SAN DIEGO — Few music fans consider David Bowie to be the missing link between fellow Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Todd Rundgren and legendary pop songwriter Burt Bacharach, who won six Grammy Awards, three Oscars and an Emmy before dying at the age of 94 in 2023. Few that is, except Rundgren, who has top billing on the “What the World Needs Now: The Burt Bacharach Songbook Live in Concert” tour. It opens this week in Southern California.

“I did the ‘Celebrating David Bowie’ tour in 2022 and that’s how I ended up being a candidate for this (Bacharach) tour. Angelo Bundini, who produced the ‘Celebrating’ tour,” is also a co-producer of the ‘What the World Needs Now’ tour,” said Rundgren, who will be accompanied by a nine-piece band. It features Rob Shirakbari, who was Bacharach’s longtime music director, former Brian Wilson band mainstay Probyn Gregory and 25-year-old San Diego singer and multi-instrumentalist Elise Trouw.

The many classic songs Bacharach co-wrote with lyricist Hal David, who died in 2012 at the age of 91, quickly became staples for artists around the world. Dionne Warwick’s career ignited in 1963, thanks to her musical partnership with Bacharach and David. They co-wrote 39 consecutive chart hits for Warwick in just 10 years.

Among the many gems Bacharach and David penned together for Warwick are “I Say a Little Prayer” (also covered by Aretha Franklin), “Walk on By” (Isaac Hayes, Cyndi Lauper), “Baby It’s You” (the Shirelles, the Beatles), “Little Red Book” (Love, Manfred Mann) and “Alfie” (Cilla Black, Sonny Rollins). “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself,” which was first recorded by Chuck Jackson in 1962, was later covered by Dusty Springfield, Warwick, Elvis Costello and the White Stripes.

A key influence

“I was influenced by Burt when I was about 14. That’s when I started listening to Dionne’s first records and appreciating Burt’s meticulous arrangements, his originality and all the twists he put into the music,” Rundgren said, speaking by phone recently from Australia.

“All that was kind of internalized in me. When I started writing my own songs, a lot of his musical qualities had already found their way into my songs, in ways I hadn’t noticed right off.”

Bacharach was a highly trained classical music composer, a former jazz big band pianist and devoted fan of bebop. He brought a new degree of skill and refinement to pop music in the 1960s and beyond.

Some of his songs included a subtly subversive degree of dissonance, along with unexpected melodic and rhythmic turns, an ingenious use of texture and counterpoint, and instrumental combinations more commonly heard in chamber-music ensembles or jazz groups. Bacharach’s catchy but deceptively intricate melodies and harmonies attracted broad audiences and attentive musicians alike.

“Burt covered so much ground and was so influential that a lot of celebrities would cozy up to me to get access to him!” said Shirakbari, who is now the mastermind of the “What the World Needs Now” tribute tour. He is co-producing it with Bundini and Miles Copeland, the former manager of The Police and founder of I.R.S. Records.

“We were playing a concert in Hawaii and Alice Cooper showed up backstage. He was a huge fan of Burt’s. And when Burt and Dionne were performing at the Greek Theatre in L.A., (blues-rock mainstay) George Thorogood was there. He said to Burt: ‘I only have one song, which is called “Bad to the Bone.” But you, sir, have more songs than I can even count!’ It was great. That kind of thing used to happen all the time,” Shirakbari said.

Warwick, not surprisingly, is also quick to sing Bacharach’s praises.

“It was like taking an exam every time I recorded with Burt and it helped me tremendously,” she said in a 2022 Union-Tribune interview. “He was a taskmaster, which was great.”

A deep admiration for Bacharach’s work is shared by country music star Luke Combs.

“I’m just a country bumpkin, but I think everybody in music would tip their hat to someone like Burt Bacharach,” Combs said in a 2013 Union-Tribune interview. “His songs are pretty much sewn into the fabric of living.”

It is precisely these hat-tipping qualities in Bacharach’s work — his ability to craft wonderfully nuanced music that captivated mainstream pop fans — which continue to enthrall Rundgren.

“When I sit down at the piano and improvise, I find my hands going to the same sorts of places Burt would go,” he said, “to the minor and major sevenths, the off-bar (rhythmic) counts, and all the little things that made Burt’s music different from anyone else’s.

“So, first and foremost, you have to acknowledge those things. You have to know what makes his music different from any other composer’s music and try and preserve as much as possible of the essential elements in it.”

‘A certain skill set’

“What the World Needs Now” music director Shirakbari spent several decades touring and recording with Bacharach. Speaking by phone from his home in London, he stressed how important it is for the hand-picked musicians on the upcoming tour to know exactly what best suits — and doesn’t suit — bringing Bacharach’s indelible songs alive on stage.

