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Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode

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of Too Much Information, the show that brings

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you the secret histories and little known facts

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behind your favorite movies, music, TV

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shows and more. We are your fedora

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wearing friends of Factoids. You're

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chairman of the board. As in I'm

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bored, Let's listen to TMI regrets.

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We have a few, including that last

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joke, which worked a lot better on paper. My

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name is Jordan Runtag and I'm Alex

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Heigel. And today we are talking

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about one of the most enduring songs of

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the last half century, a song that's

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been embraced as a stirring anthem

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of defiant individualism or

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a hymn to self delusion and self aggrandizement,

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depending on which side you're on. We are

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talking about My Way, made famous

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by Old Blue Eyes himself, Holwoken's

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very own Frances Albert Sinatra.

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It's self reflective lyrics and

1:00

especially for Sinatra on the eve of his retirement,

1:02

at the request of his friend, a young

1:04

pup by the name of Paul Anka, who

1:07

was just twenty six years old when he wrote the words

1:09

to a pre existing French pop tune.

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Now, folks, I'm going to veer into what may seem

1:14

like a shameless plug for a moment, but bear with me.

1:16

I swear it's not intended to be one of

1:18

my new projects. My friends at iHeart had me

1:20

working on as a talk show hosted by Paul

1:23

Anka, appropriately titled Our Way.

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Working on this show has led me to become pretty

1:28

friendly with Paul, and he's been very generous

1:30

in sharing his memories of frank and what it

1:32

was like writing these lyrics for his friend

1:34

and idol. I was just so fascinated

1:36

by the story, and when I realized that this spring

1:39

was the fifty fifth anniversary of the song,

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I figured it was as good an excuse as any to

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dive in. Oh does that mean it can sign up for

1:46

AARP?

1:47

Now?

1:47

Is that sixty five? Okay?

1:49

Just me.

1:49

If there's anyone under forty who knows these rules,

1:52

it's me Higel.

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What are your thoughts on this song? Or Sinatra?

1:58

Oh?

1:58

I mean, you know, I'm Italian and like I gotta, I

2:01

can't say a bad word about Frankie on air on

2:03

Area He's hilarious. He's

2:06

like one of the greatest Napoleon

2:08

complexes and music.

2:09

I don't even know if he's small. He might be the his

2:11

Napoleon complex is so strong that it transcends

2:14

his height.

2:14

Yeah, I mean he was. I know, he was like really

2:16

real thin. I mean in my college house, we had a

2:19

picture of his mug shot up on.

2:20

The wall, which I realized is probably

2:23

a problem. Is a cliche?

2:24

Well it's a cliche, but it's also a problem because wasn't

2:27

that for when he got picked up for stature rape?

2:29

Oh I didn't know that. Oh.

2:32

Oh, I assumed it was like for

2:34

like driving a golf cart through a window or something,

2:37

which we'll touch on. No, but we'll get to that.

2:40

No, I don't know.

2:41

I mean I predictably I fall

2:43

into the sort of middle aged white

2:45

in olden days what they would call a hipster listening

2:48

habits of Frank, which means I like stuff like

2:51

all the Nelson Raal stuff we small

2:53

hours, and then some of the weirder stuff

2:55

with like when we had like electric bass on

2:57

the records Watertown.

2:59

That's Watertown. Yeah, that's

3:02

in here we're gonna talk about that is weird concept

3:04

album that nobody bought. It sold

3:06

thirty thousand copies at

3:08

a time when stuff wasn't selling

3:10

thirty thousand copies.

3:12

Yeah, so yeah, I mean he's great.

3:14

He's also hilarious and embarrassing

3:17

in the way that so many prominent Italians

3:19

are like

3:20

you're like our family, Yeah,

3:23

you're Andrew Croomo's so yeah,

3:25

I don't know, he's frank.

3:27

What are you gonna say about Frankie Frank He's

3:29

frank. Yeah. I mean I kind

3:31

of took Sinatra for granted, as

3:33

you know, is the case with so many musical touchstones

3:36

that were born knowing He's just sort of

3:38

become part of the architecture. Obviously,

3:41

everyone talks about the brilliance of his phrasing.

3:43

I think it was Charlton Heston who said that every

3:45

song he sings as a four minute movie.

3:48

You had something to say about his phrasing

3:51

earlier, which I wasn't aware of.

3:52

Oh well, I mean, so Sinatra

3:55

in like the he's really

3:57

interesting because crooning as a like

3:59

singing genre really kind of

4:01

had just come into form, because you know, prior

4:03

it was like shouting, like you had to be heard

4:06

over a big band like Caruso.

4:08

Yeah, Caruso were like I'm thinking of like the

4:10

jump blues, Like there's

4:13

like four Big Joe Williams, but like, you

4:15

know, these guys who would like come in and you could hear them

4:17

singing from like the back of a bar. And

4:19

so consequently, like even your guys like Cap Callaway,

4:21

once they started having access to good studio technology,

4:24

they were still kind of in that vein. But because Sinatra

4:26

bridged that, he was able to like really bring all

4:29

this depth and nuance into, you

4:31

know, this storytelling aspect into his vocal performances,

4:34

because he wasn't singing to the rafters, he

4:36

wasn't like trying to force his body to put

4:38

out as much sound as possible. But he like

4:40

got all that phrasing admittedly from Billie

4:42

Holliday, who you know obviously did not

4:44

live long enough to profit off of it. Or you

4:47

know, as this

4:49

story is told time and time again, white

4:52

guy took something from a black lady and took

4:54

it further to the bank than she did. But

4:58

you know, he's like such a big influence on

5:00

people that it's it's easy to understand

5:03

how like guys like Jim Morrison would

5:05

have picked up his vocal phrasing having

5:07

heard Fraim before Billie Holiday.

5:09

You know, so I don't know if I can really begrudge

5:12

him that, but I think he's fascinating

5:14

because of that, you.

5:15

Know, I mean just to explicitly

5:17

state crooning really became an

5:19

R form because of just the technological

5:21

advance, but of microphones. Yeah, that's that's

5:23

what I mean.

5:24

Is really yeah, and then you think about

5:26

it, I mean, yeah, it's like illustrating the difference between

5:28

like Bessie Smith or like one of those people who's

5:30

like forty fives, like even they're old, like or

5:32

thirty. They're really old, like Depression

5:35

era ones sound like they're you

5:38

know, it's so

5:40

blown out. And then you're like, holy shit,

5:43

I can sing soft into this thing.

5:45

You can hear my lips sound, you can hear the breathing.

5:47

Yeah. Well yeah, I mean.

5:51

It was my favorite moment of that is on that on

5:53

that Rod Stewart record, the first two

5:55

just have mistakes all over them, not Gasolene

5:57

Alley, but the two he made with the Faces crew, And.

6:00

There's one I think it's every

6:02

picture.

6:03

Yeah, where he just like audibly like

6:05

tries to come into bar early and you just hear him go

6:08

yeah and then like back

6:10

off the bike real quick.

