If this is goodbye... Burt Bacharach RIP.

Burt Bacharach died this month. His song Make It Easy On Yourself got me through some hard times. His music, which I often listened to in versions without lyrics, was unusually compelling and complex for someone frequently mislabelled as 'easy-listening'. He wrote many, many hits, sung by many people, and if you think you don't know or like Burt Bacharach, you're wrong, you just don't realise you do.

I was lucky enoug to see him perform in the Iveagh Gardens in Dublin in 2019, when he was already 91. It was a great night, strangely emotional, and an excellent and lengthy consummate performance by a true professional. Also a bird suddenly appeared and shat on my plus one's head, which was apt. He got political in his much later years, and some of his new songs that night were powerful and topical. Not bad for someone who'd been performing and having hits since the early 1960s. He also sang that night, which was quite a rarity. I captured a little of that in the video below. His voice may have wavered but his presence and skill did not. I feel grateful to have been there. R.I.P. Burt Bacharach. Rest In Power, Rest In Pop, Rest In Peace.

More photos and video of Burt Bacharach playing in the Iveagh Gardens, Dublin, Ireland, on 20th July 2019.