Songwriter Sedaka: ‘better & better’

by Lois Uttley, The Knickerbocker News, August 31, 1978

Neil Sedaka just keeps getting better and better.

Now into his 26th year as a songwriter, the popular composer-pianist-singer turned up at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) Wednesday night with a sample of a newly-recorded album and showed that his talent is still growing.

The sample- a beautiful, evocative ballad entitled “Love Keeps Getting Stronger Every Day” – delighted an appreciative audience and showed all the makings of Sedaka’s next Top 40 hit. The new album, Sedaka said, took him “about two years of inspiration” to compose and record.

Hit songs, of course, seem to be a way of life for Sedaka. Almost every song in his SPAC show Wednesday was a memorable hit. They stretch back to the 1950s (“Stupid Cupid” and “Where the Boys Are”) and the early 1960s (“Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” and “I’m Living Right Next Door to An Angel”).

More recently, Sedaka has scored with “Laughter in the Rain” and “Solitaire” and composed the smash single, “Love Will Keep Us Together” for the Captain and Tennille.

Sedaka, a superb and entertaining showman, opened the concert sitting alone at the piano and conducting an amusing interview with himself about his early musical career: piano lessons at 8, the Juilliard School of Music at 9, and first success as a songwriter while still a teenager.

After his meteoric rise to popularity in the ’50s and ’60s, he “cried a lot” when the sharply differing style of the Beatles became popular in 1963 and put him into temporary retirement, Sedaka told the audience.

After performing the “Golden Oldies” on piano, Sedaka was joined by a band and two back-up singers for the songs he has made popular since his musical comeback early in this decade.

His smooth, lyrical and easy-to-listen-to singing style was complemented by accomplished piano playing and real performing flair. Although he rarely moves from the piano bench, Sedaka manages to radiate presence, even in so large an auditorium as SPAC.

Sedaka was preceded by singer-pianist-guitarist Dean Friedman. Despite a friendly round of applause for his popular “Ariel,” Friedman got a less-than-warm reception. His singing was screechy and his manner juvenile, particularly when he invited women friends from the audience to join him onstage in an uncoordinated and boring rendition of an unidentified song.

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