6:11

So it's just I mean, it's really funny.

6:13

When you think about the way that singing evolved

6:15

to catch up to the technology

6:17

rather than the other way around.

6:19

Yeah, and the other thing that

6:21

I didn't really think about until researching this episode,

6:23

and you hear people say this, how I

6:26

kind of took a dim view of Sinatra

6:28

and people of his ilk because I'm

6:30

a Beatles guy and a Bob Dylan guy and a singer

6:33

songwriter guy, and so anyone

6:35

who didn't write their own material. I

6:37

was just kind of like, you know, well,

6:41

there was a certain level of respect I felt like I couldn't

6:43

achieve for him. But you hear all these people

6:45

claiming that Sinatra invented the concept

6:47

album. That's the phrase you always hear, sure,

6:50

and there really is some truth to that, because he was the

6:52

first to use the LP as a medium.

6:54

You know, even if he didn't write the songs himself,

6:57

he would choose every track himself

6:59

and work with the arranger very closely,

7:02

or in some cases work with the songwriters personally

7:04

to kind of impart whatever mood he wanted,

7:07

And so he would create these albums that were

7:09

an entire mood. I just I

7:11

appreciate the way that he would sing too. He

7:13

would stand in the middle of an orchestra,

7:16

no headphones or anything, and

7:18

just like be part

7:20

of the music. I just I love that.

7:22

Yeah, and went deaf, did

7:25

he? I mean, I assume that's really

7:27

bad for you?

7:29

Yeah? Well back to My

7:32

Way for me. There are two distinct ways

7:34

to look at My Way. The first as a lyrical

7:36

autobiography or a sort of musical

7:39

mission statement of a very singular

7:41

man, Frank Sinatra. It was one

7:43

of the eleven songs he sang and his famous

7:45

nineteen seventy one retirement concert,

7:48

a show that was meant to wrap up his public life.

7:51

The retirement lasted two years, but let's

7:53

let's not talk about that. My Way was

7:55

intended to be a swan song for a

7:57

career that endured for a then impressive

7:59

three decades, from Bobby Soxsers

8:02

to the Beatles and beyond. And

8:04

there were many times when Frank was counted

8:06

out, but like the former boxer that he was,

8:08

he kept getting back up. And the song's

8:10

a summation of his rich life,

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sung by a guy who'd truly seen it

8:15

all, and only he could summon the

8:17

prerequisite swagger to pull off lines

8:19

like the record shows I took the

8:21

blows and did it my

8:24

way. I forgot.

8:26

He was also like basically the first guy

8:28

to start an artist owned record label too.

8:30

I can't he can't sell short for that, oh repriz.

8:33

Yeah, I mean let the record show.

8:35

Frank always knew how to make a buck. It

8:38

was very quick to act when he realized

8:40

that someone was taking a buck from

8:43

him, unless they were the mafia. Yes,

8:46

so My Way. One way of looking at it is as a musical

8:49

biography of autobiography of

8:51

Frank Sinatra himself. But to me,

8:53

the songs endured because of what it's done for

8:55

regular people. Singing

8:57

My Way is like the musical equivalent

9:00

of wearing a Superman cape or

9:02

a fine tuxedo, take your pick. The

9:04

real theme of My Way is that every

9:06

life is a triumph, not just Frank

9:08

Sinatras. That's why it regularly

9:11

tops karaoke charts around the world,

9:13

and it's also the most popular song be requested

9:15

at funerals. It's the center

9:17

point of event diagram between Trump's

9:19

inaugural ball any funeral

9:21

for murdered rapper Nipsey Hustle. It's

9:24

arguably the only thing those two events have in

9:26

common. This isn't my favorite

9:28

song by any stretch, sorry, mister

9:31

Anka, but I'd argue that for good

9:33

or ill, it lays claim to the closest

9:35

thing we've had to a new national anthem in

9:37

the last one hundred years. And

9:39

I don't necessarily mean that as a compliment.

9:42

It's a song that defines American individualism

9:45

and American exceptionalism. But

9:47

on a more positive slant, it's a song that will

9:49

live forever because it makes whoever sings it

9:52

feels like there's somebody damn it

9:55

well said thank you. I

9:57

should have saved that for a kicker. Well,

10:02

you know what, Let's screw the factoid

10:04

teasing. Let's just jump right in, folks.

10:07

Here was everything you didn't know about

10:09

My Way, made popular by

10:11

Frank Sinatra. I

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call this section having the gall the

10:22

French origins of My Way.

10:25

That's good, that's proud of that. Yeah,

10:27

thank you. The song My

10:29

Way has this origins in Heigel's beloved

10:31

France, where it was a hit in February

10:34

nineteen sixty eight under the name gomb

10:36

Debut. Dude, can you say that for me? My

10:39

French accent is so bad? Gomb debuted

10:41

Thank You, which means as usual,

10:44

and it was a hit by the French crooner Claude

10:46

Francois. I'm not familiar,

10:49

but the Guardian would describe him thus,

10:51

if it's possible to imagine a surrealistic

10:54

glic Rod Stewart, nothing

10:56

anyone would want to Francoise?

10:58

Was it our

11:01

second mention of Rod ste in

11:03

the first five minutes of this program?

11:05

So deeply unappealing? Like

11:08

didn't they already have that? Wasn't it an old

11:10

sex pest?

11:11

Serge Gainsburg? Yeah, I had the pause

11:13

and figure out which French singer you're talking

11:15

about.

11:16

Yeah, he's not a good He's not as good as a singer

11:18

as Rod Stewart, but as far as lush,

11:20

disgusting men convinced of their own genius,

11:22

go like, he's got.

11:24

To be up there right. I don't

11:26

think Rod Stewart's convinced of his own genius.

11:28

I think he's full aware of what he is. Okay,

11:31

interesting take. Claude Francois would also

11:33

have a hit with another song

11:35

that would be we worked in English, this time

11:38

Feelings by Morris Albert, which was a huge

11:40

hit. Though my way shares the

11:42

same melody as his golic cousin. The

11:44

words have absolutely nothing in common. Written

11:47

by Parisian composer Jacques Riveau, who

11:49

wrote three other songs that day,

11:52

and Giles Tibaut the lyrics

11:54

to comb debutued chronicle couple whose

11:56

relationship is disintegrating due

11:59

to the boredom of every day life, hence

12:01

the title as usual, And

12:04

it's quite the gloomy little number in

12:06

a uniquely French kind of way. It

12:09

opens with the line I get up, I

12:11

shake you, you don't wake up as

12:14

usual? Weird,

12:17

and it closes with we will make love

12:19

as usual, we will fake it

12:22

as usual, especially

12:25

for nineteen sixty eight too. Yeah

12:27

that's great, brutal Yeah yeah. Singer

12:30

Claude France Will received a co write on the

12:32

song because he tweaked the lyrics to be

12:34

more autobiographical, which is a

12:36

hell of a thing to admit. He'd recently

12:39

split up with the Iconic Yeah yea Chantu

12:41

Yeah yeahs say that the French

12:44

pop.

