Chords for Bette Midler and the Bathhouse - short documentary
Tempo:
85.575 bpm
Chords used:
D#
D
G
C#
C
Tuning:Standard Tuning (EADGBE)Capo:+0fret
Start Jamming...
You probably know her as a very big star today, but you probably also do not know her as a woman who started her career in the gay bathhouses of New York City.
Those gay bathhouses are not here anymore, but Louis Young went out tonight to find out what happened to the entertainers and the people who used to be there.
Here's his report.
[C] Sweet [D] marijuana, [E] marijuana
[F#] The pictures are black and white, but the performance is living color.
[D#] This is Bette Midler as she [F#m] was roughly 19 years ago at Manhattan's Continental Baths.
Before she was a movie star or a Grammy [F#] award winning recording artist, the Divine Miss M was a cabaret [G] performer for a room full of men dressed only in towels, [N] if that.
Lou Maletta remembers.
She was just a great performer.
She would walk into the club and talk about her bazooms all the time, and I thought that was great.
She was a big draw for the Continental Baths.
In fact, Barry Manilow played there also.
And between the two of them, it was a big draw.
It was jammed usually, very crowded.
The Continental Baths were located in the basement of the Ansonia Hotel here on the Upper West Side.
At [B] the time, it was one of a half a dozen such places in [C#] Manhattan, but the only one with live entertainment.
People who were there describe it as a [D] cavernous place with tables, chairs, a dance floor, a swimming [B] pool, a gay [F#] clientele, and what you might call an [D] undress code.
There [G#m] was a certain kind of flamboyance that they really did like, and that was a kind of hyper [D#]-emotionalism that I was very much into at the time anyway.
Bette Midler, [F] of course, went on to bigger things when the Continental Baths closed in 76.
By the mid [C#]-80s, all New York's gay bathhouses were [D#] gone, a victim of the AIDS epidemic.
Lou Miletta now works for the Gay Cable Network, where they do stories about safe sex and gay discos.
[G] The bathhouses are part of a lifestyle [E] that, foremost, is gone.
It's a different [D#] kind of situation in a disco as opposed to what the baths were like.
Certainly, nobody takes their clothes off in a disco.
Louis Young, Channel 7 eyewitness [C#m] did.
There is no one here [G] beside me.
[F#m] [C#m] There was, of course, a time [C#] when Bette Midler was [Bm] all alone.
But then, whoops, up she burbled from [D] Manhattan's Continental Baths as she found the [D#] secret.
The more outrageous [N] I was, she says, the more they liked it.
Bette calls her style Trash with Flash, a little Streisand, a little Joplin, a little Judy Garland.
A critic calls her Dorothy Parker in drag, but she's not really any of those people.
It is very exciting.
It's the most exciting part is when you have a good time doing what you've been trying to do.
That's the most exciting part.
When you do it correctly and wonderfully and they [Em] enjoy it, that's really exciting.
[G]
Her recognition as the best new artist [C#] is hard to understand if you've not seen her.
[G] You can't get the flavor of her irreverence, [D#] her teasing, taunting [A] way of shocking when she's cleaned up for television.
But Bette Midler knows how to keep an audience awake.
[D] [C] [F]
Those gay bathhouses are not here anymore, but Louis Young went out tonight to find out what happened to the entertainers and the people who used to be there.
Here's his report.
[C] Sweet [D] marijuana, [E] marijuana
[F#] The pictures are black and white, but the performance is living color.
[D#] This is Bette Midler as she [F#m] was roughly 19 years ago at Manhattan's Continental Baths.
Before she was a movie star or a Grammy [F#] award winning recording artist, the Divine Miss M was a cabaret [G] performer for a room full of men dressed only in towels, [N] if that.
Lou Maletta remembers.
She was just a great performer.
She would walk into the club and talk about her bazooms all the time, and I thought that was great.
She was a big draw for the Continental Baths.
In fact, Barry Manilow played there also.
And between the two of them, it was a big draw.
It was jammed usually, very crowded.
