How apt that one of Burt Bacharach's very first hits was The Story Of My Life. Because reading the tributes prompted by his loss a couple of days ago, it turns out that his music was pretty well a soundtrack to the lives of millions who–especially in the Sixties, an era of profound societal tension between materialism and idealism–wanted assurance that the essential bonds of humanity still united them all. He transcended those divisions much as he did musical genres, knowing that the middle-aged hosts of suburban cocktail parties and their rebellious adolescents both ultimately shared an abiding weakness for romance, optimism and style.