For Burt, Basics Are What It’s All About

What if Buart Bacharach were starting out today, rather than basking in his recently acquired status as the hippest, most omnipresent 70-year-old in pop music?

He says he would take the same approach he did 50 years ago. Instead of being consumed with mastering current trends and styles, the composer of “Alfie” and scores of other standards thinks aspiring hit-makers first should learn what it’s all about by mastering the basics of music.

“I’d just learn the rules,” said Bacharach, who performs in Costa Mesa tonightand Saturday with the Pacific Symphony Pops. “I’d learn how to write music down. I’d go to school and learn how to orchestrate and be able to write down what I’m hearing in my head and not just put it into a tape recorder and have somebody [else] write it down. Then, if you want to break rules, you can break rules.”

Bacharach’s academic explorations at McGill University in Montreal and two New York City conservatories presaged the more rough-and-tumble song-crafting path he followed. In 1957, he worked in the famed Brill Building, the New York City office tower that radiated hits by professional songwriters before the mid-’60s British Invasion established a new norm of self-sufficient songwriter-performers.

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Bacharach’s trademark as a composer and arranger (with Hal David his key partner as lyricist) was bringing an elegant airiness and well-proportioned, human-scale grandness to the charts in an era when rock’s simplicity and rough vitality were the animating spirits.

The Carpenters (“Close to You”), B.J. Thomas (“Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head”), the 5th Dimension (“One Less Bell to Answer”), Tom Jones (“What’s New Pussycat?”) and Dionne Warwick (the essential Bacharach/David artist, with too many famous songs to note briefly) are among those whose signature hits were Bacharach’s compositions.

The surprising development of the past year has been Bacharach’s embrace by a new generation of rock stars, repairing the stark but, in retrospect, wonderfully pluralistic schism that existed during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the lush “waah-aah-a-a-aah” harmonies of the Carpenters might fade over the car radio into the stuttering cowbell clank of the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women.”

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In 1999, Bacharach stands assimilated into the musical lexicon of a new rock generation that’s willing to search for influences everywhere. His music is no longer just a classy-but-old-school reminder of all that ‘60s rock didn’t want to be.

Brit-pop revivalists Oasis and Blur have championed Bacharach, and it isn’t hard to find smooth strains with his distinctive ring cropping up among adventurous bands such as Stereolab. Rockers Chrissie Hynde, Ben Folds Five and Barenaked Ladies were part of “One Amazing Night,” a live tribute to Bacharach that emerged last year; so were Warwick and Luther Vandross.

Bacharach and erstwhile angry-young-rocker Elvis Costello teamed as co-writers and performers on “Painted From Memory,” a torchy collaboration played on Bacharach’s sophisticated turf. And Rhino Records capped Bacharach’s big year by issuing “The Look of Love: The Burt Bacharach Collection,” with 75 tracks on three CDs spanning 39 years of songwriting.

Bacharach has no explanation for his influence on rock-bred musicians of the ‘90s, accepting it all as “a nice surprise.”

“I never particularly liked rock ‘n’ roll. It wasn’t the kind of music that was nurturing me,” he said. “[Rockers] are going to have to get away from the music they’re playing and [music] that’s on the scene to tap into my music.

“You wouldn’t think that’s so logical. Maybe the music is special. It had the sophistication that stood it well in the passage of time, maybe even more than songs that were more popular at the time. I always thought the songs we were writing were pretty deep and challenging and complicated. Maybe if they were ultra-simplified, we wouldn’t be talking now.”

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Bacharach has not sat back and basked in resurgent hipness. An on-screen musical appearance in the 1960s retro film “Austin Powers” helped set the stage for his rediscovery, and he says he has a return engagement in the sequel, doing “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” with Warwick. He recently completed his first film score in eight years. (His past scoring credits include “Arthur” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”) The new one, which includes fresh songs co-written with David, is for “Isn’t She Great,” a Bette Midler vehicle based on the life of author Jacqueline Suzanne.

Bacharach said his performance schedule is busier than ever, including separate tours last year with Warwick and Costello, shows with his own band and symphonic evenings, like the ones this weekend, which combine his own musicians and singers with an orchestra.

“It’s a wonderful way to meet an audience with the music you’ve written,” said Bacharach, who lives in Pacific Palisades and lists owning racehorses and raising three children, ages 3, 6, and 13, as his extra-musical passions. (He also has a grown daughter).

“Otherwise, it’s a very insulated existence. You stay in a room and write music. I’m not going to walk down the streets in Santa Monica and get a standing ovation.”

* Burt Bacharach performs with the Pacific Symphony Pops, tonight and Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 8 p.m. $14 (student and senior rush) to $52. (714) 556-2787.