Thursday, April 21, 2016
Staff report
It’s the end of the road for Barry Manilow.
The pop legend’s current tour will be the last time he mounts a massive North American tour. He isn’t ruling out a concert here or there, or perhaps a residency in Las Vegas, and he is still planning to continue to record new albums.
But this time around, there is an air of finality when it comes to living life on the road.
Luckily, the 72-year-old Manilow has included Youngstown on this road trip, appropriately titled the One Last Time! tour. It will hit Covelli Centre, with opening act Dave Koz, on Saturday.
Manilow’s only other visit to Youngstown was just five years ago. In that August 2011 concert at Covelli, he was backed by the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra, and then took the YSO with him on four more concerts in the Northeast and Canada.
The YSO will not be accompanying him on the current tour.
But fans can expect a 90-minute concert that will be replete with the litany of hits Manilow has produced in his five-decade career. With no current album to push, there won’t be any little-known new songs.
“The fans don’t want me to promote my latest anything,” he told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “I haven’t done a tour quite like this ever.”
The set list includes a medley with excerpts from at least a dozen career-spanning songs. The medley includes some concert rarities, including “Read ’Em and Weep,” “Somewhere Down the Road” and “Ships.”
The singer told the newspaper that the tour also includes a virtual duet with the late Judy Garland – using a video, of course – on “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart.”
It sounds like Manilow plans to share some memories with his fans before saying farewell.