Pharos-Tribune,
Oft-Schmaltzy Midler Shines In ‘No Frills’
Sunday, October 23, 1983
Bette Midler strips to the bare essentials in “No Frills” (Atlantic 80070), which finds the oft-schmaltzy pop queen rocking harder than she has in years.
With basic instrumentation – featuring guitarists like Buzzy Feiten, Mark Goldenberg,  Waddy Wachtel, Chas Sanford and Danny Kortchmar, she wails out a program which  would do any rock mama proud.
She’s got tunes from Nick Gilder, Marshall Crenshaw, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Andy  Goldmark, Moon Martin and others – including Jagger and Richards’ hot and heavy “Beast  of Burden.”
She opens with a wailing performance of “Is It Love” by Gilder and segues into a nostalgic “Favorite Waste of Time” by Crenshaw, and wrenches your heart out in the rock ballad “All I Need to Know” by Mann and Weil with Tom Snow.
She strips to just a killer quartet (Jim Keltner, Tim Drummond, Danny Kortchmar and Mark Goldenbert) for the albums’s high point, Jagger & Richard’s classic “Beast of Burden.”
She closes the album with the tender “Come Back Jimmy Dean,” which she cocomposed.
