She Never Knew Dad, Just His Hit Songs ‘Piece of My Heart’ Tells the Story of Bert Berns
Laura Collins-HughesJuly 21, 2014: “Does it bother you that your songs are everywhere but you aren’t?” the beautiful dancer asks, lounging in the handsome songwriter’s bed. “No one ever knows who writes the songs, right? Just who sings ’em.” Filling that gap in our rock ’n’ roll awareness is the mission behind the gorgeously tuneful, new jukebox musical Piece of My Heart: The Bert Berns Story — and if your first response to that title is “Bert who?,” well, that’s exactly the point. But if, somewhere in your head, Janis Joplin just ripped into “Piece of My Heart,” you already know Berns’s music. When Bert Berns died at 38 in 1967, he left a voluminous catalog, and Piece of My Heart — presented by Merged Work Productions at the Pershing Square Signature Center — taps it expertly. “Twist and Shout,” “I Want Candy,” “Hang on Sloopy” and “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” are among the many familiar songs that the show’s stellar singers and splendid eight-piece orchestra may lodge in your brain.
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