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April 22, 2005
Life of optimism, sorrow
Days before he died, Ehud Manor spoke to the JWB.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
When Ehud Manor, z"l, won the Israel Prize in 1998, he already
had some 1,200 songs to his credit, and he kept on writing after
that. There is probably no major singer in Israel who hasn't performed
his lyrics, and he was also an accomplished poet, translator and
radio and TV personality. When he died suddenly of a heart attack
April 12, Israelis and people around the world went into mourning;
the list of dignitaries who attended his funeral was extensive.
The Bulletin was privileged to speak with Manor days before
his death. He was in a good mood, excited about his upcoming trip
to Vancouver and looking forward to the future.
"I owe everything I know about songwriting, including the inspiration,
to American music," said Manor, who has written lyrics to such
songs as "Bashanah Haba'ah" ("Next Year")
and "Ein Li Eretz Acheret" ("I Have No Other
Country").
"Today, I am considered a very Israeli songwriter and a lot
of people read into my songs all sorts of national aspirations,"
he said. "But the truth is I've always wanted to write love
songs. That's what really started me.
"When I was a child and a teenager, I didn't like Hebrew songs
that much. I didn't like them that much because they were all 'We'
songs, you know, 'We came to this country,' 'We shall build,' 'We
shall fight,' 'We shall bring a better tomorrow,' we, we, we, we,
we.
"My parents, of course, identified with it completely,"
he continued, "but I, as a teenager, preferred 'I' songs. 'I
love you,' the sorts of rhymes that I found in American songs –
'I miss you, I kiss you,' that sort of thing."
When he says American music, Manor said he means "great artists
like Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole," who
he used to listen to day and night.
"My uncle in the States used to send the records after my mother
had written to him (in Yiddish, because when she went to Israel,
he went to the States, from East Europe)," explained Manor.
"And he always wrote in the letters, 'What's going on in the
Holy Land? Is that how you raise children there? That's what they
need?' You know, the records he was sending to me.
"And the truth is, that when I first wrote, I felt like kind
of a traitor. I felt like I was betraying my countrymen, my language
and my country because I identified with foreign music. And that's
when I was 14. I remember the day.
"I felt that I should maybe find words in Hebrew to fit the
American music and sing in Hebrew rather than in English to myself.
I remember a song by Irving Berlin with the words, 'I'm in heaven,
I'm in heaven,' " sang Manor into the phone. "And I came
up with, 'Eden, zeh Gan Eden," he said, again to the song's
tune, "which sounds the same almost as in English and has almost
the same meaning.
"I was so hysterically happy. I still get shivers up and down
my spine whenever I talk about it, because on that day I knew what
I was going to do with the rest of my life. And my parents were
very worried, let me tell you. [But] that's what I've been doing.
I've always wanted to match the right words to music."
Manor said that he could have gone on writing love songs forever,
but that death "interfered so rudely" with his life. When
he was 26 or 27 years old, his younger brother, Yehudah, who was
eight years Manor's junior, was killed in the War of Attrition.
"This is the event that really shaped my life and my character
ever since," said Manor. "I loved him dearly. There were
many reasons for this constant sorrow that has become a part of
me. One of the reasons was that when our father died, I was 15 and
he was just a little boy, so he was very, very close to me. When
he died, I felt as if I'd lost a son, not just a brother. And I
miss him terribly all these years.
"A lot of the songs that I wrote are about him. Actually, I
suspect that I received the Israel Prize because of the songs that
I wrote about him, not always naming him in my song, but always
there in spirit. Songs like ... 'Ein Li Eretz Acheret,' 'I Have
No Other Country,' and many, many other songs. One of the most famous
songs is called 'My Kid Brother, Yehudah,' and when I wrote it,
I thought I wrote a very intimate, painful song and, to my amazement,
it became a huge success."
Manor described his career as one containing both great optimism
as well as sadness. "You know, I wrote a lot of happy-go-lucky
songs and love songs," he said. "And it was all combined
with missing my brother."
The day before speaking with the Bulletin, which was April
6 in Canada, Manor found out that he was to be granted an honorary
doctorate from Bar-Ilan University.
"I was surprised and it took me time to digest [the news],"
said Manor of being chosen for the honor.
"I was very moved by it," he said. "They give their
reasons for it, and lots of their reasons is that, you know, they
talk about my, um, I don't know, I'm ashamed to say it. Anyway,
it's wonderful."
The ceremony was to take place in early June, a few days after Manor's
planned return to Israel from Canada.
"It's exciting," he said, laughing. "And also, the
truth is that I'm afraid I have to wear this robe and the funny
hat. That's what bothers me," he joked.
