Barbra Streisand is crediting her husband with inspiring one of the most popular rock songs of the late 20th century, the Aerosmith track I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing.
The 81-year-old legend was promoting new memoir, My Name Is Barbra, on The Howard Stern Show, when she revealed this interesting tidbit of music history.
The Grammy winner said she and her husband James Brolin, 83, who was celibate for three years before they married in 1998, were lying in bed, enjoying a bit of pillow talk.
‘I don’t want to fall asleep because then I’ll miss you,’ the actor told his beloved.
It was at that moment the Evergreen singer agreed to his most recent proposal saying, ‘OK, yes, I’ll marry you.’
Barbra shared that story in an interview on 20/20 with Barbra Walters in 1997 and songwriter Diane Warren learned about it.
She verified the anecdote in an interview with Shortlist in 2016.
‘Someone told me there was an interview with Barbra Streisand and her husband and he had said how he doesn’t like to go to sleep, you know, if he misses her and I was like, “Wow that’s a cool idea for a song if I can figure that out,” and that’s where I got the title from.
The song was included over the closing credits of the film Armageddon.
‘And I kept it in the back of my head and when that movie came round I thought, “You know, I’m gonna write this song because it could be about the end of the world – it could fit that storyline or it could fit this love story.”‘
I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing debuted at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 and is Aerosmith’s only number one song to date.
The hit also received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song.
As for making more movies of her own, the EGOT says she’s might do another, but only behind the camera.
‘I wouldn’t star in another movie,’ she told Howard, saying it’s ‘too much of a pain in the a** to get your hair done, your makeup.’
‘But I could direct another movie, and I have one, but it’s, like, my fourth choice of a movie to direct. It’s not the two I wanted to direct.’ she said.
The star thinks her focus on her personal life may have gotten in the way of some of her ambitions.
‘Sometimes I just give up too easily,’ she admitted.
