Burt Bacharach obituary: Composer worked with stars including Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield and Tom Jones during seven-decade career
Composer Burt Bacharach – perhaps best known for his Oscar-winning song Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head – has died aged 94.
Hailed as one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century, he wrote more than 500 songs, which were performed by more than 1,200 different artists, across his seven-decade career.
Despite numerous collaborations, it was the songs he wrote in the 1960s and 1970s with lyricist Hal David and performed by singer Dionne Warwick that achieved the greatest recognition, establishing all three as musical stars in their own rights.
Pic: Dezo Hoffman/Shutterstock
His music – which was often described as ‘easy listening’ or ‘elevator music’ thanks to its catchy melodies – was inspired by an early love of jazz.
But fans of his work would argue that although instantly memorable and addictively hummable, the mixed meters, complex melodies, unusual chord progression and asymmetrical rhythms mean his work was far from ‘easy’.
An accomplished pianist as well as a composer, Bacharach arranged, conducted, and produced the majority of his own songs.
A six-time Grammy Award winner and three-time Academy Award winner, his composing skill earned him comparisons with American music greats including George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers.
Early collaborations included Perry Como and Jerry Butler, going on to work with stars including Frank Sinatra, Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones and the Carpenters.
Some of his biggest hits include the Oscar-winning Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head, (They Long to Be) Close to You, Anyone Who Had A Heart, Always Something There To Remind Me, and What the World Needs Now Is Love.
Hollywood also played its part in amplifying his career, with many of his songs going on to become soundtracks to major films.
Pic: AP
The Look of Love, which was used in the 1967 spy parody of a James Bond film, Casino Royale, became a gold record for Dusty Springfield and Brazilian musician Sergio Mendes, and was also inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Many years later, the spoof movie would lead to cameo roles for Bacharach in all three Austin Powers films, with Mike Myers calling him a “lucky charm” for the films.
What’s New Pussycat? – which featured in the 1965 Woody Allen film of the same name – gave Welsh singer Tom Jones his second top 40 US hit and was also nominated for an Oscar for best original song the following year. It went on to be sung by stars including Barbra Streisand, The Four Seasons and The Wailers.
His mention in Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life was proof of his rightful place in pop culture, as well as his reputation as a ladies man.
‘I did not want to disappoint my mother’
Born Burt Freeman Bacharach on 12 May 1928, in Kansas City, Missouri, his father was a newspaper columnist and his mother an amateur painter and pianist.
The family moved to New York when he was three. A Jewish family in a largely Catholic neighbourhood, Bacharach said in his 2013 autobiography, Anyone Who Had A Heart: My Life And Music, that he kept his faith to himself, and “didn’t want anybody to know about it”.
It was thanks to his mother’s love of music that Bacharach undertook piano lessons as a child. He hated them with a passion, but later told fans during gigs that he persevered as “I did not want to disappoint my mother”.
He went on to study music at Montreal’s McGill University, Quebec, Canada, before completing his training at Mannes School of Music, in New York, and at the Music Academy of the West in Montecito, California.
Not a fan of the classical music he would play in his classes, he would later sneak into jazz clubs as a teenager, with the style going on to influence his songwriting later in his career.
Drafted into the US army for two years in 1950 during the Korean War, and stationed in Germany, he got his first taste of working in music serving as a pianist at officer’s clubs and arranging music for dance bands.
Burt Bacharach pictured at a media event in Sydney in June 2007
Hitting it off with big band singer and actor Vic Damone during his time in the military, he went on to work with him as a pianist and conductor following his discharge.
Touring with Hollywood royalty
From there he began to play with other artists, including actress Marlene Dietrich who is said to have called working with him “seventh heaven,” according to the 1989 biography Marlene.
Looking back on his time with her in his autobiography, Bacharach wrote: “We went to Russia, Israel, the Middle East. Going with Marlene was like going in with a conquering army.”
As the Hollywood star’s musical director, arranging and conducting her nightclub shows, he gained greater public prominence, however their working relationship came to an end in the early 1960s, when Bacharach decided to devote himself to his own songwriting full time.
Looking back to the start of his career, Bacharach said he initially thought songwriting was “so startlingly simple, I thought I could write five or six a day”.
However, after a year or so of working, and “about a thousand” rejection letters, he concluded: “It’s hard to be simple.”
