It felt like the end of an era when Alan Bergman passed away on July 17, 2025 just shy of his 100th birthday. As sad as I am over the loss of him here on earth, though, there’s joy in knowing he’s found his way back to his beloved Marilyn who died in January of 2022. It’s the closing parenthesis to one of the most beautiful love stories that seems to have been written in the stars.
They were born three years apart in the same hospital in Brooklyn, then met 30 years later in Los Angeles where they were both writing partners with composer Lew Spence — she his afternoon writer, and he Lew’s morning writer. At Marilyn’s funeral, Alan said of their meeting: “In 1955 I walked down a pathway to a house, and as I was halfway there the door opened and a young woman came out to greet me. I knew in that moment that there was something special about her. I didn’t know it then, but that ‘hello’ was to change my life from that moment on. We wrote a song together that afternoon that opened with the lines ‘I never knew what hit me / it came from out of the blue / caught off guard and totally unprepared / for someone like you.’ We began writing together that afternoon and have been writing together ever since.”
I’m not sure what blend of luck, timing, or delight from the universe delivered them into my life. I was that kid who devoured record liner notes and learned everything I could about the names denoting the songwriters. Alan and Marilyn Bergman’s showed up on everything from “The Way We Were,” “The Windmills of Your Mind,” “It Might Be You,” “The Summer Knows,” “Where Do You Start,” “How Do You Keep the Music Playing,” “Nice ’n Easy,” “That Face,” “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” and even in the credits to themes from TV Shows like “Maude,” “Good Times,” “Alice,” and “The Sandy Duncan Show.”
So you could say I’d known the Bergmans decades before the day in 2004 when Marilyn invited me to their home to meet and visit with her. That day led to years of one of the most meaningful friendships of my life, and more visits whenever I was in L.A. or they were in Nashville.
While Marilyn was busy with her duties as Board President at ASCAP events, I was usually hanging with Alan talking about jazz, our mutual love of the great pianist Bill Evans (he couldn’t believe it when I told him my mom went to college with Bill), and his dreams of going back into the studio to make another record. He recorded his first album, “Lyrically,” in 2007 when he was 82 years old and it stands as one of my favorite albums ever. I always told him I was his biggest fan (next to Marilyn), and he delivered those songs of theirs like no one else could. That record is still in constant rotation for me.
There were so many times over the years when I’d get to be a fly on the wall, witnessing the way they were together. The way these two wordsmiths communicated with no words at all. The way they’d look at each other, their pleasure in each others’ presence. I wrote essays and journal entries about those moments, and talked about them with Marilyn. On our last visit a year or so before Marilyn was unable to remember who I was, we were sitting at a Nashville hotel and Alan was dozing in a chair across from us. She had her hand on my forearm, as she always did, and was showing me photos on her phone of the house they were building in Montecito, as well as some old photos of the two of them. “Do you know who these young men are?” she asked when she got to a black and white of two fellows. It was Alan with his mentor Johnny Mercer in the 1950s. They were so handsome. Then I remember telling her that the reason I thought I was so attached to her and Alan was because they were exactly the same age as my parents, born the same years, who also had a wonderful love affair. I’d always wondered what they might have been like if my dad hadn’t died and they’d had more time to grow old together. She smiled and said she kind of knew they reminded me of my parents in some way, and that made her happy.
A couple of years ago Nils Elders was visiting from Scotland, and Don Henry came over to co-write. Nils had a great riff and I read them one of my essays about a morning I had with Marilyn. Don said, “There’s the whole song.” And then it just flowed, like Marilyn had swooped low that morning and was part of it all. So that’s what “One More Song” became, a gift for Alan that I was determined to get to him before the anniversary of the two-year passing of Marilyn. Matt Rollings said he’d be honored to play the piano for it and created this gorgeous piece — even putting in a little Easter egg at the beginning of the solo that’s a few notes of “You Must Believe in Spring” from Bill Evans’ interpretation of the Michel Legrand/Bergman song. (Matt loved the Bergmans, too, and I remember the first time I’d ever heard him play was around 1994 for Nashville’s Tin Pan South at the Ace of Clubs. The Bergmans were there and Matt accompanied Alan singing “The Way We Were.” So it was a full-circle moment for both of us.)
That December I quickly sang the song in front of Jonatha Brooke’s studio workshop class since we had the studio and engineer. This attached recording is what transpired — flaws, nerves and all. But it documented a magical moment that became a gift from all of us involved. Alan did indeed get to hear it, and sent me the sweetest message that I’ll treasure. And if nothing else wonderful ever happens in my life, this song and knowing he heard it is more than enough.
What a sparkling burst of light in this world Alan and Marilyn were with their songs and example of enduring love. I will miss them and forever be sending up my thanks for the chance to witness and share in a few moments of their remarkable lives.
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