Manilow's activism leads to Chase award

This isn’t just a trip to the People’s Choice Awards for Barry Manilow.

When the Palm Springs-based musical icon receives his Community Service recognition Saturday at the black-tie Steve Chase Humanitarian Awards, he’ll bring with him a personal awareness of the AIDS pandemic and the work the Desert AIDS Project has been doing to combat the disease in the Coachella Valley.

“I’ve had four personal assistants in my career since the ’70s,” the singer-songwriter said in a most sobering tone, “and three out of the four have died of AIDS.

“My personal assistants have always become my best friends. They are my brothers.”

Manilow has actively fought against AIDS since the earliest signs of its magnitude.

His foundation, the Manilow Fund for Health and Hope, supports such AIDS organizations as Aid for AIDS of Nevada, the AIDS Project Los Angeles, AIDS Research Alliance of America and the AIDS Walk of Los Angeles, to name just a few.

His friend, Desert AIDS Project AP board member Kevin Bass, who nominated the singer Manilow for the Steve Chase honor, said Manilow became one of the first celebrities to support the cause when Elizabeth Taylor asked him to perform at benefit dinner to combat AIDS after other artists refused.

“Certainly, the face of AIDS has changed,” said Bass, “but, at the time, Barry stepped to the plate and performed.”

Manilow said in an exclusive interview from his South Palm Springs home that Taylor called him in the early 1980s.

“Her friend Rock Hudson had died,” he said. “She was the first one to try to make the public aware of this disease that was infecting everybody and she was throwing a big dinner party. She called her entertainer friends and they all turned her down. I don’t know why. But I got the call and said ‘Of course.’

"But my band wasn’t around. I just went there and played piano and sang for a good hour. It was the first one she had and it was the first time I had ever done anything like that.”