12:44

I don't even know the first I heard of that bullet

12:47

It was from mad Men, and then no one's ever talked

12:49

about it ever since.

12:50

I'm sorry, Iconic

12:53

Yeah Yeah Chantus France, Gaul

12:55

France gall their name is Redundant.

12:58

I just can't wait for the section to be over.

13:03

Sorry, I don't want to get into a whole thing about yeah yeah,

13:05

but.

13:06

Please get into a whole thing about yeah yeah. This isn't that long

13:08

of an episode. What is the point of it.

13:10

It's just like louds music. It's French pop.

13:12

It's French pop filtered through lounge.

13:15

Yeah, all right. Did

13:17

we need that at the time, No, but they

13:19

did. It's not about us,

13:21

just so funny had the good music.

13:23

Yeah, I mean, it's just so funny that at the height of like the British

13:26

rock revolution and you know, soul

13:29

in America, the French were like, what if we took

13:31

our already boring music and made it more

13:33

precious and fanciful.

13:37

I mean, I think a lot of European countries in the sixties

13:40

did that. I mean Germany had

13:42

I think it was called Schlager.

13:43

Germany had nothing before there

13:46

was a huge blank carry between Wagner and

13:48

crowd rock, and when the Beatles were in Hamburg,

13:50

there's the only interesting things that happened in German music.

13:52

I mean, yeah, it's you're correct. I sorry,

13:56

but Schlager was like German. Yeah yeah, it

13:58

was like, just that's not locking awful. Yeah

14:01

yeah, yeah yeah, it was just

14:04

In case you think this story can't get even more

14:06

frenchly melodramatic, Claude Francois

14:08

died a decade after the release of Comb Debbie

14:11

Twod while changing a light bulb

14:13

in a bathroom lamp while in his bathtub.

14:20

That is how the French Rod Stewart died.

14:23

That sounds like a Polish joke, gonna ry embarrassing

14:28

people.

14:32

Can't rock and roll electrocute

14:34

themselves in bathtubs accidentally

14:37

invented. Yeah, yeah, what

14:41

a decrepit culture. You should have shut

14:43

it down after Camu.

14:46

That was their high point.

14:47

It's just been a ever since Gerard Depardue

14:49

started getting starring roles. It's just been all downhill

14:52

from there. So what

14:55

are we talking about again?

14:56

David Bowie? Yes,

14:58

yes, she didn't think were going to get

15:00

the David Bowie in this episode, did you, Folks? In the

15:02

mid sixties, it was fairly common for successful

15:05

European hits to be rewritten with English

15:07

lyrics and issued in the lucrative US

15:10

and UK markets. That's the backstory

15:12

of songs like Seasons in the Sun by

15:14

Terry Jacks, which was another French song.

15:17

The Beach Boys almost released that song

15:19

in the early seventies before deciding to shelvet.

15:22

Dusty Springsfield's torch song you Don't

15:24

Have to Say You Love Me was originally an operatic

15:27

Italian pop song. Beyond

15:29

the Sea made popular by Bobby Darren

15:31

was a French song called Lamaire by Charles

15:33

Trenet. It's now or never made

15:35

popular for me at least by Elvis Presley

15:38

was an Italian standard called Oslo Mio.

15:40

Pretty famous song. Yeah, so it is Lamaire,

15:42

though, I mean that's Across the Sea by Bobby Darren. Yeah,

15:45

that's why I mentioned it. Oh yeah, you did say that. Sorry,

15:48

disassociate because it's to bok about the French

15:50

for too long. Yeah. Yeah, I just went back into a fugue

15:53

state. All

15:55

this to say, it became a fairly common practice

15:57

for young songwriters under contract to British

15:59

or America and publishers to get commissioned to

16:01

write English lyrics to these European imports,

16:04

and one such writer was none other than a

16:06

young David Bowie. Before Paul Anker

16:08

reworked Come Debbie Tuta's My Way for

16:11

Frank Sinatra, a pre fame,

16:13

pre space oddity. Bowie was the first

16:15

to take a shot at it. This was nineteen

16:17

sixty seven or early nineteen sixty eight, right

16:19

around the time he was singing about the Laughing

16:21

Gnome, so, as

16:23

you may expect, the results

16:26

were not spectacular. Bowie

16:28

himself would dismiss his attempts in a two thousand

16:30

and two interview by saying, I wrote

16:32

this god awful lyric. God it was

16:34

dreadful, but I think he's

16:36

been a little hard on himself. The lyrics are better

16:38

than you might expect for a twenty

16:41

one year old. Bowie's early

16:43

hero was a man named Anthony Newley,

16:46

who was a British light entertainment star

16:48

who's best known to our demographic

16:50

for co writing the songs in nineteen seventy one's

16:52

Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. He's

16:55

been described as the British equivalent of

16:57

Stephen Sondheim, which feels

16:59

generous. But he was also married

17:01

to Joan Collins, so he is that gone for

17:03

him, which is nice. All

17:07

this to say, it's not too much of a stretch to

17:09

see why Bowie would have been drawn to a melody

17:11

like this. His version was called

17:13

even a Fool Learns to Love, and

17:16

Anthony Newly had a big song called what kind

17:18

of fool am I? So, as

17:20

usual, David Bowie's influences are not

17:23

warn lightly. His lyrics

17:25

went like this, I'll try to give

17:27

my approximation to the meter that they would

17:30

have had in My Way melody. There

17:32

was a time, the laughing time

17:35

I took my heart to every party,

17:38

They'd point my way, how

17:41

are you today?

17:43

Will you make us laugh? Chase

17:45

our blues away? They're

17:48

a funny man. Won't let them down.

17:51

No, he'd dance in prance and

17:53

be their clown that

17:56

time, the laughing time,

17:58

when even a fool learns

18:01

to love? That's tough to sing.

18:03

Thank you, thank you. That's it's hard to find

18:06

where those words fit in the melody that I

18:08

know. There

18:10

is a demo version of Bowie singing these

18:12

lyrics, which went unheard until a BBC

18:15

Arena documentary on My Way in

18:17

nineteen seventy eight. Fittingly,

18:20

it was directed by famed UK TV

18:22

documentarian Alan Yentobb, who

18:24

directed the seminal Bowie dot Cracked

18:26

Actor for the BBC a few years earlier,

18:29

which if you're a Bowie fan you should definitely

18:31

check it out. That is when he is at his cochist.

18:35

That's the one where he's like paranoid in the back

18:37

of a limo, thinking that they're being followed in La

18:40

and I mean living on milk and peppers

18:42

and cocaine. Who among us? Yes,

18:45

yeah, there was.

18:46

A time, the

18:49

laughing time he

18:52

took his plot to

18:55

every.

18:55

Party they find.

18:58

His way Holly,

19:00

you today, William

19:03

make us laugh.

