Notes From Bette Midler’s Carole Bayer Sager Interview (Thanks Christy Labonte!)
By Christy Labonte
October 17, 2016
Great story about her and Bette writing a song together. Carole goes to Bette’s house. Bette was renting a house in Bel-Air. Bruce Roberts was there. Bette says to Carole “Okay Carole, we aren’t going to write songs about rain or this or that like you usually do” so Bette starts looking in books and she goes “Lengthy, why don’t you ever use the word lengthy in one of your songs?” LOL Carole says to her “Bette, I’ve been writing very simple songs for years” Bette replies to her “Well now you’re going to write a different one and these will be hits too.” That last quote is a bit off from what she actually said, but close enough. Bette chimed in that she wanted to write a song like the Beatles. It was a very funny story. They also talked about how Bette gave her the Oscar for Arthur’s Theme and they were still in the middle of their riff and Carole said she remembered she told Bette how happy she was that she was giving her the award. Those are the tidbits that had to do with the two of them. She was a great interviewer.
