One Less Bell To Answer
“That title was born from working on “What’s New Pussycat?” and Angie Dickinson was living with me [Burt Bacharach – Ed] in London. And a doorbell rang, and I think she made the comment, “One less bell to answer, when I get out of here.” It was pretty intense and it bothered her.”Burt Bacharach (21)
Don’t Make Me Over (Recorded by Dionne Warwick)
“It came about because of a sort of fight I had with Hal and Burt – not really a fight but a little argument. I felt Burt and Hal had given my songs away and they felt they hadn’t and that maybe I was being a bit unreasonable. [She was a background singer on a lot of the (recording) dates and she came to Burt, wanting to do some demo records for him. He invited her up to Famous Music and she sang for both of us. We both were very impressed and we went in and did a couple of demo songs with her. The first one was ‘It’s Love That Really Counts’ and then we did ‘Make It Easy On Yourself’.” The latter demo was submitted to Jerry Butler, who had a #20 hit with the song. Dionne was much perturbed because she thought that was her song. I think that¹s what prompted us to go and take Dionne to Florence Greenburg at Scepter Records and see if we could get her a contract, which we were able to do right away – Hal David]. Well, one word led to another… and finally I said, ‘Don’t make me over, man!’ and I walked out. About a week later I walked back in. The mad was gone – and they had written the song.”Dionne Warwick (588)
Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa (Recorded by Gene Pitney)
“I wrote that to a melody that Burt wrote and that’s what the melody said to me. Music speaks to a lyric writer, or at least it should speak to a lyric writer. And that’s what the music said to me. And why it did, I don’t know. I don’t think I had ever been to Tulsa. I’ve always kind of liked what I call ‘narrative songs’ – story songs. And when I hear music, very often I hear a story. The fact that it was Tulsa, as opposed to Dallas, is not terribly meaningful, but the sound of ‘Tulsa’ rang in my ear.”Hal David (588)
The Windows Of The World (Recorded by Dionne Warwick)
“‘Windows Of The World’ is a song I felt very keenly about, We were going through the Vietnam war and I had two sons – and still have them. And so I pictured my sons getting involved, particularly my older son who was soon going to be of age. And that was my feeling. I wrote that, I guess, as a political song from a father’s perspective.”Hal David (588)