19:06

Jay sadly,

19:09

I don't believe Bowie's version of the proto

19:12

My Way has been officially released. Ultimately,

19:15

the world would get a very different version

19:17

of comb debut Twode. As Bowie

19:19

would recall during an interview with the legendary

19:22

British journalist Michael Parkinson. I

19:24

wrote some really terrible lyrics. I sent

19:26

it back and thought that'll be the last I hear

19:28

of that. Then I heard the song on

19:30

the radio and I thought, that's that tune.

19:32

It must be my song. But hang on, those

19:34

are different lyrics and it was Sinatra singing

19:37

My Way. Bowie was somewhat understandably

19:39

pissed off by the fact that his lyrics had

19:41

been elbowed in favor of somebody Else's

19:44

Paul Anka will Discover. He added

19:46

in the Parkinson interview that the success of Sinatra's

19:49

version quote really made me angry for so

19:51

long, for about a year. Eventually,

19:53

I thought, I can write something as big as

19:55

that, and I'll write one that sounds a bit like

19:57

it. So I did Life on Mars, which

20:00

was sort of my revenge trip on my Way.

20:03

Bowie acknowledged the influence on the back cover

20:05

of his nineteen seventy one album Hunky Dory,

20:08

writing inspired by Frankie

20:10

next to the song's title, do

20:13

you know that Life on Mars was My

20:16

Way? Yeah? I told you We're gonna get to some

20:18

interesting places in this episode. Can

20:20

you imagine frank singing that song? This is a part

20:23

of me that wonders if there was a time when

20:25

he was like trying to grab on to pop

20:27

cultural relevance, he would have. There's

20:29

some truly wild clips

20:31

of frank in like anahrew Jacket

20:34

and Love Beads with the Fifth Dimension on

20:36

like some TV special. It is it

20:39

is something who made that pairing

20:41

a talent booker was that high?

20:44

I mean it

20:46

kind of worked earlier in the decade he did a TV

20:48

special with Elvis.

20:49

I just imagine every single of those

20:52

misplaced interactions going like Phil

20:54

Hartman's impression of him on SNL with Connor,

20:57

like just being utterly baffled

20:59

but still like aggressively in

21:02

charge and a weird dick. But

21:05

now enter Anka.

21:07

I was trying to think of an enter Sandman thing, but I realized

21:09

I don't actually ever say enter Sandman in

21:12

that song.

21:12

Yeah

21:14

now

21:16

anyway, So, but we missed out

21:18

to mister Paul anchor Paul Anka,

21:21

not the semi low tier brand

21:24

of Bluetooth accessories.

21:25

And on your thanks,

21:29

Anka singer songwriter teen Idol,

21:31

youngest member of the rat Pack and personal friend

21:33

and co worker of Jordan Runt Toss. I

21:38

hear from it more than my own family anyway.

21:41

Anka has struck it big in the nineteen fifties with

21:43

songs like Diana, which he wrote when he was fifteen.

21:45

Man, that's like a Jackson Brown

21:48

writing these these days,

21:50

like sixteen or seventeen, after he'd been heartbroken

21:53

by like a decade older Nico blowing

21:55

his mind sexually.

21:57

I just saw him something he oo

22:01

Puppy Love, another one of his songs, Lonely

22:03

Boys the deathless, TikTok hit

22:06

put your Head on My Shoulder, which Paul loves

22:08

to change to put your legs on my shoulder, to

22:10

shock me during tapings.

22:13

Pause to let that one, belly fop, Johnny

22:17

Carson's Tonight Show theme, which was actually the

22:19

instrumental version of a song he'd written for a Nette Fornicello,

22:22

and get this not for

22:24

nothing, folks. He also wrote Buddy Holly's

22:26

last single it Doesn't Matter Anymore?

22:28

Did you know that? I didn't? I

22:31

mean for real? Though his own hit

22:33

songs, the Tonight Show theme,

22:36

Frankie and Annette songs, and

22:38

Buddy Holly's last single and this is pre

22:40

my way. The man is an octopus tendrils

22:43

and everything. The

22:45

man is an octopus eight

22:48

arms or otherwise. I

22:52

don't even know where I was coming with that. This

22:54

was all before the Beatles. Naturally,

22:57

Hey you Bob Dylan too, well

23:00

he didn't have the same chart success though. No,

23:03

but there wasn't money to be made from

23:05

writing your own songs until the Beatles came.

23:08

What year was free Yllain? I

23:10

think sixty three? What year

23:13

they come to America? February sixty four?

23:15

How about that? Well, come

23:18

on, there

23:20

wasn't hit potential.

23:21

What Jordan and I are debating is that essentially

23:23

the old model of the music industry was that you would

23:25

have professional songwriters. This is a tinpan alley

23:28

kind of situation where it was literally a

23:31

lot of Russian Jews sitting at pianos

23:33

in New York banging out songs like on

23:35

an eight hour shift, which would then be scouted

23:39

and shipped to whatever

23:41

kooner singer of the day was going

23:43

to sing it their label or their agent

23:46

or whatever deemed was going to be hit for them.

23:48

And then this changed with Bob Dylan.

23:51

Not that I'm a Dylan stand I'm just arguing for like historical

23:53

accuracy and not everything being

23:55

about the damn Beatles. You

23:58

know, Dylan really revolutionized publishing

24:00

rights and songwriters singing

24:03

and writing their own songs, because it used to be even

24:05

if you were a singer and you wrote your own

24:07

song, it would just immediately get taken away from

24:09

you.

24:10

And he and his voice.

24:11

Completely revolutionized that. And I would

24:14

argue the commercial impact came from people covering

24:16

his songs.

24:18

Oh certainly, yeah, but I think that came later.

24:20

We're tabling this, We're gonna have it out on this some

24:22

other time. I'm not talking about who's doing a first. I'm talking about

24:24

who did it in a way that made so much money

24:26

that everyone was like, oh, we got to do that now.

24:29

Oh okay, just changing the rules of debate

24:32

on me. Yeah, okay, that's fine.

24:34

Paul was on vacation in southern

24:36

France, where he spent most of the sixties

24:38

bouncing between Vegas and Europe, and when he

24:40

first heard combe debutide on

24:43

the radio, and as he would say, it was

24:45

a song, but I felt there was something different

24:47

in it. Something about the melody of the tune

24:49

captivated him, and he tracked down the publishers.

24:52

He got them to sign the adaptation, recording

24:54

and publishing rights over to him for

24:57

one dollar, an astounding

24:59

feat of negotiating, as

25:01

long as the melodies composers would retain

25:03

their original share of royalty rights.

25:06

I just want to say, it's funny because we have

25:08

to license my way for the podcast I'm

25:10

working on, and it's

25:12

extremely easy to get that song cleared

25:15

because even though he doesn't own all of it anymore,

25:17

they're just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, because they're so great.

25:20

Sure him for turning that song

25:22

into what it's become.

25:23

Yeah, this would have been at some

25:25

point in early nineteen sixty eight, and for

25:27

a few months Paul just sat on his new investment,

25:30

just mulling it over, you know, looking

25:33

at this little French nest egg in these

25:36

files. And that is until

25:38

his buddy Frank Sinatra called him up one night

25:40

and invited him to dinner.

