Well, it works for her!
Six time Grammy Award-winning Dionne Warwick is bringing her Don’t Make Me Over tour to the UK this month.
Based on the documentary of the same name about the 83-year-old star, the show is a mixture of chat and music with Dionne answering questions from the audience, and singing hits including Walk On By and Say A Little Prayer.
For this weekend’s 60 Seconds, Metro caught up with her in her New Jersey home, sitting in her office bedecked with gold discs and photographs from her six-decade long career.
Lets just say, she’s not slowing down any time soon.
There’s a few. That photo is of Grammy Award winners.
In the pop arena, yes. I hadn’t realised I was the first to do that until someone told me. That particular category was basically designated for those who were white, blue-eyed blondes.
Yeah! I don’t categorise music. Music is music. They try to put you into a box all the time. But you can’t put me into a box.
[Laughing] Yes, it was. But that just meant I’m going to be riding around the whole word like a crazy woman one last time.
Plenty of time to get to where I gotta go and rest up, or go shopping. I love shopping. Or I spend the entire day in my PJs.
Supply and demand. You guys won’t leave me alone!
It’s amazing. I say maybe this year I’ll take the whole year off and do nothing. People will think I’ve lost my mind.
That would be fine with me.
Oh, yeah. I’d love to see me. But I don’t listen to my music.
I listen to it one time when I recorded it. I am so critical I will say things to myself like, ‘Why didn’t you sing this other note?’ or ‘Why didn’t you do it this way?’ So I refrain from listening to me. I listen to my peers.
I was listening to Johnny Mathis last night. Sometimes it’s Tina Turner. And I listen to a lot of Brazilian music. I love it.
Yes, it is. That’s my paradise. I discovered Brazil in the mid-60s during my first tour there. I fell completely in love with it, not only with the country and the people, but the music.
This is where I belong. They embrace me. There’s a mutual love affair going on.
I describe it is as happy music. Music that makes you smile, makes you move.
I think the songs are basically songs of reality. Hal David wrote lyrics [to Burt Bacharach’s music] that he felt were needed to be heard.
Walk On By is a song specifically about the way most people don’t want things to turn out. But if things don’t work out the way you want then, ‘Bye bye!’ So there are different phases of life that I sing about.
It really amuses me how much people want to know about me. Sometimes there are questions that I feel are really none of anybody’s business but mine. I mean, what is so interesting about Dionne Warwick?
Cup of coffee and a cigarette.
I’m a doctor’s nightmare. I hate medications. I mean, I’ll take what they tell me to because they know what they are doing. But I still eat every single thing my mother put in my mouth from the beginning. And people say, ‘You still eat sugar? You still eat bread?’ And I say, ‘I certainly do!’
No. They are my children, my babies. The songs were written specifically for me and you can’t choose one over the other. They are all very special.
Dionne Warwick Don’t Make Me Over Tour arrives in the UK on May 4 and finishes on May 26. Tickets, available on Ticketmaster.
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