[Music] thank you for welcoming us to this incredible place and oh i'm glad you're like it's just a joy to be able to spend some time with you and talk about music oh talk about life thank you and in particular you know i mean starting with with recent life you as you were saying before that um
you know you you don't even think you've been into this place in recent memory because i think we all just sort of stopped and took a look around at our surroundings and then sort of figured out where we need to go and and not need to go you know and in the end it was just like
once quarantined kicked in we all just decided like oh let's let's just be very calm and and try to find our feet how was it for you well it gave me a solid bit of time which is about a year to finish my book that i started many many years ago and never really found the time to finish it
so i loved that time i loved not having to go anywhere not have to go to events that i'm invited to you know i like being with renato and my husband and my dogs and so i was very happy i love not going to doctor's appointments or dentists yeah i swear that's what i've just been doing over the last few months
and i was surprised i was even thinking i had cavities but i don't have any cavities so it was really great i feel like in many respects once success really came your way and and you sort of started to build a life for yourself that was going in that direction like what do i really want to
do versus what people expect me to do yeah and i guess to some degree if you if you have enough success the construct of that you're able to make more decisions of that nature but at what point did you realize wow i actually don't have to do anything that i don't want to do
anymore just the stuff i want to do i think it was at a very young age that i thought i'd like to be the best at singing first it was acting i wanted to be an actress first i only became a singer because i couldn't get a job as an actress and i thought i knew i had a good voice
from when i was a kid and we used to sing on the stoops in brooklyn and i was known for having a good voice and no father because every other kid had a father so i was unique and when you have a kind of void in your life had a strange childhood you know i wasn't seen it was like i was pushed around or you know
my mother wanted me to be a a teacher or work in the school system like my father did my father was a teacher but my mother was a bookkeeper in the school system and she said you know you get vacations and paid vacations i thought no i really want to experience happiness that i don't know i see people going to
dinner with their parents or i mean eating in their house we never sat down at a table at a specific time to have dinner so i think in the back of my mind it was always about that how how do you get fulfilled and that's what i did i mean i wanted to be the best at whatever i do
so i knew i had a good voice when i couldn't get a job as an actress i started to sing you know entered a talent contest and won and that led me to my goal of being an actress and being in films you know as a child i would sit in my bedroom when i had a bedroom because i slept in the living room until i was 13.
that could make you ambitious yeah like to get a bedroom yeah you know i finally got a bedroom when my brother got married and i would read movie magazines and eat briar's coffee ice cream that was to me you know the end-all and the be-all that was success at that age but my mother never
said follow your dreams or you could do this no she didn't think i could ever succeed at that so she wanted me to have a you know a yearly paying job yeah something safe something yeah secure and i think that's why in a way i dedicate this book to my mother yeah not only my mother but the father i
never knew because she incentivized me to do the opposite of what she thought i should do do you see what i mean it's like i was part of arista which i found out that's the honor society at the the high school i went to yeah by the way you know clive davis named his company
after that i guess he was a member of it before me but they invited my i said i i want to be an actress my book reports were on stanislavski you know and um i guess it was escaping reality in a way to be an actress you know i think all the arts are to some degree i think i think a lot of what drives the
artistic spirit is escapism the idea also yes yes of recognizing something deep inside that didn't sit right with you as a child a fracture of some description right and trying to find a way to understand it is is what leads you into that expression that desire to express yourself right
that's why i think it's so important for kids to have music and art yes in their programs which they've taken out yeah it drives me crazy that you know when we get into this time where costs need to be cut there's this default reaction that the arts get it in the neck and i just well it's because
so many displaced kids and unhappy kids lacking a parent or whatever being poor they have no way to express themselves so they you know belong to gangs or they they're so angry at life art would have given them some form of expression a way to let go release themselves you know i walk
around this this beautiful home and i think it's just full of fulfillment it just feels like you have filled it full of perhaps the things that you pined for when you were sleeping on the couch when you were 11 10. is that fair to say that it's all led to yeah since i was eight
you're absolutely right actually another title for my book it's not going to be named this but it's the sub story of my life is my search for beauty oh it's amazing though so everything you're looking at you know like that tassel it's on the bottom of that chair yeah it's so beautiful to me i bought this
painting of this woman i was gonna ask i bought that before i built this house because of you see the blue table yeah i said that's what the color of the living room living room screening room should be and it is so you know once i get a a tip then i can fulfill the dream of it
