim of a diva.”

Sondheim, therefore, wrote a new verse for Streisand's version of “Clowns” on The Broadway Album:

What a surprise!
Who could foresee
I'd come to feel about you
What you felt about me?
Why only now when I see
That you've drifted away?
What a surprise ...
What a cliché ...

Streisand also preferred switching some of Sondheim's lyrics to the end of the song. Whereas most recorded versions of “Clowns” end with “Well maybe next year,” Streisand preferred the ironic last line: “Don't bother they're here.”

 

Sondheim & “Putting It Together”

In his marvelous book (Look I Made A Hat), Stephen Sondheim explained how Streisand asked him to alter the lyrics to “Putting It Together” in order to make the song more about the record business. “I suggested,” he wrote, “that all she needed to do was to change ‘I remember lasers are expensive’ to ‘I remember vinyl is expensive’ and the rest of the lyric, being a generalized set of statements about patronage and its effects would take care of itself.”

Sondheim, however, realized that other parts of the lyric needed changing. “I felt beholden to someone who wanted to make the song so personal, and guilty about skimping on the obligation to make it as pertinent as possible.”

The song's lyrics received a re-working and Sondheim concluded, “[Barbra's] performance made the rewrite more than worth the trouble.”

Barbra's Album Notes:

SPECIAL THANKS:

To Stephen Sondheim for his contribution to this project—for being so open to change, believing as I do, that art is a living, constantly evolving process.

To Stevie Wonder for bringing his sweet music to my song.

To Richard Baskin for his invaluable help in completing this album.

Thanks to my friends: Sydney Pollack, David Geffen and Ken Sylk.

Special thanks to Peter Afterman of the Guber-Peters Co., Sandy Gallin and Barry Josephson.

To Kim Skalecki, Ranata Buser and John Arrias for all those late hours.

... and to Marilyn and Alan Bergman for being the best audience and the best of friends.

Compact Discs: New Technology

The comedic track, “Adelaide’s Lament,” did not appear on the original Broadway Album (i.e. the vinyl LP). Side one ended with The King and I medley and side two began with “Send in the Clowns”. To entice buyers to invest in The Broadway Album compact disc — which, in 1985, was still considered new technology — Columbia Records included “Adelaide’s Lament” as a “bonus track” on the digital recording. Many Streisand fans with “old fashioned” record players could not hear the song until they upgraded their sound system and bought a compact disc player. Years later, of course, The Broadway Album CD included “Adelaide’s Lament” positioned before “Send in the Clowns”.

When Streisand spoke to Digital Audio magazine in 1986, she confessed, “I never want to hear vinyl again!” when discussing compact disc technology. She explained, “I took all the EQ [Equalization] off the tape for the CD. Because of the dynamics on ‘Somewhere,’ [CBS] didn’t want it as a [closing track on the vinyl LP]—too hard to cut and get the full range that close to the end of the disc. The first master tape I heard had everything squeezed flat; the song lost its build. For the CD, I cranked up the volume on ‘Somewhere.’ That was an overreaction to what I heard on the LP test pressing; [but] I brought it back to its natural level.”

 

Billboard Charts

The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine.

Here's the numbers for this Streisand album:

• Debut Chart Date: 11-23-85
• No. Weeks on Billboard 200 Albums Chart: 50
• Peak Chart Position: #1 for 3 weeks
• Gold: 1/13/86
• Platinum: 1/13/86
• 4x Multi-Platinum: 1/31/95

Gold: 500,000 units shipped

Platinum: 1 million units shipped.

Note: The record company must submit an album to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) where it undergoes a certification process to become eligible for an award. The process entails an independent sales audit, which calculates the quantity of singles or albums shipped for sale, net after returns. The audit surveys shipments to the entire music marketplace, including retail, record clubs, television sales, Internet orders and other ancillary markets. Based on the certification of these shipments, a title is awarded Gold, Platinum, Multi-Platinum or Diamond status. The data here comes directly from official sources, mainly the RIAA online database.

Grammy Wins & Noms

• Best Pop Female Vocal Performance: The Broadway Album
• Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s): David Foster for “Somewhere”
• Album Of The Year Nomination: The Broadway Album
• Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocal Nomination: “Being Alive” with Peter Matz

When Barbra won her Grammy for Best Pop Female Vocal Performance, she confessed she knew she would win “because today is the 24th and my lucky number has always been 24. Maybe because I was born on the 24th, I had my son when I was 24, and it was 24 years ago that I took home my first Grammy in the same category. So, with your continued support and a little bit of luck, I might just see you again 24 years from tonight.”

[Note: 24 years later, in 2011, Streisand was nominated for her album “Love is the Answer” and honored by the Grammys at MusiCares.]

Remastered: 2002 CD Notes

• Remastered from the original master tapes by Stephen Marcussen
• Digitally edited by Stewart Whitmore for Marcussen Mastering, Hollywood, CA.

Marcussen's remaster is wonderful, an improvement over the original CD.

CD Packaging Notes

The CD insert is the same in both the 1985 and 2002 versions, with the exception of a printed credit for Marcussen's remastering duties on the 2002 disc.

Missing from both versions of the CD are Mark Sennett's photos of Streisand with Sondheim, Baskin, Matz, and Foster. The photos originally appeared in the LP on the Bergman's liner notes insert (photo below).

Album Cover Outtakes

Photographer Richard Corman (son of Barbra’s good friend Cis Corman) shot Streisand in July 1985 at New York's Plymouth Theatre. Besides the onstage photographs of Streisand posed in a chair with sheet music, Corman also photographed Streisand in the theater seats with and without a beret.

End.

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