Truth mer·chant /truth merchant/ from the latin verum mercator meaning one who deals in truisms no matter how unpopular his or her opinion may be; one who tells it like it is; one who does the heavy lifting of revealing the shortcomings of something that has long been venerated or loved; a dropper of “truth bombs” — noun — as in “we need someone who will tell us the truth about things, a truth that may or may not cause us to love something less, but a truth that makes us understand reality. It is a good thing that Wellsy is our truth merchant”
What a service I provide. Not only am I a truth merchant but I am also a freedom peddler, a crusher of walls and a breaker of thought-chains. Maybe you have long held to the memory of a show like Happy Days and you always bring it up when the conversation calls for suggestions of wonderful TV shows from your youth. And every time you do, maybe you think to yourself “but, dang, after the first season, it was kinda goofy, wasn’t it?” Yes, it was. And that’s OK. Because, yes, most of that favourite show of mine from my youth was lame. Or maybe – as I have reported in these pages – you fill the first warm evenings of spring with the sound of Jan & Dean but you have to admit that, as a vocal duo, those guys just couldn’t sing. And that’s OK. Because, yes, as much as I love those guys, their vocal tones leave much to be desired.
Or how about this one? When talk turns to the great pop vocal songs of the Sixties, the big, splashy numbers like “The Impossible Dream” or “You’ll Never Walk Alone” come up. You may nod your head in agreement and reiterate the idea that you can’t beat those great, old songs. And you may be thinking to yourself that, when you want to hear the best of the 1960s, those two overwrought, soulless songs that often result in disenchanting performances are the last songs you want to hear. I’m here to set you free. It is OK to acknowledge that generally beloved movies (Some Like It Hot), bands (Herman’s Hermits), singers (Shirley Bassey) or songs (“Good Morning, Starshine”) are actually lame, if that’s what you think. You can still join us here living This Vintage Life, its cool. This bloated preamble leads me to our topic for today, a song that is always accepted as the showstopper for pop vocalists of the 60s and 70s, a song that allows the singer to make the boastful claim of having lived life according to their own rules and to make that claim in an often lavish and resplendent setting. Today we are talking about “My Way”.
Claude François was a French singer popular in the 1960s and 70s often scoring with French versions of American hits. How popular was he? Get this – he is said to have sold over 60 million records. In 1978 when the guy was only 39, he finished taping a TV special for the BBC and went back to his hotel. While prepping for a bath, Claude was replacing a light bulb in his bathroom lamp when he received a severe electric shock. Poor guy died the next day in hospital.
Twelve years previously, Claude François had teamed with French songwriters Gilles Thibaut and Jacques Revaux to pen “Comme d’habitude” (French for “As Usual”), a song about a stagnant relationship; the love affair has gone cold and the two have fallen into routine (“All alone I will go to bed / In this big cold bed / as usual / I will hide my tears / as usual”).
And right from the outset I am faced with the old “Jan & Dean conundrum”. Meaning, I love Paul Anka but I wish he hadn’t done this. Make no mistake; Paul Anka is a singular player in the world of Vintage Leisure. There really was – and is – no one like him. He started as a singer who on the surface appeared to be simply another teen idol but he not only had determination and drive but he had a canny knack for songwriting, writing hits for himself and for others. As styles changed, he changed as well. Continuing to pen hit songs, he updated his music and maintained a presence on records and on stage. And as a singer, he may not be in the same league as Tony Bennett, Perry Como or Jack Jones but Paul was unique in that he needed no one other than himself to make a record and place songs on the chart. But neither can we place him among the rarified air of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin or Sammy Davis but he really did roll with those guys. He really was in the steam room with them, he really was taken somewhat under their wings and respected because he was good earner – Paul says Frank liked him “because I made money for the mob in Vegas”. I could go on about my Canadian homeboy, Anka but I say all this in the hopes that you understand that the man is supremely talented; he is a player and a legend.