Without doubt, his most enduring and fruitful professional relationship was with lyricist Hal David, who he met in 1957. In the early and mid-sixties alone, the pair wrote over 100 songs together.
Work with Hal David and Dionne Warwick
But it was in 1961, when they discovered Dionne Warwick who was working as a session singer, that their partnership really took off.
During their time creating songs for Warwick, they wrote 39 of her chart hits including Don’t Make Me Over, I’ll Never Fall In Love Again, Walk On By and Do You Know The Way To San Jose.
In 1969, Bacharach and David ventured into theatre, writing hit musical Promises, Promises, based on the 1960 film The Apartment. Their first and only Broadway show, it won them a Grammy.
Less auspicious was their soundtrack for the 1973 movie Lost Horizon, a massive flop which led to lawsuits between the pair and their professional breakup.
In turn, their parting of ways led Warwick to sue them for failure to honour their contract working with her on her music. It was finally settled out of court in 1979 for $5m (£4.1m).
In 1975, Bacharach worked briefly with David again, producing a Motown album together.
And in 1985, Warwick and Bacharach were reunited too, when she sang his hit That’s What Friends Are For.
Co-written with his then-wife Carole Bayer Sager, the track featured Elton John, Stevie Wonder, and Gladys Knight and went on to win a Grammy for Song of the Year.
Warwick described her relationship with Bacharach at the time as: “Not just friends. We’re family.”
The three would work together once more in 2000, on songs for film Isn’t She Great, based on the life of Valley Of The Dolls novelist Jacqueline Susann.
In the 1980s, Bacharach’s music inspired many of the songs coming out of the post-punk era, and in the 1990s his work was introduced to a whole new generation of fans thanks to a lounge music resurgence, led by bands including Divine Comedy and The Mike Flowers Pops.
Named the “Sexiest Man Alive” by People Magazine in 2000, the noughties saw remixes and samples of his work high in the charts on numerous occasions.
Bacharach performing with the BBC Concert Orchestra in 2008
An American Idol
A guest vocal coach on American Idol, an entire episode was also dedicated to his hits in 2006.
More modern collaborations include Sheryl Crow, Elvis Costello, Noel Gallagher and hip-hop producer Dr Dre.
In June 2015, Bacharach played the main stage at Glastonbury Festival, 15 years after he had been forced to pull out of the event due to a shoulder injury.
Bacharach was awarded the Johnny Mercer Award, the highest honour in the Songwriters Hall of Fame In 1996.
Other honours include the George and Ira Gershwin Award for Musical Achievement from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Grammy lifetime achievement award, where he was proclaimed music’s greatest living composer, in 2006.
A performer as well as a composer, Bacharach played concerts all over the world throughout his career, often accompanied by large orchestras.
Not known for his political songs, he made an exception in 2018 with Live To See Another Day, dedicated to the survivors of gun violence and with proceeds going to a charity run by the families of some of those killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
In late 2022, a New York dance troop celebrated Bacharach’s music in an evening of dance titled The Look Of Love, named after one of his biggest hits.
Even his pastime of horseracing – he was an owner and breeder of thoroughbreds for over 30 years – was influenced by his love of music, naming one of his champion horses Heartlight No. One after his Neil Diamond collaboration, inspired by film E.T.
Bacharach was married four times, first to TV actress Paula Stuart between 1953 and 1958, then to actress Angie Dickinson between 1965 and 1980.
Bacharach and Dickinson had one daughter together, Nikki, who took her own life in 2007, aged 40, after battling with Asperger’s Syndrome from a young age.
His third marriage to lyricist Carole Bayer Sager lasted from 1982 to 1991, and they adopted a son, Christopher.
His fourth and final marriage was to former ski-instructor Jane Hanson, 32 years his junior, with whom he has a son and a daughter – Oliver and Raleigh.
Bacharach is survived by ex-wives Dickinson and Bayer Sager, his wife Jane, and children Christopher, Oliver and Raleigh.
Puppetry has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years.
With the ability to tell political and philosophical stories, fairy tales and musical adventures, all with equal flair, puppeteers bringing the inanimate to life on stage is back in vogue.
A staple of the festive season, the year-round resurgence has been invigorated by hit West End shows including War Horse, The Life Of Pi, The Lion King and My Neighbour Totoro, boosting a craft that has been traced back as far as the ancient Greeks.