25:44

We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right

25:46

back with more too much information in just

25:48

a moment.

26:00

Now we segue into the history

26:02

of the rat Pack. Just

26:04

the best name for a bunch of filthy

26:07

rich celebrities. Anko

26:10

was significantly younger than Frank, something like twenty

26:13

six year difference. They met

26:15

when Paul Anka started headlining at the Sands Hotel

26:17

in Vegas when he was just sixteen years old, and

26:20

at the time that was the home base for the rat Pack.

26:23

Frank and

26:25

Dean No like

26:27

Dean Dean forgot his

26:29

last name for a second mark Frank

26:31

Sinadra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, and

26:33

so forth. But they were actually the second

26:36

generation the popularized ones rat

26:38

Pack UH one point zero

26:40

as you put it, rat Pack Beta

26:42

version was led referred

26:44

to Humphrey Bogart and his running, drinking

26:46

and smoking buddies who would hang out in Vegas.

26:49

According to a possibly apocryphal story, the term

26:51

was coined by Bogie's wife, Lauren Bakal,

26:54

who walked in on Humphrey and his cronies and

26:56

said, insultingly, don't you look

26:58

like a regular rat pack? I

27:00

know it smelled crazy in there. It

27:04

was like pre the rise of commercial

27:06

deodorants. You're talking about a bunch of chain smoking

27:09

alcoholics. Sinatra

27:11

woorl lavender. Apparently lavender was a scent

27:14

that he liked very much. Oh smells like

27:16

cancer. Uh.

27:18

Lauren Pocau would later be linked romantically

27:20

with Sinatra after Bogert kicked It in

27:22

nineteen fifty seven. So perhaps she

27:24

was really the one that we owed the transference

27:27

of that nickname over to.

27:28

He died, He wasn't hanging out. That's

27:30

the different use of kicked it.

27:32

Oh yeah, sorry, he died horribly

27:34

of lung and throat cancer. Up right, Yeah,

27:37

seriously, don't smoke, especially

27:40

as.

27:40

Much as he did unfiltered

27:44

sawdust. Yeah,

27:47

Frank, it should be said, never referred to his

27:49

group as the rat pack.

27:50

Apparently he called it the Clan, which

27:53

is so much worse. Now

27:57

here's where we get into parsing it, because if you sticks

28:00

some else in front of clan, it sounds fine, like the

28:02

rat clan.

28:03

That's hilarious, that's cute, the

28:05

rat family. Just again, you're

28:08

just spinning out things that are adorable. The

28:10

clan. Yeah,

28:13

he did spell it with the c though, so at least he

28:15

had the awareness there. Paul

28:18

Anka would tell me that after

28:20

all the shows that they would do, there

28:23

was like a steam room that all the rat Pack guys

28:25

would go to and they would invite Paul along,

28:27

and Frank had everybody They had

28:29

a made custom robes

28:31

that he would embroider with the nicknames Frank gave everybody

28:34

nicknamed. Paul was the kid because he

28:36

was still like a teenager at this time. I

28:38

think Frank's was the Pope. I want to say

28:42

Dean's was Dago because racism,

28:46

and Sammy's

28:48

was Smoky. I think for smoking the bear,

28:51

is that racist? I think so, I

28:53

assume, yeah, Okay.

28:56

Anyway, Sinatra's history with Vegas really

28:58

began in nineteen fifty three, when he started singing

29:00

in the Copa room at the Sands. The

29:02

hotel was aptly named At this point in Vegas

29:04

history, the town was still a dusty desert

29:06

outpost. The Sands Hotel was one

29:08

of the first truly elegant establishments, and Frank

29:11

who would be joined by Dean Martin, Sammy Davis

29:13

Junior, Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop.

29:16

Listed in descending order of rank. You

29:18

noted so Dean Martin,

29:21

Lieutenant, Sammy Davis, Secretary,

29:23

Peter Lawford Assistant to

29:25

the Secretary, and Joey Bishop intern.

29:28

Yeah. The only cool thing about Joey Bishop is that he

29:30

gave Regis philip In his big break. He had a

29:32

talk show and then Regis philbim was like is Ed

29:34

McMahon. Basically, I don't care

29:36

about that.

29:38

This group was largely responsible for bringing a dose

29:40

of glamour to the town and helping make Las Vegas

29:42

a tourist destination. Prior to this,

29:45

hoteliers were struggling to fill their new casino

29:47

resorts. Now people flocked to the area for a

29:49

chance to rub shoulders with Sinatra and Co, who

29:52

were famous for treating the town as their personal playground.

29:54

You'd see them at casinos, dropping in on each other's

29:56

performance as it lounges up and down the strip. As

29:59

a result, they were treated like kings by the

30:02

powers that be in the town and generally allowed

30:04

to do whatever they wanted. Sometimes this

30:06

would result in hilariously diva esque or

30:08

divo esque, not like the band,

30:10

but the masculine form of the word diva. The

30:13

joke is always better when you explain it. For

30:15

example, one of the matre d's at the Kopa

30:17

Room, a guy named George Levin, recalled that Sinatra

30:19

had a phobia of mushrooms. When he discovered

30:22

some of his dish at the White Gloved Garden

30:24

Room restaurant, he was displeased.

30:27

As Levin would later recall, everything was silver

30:29

at that time, silver plates and silver toppings.

30:32

Frank lifts the cover up in their mushrooms.

30:34

He took the bowl and threw it over his head.

30:37

I stepped to the side and I started to laugh.

30:40

Frank gets up and he starts coming after me,

30:42

and I run into the kitchen. He comes

30:44

after me into the kitchen and says to me, you

30:46

want to fight. I said, I'm not a fighter,

30:48

I'm a lover. Were they

30:50

making eye contact anyway?

30:53

Sinatra? He says. Sinatra broke up. He

30:55

hugged me and that was it. Sinatra

30:57

wud ultimately depart the Sands for the

30:59

newly build Caesar's Palace. On

31:01

September eleventh, nineteen

31:04

sixty seven. The lead in the

31:06

New York Times piece covering his exit read, Frank

31:09

Sinatra walked out on his contract with the Sands

31:11

Hotel last night because the management quote

31:13

cut off his credit. A spokesman for

31:15

the singer said, today, you see the

31:17

Sands have been sold to Howard Hughes

31:20

and old pissbottle Howie, who was

31:22

not as lax in his attitudes towards Sinatra's

31:24

casino debts.

31:25

Truly hilarious nickname. Thank you for putting

31:27

that in there. You know, C's famously

31:29

died surrounded by or did he clean up

31:31

first? So he died among him? He didn't clean

31:34

up.

31:34

No, he died with broken the hypodermic

31:36

needles broken off under his skin and was

31:39

like seventy six pounds.

31:40

Surrounded by jars of his own piss

31:42

and long gross

31:44

fingernails.

31:45

Yeah, long hair and beard watching

31:47

the same weird sixty sci

31:49

fi movie Ice Station Zebra over and over

31:52

and over again and.

