Mann and Weil on Broadway: The New Yorker On November 21st, the composer Barry Mann and the lyricist Cynthia Weil, visiting from Los Angeles, stood in the lobby of 1650 Broadway. They were in town to see "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical on Broadway," in which they are characters, and which takes place largely in that building. There, in the offices of Aldon Music, in 1961, Mann co-wrote "Who Put the Bomp?," which he sang himself, and which asks, and subtly answers, the defining question of the Brill Building era. Around that time, Mann and Weil became a team - a couple and a hit-making juggernaut, writing "You've Lost That Lovin" Feelin,"" for the Righteous Brothers, "On Broadway," for the Drifters, "We Gotta Get Out of This Place," for the Animals, and many others. They've been married since 1961. Mann is bearded, and he wore small round glasses, a beige scarf, and a dark overcoat. He looked around the lobby. "It looks more modern, I think," he said. We worked on the seventh floor. Weil laughed. She has dramatic bangs and wore a dark coat and a statement necklace. Eighth! Mann smiled and shrugged. "We met at nine, we met at eight," Weil sang. "I was about to say the same thing," Mann said. Carole King and her then husband, Gerry Goffin, had worked at Aldon Music in a cubicle adjacent to Mann and Weil's; they wrote "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," for the Shirelles, "One Fine Day," for the Chiffons, and "The Loco-Motion," for Little Eva. The two couples were close friends and fierce competitors; they wrote all day, and sometimes all night, generating hundreds of songs. In the lobby, a parade of sanitation workers emerged from an elevator, wheeling industrial-sized garbage bins toward a truck idling on the street. The convoy continued for more than twenty minutes. "That's a lot of songs," Weil said. They walked along Broadway, toward the Brill Building. Weil said, "I was always obsessed with Broadway. It was where I thought I would end up writing. We wrote "On Broadway" about a girl wanting to escape a small town." Mann sang, "I hear the neon lights are bright on Broadway." Weil went on, "Then we heard that the Drifters were cutting. We brought it down to Leiber and Stoller" - in the Brill Building - "who said that we could either go home and rewrite it for a male group, or we could write it with them. We idolized those guys, so we said, "Let's do it with you." " They looked up at the gilded entrance to the Brill Building and then got into a black S.U.V. Weil said, "The Brill Building had a fancy restaurant called Jack Dempsey's, and another called the Turf. The Turf had a bar where you could get a roast-beef sandwich for fifty cents. The rents were cheaper at 1650 Broadway, and the newer and younger music publishers had offices there. Mann said, "When you went into Aldon Music, on the right side there were about four different little cubicles, and all they had was one upright piano, a piano bench, and one chair. That was it," Mann said. "And a big ashtray," Weil said. So it was kind of funky, and you could hear who was writing their song. We'd listen to Carole and Gerry, and they'd listen to us. It was like, "We gotta get that record, we gotta beat them out!" And they were the same way. "And yet we were best friends," Weil said. As you'll see in the show. We always took vacations together, because we wanted to be sure they weren't working when we were on vacation. Mann laughed. We almost didn't want to go on a honeymoon! "There's a line in the show, "You're our best friends, and I'm not saying that because you're our only friends." But they were our only friends, because nobody else lived this crazy life! No one understood what our life was like except them. King and Goffin, who have two daughters, divorced in 1968. King hasn't seen "Beautiful." Weil said, "Carole came to the second reading, and it was too emotional for her. It was a wonderful and terrible part of her life. But she gave the show her blessing. My theory is that she will sneak into this after it opens, so she can leave if she wants to, and she'll absorb it in her own way. Mann and Weil are still close with King, who lives in Idaho, and speak fondly of Goffin. At the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, on Forty-third Street, Mann and Weil got out of the car and stood under the marquee. "In a million years, we'd never have thought that we'd be characters in a theatre piece," Mann said. Douglas McGrath, who wrote the book - he'd spent two days interviewing each of the real-life subjects, Weil said - appeared, and greeted