Pinocchio is this year’s Christmas show at Shakespeare’s Globe. Pic: Johan Persson
This year, puppets are centre stage at Shakespeare’s Globe, with Pinocchio their leading man.
The tale of a wooden puppet who dreams of becoming a real boy, Globe associate director Sean Holmes tells Sky News: “It seemed to fit, a boy made of wood in a theatre made of wood.
“There’s something about the kind of challenge of that storytelling, the theatricality, the magic, the puppetry, that really drew us to it.”
The performers – made up of actors and puppeteers – spent 18 months workshopping the show ahead of opening night, perfecting the challenge of skilled puppetry, acting and singing all on an open-air stage. It’s no mean feat.
The show features a range of puppets, including rod, table-top, and large-scale creations that fill the stage and marionettes – small puppets with big impact.
Puppeteer Stan Middleton is a marionette specialist. Pic: Patrick Hutton
Romeo the marionette on the Globe stage. Pic: Patrick Hutton
One of the show’s puppeteers, Stan Middleton, a marionette specialist, operates a marionette Romeo puppet in part of the performance.
He tells Sky News: “I think a lot of people are scared of marionettes because they think, ‘Oh no, they’re too difficult, we can’t do them’.”
He goes on: “It’s so nice to have the marionette moment in this show, because it gives people a chance to see how beautiful they are and how enchanting…
“They’ve got a sort of delicate charm and a sort of like inner silence which I think really captivates people.”
Despite their charms, the intricate skills required to both craft and manipulate long-string marionettes mean they are under threat.
While some puppets – including War Horse-style rod and Totoro-style body ones – are enjoying success on the stage, marionettes are critically endangered.
Globe associate director Sean Holmes. Pic: Patrick Hutton
Unlike dance or circus, puppetry is not recognised in its own right by Arts Council England and is instead grouped with theatre.
It means specialist puppet venues are competing for funding in the highly saturated market of theatre companies producing for children and families, with no special recognition of their craft.
Marionette-making was added to Heritage Crafts’ Red List of Endangered Crafts in 2023.
There are now calls for it to be added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) list too, after the UK officially joined earlier this year.
Puppets are big business, but as some types thrive, others are at risk of disappearing completely. Pic: Johan Persson/Patrick Hutton
Little Angel is one of the few UK theatres to have a marionette bridge. Pic: Patrick Hutton
Little Angel Theatre, a hub for British puppetry for over six decades, is one of a handful of UK spaces where puppeteers can perform with long-string marionettes.
Boasting not one but two marionette bridges, puppeteers can walk 360 degrees all the way around the upper part of the stage, working their marionettes from a hidden vantage point above.
Trained by some of the last remaining UK makers, including Little Angel co-founder Lyndie Wright, Little Angel Associate director Oliver Hymans is a central figure in the effort to save the craft.
Little Angel associate director Oliver Hymans. Pic: Patrick Hutton
Inspired by seeing old marionettes hung up at the back of the stage and intrigued by why they were not being used, he is now committed to re-establishing traditional marionette-making.
Hymans tells Sky News: “The marionette is a series of nine different pendulums all wired together. You’re having to work against gravity to keep it in control.
“But the thing about the marionette is you can hide the puppeteer. So, you can completely design and develop a world where there are only puppets and scenery and scenography.”
He says the majority of master marionette makers have retired or are nearing retirement, and warns there may be just a handful left in the country.
He explains: “With the onslaught of AI, we know it’s coming. Jobs where people use their hands are going to be vitally important, and if we don’t protect these crafts, they are going to die out.”
Me at Little Angel Studios. Pic: Ellie Kurttz
The Storm Whale at Little Angel Theatre. Pic: Northedge Photography
Putting their money where their mouth is, Little Angel is nurturing emerging talent, upskilling people in both the art of making and performing with marionettes.
They plan to have a marionette show on stage next summer.
Also joining the fight for the overlooked craft, puppetry director Rachel Warr has organised a celebration of marionettes for the last three years, with the support of the Art Workers’ Guild Outreach Committee.
An industry-focused free event, it brings the puppetry community together – with particular relevance to those who work with marionettes – or who aspire to.
Puppetry director Rachel Warr (R) with Alicia Britt and Anna Smith. Pic. Tom Crame
Some members of the community appear in a forthcoming short documentary about puppets, Untangling, by filmmaker Hester Heeler-Frood.
