The divine Miss M: from her days singing torch songs in one of the most legendary bathhouses in New York City to all the big challenges, big battles, big songs, and big moments that have followed, she has never stopped being true to her roots and never stopped being Bette

ANTONY: Hi, Bette!

BETTE MIDLER: Hi, Antony! Hi, Ingrid!

INGRID SISCHY: Antony's talking to us from Australia, Bette.

BM: I know. I was there last May. I had a great time. Are you having fun?

A: Yeah, we've done a few shows that we're just wrapping up now. It's beautiful here.

IS: Has the response been good?

A: I think it has. It's been really exciting.

BM: I bet. You know I went to see you at Carnegie Hall.

A: I know, I'll never forget seeing you there. I was so honored.

BM: I was so happy to be there. In fact, I have a picture right here of you and me with Laurie Anderson, Jimmy Scott, Lou Reed, and David Bowie. What a great group--it's as if I died and went to heaven.

A: Well, you can imagine how I felt!

BM: Oh, you're very sweet. As long as you're down there, are you going to go to New Zealand?

A: Actually, my mother's there at the moment, but I haven't been. She's friends with all these Maori lesbians.

IS: Now, there's nothing wrong with that, Antony! [all laugh]

BM: And you've never been?

A: No. I'm actually keener to go to Samoa.

BM: Oh, listen, I don't mean to slag Samoa, but New Zealand is one of the most beautiful places in the entire world, with every kind of landscape you can imagine--it's jaw-dropping, it's so beautiful.

IS: Speaking of jaw-dropping, Miss M.

BM: Yes, my dear?.

IS: When I heard your interpretation of "The Folks Who Live on the Hill" on that new Peggy Lee album of yours [Bette Midler Sings the Peggy Lee Songbook, Sony], I was knocked out. Has that one been a favorite of yours forever?.

BM: Actually, it hasn't. But when Barry Manilow called me up and asked me to do this record with him and mentioned that song as being one of his favorites, I thought I better get cracking. It is a beautiful song--it's so sad. I did a DualDisc for the first time with this album, a CD on one side and a DVD on the other. On the DVD we included home movies that Peggy Lee's daughter and granddaughter gave me--we actually underscored the footage with "The Folks Who Live on the Hill." All of Peggy Lee's romance is in these home movies. She's so crazy about her daughter and the guy she was married to. I almost think it's better than the record. It's really moving, and she has lots of fans who've never seen any of this stuff. Anyway, making the album was a great thing, and it was really wonderful to reacquaint myself with her music--I've met many people, but I'd never met her. She had the most haunting life. Once I got to know the material and saw her in the context of her time, I began to see she was actually cooler than any of them. Cool in the best sense of the world.

IS: Not cool as in cold.

BM: No, I had thought she was disengaged. But she wasn't. It was almost a stylistic thing that she adopted, because when you see her old stuff with Benny Goodman, she was like a ball of fire. As the years went on, though, things changed--she married an excellent jazz guitar player, Dave Barbour, and I think his crowd was not unfamiliar with the stoned life. She made a choice to be attitudinal cool, but I think she was better at it than almost anybody. You talk about Miles Davis, Chet Baker, any of those icons, but for my money she made it work better than any of them. And then there's the abuse in her early life. Antony, I don't know if you know of this, but her mother died when she was very young, and her father married a woman who beat her constantly until she left home. My eyes were bugging out of my head when I learned all this. So when you see this beautiful creature that's a little bit cut off, it's fascinating to know the backstory.... Come on, Antony, ask me a question!

A: Well, I was just wondering where you find yourself in her work?.

BM: In the romance more than anything, I think. In the past 15 or 20 years I've sung a lot of songs about the human condition and a lot of triumphal ones like "Wind Beneath My Wings" and "From a Distance" and "The Rose." I've had big hits with those, but I almost never sing love songs, so to be able to sing these was really meaningful. When I was first making records, I chose my own material for the most part, but once I was signed up with a label, I started taking stuff they gave me--it became about chart-chasing, and it didn't serve me well: I'd sing disco songs when I wasn't supposed to be singing disco. That's one of the reasons I enjoy your music so much, Antony. It's deeply personal, and yet it manages to be about the human condition at the same time. The evening I went to see you was full of surprises and emotion, but the biggest shock was when you and Lou [Reed] sang "Candy Says." It was beyond mesmerizing--it was heartbreaking and transporting, which hardly anybody manages to do.

A: That's what you do. You've given a voice to so many people's hearts and minds. When you're performing live, where do you draw your energy from?

BM: It comes from a commitment to the evening and to the people sitting in the seats; they're going to see the best of me. I don't want to say it's bigger than me, but it's bigger than me.