The Continental Baths were located in the basement of the Ansonia Hotel here on the Upper West Side.
At [B] the time, it was one of a half a dozen such places in [C#] Manhattan, but the only one with live entertainment.
People who were there describe it as a [D] cavernous place with tables, chairs, a dance floor, a swimming [B] pool, a gay [F#] clientele, and what you might call an [D] undress code.
There [G#m] was a certain kind of flamboyance that they really did like, and that was a kind of hyper [D#]-emotionalism that I was very much into at the time anyway.
Bette Midler, [F] of course, went on to bigger things when the Continental Baths closed in 76.
By the mid [C#]-80s, all New York's gay bathhouses were [D#] gone, a victim of the AIDS epidemic.
Lou Miletta now works for the Gay Cable Network, where they do stories about safe sex and gay discos.
[G] The bathhouses are part of a lifestyle [E] that, foremost, is gone.
It's a different [D#] kind of situation in a disco as opposed to what the baths were like.
Certainly, nobody takes their clothes off in a disco.
Louis Young, Channel 7 eyewitness [C#m] did.
There is no one here [G] beside me.
[F#m] [C#m] There was, of course, a time [C#] when Bette Midler was [Bm] all alone.
But then, whoops, up she burbled from [D] Manhattan's Continental Baths as she found the [D#] secret.
The more outrageous [N] I was, she says, the more they liked it.
Bette calls her style Trash with Flash, a little Streisand, a little Joplin, a little Judy Garland.
A critic calls her Dorothy Parker in drag, but she's not really any of those people.
It is very exciting.
It's the most exciting part is when you have a good time doing what you've been trying to do.
That's the most exciting part.
When you do it correctly and wonderfully and they [Em] enjoy it, that's really exciting.
[G]
Her recognition as the best new artist [C#] is hard to understand if you've not seen her.
[G] You can't get the flavor of her irreverence, [D#] her teasing, taunting [A] way of shocking when she's cleaned up for television.
But Bette Midler knows how to keep an audience awake.
[D] [C] [F]
Key:
D#
D
G
C#
C
D#
D
G
_ _ _ You probably know her as a very big star today, but you probably also do not know her as a woman who started her career in the gay bathhouses of New York City.
Those gay bathhouses are not here anymore, but Louis Young went out tonight to find out what happened to the entertainers and the people who used to be there.
Here's his report.
_ [C] Sweet [D] marijuana, _ _ [E] marijuana
_ [F#] _ The pictures are black and white, but the performance is living color.
[D#] This is Bette Midler as she [F#m] was roughly 19 years ago at Manhattan's Continental Baths.
Before she was a movie star or a Grammy [F#] award winning recording artist, the Divine Miss M was a cabaret [G] performer for a room full of men dressed only in towels, [N] if that.
Lou Maletta remembers.
She was just a great performer.
She would walk into the club and talk about her bazooms all the time, and I thought that was great.
She was a big draw for the Continental Baths.
In fact, Barry Manilow played there also.
And between the two of them, it was a big draw.
It was jammed usually, very crowded.
The Continental Baths were located in the basement of the Ansonia Hotel here on the Upper West Side.
At [B] the time, it was one of a half a dozen such places in [C#] Manhattan, but the only one with live entertainment.
People who were there describe it as a [D] cavernous place with tables, chairs, a dance floor, a swimming [B] pool, a gay [F#] clientele, and what you might call an [D] undress code.
There [G#m] was a certain kind of flamboyance that they really did like, and that was a kind of hyper [D#]-emotionalism that I was very much into at the time anyway.
Bette Midler, [F] of course, went on to bigger things when the Continental Baths closed in 76.
By the mid [C#]-80s, all New York's gay bathhouses were [D#] gone, a victim of the AIDS epidemic.
Lou Miletta now works for the Gay Cable Network, where they do stories about safe sex and gay discos.
[G] The bathhouses are part of a lifestyle [E] that, foremost, is gone.
It's a different [D#] kind of situation in a disco as opposed to what the baths were like.
Certainly, nobody takes their clothes off in a disco.
