Elvis Costello celebrated the life of his friend and collaborator Burt Bacharach during a performance on Thursday (February 9), Rolling Stone and Stereogum report. Bacharach died at his home in Los Angeles on February 8, and Costello took a moment to pay tribute to the songwriter as part of the first performance of his 10-night residency at New York’s Gramercy Theater.
“A really great man left us yesterday,” Costello said. “And people say when somebody reached a great age, ‘Well, it was a good ending.’ Yeah, it’s never time to say goodbye to somebody if you love them. I’m not ashamed to say I did love this man for everything he gave, Mr. Burt Bacharach.”
Costello then performed “Baby, It’s You,” the song that Bacharach co-wrote with Luther Dixon and Mack David for the Shirelles, who released it as a single in 1961. It was later recorded by the Beatles and featured on their debut album, Please Please Me, in 1963.
Costello also covered “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” another hit co-written by Bacharach alongside Hal David for Dionne Warwick. Warwick released the song as a single in November 1963; it peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1964.
In January, the two songwriters announced The Songs of Bacharach & Costello, a box set collecting their collaborative material through the years. The duo came together for the first time on 1998’s Painted From Memory and earned the Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals for the album song “I Still Have That Other Girl” in 1999.
