The Paradise Tour
Salt Palace Arena
Salt Lake City, UT
October 5th, 1984
First Night Of The Tour

Hi everyone,

This month's episode of Manilow Archives is a really rare find as it's the first night of the Paradise Tour in Salt Lake City, Utah, on October 5, 1984.

This one is memorable for many reasons.

A nearly 2 year tour ended on New Years Eve 1983, and I took a break from performing to record "2:00AM Paradise Cafe".

After spending all those years on pop radio, that album added a whole new dimension and sound to my catalog.

I wanted to shake up the band too and held open auditions to find some new young musicians to put together a hip synthesizer based band.

New members Dana Robbins, Vanessa Brown, and young 23 year old Ron Pedley joined music director Victor Vanacore, Marc Levine, Jon Pondel, Bud Harner, Kevin DiSimone, James Jolis and Muffy Hendrix. They could play anything!

The amazing thing to me, while watching it after all these years, is how together and tight the whole band was on this first night. You'd never guess we'd taken 10 months off from touring! It looks as if we'd been doing the show for months.

The setlist is surprising and daring because it included so many never before heard songs like "Come With Me", "At The Dance", "Love Me Just A Little Bit", "How Do I Stop Loving You" and amazingly enough, songs from the yet to be released "2:00AM Paradise Cafe" which wouldn't even come out until the middle of the next month!

The audience reacted to the new music as if they knew it.

Such talented people on that stage!
Such a great audience!

This was one of my favorite tours and it lasted nearly 5 years!

Enjoy!

-Barry