“The people we chose for this band had to have a certain skill set” Shirakbari said. “And if they don’t know and love Burt’s songs, and have the sophistication to play his music correctly, there’s no point to having them be involved. It wasn’t easy to find people like that.

“You’ve got to have jazz chops — and not use them. I used to say this to Burt’s band, too: ‘Burt wants to have a (musical) racehorse, but he just wants to take it out for a trot,’ and it’s the same way with musicians. You have to really lean into the restraint and comfortably play just what is needed. That takes some maturity, wisdom and experience in players to do right. I saw a lot of great musicians come into Burt’s band and they just couldn’t cut it.”

Rundgren will be one of the three featured lead singers in the band. It also includes his longtime bassist Kasim Sulton, 2021 “The Voice” runner-up Wendy Moten, and — on drums and vocals — San Diego’s Trouw.

“Elise got on our radar from the (live performance) videos she did that went viral, and we vetted her,” Shirakbari said of Trouw. “She’s done stuff with (Los Angeles funk band) Scary Pockets and other people in the musical circle I used to work with, so we thought she’d be a good fit. And we like that Elise is young and brings some fresh energy to it. I think Burt would have liked that.”

The longtime San Diego resident was 17 when she released her debut album, “Unraveling.” It featured her on drums, vocals, guitar, bass and keyboards. She has since collaborated with Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda and Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker. Being part of the “What the World Needs Now” tour will showcase her talents anew.

“To go on tour playing Burt’s music as a drummer is really exciting for me. This will be the first time I go out on the road as a hired musician for a tour like this,” said Trouw, who is now completing her next album and is an alum of the Bishop’s School in La Jolla.

“I’ve heard his music since I was a child because it’s so prevalent in pop culture and in movies and on TV. I have covered Burt’s song, ‘The Look of Love,’ which is a favorite of mine. I first heard Diana Krall’s version of it when I was in high school. When I was a kid, my parents would play my sister and me The Carpenters’ album with his song ‘(They Long To Be) Close To You.’

“The greatness of Burt’s songwriting is shown by how many different artists have recorded his music,” Trouw continued. “People in my age group also know his music from the movies ‘Bridesmaids’ and ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ with Lady Gaga. And there are so many songs Burt wrote that people know really well but don’t know are by him.”

Trouw will handle lead vocals on at least one song on the tour’s concert program, which will feature nearly 40 songs, performed with an intermission. Like Rundgren and Shirakbari, she finds Bacharach’s compositional breadth and the structural intricacies in his work to be especially alluring and rewarding.

‘Hidden complexities’

“What I love most about his music is his pop sensibility, sophistication and the hidden complexities in it,” Trouw said. “I really like the fact you can sing along with his songs, but when you play it, you go: ‘Oh, this bar is (in) 7/8 and this bar is 3/8.’ The subtlety is what makes it so special.”

Shirakbari is confident “What the World Needs Now” will become an annual tour with new lineups each time. For its debut edition, Rundgren is the headliner and will be featured on at least nine selections. The repertoire will stretch from early Bacharach/David songs, including the 1962 Jerry Butler R&B hit “Take It Easy on Yourself,” to Bacharach’s later songwriting collaboration with Elvis Costello, with whom he made several albums.

Some guest singers on the tour, including Chris Pierce and Men at Work’s Colin Hay, will each perform a number during Sunday's Wiltern Theater date in Los Angeles. Shirakbari expects other vocal cameos to take place in some other cities on the tour.

“I sort of expected there might be more familiar names on the bill,” Rundgren said. “I’m only speculating that it’s hard to find people who have familiarity with Burt’s larger catalog and who are willing — or just rash enough! — to try and tackle the material, given how very exacting Burt was about his music. They also need to be very reverent about the way it was originally crafted, so it’s really a challenge to kind of make it your own.

“The whole idea,” Rundgren said, “is to somehow internalize them to deliver the message of the songs, and to do it your own way. It’s not simply trying to copy the originals. And it’s not about showing off your vocal range. It’s about trying to capture the meaning of the songs.”

Rundgren chuckled.

“You don’t want to murder the melodies!” he stressed. “A singer’s own inclinations may work against the material and against the audience’s expectations that it will be similar to the original versions. That’s kind of the point. The first time you hear a song you are in a certain situation or period in your life. And when you hear it again, years later, it takes you back to that point.”

Near-miss at the Belly Up

To their disappointment, neither Rundgren nor Trouw ever met Bacharach or heard him perform in person. But Rundgren came close during one of his solo gigs a decade ago at the Belly Up in Solana Beach.

Bacharach attended the concert specifically hoping to hear “Hello It’s Me.” Rundgren wrote and recorded the heartfelt ballad in 1968 with his first band, Nazz, then had a hit with in 1973 with his modified solo version of the song.