31:53

Yeah again, who among

31:55

us? Sinatra's

31:57

rage at this turn of events was swift.

32:00

According to witnesses, he climbed onto one of the casino

32:02

tables and began screaming before throwing a

32:04

chair at the casino boss. The pit boss

32:06

then responded by punching him in the face. Sinatra

32:10

left the hotel via the most dramatic and immediate

32:12

route. He drove a golf cart through

32:14

a window, and the following day

32:17

upped sticks to Seas Palace.

32:20

Very nicely read I just want to praise you for

32:22

that. That was extremely well delivered.

32:24

Oh well, thank you. So

32:26

that wasn't very cool. But on the flip side,

32:29

or was it, well,

32:31

you put it that way, it was very cool. But

32:34

this is very cool too. S

32:36

Ultra also put himself on the line to help

32:38

fight racial segregation in Las Vegas

32:41

in the mid fifties. Hotel owners knew

32:43

they had the book Black Acts because the revenue

32:45

they brought was enormous, but headliners

32:47

like Lena Horne and Fat Stamino were forbidden

32:49

from meeting in the dining room at the venues

32:51

where they performed. Instead,

32:54

they were sequestion in the kitchen or sometimes

32:56

a dressing room. There's a famous story

32:58

where Frank saw Inn that King Cole eating

33:00

in his dressing room by himself. Sinatra

33:02

invited him to be his guest at his table in the whites

33:04

only dining room, summoning

33:07

a hutzpa that only fifties era Sinatra

33:09

could muster. He told the hotel

33:11

management that if African Americans weren't allowed

33:13

in the dining room, he would have the entire weight

33:15

staff fired. I have no idea

33:18

whether or not he actually had the authority to do that,

33:20

but surely no one doubted him.

33:23

He would also assign some of his bodyguards

33:25

to follow some of the black acts around, telling

33:27

them, if anyone looks at them, the black

33:29

art is funny, break both their legs.

33:32

That does rule. I love a guy who

33:34

gave money to both the NAACP and

33:36

the mob. That seems that's

33:38

nice. Yeah, he's just he's

33:41

leveling all sides. Yeah.

33:45

Sinatra threatened to end the rat Pack's popular

33:47

summat at the Sands Show if Sammy Davis

33:49

Junior wasn't allowed to stay at the same hotel

33:51

with the others. Hotel management

33:54

gave in the Sinatra's demands and Sammy

33:56

was given a suite, helping to pave the way

33:58

for equal treatment of black entertainment in the

34:00

city. Well, since we're talking

34:02

about the rat pack and Vegas, we should really

34:04

close the loop and touch on the mob and

34:06

JFK. Sinatra met Kennedy

34:09

through second tier rat packer Peter Lawford,

34:11

who was married to JFK's sister, Patricia

34:13

Kennedy at the time. Frank

34:16

contributed Kennedy's campaign theme tune,

34:18

which was a revamped version of Sammy Cohn's

34:20

High Hopes. With In nineteen

34:22

sixty election against Richard Nixon started to look

34:24

a little too close for comfort, Kennedy

34:27

patriarch Joe Senior put in a call

34:29

to Sinatra and supposedly

34:31

said, I'm going to ask you a favor. I

34:33

need your help in Illinois and West Virginia.

34:35

I want you to talk to the guys you know in the mob

34:37

to get the unions of both states to vote for Kennedy.

34:41

Frank had known these guys since he was singing in bootleg

34:43

saloons in the thirties, but his ties with

34:45

them had really become cemented when he started

34:48

working in Las Vegas, because Vegas

34:50

was where all the mobsters went in the forties and

34:52

fifties, because all the illegal stuff they did

34:54

back east was legal there. Brothels,

34:57

gambling. Surely there

34:59

are others of things, hunting men for sport,

35:03

I assume. Yeah,

35:06

Suddenly they went from being organized crime

35:08

kingpins in the East to being legitimate businessmen

35:10

in Las Vegas on you guys have seen

35:12

The Godfather, right. Plus

35:15

it was out in the desert where law enforcement

35:17

and regulations weren't very strict, so

35:19

it was a good place to kind of dip

35:22

your toes in legitimate business without

35:24

having to really be all that strict about it. Anyway,

35:27

when Joe Kennedy asked for help, Frank

35:29

put in a call to Chicago mob boss San

35:31

Jiancana. Sam

35:33

liked hanging out with Frank because he liked hanging out with famous

35:36

people, and Frank liked hanging out with mob guys

35:38

because it enhanced this bad boy reputation,

35:41

So it's a perfect match. Samsu

35:43

and Khana had a vested interest in Kennedy owing

35:45

him a favor since the FBI were tailing

35:47

him day and night, and he figured

35:49

that having a sitting president in his corner would

35:52

be pretty helpful for calling off

35:54

the dogs. This backfired

35:56

when JFK went and appointed his brother Robert

35:58

as Attorney General. RFK

36:01

famously became one of the most fervent anti

36:03

mafia crusaders this country has ever

36:05

seen. The mobsters

36:08

were apparently furious at these little, ungrateful

36:10

Boston brats who were biting the pinky

36:12

ring clad hands that fed them.

36:16

No, not even no, no, that's

36:18

good. Just

36:21

tried carefully, you know, sensitively.

36:24

This is still a sensitive topic in the community.

36:28

I have distant family members who split on the ground

36:30

whenever RFK is mentioned. I

36:32

don't I was making that up. Well.

36:36

This is all cited as a circumstantial evidence

36:38

by conspiracy theorists who say that the

36:41

mob at a hand and killing JFK in

36:43

November nineteen sixty three. Another

36:46

way Frank possibly helped

36:48

set the wheels in motion for the most infamous

36:50

assassination in American history is

36:53

by introducing JFK to was former

36:55

girlfriend, Judith Campbell. Campbell

36:57

would go on to become Kennedy's mistress as

37:00

well as Sam gen Conna's mistress. Ooh.

37:03

This is a relatively open secret

37:05

in government circles, and the Court at Camelot

37:08

was understandably freaked that the president

37:10

was sharing a girlfriend with one of the most prominent

37:13

mob bosses in the country. Who

37:15

his own brother was trying to put away. This

37:17

is like breaking bad the way the layers

37:20

here. I mean, you couldn't even write this.

37:22

It seems to what do you I mean, like, yeah, what do you even

37:24

put it? When there was like one of the biggest musicians in the

37:26

world was like in

37:29

bed with the mob and the president was

37:31

fighting the mob and the president was also

37:33

sleeping with the mob guy's girlfriend. Like

37:36

you imagine that. That's like a Shakespeare

37:38

farce. I mean, that's like a right

37:40

people would the comparison be like it

37:44

was like some Italian prime

37:46

minister Berlosconi. Well, Pearl

37:48

SCARONI, yeah, just did it for real with porn

37:50

stars. But who's like the

37:53

big male star that It's got to be some

37:55

country to be hilarious. It was some country

37:57

just in Timberlake. No, no,

38:01

well, finish what you're asking.

