Bette Midler, at 69, looks forward to first concert tour in a decade
She turns 70 this year but retirement is the last thing on Bette Midler's mind
Bette Midler knows what's expected of her onstage in 2015. "I have to sing well, and I have to have a great band," she says. "But my audience, they've known me at this point for 50 years. Whether I show up in a fishtail or not, I don't think it matters to them."
The fishtail, of course, is a reference to her character Delores DeLago, the mermaid in a wheelchair who (mostly) sits out Midler's new show. So what does it mean for this veteran entertainer to skip one of her most famous bits?
"It means I had to fill 20 minutes," she says with a throaty laugh.
The road show, Midler's first in a decade, follows the release last year of It's the Girls!, a studio album collecting the singer's vivid renditions of songs by girl groups from The Boswell Sisters to TLC.
Given that it brought Midler back to music after a stretch spent primarily focused on acting (most notably in the acclaimed Broadway play I'll Eat You Last, about the late talent agent Sue Mengers), It's the Girls! could be thought to have set the table for the tour. Yet Midler admits she has another, more pressing reason for heading out on the road now.