The Broadway Album (1985)

“Anybody could have done the songs on Emotion as well as or better than I could have done them,” Barbra explained about her last pop album. “It was time to do something I truly believed in.”

Streisand told Stephen Holden, “Making Yentl wiped me out and left me with no drive for two years. But once I commit to a project, whether it's a record or a movie, I become so involved with every aspect that I become obsessed …. This is the music I love, it is where I came from, it is my roots.”

Peter Matz, the renowned musical director/arranger who worked on Streisand’s first few albums, recalled that Barbra mentioned the album to him in late 1984. “We were at her house at Christmas, and she said she was going to go ahead with the project,” Matz stated. “I always felt very strongly that she was right to do it and that it was a good idea.” 

“It was her idea,” Sandy Gallin said. “The first big hit album that she had in many years. It was an absolute labor of love for her and for me.”

Gallin explained how he took over for Barbra’s longtime manager Marty Erlichman at this point in her career. “Jon Peters was [Barbra’s] boyfriend,” he said. “Jon Peters and [her movie agent] Sue Mengers got Barbra to fire Marty Erlichman. A horrible thing. Barbra said to me, ‘While I’m going through this transition, why don’t you manage me?’ And I was like, ‘Of course I’ll manage you!’”

Gallin took the next step by alerting Lee Solters (Streisand’s publicist) about the project in a memo: 

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... 

The plan to record the album in front of a live audience was ultimately abandoned (“Are you kidding?” Barbra said to Rod McKuen when he asked why she didn’t do it. “With the energy that would take I could do another movie.”)

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.” 

One of the ideas that suffered once the idea of a double album was abandoned was the long medley of songs from The King and I. Streisand worked with Paul Jabara and Bob Esty, the team behind Barbra’s hit single “The Main Event.” The medley would have featured “I Have Dreamed,” “We Kiss in a Shadow,” “Something Wonderful,” as well as “Shall We Dance” and a few lines from “Hello, Young Lovers.” 

“It was meant to be a bonus 12-inch single for the album,” Bob Esty recalled, “as a promotional tool for a younger crowd not into Broadway songs.”

While rehearsing “Shall We Dance,” Barbra had misgivings about the “whimsical Latin arrangement” (as Paul Jabara described it). “I don’t sing this good,” she told to Jabara and Esty. “When I sing ‘If I Loved You,’ that’s like in my … I know what I’m doing.”

“We wanted to create something beautiful for her,” Bob Esty explained.  John Arrias echoed Esty: “Bob and I worked for days trying to put the tape together so Barbra could get a feeling for the piece as a whole,” he said.

The complete medley, running 8-minutes long, was substantial. For the final album, “Shall We Dance” was removed and, instead, the track opened with “I Have Dreamed.” 

Bob Esty confessed that when Barbra played the dance track for David Foster (who produced “Somewhere), “he said, in an I-don't-like-anything-disco attitude, ‘I don't hear it, for this project.’ And Paul Jabara & I were immediately fired!!”

Jabara complained publicly about payment for his work when he spoke to Marilyn Beck in her February 1986 column. “I would never sue Barbra; she’s a friend,” he said.  But, apparently, the record company lawyers were still haggling.  Jabara stated he wanted to be paid “a normal producer’s rate” or 3- to 4-percentage points on the album which at that point had sold more than two million copies. Jabara made sure to tell Beck that Streisand “just learned about the situation and called to volunteer to pay me out of her own pocket.”

Streisand recorded “Show Me” (from My Fair Lady) and “Unusual Way” (from Nine) with full orchestrations.  Both remain unreleased, although Streisand did perform “Unusual Way” twenty-one years later on her North American concert tour.  

“Being Good Isn’t Good Enough” was an exceptional recording that remained on the cutting room floor until Barbra added it to her 2012 album, Release Me.

“I Know Him So Well” was from the musical Chess. It was eventually included on the 1991 retrospective box set, Just For the Record. Barbra, in her liner notes, said the track did not make it onto The Broadway Album for two reasons: for one, Chess hadn’t opened on Broadway yet, so, therefore, it was technically not a Broadway tune. Secondly, Barbra said, “I thought it sounded too ‘Pop’, like it was trying to be a contemporary hit, and seemed out of context with the rest of the material.” By the way, Richard Page (from the group Mr. Mister) provided the male vocal on this track. “She was great,” Page said about Streisand. “I spent one afternoon with her, although she lives in my neighborhood and I see her from time to time. But she’s really in control and is all those things that people say about her. She definitely knew what she was doing in the recording studio and was very kind. It was a good experience.”