Paul heard “Comme d’habitude” while on vacation in the south of France. He was taken enough by what he heard that he flew to Paris to negotiate for the rights to the song. In a move that really gets into the weeds of the publishing business, Paul Anka “acquired adaptation, recording, and publishing rights for the nominal but formal consideration of one dollar, subject to the provision that the melody’s composers would retain their original share of royalty rights with respect to whatever versions Anka or his designates created or produced”. Some time in 1968, Paul had dinner with Frank Sinatra in Florida. The Chairman surprised Anka by saying that he was sick and tired of show business and that he was retiring. Back home, Paul got to thinking about the entertainment business without Sinatra – and he recalled the French ditty he had bought. Sitting not at the piano but at an IBM typewriter, Paul began to write lyrics using Frank’s voice, writing words he thought Sinatra would write or say. In one night during a rainstorm, Anka had the words written to the song he rechristened “My Way”. He was done at 5am and immediately called Sinatra at Caesars in Las Vegas. “I’ve got something really special for you”, the Canadian told the man from Hoboken. On the eve of New Year’s Eve, 1968, Sinatra recorded “My Way” in two takes.
Premiere Sinatra scholar Will Friedwald has little regard for the song itself but understands its place in the Sinatra Legend. “My Way”, declares Friedwald, is “droning…underwhelming (and) very monotonous”. Lyrically, it is a “choreographed exhibition of burgeoning ego”. But I agree with the writer when he talks about the incredible theatre of Sinatra doing this number in concert. J. Randy Taraborelli reports that Sinatra “loathed” the song, thinking it “kooky” and for the kids but fans of all ages were overawed to hear Frank do the number in concert in the years after returning from a brief retirement. It became a showpiece for the ages. The “self-congratulating lyrics had the desired effect of making the song both a summation of and a metaphor for Sinatra’s entire career”.
Paul Anka now scores a couple of points for discernment. Paul was with Elvis Presley once in the early 1970s when King expressed his desire to tackle “My Way” in the studio but more as a live showpiece. Anka may have paused for a minute before telling Presley the song didn’t suit him. Presley, though, added to his legend when he included the song in his setlist for the Aloha from Hawaii concert beamed to the world via satellite in 1973. Strictly as a show-stopper, as a vocal performance, as a big moment during the last triumph of his life, 38-year-old Elvis Presley singing “My Way” in Hawaii is quite stunning. The last note alone packs an intense emotional wallop. I recall being 15 in 1987 and kneeling in front of the TV watching him sing that with tears running down my face, no lie. But I was fifteen years old and only at the beginning of my understanding of the full spectrum of Presley’s career in all of its ramifications and with all of its particular distinctions and shadings. I hadn’t yet gained a certain perspective.
My cousin once asked me at a family event who sang “My Way” best, Sinatra or Presley. I’m sure he wasn’t prepared for the complexity of my answer. Beginning many years ago, I have read several Sinatra biographies. Reading the life story of Frank Sinatra is somewhat exhilarating. His is a story of victory. He is a singular figure who conquered the entire entertainment industry, his power and his reach even extending at one point to the White House. He mowed down all of the formidable opposition he faced – excepting, of course, the most formidable; a five-foot-six-inch, 120-pound Ava Gardner – and dispatched obstacles with cold and calculating haste. In other words, he did it his way; there is a reason that almost every single obituary when FS died referenced this song’s title. Can any fan or even student of Frank Sinatra identify someone who controlled or “managed” him?
Conversely, the life of Elvis Presley is essentially a sad story. Now, let me take a second to clarify so as not to be too depressing or maudlin. Presley is a man who forged a career and a body of work that provides endless – as in never ending – pleasure. His filmography and his catalogue of recordings both have more than enough depth and breadth to satisfy the millions of people his work has been enchanting for decades. I love him with a depth I do not apply to people I don’t know personally. However…
I stated in a King Reader article that owing to his upbringing, his twin and his mama, Elvis “never had a chance”; he was destined to spend his life unsettled, to say the least. And in terms of his professional life, he traveled uncharted territory and many of the decisions regarding his work were steered – “steered” at the very least – by his manager, Col. Tom Parker. This is not the place to get too deep into the weeds regarding the Colonel and his methods but he definitely directed many of Presley’s career choices. Hollywood was a safe haven through the turbulent 1960s and endless touring filled the coffers in the 70s to cite two examples. When you dig deep, you learn that Presley – with some artistically rewarding exceptions – was something of a helpless rider on a train that was barreling through a twilight world that no one had ever seen before. His legacy, the fact that he created what he did, is all the more staggering considering things like Double Trouble or RCA’s avarice.