Manor then spoke with pride about the show that he and Hanan Yovel
were going to bring to Vancouver for the community's Yom Ha'atzmaut
celebrations May 11. (Israeli singer and TV personality Yardena
Arazi will now be joining the Yovels in the concert, which will
include a tribute to Manor.)
"We've been friends for many years," said Manor of Yovel,
who he described as "one of my favorite singers and also a
co-writer." Yovel is an eminent singer, guitarist and composer.
Following his military service in the army's Nahal musical troupe,
he became one of the Shlosharim trio, a vocal group that introduced
rock elements to Israeli pop music. Later, he embarked on what continues
to be a very successful solo career. Because Manor and Yovel had
written many songs together, "it was only natural that we performed
together," explained Manor.
"What we do on the stage is doing our songs and we do it –
I sing as well, by the way – we do it with our children, with
our youngest children; his daughter Shira and my son Yehudah, who's
named after my brother, who I can't even call him by his name to
his face. I can't do it even now, so I call him Yadi," said
Manor, spelling out his son's nickname.
"Yadi is actually a successful lawyer," continued Manor.
"He's 30 years old, married, but he has the most beautiful
voice."
Manor had to convince his son to join the group and Yadi's condition
for participating, said Manor, was that they sing abroad. The foursome
performed their show in the United States, Australia and Toronto
several times. They also performed a lot in Israel. The May 11 celebration
would have been the first time they performed on Canada's West Coast.
Manor had never been to Vancouver and was looking forward to the
visit.
"I've been very close, like Seattle," he laughed. "I
always wanted to go there [to Vancouver]. And you know who is a
great admirer of Vancouver? My son. Because before he went to the
army, he and his friends went on a trip to America, Canada and the
U.S., and his favorite place of all [on] the long trip was Vancouver.
He just loves it."
When asked to what he contributed his successful career and to what
he thought people related in his songs, Manor jokingly responded,
"I wish I knew," before continuing.
"When it comes to songwriting," he said, "you always
feel, at least I do, that you're at your prime, when it comes to
popular music, that you're in your prime in your 30s, or maybe 40s,
and that's it. I was amazed to realize, to find out, how I was still
popular and wanted by singers much younger than myself, who wanted
me to write for them. And it still goes on, and I'll be 64 this
summer."
In addition to his 40-year songwriting career, Manor was also an
acclaimed translator of theatre plays (Shakespeare, Harold Pinter,
Tennessee Williams) and musicals (Hair, Grease,
West Side Story, Les Misérables and Oliver).
"I think that it's the child in me that has survived all these
years," said Manor of the longevity and height of his success.
"I feel that popular music stems from a kind of feeling that
I can only associate with people aged 16 to 22," he said. "What
I'm saying is – I don't mean that it shouldn't appeal to older
people; it does, of course – but that it's [at] that age [when]
we are at our best.
"I know it's a dangerous thing to say," he said, laughing,
"But what I'm saying is that we are better human beings when
we are 16 to 22. I feel that we're more open, more liberal, more
ready to give of ourselves, more ready to sacrifice, braver in our
love, ready to accept new ideas.
"After we – in Israel, it's after we are released from
the army, more or less – start to bother about a livelihood
and what we're going to do with rest of our lives, shall we get
married or not, and how are we going to go about it and how are
we going to make our decisions, suddenly we become – gradually,
let's say, rather than suddenly – more and more self-centred....
In keeping in touch with music, it's usually a way of keeping in
touch with your young self."
Manor didn't hold back his enthusiasm for music: "I love it.
It's like my cure, how shall I say it, it's like, like my last train
to youth."
Before the interview ended, Manor added that he and Yovel were happy
grandparents; Yovel with one grandson, him with four grandchildren.
At the end of April, said Manor, he and his wife, who is a singer
and an actress, were planning, as part of their 40th wedding anniversary
celebrations, to do a special show called To Sing with Grandma and
Grandpa. It would comprise, said Manor, "all our songs for
children that I wrote over the years, since my children were very
small.
"Now I've been writing for my grandchildren as well. We're
doing a show and they will be there, all our grandchildren. Hopefully,
they'll join us in the songs about themselves ... that everyone
knows, of course."
Manor began to laugh during the word "themselves," as
if just realizing the awkwardness of his grandchildren singing songs
that were written about them. Throughout the conversation, he displayed
a sincerity and casual friendliness that belied his importance as
one of the greatest songwriters ever to come from Israel. I am thankful
that I had the chance to meet him before he died – even if
it was only for a half an hour over the phone. May his memory be
a blessing.
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