In Close to You: Bacharach Reimagined, Kyle Riabko takes the catalogue of one of the world’s most beloved composers, and turns it into something that’s both new and classic. His stripped down takes on numbers like “The Look of Love”, “Alfie” and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” highlight Bacharach’s unique sense of melody, and in expertly crafted mashups Riabko draws unexpected connections between some of Burt’s songs you only thought you knew. After a successful run in New York, the show went to London where it received a fine cast recording. With the album being released on July 1st, we had the chance to speak to Mr. Riabko about working with the legendary composer.

When do you first remember encountering Burt Bacharach?

I remember my mom singing “Close to You” at home when I was a kid. She used to sing that a lot and also “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”, the thing with Bacharach is that his music has become so ingrained in people’s brains that you encounter it as a child, and even though I wasn’t aware they were his songs, the melodies were inside me. I always sort of knew Burt’s music in that way, but I only started studying the songs after I met him.

In Close to You, you strip down the songs, but Bacharach’s arrangements were always very simple. Were you afraid of oversimplifying them? What were you looking to bring out in them with your own sound?

I wasn’t even really thinking about simplification or complication. I was just playing them from my personal perspective, I grew up as a guitar player and listen to blues and rock, so I infused that into his songs. While many of his arrangements are orchestral and have horns and strings, mine tended to be acoustic guitars and electric basses and drums. A simpler setup. What I was nervous about was showing the arrangements to Burt, so when I went to his house to play him the first demo I was nervous and felt like an idiot, but the second I pressed play I could tell he got what I was doing. He actually called his son Oliver to come hear the demo, and I watched Burt watch his son listen to these songs he knew so well, but performed by one of his peers since I was closer to Oliver’s age. The exercise wasn’t really cerebral, so what it ended up being was someone young playing legendary songs.

You have expressed your admiration for Jimi Hendrix and his guitar, Close to You is a marriage of a guitar sound with Bacharach’s compositions. My favorite thing about Burt Bacharach’s songs is that I never know where they’re taking me. We have that last part in “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”, that brass in “What the World Needs Now (Is Love)” and the overall feel of something like “Walk on By” for instance. How did his unique views on structure help you shape the show?

When I started really digging into his catalogue and reading about his life, I realized he was a rebel. He’s sort of a punk rocker in that he said “screw it, I wanna write these songs the way I hear them in my head”. The arrangements take you to these wacky places, so he felt a lot of rejection in the early days, but he stuck to his instincts. That’s much easier to write in a biography than to actually do though, that required a lot of confidence and trust in yourself. In that way his music is very rebellious, you don’t think of him that way because his songs are so beautiful, but they really are rebellious. When we decided to make a theatre piece we wanted to go our own rebellious way, people expected a book and something nice, but we said no to a lot of people who wanted the show to be that. We wanted an emotional musical experience through the songs, but to get it there I had to say no to 100 people. If we had done it that way maybe our show would play forever like the Carole King musical, but I think you’re right, we got that from him.

Burt did one Broadway musical, Promises, Promises, and then never composed for the stage. Do you have a sense of why this was? Did you talk to him about why he never went back to Broadway?

I talked to him a little bit about that, I don’t want to answer something for him, but the thing about him is that he’s very scrupulous about his music and the way it sounds, and the way it’s played is very specific. I remember him telling a story of how when Promises, Promises was playing on Broadway there was a night when many legendary people, like Richard Rodgers, came to see the show. Somehow a lot of people in the orchestra were out or sick and there were many subs in. Most people would have never heard the difference, but he was devastated because it wasn’t exactly the way he had it planned. Therein lies the beauty and the danger of theatre, it can be unpredictable, it’s a living breathing thing, but it’s not perfect and Burt is a perfectionist. He felt more comfortable in a studio than a theatre. But that’s an anecdote, I don’t know the exact reasons, I wish he’d done more of course.

Are you looking forward to composing your own musicals?

There are some projects that I’ve been working on, we’ll see though. I definitely like the world of theatre as a place to compose. As a musician it’s becoming more and more an important medium.

Close to You feels like a natural progression of your work, since you seem to have a penchant for 60s/70s nostalgia having done rock musicals like Hair and Spring Awakening. Why do you keep coming back to this era/style?

I’ve always listened to music that’s much older than me. When I was 10 years old I started out as a blues musician, I would go to this one bar with my guitar and jam with these people. They were playing B.B King, Prince, all these people who were older than me but I didn’t know that, so it started getting infused. My record collection is old stuff, I don’t spend a lot of time searching for new music. It’s the same with movies, I like stuff that came before me.

Speaking of old movies, I liked that you included “Come to You” which is what we can call obscure in terms of Burt’s catalogue. Which of Burt’s songs do you wish were more beloved?

“Come to You”, the funny thing about that song is when I was working on the show I’d come across the song when we listened to the Lost Horizon soundtrack. I went to Burt a few days later, I sort of hummed it in his ears, and he said “that sounds great, who wrote it?” I said “you did, it’s your song”, he didn’t even remember it. That album has some corny songs, but as a whole, it’s an overlooked, beautiful thing.

I have to leave Bacharach world for a bit, to ask you about your dream roles in a Sondheim musical?

I’m the worst person to ask that to, because the Sondheim I’ve seen I’ve really liked, but I’m not that well versed in the rest. I saw Follies on Broadway and I really, really liked it which I wasn’t expecting to. I did read the books he put out and they were great, but I don’t have a huge knowledge of his songs.

Close to You is now available in stores and online. Click here to learn more.