Bette Midler About Singing 70’s Material: “I started in 1976 with a Cleveland HBO show. And, surprisingly, a lot of people have seen it many, many times. The same for `Divine Madness.’ I don’t know why, but those shows are like toxic waste. The stuff never goes away. It reappears again and again. You go, `But, but, but, but,’ but there’s nothing you can do. They just keep showing it. So a lot of it is familiar to people. And it’s kind of upsetting because I didn’t know it was going to be like that, since I’ve tried to eliminate some of the very familiar stuff like `Shiver Me Timbers.’ I’ve sung that so many times at so many shows in the past. It’s a Tom Waits song, and I think it’s one of the greatest songs ever written, but I just couldn’t do it anymore.” (1993)