Warr told Sky News: “People are often more affected by a puppet dying on stage than an actor pretending to die in character. It doesn’t have the artifice of getting up and walking away and getting on the tube at the end of the night.
“There’s something quite vulnerable about the puppet in that sense… We know that it’s not really alive, and yet we’re able to project on to it our own thoughts and feelings. It’s a blank canvas – a powerful tool.”
Meanwhile, as Pinocchio plays at the Globe, the theatre is running accompanying puppetry workshops, encouraging children to get involved in the craft – maybe inspiring future stars of puppeteering.
With their future hanging by a string, the training of the next generation is key to breathing life back into an overlooked craft, reinstating marionettes to their rightful place on the stage.
Pinocchio runs at Shakespeare’s Globe until Sunday 4 January.
The Storm Whale at Little Angel Studios runs until Saturday 24 January, and Me runs at Little Angel Theatre until Sunday 25 January.
Kate Winslet says she never set out to become a director – but after reading her son’s first screenplay, she simply “couldn’t let it go”.
In 2023, Joe Anders, whose father is director Sam Mendes, signed up to a screenwriting course at the National Film and Television School.
His mother read one of his assignments and insisted it was worth making into a film – so they did.
Anders created a story around adult siblings who reunite around Christmastime to say goodbye to their dying mother.
Abiding by Mark Twain’s phrase “write what you know”, it was inspired by the death of Winslet’s mother Sally Bridgers-Winslet from ovarian cancer in 2017.
Helen Mirren (left) as June and Kate Winslet (right) as Julia in Goodbye June. Pic: Netflix
Speaking to Sky News, the Titanic actress says they learned “how to develop a completely new relationship” as colleagues”.
“I’m incredibly impressed by him and really proud of him, not least because he wrote this screenplay and started writing it when he was 19,” she says.
“But he had to adapt and learn very, very quickly that when you’re developing something, you take notes, you take feedback.
“Netflix became involved at some stage that they were also giving notes to, and then I was sort of playing the role of kind of protecting the project and also protecting him at the same time from things that, you know, may necessarily not have been useful, things that actually were great ideas.”
Winslet speaking to Sky News
Anders isn’t her only child to have got their start alongside their famous parent.
Mia Threapleton, who most recently starred in the Wes Anderson film The Phoenician Scheme, made her on-screen debut in the 2014 Winslet-led movie A Little Chaos.
They worked together again in the series I Am… which won Winslet a TV BAFTA award for best leading actress.
Goodbye June stars (L-R) Johnny Flynn, Andrea Riseborough, Timothy Spall, Kate Winslet and Fisayo Akinade, among others. Pic: Netflix
An actor’s director
Winslet has starred in some of the biggest films of all time, with Titanic, Avatar and Sense And Sensibility, to name a few.
She says it’s that experience in front of the camera that helped her tailor the on-set experience to help its actors explore their emotions and creativity.
“We know what works for us as actors from a director,” she says. “We know what does not work, and we also know what’s actively destructive and sometimes that can mean the environment, the working environment.
“Film sets are very busy places it can often be frantic, sometimes it’s hard to kind of follow what’s going on or what you’re doing next, and it mattered to me enormously that everybody always felt extremely safe, completely informed, and very free.”
Read more from Sky News:
Actors demand AI protections
Celebrities who died in 2025
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(L-R) Andrea Riseborough, Johnny Flynn, Kate Winslet and Timothy Spall in Goodbye June. Pic: Netflix
Winslet adds: “In this country, we’re not necessarily so good at processing, especially when it comes to talking about grief.
“And so hopefully through this film, which is also very funny, hopefully through this film, people might see something of themselves and connect with it in that way.”
Timothy Spall, next to co-star Toni Collette, says it is not surprising Winslet is such a good director
‘One of the greats’
Co-star Timothy Spall says “it’s not surprising she’s such a good director” – and calls her “one of the great actresses in the world.”
“I worked with her when she was 20. She was impressive then, just before she got Titanic… and she’s paid attention. She’s listened. She’s a great actress,” Spall says of Winslet.
“She knows how it works, and she helps other actors to do the best they can. And she’s all over the crew. She’s great with them. She’s paid attention in every department.”
Goodbye June is out on Netflix on 24 December
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