“I didn’t know Burt was in the audience and I didn’t play ‘Hello It’s Me’ that night, so he left the show disappointed and I never got to meet him,” Rundgren lamented.

“Now, in a way, I think my being involved in this tour is karma. I didn’t get to meet Burt, but now I’ll be somewhat connected to him by doing this tour with Rob, who was his musical director for so many years.”

It is not known if Bacharach detected his influence in any of Rundgren’s music. But Rundgren readily acknowledges how much Bacharach inspired him from the get-go, starting with “Hello It’s Me.”

“When I first started writing songs, there was something there I was doing that was not following the traditional songwriting form, and that’s a commonality I had with Burt,” Rundgren noted.

“The first song I ever wrote was ‘Hello It’s Me.’ And if you examine it from a musicological standpoint, there’s no chorus in the song, which is sort of unusual in the first place. And the chord changes are something I took from (jazz organ great) Jimmy Smith’s 1960 live-album version of ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home,’ a series of descending chords in the intro that I copied and became a big part of ‘Hello It’s Me.'”

As much as Rundgren admires Bacharach’s artistic innovations, he is just as much a fan of the simultaneously earthy and urbane lyrics Hal David crafted for the songs he and Bacharach co-wrote. A master of concision, David packed a lot of emotional depth into a few words, especially when the theme was heartbreak or unrequited love (which it often was).

Some of his best couplets include: “And if the way I hold you/ Can't compare to his caress/ No words of consolation/ Will make me miss you less” (from “Make It Easy On Yourself”); “The moment I wake up/ Before I put on my makeup/ I say a little prayer for you” (“I Say A Little Prayer”); and “One less bell to answer/ One less egg to fry/ One less man to pick up after/ I should be happy/ But all I do is cry” (“One Less Bell To Answer”).

“People tend to sometimes marginalize the role of Hal David,” Rundgren said. “And this tour is a tribute to Burt, but in some ways also to Hal David and the way he managed to take Burt’s music and turn it into story lines, almost as if it was opera or musical theater.”

Little love for Love

In concert, Bacharach used to introduce the song “My Little Red Book” by noting how much he disliked the 1966 version recorded by the Los Angeles rock band Love — until he began to be paid substantial royalties as the song’s co-writer.

“I’m not necessarily proud of every song I’ve written,” Rundgren said, with an appreciative laugh. “When I wrote (1982’s) ‘Bang on the Drum,’ I didn’t put much thought into it. But it’s made me more money than any other song I’ve written.” (“Drum” has been used in TV commercials for Carnival Cruise Line, in the film “Shrek” and by multiple NFL teams as their touchdown celebration song.)

“Maybe one reason I was invited to be part of this tour is I’m not afraid to take on a ballad, which was also the case on the ‘Celebrating David Bowie’ tour I did,” Rundgren mused.

“A lot of the songs I’ve done on my own are real heartbreakers. I have been given the burden for this tour of doing ‘God Give Me Strength,’ which Burt wrote with Elvis Costello. That’s the song I have to woodshed on the most, because it’s the one I’m least familiar with, and — in some ways — also the most challenging. Elvis’ lyrics in it are very angry when he sings: ‘I want him to hurt, I want him to hurt.’

“That seems so out of touch with the way Hal David wrote, in which the singer is usually the victim,” Rundgren said. “In Hal’s lyrics, the singer can’t get the person they want but it never gets to the point of wanting to inflict harm on somebody else. So, doing ‘God Give Me Strength’ will be a challenge for me. We’ll see how it works out.

“And I’m enjoying the opportunity to do some of Burt’s early, pre-Dionne Warwick work, like ‘Any Day Now’ (a 1962 hit for Chuck Jackson). I’ve also claimed some of the — to my mind — more frivolous songs Burt and Hal wrote, like ‘What’s New Pussycat?’ and ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head,’ just so I’m not wholly associated with all the most heartbroken songs on this tour.”

Ultimately, the ‘What the World Needs Now” tour offers Rundgren a chance to complete a musical circle that began when he first heard Dionne Warwick’s 1964 recording of Bacharach and David’s “Walk on By.”

“In the long run, the main commonality I had with Burt was to avoid doing things exactly the same way as other people,” Rundgren said.

“I wrote (1972′) ‘I Saw the Light’ in 10 minutes and it was being compared to Carole King. As much as I enjoyed her music and her ‘Tapestry’ album, I didn’t want to be compared to another songwriter. So, I started dismantling the traditional forms of songwriting in my work, and that seemed to be what Burt had done, the way he suddenly would go from a major to minor keys, or the other way around, and do things that songwriting didn’t usually include.

“That’s what initially attracted me to Burt’s music — and the fact he got away with so much. My favorites songs by him all have something unpredictable in them.”

©2025 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.