Pictured: Johnny Mathis and Barbra Streisand. Photo by: Dan Zaitz
Back to Broadway was a milestone in Barbra Streisand's recording career. It followed on the heels of a $60 million dollar contract she signed in December 1992 with Sony Corporation. The contract gave Streisand deals for both film and recording projects. The contract was negotiated by Marty Erlichman and Barbra's attorney Lee Phillips, and in the recording arena, Barbra's new contract with Sony reportedly paid her $5 million for every album, plus a 42 percent-plus royalty on the wholesale price of each unit sold. The 1992 contract called for her to produce six albums plus two re-issues.
Back to Broadway was not only a sequel to her multi-platinum 1985 record, The Broadway Album, it was also Barbra's 50th album for Columbia Records. Back to Broadway, therefore, was prepared by the label for an all-out marketing blitz.
Barbra actually started working on Back to Broadway back in November 1992.
In November 1992, Streisand sang “I Have A Love / One Hand, One Heart” live with Johnny Mathis at the APLA program. Streisand told Goldmine magazine she was a Mathis fan for years, attracted to “his beautiful voice and his beautiful soulful eyes. I saw him the first time he was on the Ed Sullivan Show. I think I was 13 years old, living in Brooklyn.” She also said that working with Mathis “brings back lots of memories and feelings of when I was a kid wanting to be somebody: friends listening to rock 'n' roll stations, and me listening to Johnny Mathis. It just feels good.”
Mathis returned the compliments about recording with Streisand: “Barbra is very exacting when it comes to her music. She's very wonderful that way. She doesn't let a thing get by. She changes arrangements and changes arrangers at the drop of a hat because she feels she hasn't got it right. She's absolutely right with what she does. It's just that sometimes it takes a long time to do it.”
Mathis also commented on the recording of “I Have A Love / One Hand, One Heart”: “[David Foster] sat down and did a $20 recording of the background on a synthesizer and that's what we first rehearsed to for about a month or so. Then, we went into the studio over at MGM and I think it was about a 106-piece orchestra and we re-recorded it and Barbra didn't like that, so we scrapped that. Then, we tried something else and something else again and what we did is we went back to David's original $20 little thing he did on the synthesizer and that's what the record ended up as. It sounds great.”
Also in November 1992, Streisand reportedly tackled both “Unusual Way” (by Maury Yeston, from Nine) and “Being Good” (by Jule Styne from Hallelujah, Baby!) in the recording studio for a second time. (Streisand recorded both songs for 1985's Broadway Album but she decided not to use them on that record.)
The didn't make it onto this record either. Streisand did sing “Unusual Way” during her 2006 concert tour.
Streisand also recorded “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” for Back to Broadway with David Foster arranging—but did not use it. (Barbra recorded it again — with a different arrangement — for 2009's Love is the Answer album).
In January 1993, Barbra sang “Children Will Listen” at Bill Clinton's inauguration. (Note: The version she sang did not include Sondheim's quatrains, which he wrote for this album.)
In March 1993, still three months away from the album's release, David Foster talked to the L.A. Times about his work on Back to Broadway with Streisand. “I work on the musical tracks and she works out her own vocals,” Foster said. “She sings them the way she wants to sing them, which is fine with me. Broadway material is not my forte, but it is hers. It's hard for me to say, ‘Barbra, sing it this way.’”
