| The famous "more more more" fans expressing their approval at the end of Last Dance. |
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| The "magical mystical night" intro to Try Me. |
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| So how does disco sound live? Well, when you have the good sense to use the same engineers who painstakingly created your highly electronicized recordings in the studio for on-the-spot recording at the Hollywood Bowl, the results can sound surprisingly right. Sides one and three of the two-record Live and More concert set on Casablanca are filled with Donna Summer's top disco hits. Included are three songs from her classic album
Once Upon A Time - the title song, Fairy Tale High and Faster And Faster - all done at a faster tempo than the originals. Judging from the crowd's enthusiastic response, the song everyone at the concert has been waiting for was
Last Dance (there's a wonderful moment when what sounds like the entire audience, knowing the arrangement by heart, anticipates the return of the uptempo section of the song with a great roar).
- Edward Buxbaum, Stereo Review Feb 1979
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| What surprises me is how well the songs hold up to listening without dancing. There's a richness of melody in them and an attention to the lyrics that most disco lacks.
- Edward Buxbaum, Stereo Review Feb 1979
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| Donna talking about MacArthur Park on CNBC Talk Live, 1991 |
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| But the arrangement [of MacArthur Park] is high pop artistry, Donna sings the pants off it, and the two new Summer/Pete Bellotte/Giorgio Moroder songs woven into it (making it the MacArthur Park Suite) - One Of A Kind and Heaven Knows - are simply terrific.
- Edward Buxbaum, Stereo Review Feb 1979 |
| It's very simple. The songwriter, Jimmy Webb, was in love with a girl, and they went for a walk in MacArthur Park. She says, "Look, we have been together for a long time now; you have to marry me." She proposes. He says no. She meets somebody else that she was keen on. Now MacArthur Park is what? It's where he lost her. So he goes back and sees the old men playing checkers under the trees, and the cake is the wedding cake. . . . The wedding cake that he blew. It's melting in the rain. And he will never have that recipe again.
- Richard Harris, Premieremag.radicalmedia.com, 1995 |
| On I Feel Love performed live:
Then, almost as though she finds Giorgio's mesmerizing "popcorn tracks" too confining, she begins to sing, "Feel it!" on the offbeat, gradually transforming the song into a fevered gospel and bolting into a coltish dance. I'm reminded of that moment at the end of
Once Upon A Time's second side, when, after fifteen minutes of brilliant electronic tension, Cinderella's dream - to be free of the machines - true, signaled by an acoustic piano flourish. The first time I heard that, I thought of
Metropolis, Fritz Lang's archetypal science-fiction film about man's revolt against the machines, and its simple maxim: "The mediator between the mind and the machine must be the heart."
- Mikal Gilmore Rolling Stone March 23, 1978 |
| He got me to sing [Last Dance] by coming to Puerto Rico, where I was performing, and he literally cornered me in that bathroom with his cassette recorder. I'm in the bathroom, I don't know, putting on makeup or doing whatever, and he turns around, locks the door and whips out this cassette recorder and says "Now you're gonna listen to my song." I said, "I don't believe it." I said, "Paul, you're crazy, you're nuts." Now my boyfriend is outside the door, not knowing what the heck is going on in this bathroom. And I'm in there for a long time. And I'm hysterical laughing, cause it's hysterical. So anyways, I liked the song and I said when I come back I'll do it.
I knew it was a winner, and when I sang it, I fell just, like, under a spell for awhile. I couldn't stop singing that song. And it was contrary, because usually I don't listen to any of my tapes after I've recorded them. The first week after they're recorded I usually put them away and I don't listen to them anymore. Last Dance I listened to for, I don't know. I used to put it in the car and drive with it down Mulholland, blaring loud in the car, and singing. I could just sense that song was going to be a hit.
- Donna Summer, The Hot Ones (radio interview) March 6, 1983 |
| Donna talking about Last Dance on The Maury Povich Show in 1993. |
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| Donna talking about Last Dance on Later with Greg Kinnear in 1995. |
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| Of all the songs from those days, I probably still feel most connected to Last Dance. I sing it and it brings tears to my eyes. For me it's become a poignant song. There were a lot of people in my life at that time who are not with us anymore. It's like I'm singing to the memory of people who are special to me.
- Donna Summer, DMA
December 1994 |
| DMA: What would you say is the highlight of your career?
DS: Probably when Last Dance won the Oscar.
DMA: That was a great moment...
DS: For Paul Jabara. I was very proud of him and happy for him and very happy to have sung that song and very happy he trapped me in the bathroom and made me listen... very happy for all of it. That was probably the high point..."
- Donna Summer, DMA
July 1997 |
| Donna and Paul Jabara accepting an American Music Award for Last Dance in 1979. |
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