To summarize, then, my thoughts on Elvis Presley and “My Way” – while he sang the heck out of it in Hawaii, it makes me sad because you could argue – as I am here – that he really didn’t do it his way. Even Anka has said “there was nothing defiant or heroic (about Elvis’ later performances of the song and) everyone thinks it’s their song – but how many people really do it their own way?”.
I present another problem with “My Way” – the uninitiated think that it represents the pinnacle of Sinatra’s or Presley’s recording career, the height of what they could do with a song. Not even close. And I tread lightly here. Music appreciation is subjective and people love what they love and that’s fine. How else can I explain owning two Fabian records? It always irked me in my youth when people thought “Stairway to Heaven” was the best of Led Zeppelin (“Fool in the Rain” is) or “Dream On” the best of Aerosmith (“Sweet Emotion”, maybe) or that “Bohemian Rhapsody” was the pinnacle of Freddie & Co. (“Keep Yourself Alive” or “Dragon Attack”).
If you only intermittently divert into the “crooner” genre, than you may like to hear Frank do “My Way” or “Strangers in the Night” (don’t get me started on that song) or even Bennett sing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” or Wayne Newton do “Danke Schoen” again. But those of us who do not just visit or rent but who have bought property and have set up residency in the land of “Sinatra & Friends” have seen the other side, we have looked over the horizon. We have discovered Frank LPs like In the Wee Small Hours or Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! and recordings like “Lost in the Stars” or “The Way You Look Tonight” and we – dare I say – “know better”. When we Sinatraphiles get together and commiserate, ain’t no one mentioning “My Way”. Or the Duets albums. That’s for the peasants, the tourists.
And it’s the same with Presley. While I will say that as a piece of theatre, King doing “My Way” in Hawaii is the absolute pinnacle of that song, there are a plethora of Elvis performances more engaging and listenable. Even during that satellite show – “What Now, My Love” and “An American Trilogy” have “My Way” beat a mile. And while Sinatra’s version is about unapologetic conquering, Presley’s is more world weary and plaintive, melancholic.
In anyone’s hands, the lyrics Anka wrote for the song are simply too pompous and self-aggrandizing. And that is by design. Anka was and is a fan of Frank’s like the rest of us. He sat down that night to write words that he thought would come out of Franks mouth. Words that us fans would want to hear from Frank because after all “Frank Sinatra actually possessed the moral authority to sing it. A hoodlum, a boxer, a heartthrob, a has-been, a comeback kid, a titan, a has-been once again, and finally a living legend back on top for good, Sinatra had actually lived the kind of life described in the song, having taken the blows and done it his way”.
It is the most played song at UK funerals and appears on upwards of 247 film and TV soundtracks and that is perhaps telling. “My Way” is more a statement than a song. It’s more a declaration that is better seen as maybe a show tune, sung during a part of the performance depicting a man or woman at the end of life looking back at choices made. Maybe we can boil it down to the simple fact that it is over-used and over-heard. With “My Way”, we’ve been there and done that. We’re good now, thanks.
Sources
- Guardian Unlimited (via Wayback Machine) – “How Sinatra did it My Way – via a French pop star and a Canadian lounge act” (2007)
- The Telegraph (via Wayback Machine) – “Paul Anka: One song the Sex Pistols won’t be singing” (2007)
- Will Friedwald – Sinatra! The Song is You: A Singer’s Art (1995)
- J. Randy Taraborelli – Sinatra: Behind the Legend (1997)
SoulRide 