38:04

Luke Combs, like if what it was like the most like

38:06

milk toast, like good old boy country

38:08

artist and he was like, you know, trying

38:11

to impressure Joe Biden. But at the same

38:13

time he was also like in QAnon

38:16

and one of the QAnon women.

38:19

Was having sex with Joe Biden.

38:21

Does that make sense? Sinatra was a milk

38:23

toast though. I feel like he still had kind of but he

38:26

was like mainstream appeal, you know. I mean like that's

38:28

what I'm saying. JT. His time is

38:30

pasted. Also at Franks by nineteen sixty.

38:33

I'm warning you,

38:36

you're just like the community is getting mad at

38:38

me. You are.

38:39

You are pushing a lot of my buttons today.

38:44

I mean, Okay, how is Luke Colmbs more like Sinatra

38:47

than JT? I don't know, he just had that big

38:49

hit. I was thinking like chart topping, you know, like

38:51

Okay, I just think, yeah, I don't

38:53

know, they aren't like all the male stars

38:55

now, like coming from country. I

38:58

just heard of this guy jelly Roll. You

39:00

heard of him, jelly Roll Morton. No.

39:03

No, he's a large man with face tattoos.

39:07

So it is jelly Roll Morton. No.

39:09

I don't think he had a face tattoo. No,

39:11

I don't care to know about that. Yeah,

39:14

you wouldn't would make you unhappy. FBI

39:19

chief slash garbage human Jaggar Hoover

39:21

wrote irate memos to Bobby Kennedy

39:23

while wearing women's underpants. Probably

39:26

yes, the hypocrisy of Jaeger

39:28

Hoover that's a whole other podcast.

39:30

Oh yeah, my fun my, funniest

39:33

niche fact about Old Hooves is,

39:35

uh, j Eddie

39:38

Hooves as we call him around the way.

39:41

Uh. Matti Klarwine

39:43

is this famous like psychedelic album sleeve

39:45

designer painter from the sixties. He did the cover

39:47

of a Braxis by Santana,

39:50

and he also did the cover of Live

39:52

Evil, which is a Miles Davis live album,

39:54

and on the back half of it

39:56

is this repulsive frog

39:59

beat looking thing that's very like

40:01

obviously psychedelic, and he said his facial

40:04

model for it was j Eddie

40:06

Hooves.

40:07

Oh yeah, Oh, you can totally tell. Yeah,

40:09

So that's funny. That is very funny. So

40:12

Jaeger Hoover wrote furious memos

40:14

to Bobby Kennedy about the fact that his brother was

40:17

sleeping with a mobster's

40:19

mole. Is that what you'd call her? Oh, mobster's

40:22

girlfriend. Yeah.

40:24

Needless to say, all of us strain the friendship

40:26

between Sinatra and JFK, and

40:28

soon relations between them began to sour.

40:31

But the real split between Frank and JFK

40:34

came in March nineteen sixty two,

40:36

when Kennedy was supposed to visit Sinatra at

40:38

his home in Palm Springs. Frank

40:40

was so thrilled about hosting the President that

40:43

he went all out and had his tennis court

40:45

turned into a helicopter pad for

40:47

the President's Marine one chopper to land.

40:49

But then at the last minute, Kennedy

40:52

called and told him that he was going to stay down the street

40:54

with Bing Crosby instead. Bing

40:56

Crosby a well known Republican

40:58

who also had mop It's worth noting.

41:02

Kennedy claimed that this was due to security concerns,

41:04

but Sinatra knew it was because Bobby Kennedy

41:07

was putting the muscle on JFK to

41:09

distance himself from him, and

41:11

consequently Sinatra took it as a betrayal.

41:14

He was so mad that he went into the backyard

41:16

at night, turned on the lights

41:18

and smashed up the helipad with a sledgehammer,

41:23

with Vince Grolty's Christmas

41:26

Time is Ar playing in the background.

41:29

Oh that's so funny. How mad do you have to

41:31

be to smash up an entire helipad

41:33

by yourself with a sledgehammer? I

41:36

mean, Frank, Oh, a rageful

41:38

man, to be sure, yes, yes, also

41:40

a slight one, you know. I

41:43

don't think he was that. This is post Bobby

41:45

Socks or era.

41:45

He was like he got some

41:48

he had some drinking weight on him, but I think he was ever

41:50

like beefy.

41:51

You know, Paul

41:54

was talking the other day. This was great. I mean,

41:56

just it's so weird that, like, I talked

41:58

to this guy fairly text with this guy

42:00

at a fairly regular basis. He was like, yeah,

42:03

and that King Cole. He was really grateful to Frank

42:05

about, you know, all that he did for him, helping

42:07

integrate you know, the casinos and stuff, and

42:09

helping fight racism in Vegas. But he

42:11

didn't really like hanging out with Frank because

42:14

and his voice kind of trolled off, and I was like, well why,

42:16

He's like, well, it's a tough crowd to hang

42:18

out with. They just it was tough

42:21

to keep up with Frank and those guys just drinking

42:23

wise, joking wise, everything wise,

42:25

really racially. Yeah.

42:27

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it was in

42:30

hell for Sam a man. Yeah,

42:32

oh my god god. Yeah.

42:35

So yeah, So Frank was really heartbroken that JFK

42:38

blew him off and making matters worse

42:40

for him. The mafia still thought he

42:42

was buddy buddy with the Kennedys, and so they

42:44

didn't trust him anymore either. And

42:47

the real falling out with Frank and the mob cam

42:49

when then the Vada Gaming Commission started

42:51

to investigate mob run casinos in

42:53

nineteen sixty three, which possibly

42:55

not coincidentally, was the year that JFK was murdered.

42:59

Ji and con blamed this investigation

43:01

in the mob run casinos on Sinatra,

43:04

which was untrue, but he severed their relationship,

43:07

and Mobster started openly talking about

43:09

assassinating Sinatra and Dean

43:12

or poking Sammy Davis's other eye

43:14

out he lost an eye in a

43:16

car accident in the fifties. All of this

43:18

is charming. Yeah, that's Dube because

43:20

you know that was the one that he could have pulled off

43:23

with zero repercussions. Kill

43:27

and Frank or Dean Martin probably would have gotten some

43:29

notice from the press, but they you would

43:31

have been able to kill Sammy Davis because of racism

43:34

or blind him, I'll say. Evidence

43:36

of all this came to light after the FBI wiretapped

43:39

g and Conna's phones. Frank's

43:41

FBI file, meanwhile, has nothing to sneeze

43:43

at either. He was under surveillance

43:46

since the forties due to his new deal politics

43:48

during the Roosevelt administration. Sinatra

43:52

has a file that totals some twenty

43:54

four hundred and three pages, some

43:56

of which include accounts of him as a target

43:58

of death threats and extortion

44:00

schemes. Hell yeah, so

44:03

this is a rough time for Frank Kenny.