Louis Young, Channel 7 eyewitness [C#m] did.
There is no one here [G] beside _ me.
_ [F#m] _ _ [C#m] There was, of course, a time [C#] when Bette Midler was [Bm] all alone.
But then, whoops, up she burbled from [D] Manhattan's Continental Baths as she found the [D#] secret.
The more outrageous [N] I was, she says, the more they liked it.
Bette calls her style Trash with Flash, a little Streisand, a little Joplin, a little Judy Garland.
A critic calls her Dorothy Parker in drag, but she's not really any of those people.
It is very exciting.
It's the most exciting part is when you have a good time doing what you've been trying to do.
That's the most exciting part.
When you do it correctly and wonderfully and they [Em] enjoy it, that's really exciting.
[G] _ _
_ Her recognition as the best new artist [C#] is hard to understand if you've not seen her.
[G] You can't get the flavor of her irreverence, [D#] her teasing, taunting [A] way of shocking when she's cleaned up for television.
But Bette Midler knows how to keep an audience awake.
[D] _ _ _ _ _ [C] _ _ [F] _ _
Those gay bathhouses are not here anymore, but Louis Young went out tonight to find out what happened to the entertainers and the people who used to be there.
Here's his report.
_ [C] Sweet [D] marijuana, _ _ [E] marijuana
_ [F#] _ The pictures are black and white, but the performance is living color.
[D#] This is Bette Midler as she [F#m] was roughly 19 years ago at Manhattan's Continental Baths.
Before she was a movie star or a Grammy [F#] award winning recording artist, the Divine Miss M was a cabaret [G] performer for a room full of men dressed only in towels, [N] if that.
Lou Maletta remembers.
She was just a great performer.
She would walk into the club and talk about her bazooms all the time, and I thought that was great.
She was a big draw for the Continental Baths.
In fact, Barry Manilow played there also.
And between the two of them, it was a big draw.
It was jammed usually, very crowded.
The Continental Baths were located in the basement of the Ansonia Hotel here on the Upper West Side.
At [B] the time, it was one of a half a dozen such places in [C#] Manhattan, but the only one with live entertainment.
People who were there describe it as a [D] cavernous place with tables, chairs, a dance floor, a swimming [B] pool, a gay [F#] clientele, and what you might call an [D] undress code.
There [G#m] was a certain kind of flamboyance that they really did like, and that was a kind of hyper [D#]-emotionalism that I was very much into at the time anyway.
Bette Midler, [F] of course, went on to bigger things when the Continental Baths closed in 76.
By the mid [C#]-80s, all New York's gay bathhouses were [D#] gone, a victim of the AIDS epidemic.
Lou Miletta now works for the Gay Cable Network, where they do stories about safe sex and gay discos.
[G] The bathhouses are part of a lifestyle [E] that, foremost, is gone.
It's a different [D#] kind of situation in a disco as opposed to what the baths were like.
Certainly, nobody takes their clothes off in a disco.
Louis Young, Channel 7 eyewitness [C#m] did.
There is no one here [G] beside _ me.
_ [F#m] _ _ [C#m] There was, of course, a time [C#] when Bette Midler was [Bm] all alone.
But then, whoops, up she burbled from [D] Manhattan's Continental Baths as she found the [D#] secret.
The more outrageous [N] I was, she says, the more they liked it.
Bette calls her style Trash with Flash, a little Streisand, a little Joplin, a little Judy Garland.
A critic calls her Dorothy Parker in drag, but she's not really any of those people.
It is very exciting.
It's the most exciting part is when you have a good time doing what you've been trying to do.
That's the most exciting part.
When you do it correctly and wonderfully and they [Em] enjoy it, that's really exciting.
[G] _ _
_ Her recognition as the best new artist [C#] is hard to understand if you've not seen her.
[G] You can't get the flavor of her irreverence, [D#] her teasing, taunting [A] way of shocking when she's cleaned up for television.
But Bette Midler knows how to keep an audience awake.
[D] _ _ _ _ _ [C] _ _ [F] _ _