“Home” from The Wiz was associated with Stephanie Mills, who played Dorothy in the Broadway show (and, later, Diana Ross in the film version of the musical). “Home” was recorded by Barbra with a pop arrangement. Ultimately, it was dropped from the album, but included on Streisand's 2012 compilation album, Release Me – although she did rerecord the drums, bass, and piano for that album, keeping her original vocal.

Streisand was interested in performing the showstopping “Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy (another Jule Styne show, with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim). Barbra wanted a fresh approach for her album, though. “I worked on ‘Rose’s Turn’ for quite a while for this album, but I couldn’t quite solve it,” Barbra told a reporter. “I even asked Stephen [Sondheim] to try and figure a way of integrating it with ‘Some People’, but it didn’t work.” (Note: she sang a new medley of the two songs in her 2012 concert tour.)

Streisand loved the songs from Sunday in the Park with George by Sondheim and considered recording “Finishing the Hat” and “Children and Art”. [“Move On”, the finale of the show, was recorded fresh for Barbra’s 1993 album, Back to Broadway]. 

Streisand and Matz took a 1985-attempt at the medley of “There Won’t Be Trumpets / A Quiet Thing” from Anyone Can Whistle and Flora, The Red Menace. She had recorded it previously in the 1970s, but never released it (until Just For the Record).

She also considered “Simple” from Nine and “One Hand, One Heart” from West Side Story—which Barbra ended up recording with David Foster for Back to Broadway.

Barbra and Bob Esty rehearsed a version of “Fascinating Rhythm” from Lady Be Good as a potential song for the album.

“It’s interesting that I hadn’t sung any of Stephen’s songs before,” Streisand told author Craig Zadan. In the past, Barbra recorded a few bars of “Small World” (Gypsy) in a Color Me Barbra medley, as well as “There Won’t Be Trumpets” (Anyone Can Whistle).  But at the time of The Broadway Album, “Trumpets” was an unreleased song recorded in 1974.

Streisand worked with Stephen Sondheim on seven out of the twelve tracks on The Broadway Album. The two began their collaboration on the telephone in March 1985 and continued through the summer while Streisand recorded the album in Los Angeles. Craig Zadan, who wrote a wonderful biography on the man (Sondheim & Co.), interviewed Streisand about their work.  “They collaborated as if they were doing a show, not an album,” he said.

“I had been thinking about doing an album of Broadway songs for years,” Streisand said. “When I finally got around to it, I called up Steve and said I was interested in doing some of his songs. We hardly knew each other, and I had only recorded on of his songs, ‘There Won't Be Trumpets,’ which ended up not being released. It turned into a process that was so exhilarating, there were moments I was screaming with joy over the phone.”

For the medley of “Pretty Women” (from Sweeney Todd) and “The Ladies Who Lunch” (from Company), Streisand asked Sondheim to contribute a coda. “I wanted to put the two songs together, because I loved the melody of ‘Pretty Women’ but didn't feel comfortable singing from a male point of view,” Streisand told Stephen Holden. “When I listened to ‘The Ladies Who Lunch,’ I thought it would be interesting to put the songs together to present two opposing views of women—a superficial view versus what their lives might really be like—but I needed a lyrical ending that would pull the two together.”

Sondheim was willing to tailor his material for Streisand. “Barbra Streisand has one of the two or three best voices in the world of singing voices,” he explained to Stephen Holden. 

Sondheim even came West and spent a few weeks in the recording studio with Streisand. “I didn’t know if he trusted me when he first met me,” she said. “Was I going to hurt the songs in some way? But I think, as he thought about it, he got excited by the ideas.”

“It’s all about Barbra,” Sondheim said. “If anyone else had recorded the exact same set of songs and sung them very well, it might not have sold. But she’s got one of the best voices on the planet. And it’s not just her voice, it’s her intensity, her passion, her control. Although every moment has been thought out, you don’t see all the sweat and decisions that went into the work. It is as though she just stepped out of the shower and began singing at you.”