them warmly. "Look at you, you're like a schoolgirl!" he said to Weil, kissing her. "I love you," Weil said. When the overture began, Mann leaned over and whispered, "How do you like it so far?" There's plenty to like. Sixteen-year-old Carole Klein (Jessie Mueller) takes a song she's written to 1650 Broadway, which is unveiled in a burst of music - "Splish Splash," "Love Potion #9," "Yakety Yak" - and industry. Klein, shy but determined, introduces herself as Carole King to the boss, Don Kirshner (Jeb Brown), and sings her song while playing piano. Weil's first memory of King: "In comes this little girl, very bedraggled, and she sits at the piano, and she plays the shit out of it." Mueller plays King with humility and charm, and her voice is lovely to listen to; it sounds very much like King's and a bit like the young Judy Garland's. King meets Goffin (Jake Epstein) at Queens College; they start writing together. Cynthia Weil (Anika Larsen) - blond and stylish, with moxie - shows up at Aldon Music, and introduces herself to the tune of "Happy Days Are Here Again." Mann (Jarrod Spector) - medium, dark, and handsome - leans in the doorway, marvelling. "This is our dimpled hypochondriac," Kirshner says of him. In the audience, Mann smiled as he watched Barry fall for Cynthia. The audience liked them, too: later, when they kissed, it clapped vigorously, several beats before the end of the scene. As Carole King's plot unfolds - love, chart-toppers, children, Goffin problems, divorce, and, finally, the recording of "Tapestry," the album that established her as a singer-songwriter and sold more than twenty-five million copies - Barry and Cynthia are a wry, happy presence, and when King plays them her new song "You've Got a Friend," it doesn't feel treacly. The show ended with the audience members on their feet, clapping and singing "I Feel the Earth Move." Among them, Mann and Weil were beaming. Afterward, they popped into a backstage room, where cast members were celebrating with friends, one of whom was a sporty woman in a fleece vest and a blue warmup jacket: Billie Jean King, on the eve of her seventieth birthday. When the group saw Mann and Weil, a cheer went up, and someone called out, "How did you feel, watching yourself?" I'm looking good! Weil said. The room erupted. Barry and Cynthia - both pairs - took the elevator upstairs and went outside. The four of them were going for a drink. They piled into an S.U.V., Spector climbing in back, between Larsen and Weil. "My girls," he said. Spector is thirty-one and clean-cut, with dark hair and a boyish face; it's easy to envision him as the young Frankie Valli, a role he played for four years, in "Jersey Boys," on Broadway. Mann and Weil had met Spector and Larsen a few weeks before, during the show's pre-Broadway run in San Francisco. Carole King had also met the actors there. "Carole told me that she saw me in "Jersey Boys," " Spector said. "She started saying, "I'm such a fan of yours," and I'm going, "What?" " Larsen said, "She's like a warm light." Larsen, thirty-nine, is blond and fair, with what was once called a Pepsodent smile. She starred in "Avenue Q" on Broadway. At Joe Allen, the venerable theatre hangout on Forty-sixth Street, everyone had wine, and Spector ordered monkfish. "Hey, cheers, everybody," he said, raising his glass. To Barry and Cynthia! Larsen said. And Barry and Cynthia! "Cheers, babe," Spector said to Larsen. Weil said, "One thing we forgot to tell Doug was that Barry always wore all black. And cowboy boots. My mother thought they were orthopedic shoes. Larsen and Spector laughed. "She said, "He probably has weak ankles, dear, you don't want to pass that on to your kids." " "Can we talk about "You've Lost That Lovin" Feelin"?" Spector said. I have to know. Like, who wrote what first? "I wrote the melody first," Mann said. Specifically for the Righteous Brothers. We flew to California to write with Phil Spector. His name is on the song. I came up with the verse and the chorus. And I came up with the opening line and we both liked it... Phil came up with "gone, gone, gone, whoa, whoa, whoa." " Just before 1 A.M., Mann and Weil and Spector and Larsen began to say their goodnights. Weil said that they would be back for opening night, in January. Are you going to drag Carole out? Spector asked. Can't drag her. If she comes, she comes," Weil said. Larsen said, "I think if she comes, it's not going to be opening night - it'll be a time when she can sneak in the back." That's what I said! One mind. They high-fived. Photograph by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty.