“I was the Justin Bieber of the ’70s. Really. Just ask your mother,†Barry Manilow joked from the stage of the St. James Theater early in Monday’s opening-night show of his return to Broadway for the first time in decades.
Mr. Manilow was still recovering from the flu, which had caused him to cancel several preview performances, and the front of the stage was lined with boxes of tissue in case he needed them. (He didn’t.) In the past few days, he said, he had coughed up enough phlegm “to float Fire Island.â€
It is worth noting that unlike Mr. Bieber, Mr. Manilow was no teenager when he hit it big. Puppylike he may have seemed, but he was already in his 30s. Whether or not Mr. Bieber can sustain the kind of stardom Mr. Manilow still enjoys remains to be seen.
Mr. Manilow is now 69 and after nearly four decades in the limelight has crossed the invisible line from pop star to pop institution. His voice, while instantly recognizable, is not what it used to be. High notes have diappeared, and a certain unsteadiness has crept into his delivery. But for the fans who sang along with his hits, that didn’t matter. He was present. As he sang many of his greatest hits in a one-hour-and-50-minute concert without an intermission, his brand was intact.