you know what i mean the fabric for the walls the color of the paint and the color of beautiful wood you're very aesthetically oriented oriented aren't you and it's so funny to me because we are all in love with the charisma in the voice and the talent but it feels to me like even in the short time we've been
talking that you're more focused on the aesthetic that's funny it's like a trojan horse like we're all just going wow the voice and you're like yeah i'm too busy trying to figure out what the fabric's going to be on this couch right is that fair totally it's totally right i walked out of my door
i haven't been out of the house where i paid attention to it you know i wanted to be in a good mood but i noticed my orchids were not in bloom right and that disturbs me i said you mean if i don't walk out that door nobody's gonna notice these orchids are dead as a matter of fact when i went to my
doctor's habit not seeing him you know for my yearly physical for almost two years i saw his orchids were dead on his desk i immediately sent him a fresh orchid if he would just get rid of the dead ones do you know what i'm saying it's like life yeah and and walking into a room and not
taking anything for granted yeah i feel like we've all been focused on the wrong things like we focus on the fact you don't play live and you don't do all these things that people would expect of someone in your situation but it seems to me you're just focused on other things like oh yeah well i turned down
directing a movie because i had to finish this house and it took five years also there was another reason the person wouldn't let me change the script i can't go on to a project and not have a chance to bring it to full fruition and i like doing that i like being i like doing private things
not public things you know i can get fulfillment out of designing a house and then furnishing it and it took five years to go into all that detail oh it's worth it it's so beautiful but i think i think about that's a great statement i like to do private things yeah and it really puts a ribbon on a
lot of those expectations over the years yeah i wonder at what point you realize because you were doing very public things at the beginning of your career and it went very fast you know yeah grammy's academy awards all very quick at what point you were they satisfied me then in other
words i didn't need to go on right it's like even now it's like the thought of well i couldn't get the movies i wanted made now i don't know how much that has to do with ageism or what but i was very fortunate that the three movies i directed i had complete control over you know
when i was making star is born and i had final cut in other words every frame of that film was something i wanted to say or do i was attacked for being in control you know so i did an interview i remember the first question of that interview 1977 i guess it was so you want to be in control you're a
control freak and i thought i want to be in control of what i can control yeah i can't control life in general i can control my work but to even have to defend your work first over a statement like that yeah i feel at least now a statement of that nature for the most part feels archaic
and and because there are things changing for the better and the long way to go back then it just must have been a constant fight yeah a constant fight and when i redid it i added a scene that i had cut out uh last year or the year before they quarantined and star is born that i stupidly cut out
and i put it back in and change the ending because i never got around to editing it like a rock and roll kind of thing and actually the people liked it when we showed the film in preview so i left it but we had shot things that you could cut and so i thought it would be fun to do that
right when i was re-putting the music back in because it was the end of the film and there's a chiron i forgot to put one of the songs i wrote in there i was so afraid of being attacked you know that i gave away my producer credit yeah i put myself as something else in the crawl
i thought what the hell that's why it was so hard to do things uh and be attacked for them do you know what i mean in terms of yentl let's say right because i was producing and directing and writing and acting in it it was that i was attacked how do you dare do do all those jobs i was like because when i wanted to
fulfill my vision of the movie well you can't fulfill a vision you really can't unless you have control of the you know what's going to be on that celluloid how do you edit something that you didn't want filmed or something i had it was such an incredible experience
and in europe it was so fabulous it wasn't america europe says oh wait a minute you're a first-time director but you know we're used to women in power we're used to margaret thatcher being the prime minister at that time we're used to having a queen so they were so wonderful you know it's like my
amazing camera operator and the english crew you know they were so kind to me and they wrote a letter to the press because they they were defending me you know that i was getting bad press or something in those tabloidy papers and they wrote this letter that talks about she never raises her voice you
know she speaks very quietly brings in tea and pasties every not every day but you know i wanted to i was so grateful to this crew nobody printed it though none of those papers printed the letter that everyone signed what a hell what a what a mountain to have to climb just to to your point fulfill
some kind of artistic impulse some desire to tell a story tell a story to tell a story that made a point about how hard it was for women to do the things they wanted to do yeah look what's happened i mean isn't it great for women now getting better oh my god i mean i started off with you know i'm leaving
centers at ucla and the one i started in 1984 my first contribution to doing something about education it was at usc men and women in society in a changing world the dynamics i'm finally getting it at ucla nobody studied it but now it's changed that was an 84. that was in 1984
because i loved whenever i made money i wanted to give it away i keep some for myself but do something like my father intended you know about education my next contribution was to the environmental defense fund because i had read about climate change so i love to have a purpose that's
