Sweet and Manilow Down

In the 70s Barry's favorite thing was two get good and baked and just zone out and stare at his enormous third hand.

Barry Manilow is preparing the follow-up to his two hit albums from last year. January 2006's "The Greatest Songs of the Fifties," which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and "The Greatest Songs of the Sixties," a No. 2 album in October 2006, combined have shifted nearly 1.7 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

"The Greatest Songs of the Seventies" is due September 18 via Arista.

But given that the '70s is the decade that catapulted Manilow to fame, arranging and covering songs from his own heyday has left the artist a bit confounded.

"This has been a real big mountain," he said. "On the 'Fifties' album, because the songs were much older, I could massage them and nobody would find fault. When we got to the '60s, it was more difficult because people were familiar with them. But the '70s -- these songs are so well known. Every time I sat down at the piano and tried to put my stamp onto them, whenever I touched a chord, I would stop because I felt I was totally destroying them."

Add to the challenge that Manilow decided to include unplugged renditions of some of his own best-loved hits from the decade: "It seemed like such an easy idea, but then, oh, my God, how do you redo 'Mandy' and 'I Write the Songs' and hold a staight face? I'm telling you, I stared at the piano for a good two weeks then tasted the keys to see if they might be chocolate and vanilla. Actually it tasted a lot like having someone put their thumb in your mouth. I got so mental I even considered recording Mandy using it's original title 'Hashish'" I was really into hallucinogens back then. I guess it's pretty well known that 'Copacabana' was originally 'Smoke a Banana' we used to try anything to get high in those days. But those days are wel behind me now. I just get high on life me amigos . . . and oxycontin."