Cynthia Weil is one of the greatest songwriters of the rock era, but according to marriage/family/child therapist Dr. Jenn Berman, she surpassed it in one important area.
"As great as she was as a songwriter, she was an even better mother!" said Berman earlier this month at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble outlet--and she should know: Berman was there to sign copies of Rockin' Babies (Sterling), a children's book she co-wrote with Weil, with illustrations by Galia Bernstein. Weil is Berman's best friend--and mother.
"I fell into [writing the book] totally by accident!" says Weil, back home in Los Angeles. "My daughter gave birth to twins four and a-half years ago, and they were a month premature and had terrible reflux. It was torture to feed them--you've got to go slowly--and I'd go over every night to help."
Surprising herself, Weil, who with husband Barry Mann wrote such classic Brill Building-era hits as “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’" and "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place," found that she loved being with her grandchildren.
"I never imagined I'd feel that way!" she admits. "Everyone says they're the greatest and you feel things you never felt before. I'm not crazy about babies, but I fell in love and got so close helping them through a terrible time. I even got slap-happy talking about them! We started wondering what we did before they were born and realized they're like rock stars who took over our lives. Jenn said they were our rockin' babies."
That "rockin' babies" recognition led to numerous analogies.
"They never go out without roadies--us!" continues Weil. "We're working for them! And when they're out in the neighborhood in their carriages, they're on tour. After a while we started writing down other similarities, and since Jenn had a parenting book with Sterling [SuperBaby] we took it to them and they liked it."
Other rockin' babies activities illustrated in the board book include being hounded by paparazzi (parents with cameras), mobbed by fans (cheek-pinching relatives), partying in their cribs, trashing their rooms and spitting (up) on (parental) authority figures.
"I told Jenn that motherhood is an act that's impossible to follow," says Weil, "and it's the thing I'm proudest of--though I didn't know what I was doing and went by what I felt and what was lacking in my own childhood. But Jenn is an amazing mother: She's a psychotherapist with a practice in Beverly Hills, who also writes books and has a radio show on Sirius--The Love And Sex Show With Dr. Jenn. Listen to her mother tell you that! But it's really more about relationships."
Rockin' Babies is Weil's first book, but she's also completed one geared for young adults.
"It's contemporary, with no vampires and werewolves--so it's not an easy sell!" she says. Husband Mann, meanwhile, is working on a memoir.
"I have no memory but I try to fill in something that's missing--and then we fight about it!" she says. "Heaven knows when it will be finished. We definitely have completely different memories of the same events!"
Of course, those events are now legend. But the Mann-Weil songwriting team is hardly resting on its laurels.
Weil says that they're writing with young artist Nikki Jean, whose forthcoming album Pennies In A Jar (S-Curve) features songs she also co-wrote with other master pop tunesmiths including Burt Bacharach, Jeff Barry, Paul Williams and Jimmy Webb. Webb and Williams, incidentally, occasionally perform with Mann--who had a No. 7 hit in 1961 with "Who Put The Bomp (In The Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)"--in a show entitled The Soundtrack Of Your Life.
Mann and Weil will return to New York on June 16 to receive the Songwriters Hall of Fame's prestigious Johnny Mercer Award.
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