bigger than myself it's not about financially making myself richer it's nothing to do with it i think about a song when you talk about the idea of of the correlation between what you receive versus what you're willing to give and and if you get it right they feed each other the more that you actually
think of others the more positive energy you get back right now think about a song like be aware which is one of my favorites on this new album released me too when i first listened to it i was shocked that it was 50 years old i talk about a 50th birthday present to actually come out the way
finally come out and be heard the way that it probably should have been heard 50 years ago but be more present today yeah than it even was then so wow i kind of got two questions around that song one is in many respects did a song like that do you think even subconsciously puts you on this path of like
okay i'm seven or eight years into my career maybe even less and i'm singing a song right now about awareness and about the idea of not just being so self-absorbed and so focused on my own purpose do you think of it in that way well because in the 60s i was so upset by racial tension so i know i
did a concert about selma in other words all those things you know snick i wanted to help the world i wanted to help our country i couldn't stand what was going on in the vietnam war so that song was written about that 1972 or something like that that song 71 71 50 yeah 50 years
really yeah seems like yesterday sounds like yesterday isn't that well i had so much fun with my wonderful engineer to work on these songs you know in quarantine so we did it by zoom yeah and so i would just put a robe on go from my house to grandma's house a cup of tea cup of coffee whatever you
need where i work yeah and just get down to it and we worked that way and i could really hear what i'd like to do with it bringing out little fills that were so fabulous but you never heard them yeah 50 years ago it's so lush the sound of this record i know the marimba i think they were did it it
just floats into your ears when you press play on it and be aware begins it's like it just kind of folds on you oh good good good but i mean i must have mixed that thing at least four times it's like i kept wanting more and more of those things my engineer thinks like i do here's like i do
beautiful so that i could raise something a tenth of a db in other words some engineers would say well wait you won't if you want to raise that you've got to raise it 5 db before you hear it yeah i said no no no this is below 1db but that's the place of feeling i i have a theory about that because
i've tried that in studios myself and it's like no one else is going to hear that i'm like but i feel it that's right and you know what my husband always says to me i remember what you said once when you were working with the color of the film that i was doing at the time i met him
during the mirror has two phases and i he says i was standing there while you were doing color with technicolor you know and you said i can't even tell you it's a i don't even know how to describe it i want to feel a little more red yeah but it's you know since i just did this album i'm thinking in terms of
decibels but it's um one-tenth and and you know maybe we should go two-tenths and then maybe we have to reduce it but my engineer joachim van der saag such a delightful person as well as being so talented he heard like i did in those little teeny slices isn't it great when you find people that
that don't aren't maddened by that process that they actually welcome it exactly because i think you're difficult no no we had so much fun it's fun when you can think alike and you say oh my god you know that color blue you know is has to be the right thing you know your last album
barbara was in 2018 it was called walls it was a direct reflection of what was going on in the in this country and it was a powerful album and you know i guess the question is why did you decide to to make an album a follow-up to release me release me too as as your latest record like what
prompted you to do that i actually was collecting songs to make a new studio album right a song i love love can't wait to sing by desmond child oh i can't wait to hear it gorgeous song and a song that sinatra sang that i can't remember the title of but it's something i heard on an album
a while ago and i thought i'd like to record that but as you know when you make a record you have to see people yeah so you have to talk to arrangers and producers and musicians and i can't sing with a mask obviously so this was the time to go back into the vault and find things that i haven't released
yet you know the idea of of making this album and going back it's the second in the series thus far i'm hoping there'll be a third or fourth but release me is now at volume two yeah and i wondered whether going back and listening to songs that in some cases you wouldn't have listened
to for a long time um and and reacquainting yourself with old performances whether it kind of struck you emotionally in ways you didn't expect because it's probably the closest you get to listening to yourself in a way that we listen to you because you haven't got that immediacy of like i just recorded
this yesterday i have to finish it well i realized this the second song isn't it you light up my life that's right yeah i remember recording it in 1973 yeah but it was like a lousy arrangement it had no magic so i never released it i know i did a good vocal on it but i let it disappear
so to re-examine it now and add what how about my engineer happens to also be a musician right so he could play congas on it you know he could add a guitar part but a lot of these songs were quoted in from the 60s to the 70s you know it's hard to to if we're talking aesthetic
it's hard to add something in 2021 2020 to something that's 40 50 years old and keep the same feel the same well it's even a better feel you light up my life i mean than when i recorded it it's um and i think it had to do with my own psyche at the time i don't think i was really happy and now i'm happy you