Sad to hear the death Saturday of Hal David, the great lyricists whose simple, profound words were indelibly paired with Burt Bacharach’s often complex melodies to create a sophisticated soundtrack of the 60s.
While we’ll always remember him for a heady list of pop hits, from the rock of “My Little Red Book” to “Wishin’ and Hopin,” “Trains and Boats and Planes,” “What’s New Pussycat and “The Look of Love.”
Their work for Dionne Warwick was a whole heady chapter, from “Don’t Make Me Over” and “Anyone Who Had a Heart” to “Walk On By,” “I Say a Little Prayer” and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.”
But they were also behind some of Gene Pitney’s most stirring gongs, from “(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance” to “Twenty Four Hours to Tulsa.”
For B.J. Thomas they wrote “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head,” a monster hit from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
Born in Brooklyn in 1921, he met Bacharach in 1957 and worked with him in the fame, gilded Brill Building in New York’s largely disappeared Tin Pan Alley. Not all of their collaborations were hits, he was fond of saying. But those that did remained memorable for decades.
Some lyrics he’d turn out in a day, as he did for “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” But he took two years to get the bridge right for one of his most enduring lyrics, “What the World Needs Now is Love.”
The breakup songs were killer. One only needs to hear the Walker Brothers version of “Make It Easy on Yourself,” Elvis Costello’s take on “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself” or Luther Vandross’ signature cover of “A House is Not a Home” to witness the devastation sometimes caused by “love, sweet love.”
The writer Paul Grein noted a spiritual quality to his music, not just in the benedictory uplift of “What the World Needs Now” but in the simple “I Say a Little Prayer” or “You’ll Never Get to heaven (If You Break My Heart).”
His words for “Alfie” asked about the nature of life itself in asking “What’s it all about?” and resolved that love is “something even non believers can believe in.”
In addition to his work with Bacharach, he provided lyrics to such wide ranging songs as Joanie Sommers’ “Johnny Get Angry,” Don Gibson’s lilting “Sea of Heartbreak” and “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before,” the hit duet by Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias.
He was 91.