His first and deepest love is musical theater (he even studied at Juillard).
“The rules are still the same and the joy is still the same,” he says.
“For me, this pop career was a big surprise.
Bruce Sussman and Barry Manilow.Paul Aphisit
I had to learn how to write a pop song.
I had to learn how to make a pop record.
That’s a really big moment for me.”
Manilow also dragged writing partner Sussman along into the pop music business.
“All you got in a pop song is, ‘I love you or I miss you.’
“The classic animated films follow the Rodgers and Hammerstein formula for writing a musical,” says Sussman.
“So when we had a chance to do that, it was time to roll up our sleeves.
It was right around that time that we really committed to writingHarmony.”
He went to see the 191-minute film and was blown away.
I think I found the story.'”
In 2004, Manilow released an album where he recorded all of the songs from the show himself.
Sussman says it was the COVID-19 pandemic that really led him and Manilow to revisit their dream.
“The proposal is in, and we love it,” Sussman says.
“There were two spots that I was considering, and I put it in the later moment.
We staged it a few days ago and I like it a lot.”
I realized that I could use that to clock where they were in their relationship."
But his role changed significantly in the new drafts the team worked out during the COVID-19 shutdown.
Now, there are two of them now an older and younger."
“It’s in Rabbi’s mind, and all of the characters we will eventually meet flood in.
He has to gain control over his memory and slow down, one at a time.
“I didn’t feel an American audience would necessarily know that.
So, I didn’t have to write anything.”
“That number goes way back,” he explains.
“It was one of the earliest pieces we wrote.
“This group sang in so many different styles,” adds Sussman.
“We listened very carefully to a number they did called ‘The Puppet Show.’
We got the idea for what ‘Come to the Fatherland’ could be from that.”
His notes point out that this would require a new rhyme with “folks” in the lyrics above.
Sussman says he ended up leaving it as is with the word “jokes.”
“I decided it’s stronger this way,” he notes.
“They were erased from the world.
Adds Sussman: “The history we ignore is the history we’re condemned to repeat.”