44:05

Administration didn't like him, the mobsters didn't

44:07

like him. He was on his way out musically

44:09

because the Beatles had kind of supplanted him by

44:11

the late sixties. He was having

44:13

a tough time and this is why he started

44:16

to think about retirement. Heigel,

44:19

take us there, retirement

44:23

and you and you a primer, what

44:25

can it do for you? Around

44:29

the same time, Sinatra's divorce from twenty

44:31

one year old Mia Pharaoh was almost finalized.

44:34

That was was that over Rosemary's Baby? Yeah?

44:37

Yeah, they were supposed to make a movie together and

44:39

Rosemary's Baby shoot ran long

44:41

and she refused to leave, and

44:43

then she was served divorce papers

44:46

on the set. And if I recall,

44:48

Harkley ran into the open embrace

44:50

of Roman Polanski Black

44:54

not the man you want comforting you. Yeah,

44:56

but I do want to say she was on the right side of history

44:58

there. Well, yeah, what movie did he make.

45:01

Oh it was bad.

45:02

It has to be called like running wild or

45:04

like you know. No, he did

45:06

a lot of like serious with

45:09

the.

45:09

Golden arm Manchurian Candidate, et

45:11

cetera, et cetera. I think it was called

45:13

the Detective. That was kind of

45:15

on the nose. Yeah.

45:19

So, at his wits end, Sinatra decided he

45:21

was going to retire from public life again

45:24

who among us? While in Miami

45:26

making the thriller Lady and Cement.

45:29

Yeah, this is I'm talking about Lady

45:33

and Cement.

45:34

Oh what's it about? I

45:38

think Lady Cement referred to murdered

45:41

mob victims. No, I get it.

45:43

Okay, did you not? Did you? I

45:47

thought you were thinking about like like some

45:49

Benny Hill like woman who's like, you know, in

45:51

a bikini running around and excellently falling into

45:53

a wheelbarrow of like wet Cement. And I mean

45:55

it was Raquel Welch. So can it be both true?

46:00

So he called Paul Anka to dinner and

46:02

said, kid, we're going to do dinner and

46:04

told him per Anka's recollection. I'm

46:07

quitting the business. I'm sick of it. I'm getting the

46:09

hell out, but I'm doing one more album

46:11

and you never wrote me that song. There

46:13

had been a long standing and possibly tongue in cheek

46:15

request from Sinatra to Paul to write him a song,

46:17

but Anka was always too intimidated. He

46:20

would say, I couldn't. I was scared to

46:22

death. I was writing all this teen stuff. In

46:24

a different interview, he added, you have to remember, as

46:26

you're growing and maturing and working at your craft,

46:28

that's not overnight. There's a certain kind

46:30

of song that you write for your age, and your intellect

46:33

comes from learning your craft and maturing as a person.

46:35

I would never would have written the song when I was younger.

46:38

I wasn't capable. But Sinatra was always

46:40

talking about aging. He hated getting old,

46:42

he hated old age, and the song is about

46:44

being old. You're old, your vintage. But it

46:46

bugged me that I couldn't write him a song because

46:48

I loved him and adored him like all of us did. So

46:51

I decided that day I was going to do it.

46:54

The day finally came when Anka was back in his apartment

46:56

in New York City. It was just after

46:59

one am once tore me City night, when

47:01

Anka sat down his IBM electric typewriter

47:03

and began putting words to the French melody that he'd

47:05

loved so much. He put himself

47:08

in Frank's shoes and began to write the song he felt

47:10

Frank would have written. I thought,

47:12

what would Frank do with this melody if he were

47:14

a writer. All of a sudden, it

47:16

just came to me. And now the end is near.

47:19

I faced the final curtain. The

47:21

lyrics went from being about a dead love affair

47:23

to a man looking back fondly on a life

47:25

he'd lived on his own terms and the

47:27

mobs. Even

47:32

the word choice was steeped in Sinatra's own unique

47:34

dialect. I used words that I

47:36

would never use, Anka said, I ate it up

47:38

and spit it out, But that's the way he talked.

47:40

The rat pack guys. They like to talk like mob

47:43

guys. Musically, it was interesting

47:45

because it had an interval of a sixth, which is an

47:47

aspiring interval because it likes to resolve

47:49

to a fifth, and gave the song stirring

47:51

and theemic quality. And for the

47:54

title, Anka more or less looked to the zeitgeist.

47:56

He said, I read a lot of periodicals and

47:59

I noticed everything was my this and my that.

48:02

We were in the me generation and Frank became

48:04

the guy for me to use to say that. Anka

48:07

ultimately finished the song as the sun came up at

48:09

dawn, and at last he knew he had a

48:11

song that was worthy of his idol. He

48:13

called Sinatra, who is at Caesar's Palace in Vegas,

48:16

having already crashed his golf cart through a window

48:18

of the sands, and said, I've got something

48:20

really special for you. He recorded

48:22

a demo of the song and flew to Vegas to play

48:24

it for Sinatra, who immediately replied,

48:26

I'm doing it. Two months

48:28

later went by before Anka got a call from Frank.

48:31

He says, kid, listen to this, and puts the phone

48:33

up to the speaker. I heard My

48:35

Way playing for the first time, and I started

48:37

to cry.

48:38

That's cute. Yeah, I mean, I actually

48:41

have tape of Paul talking

48:43

about writing My Way on a recent

48:45

episode of our podcast Our

48:47

Way. We had Gail King on this

48:49

week's episode, actually, and the topic

48:52

came up, and I don't think

48:54

he'd mind if I spiced that in right here. It's

48:56

just cool. It was rare that we actually get to hear

48:58

the person who wrote whatever it is we're talking

49:00

about discussing it, and it's

49:03

a nice little plug for the

49:06

show. So here we go, put a little teaser in for

49:08

that right here.

49:08

Well, I started with those guys, Gail

49:11

back in the early fifties.

49:14

I went to Vegas at fifty eight, and then I wound

49:16

up with the rat Pack, and there with guys

49:19

I idolized, Sinatra, Sammy Davis,

49:21

who was the most talented of everybody, and

49:23

Dean Martin, and you know, through those

49:26

years I got to know them well, but I was still

49:28

the kid. You know. These guys were twice my

49:31

age, but I was working for the mob like

49:33

they were, and they controlled

49:35

and we had our life and we were having

49:37

and frolicking and having fun. But I'd

49:39

always wanted to write for Sinatra because he

49:41

was like the guy. And I was

49:43

at the Fountain Blue Hotel in

49:45

the late sixties. He

49:48

was in town doing a film called Lady

49:50

in Cement, and with the guys we

49:52

worked for, it could have been a documentary, you know,

49:55

but he was he was very

49:57

cool. And he called me up and he said,

50:00

dinner, dinner, I want to talk to you. So I went to dinner

50:02

with him. So we're at dinner and one

50:04

thing led to another. He said, kid, I'm quitting show because

50:06

I've had enough. I'm tired. Rat packs

50:09

over. Yeah,

50:12

we all had nicknames. Sammy had a name,

50:14

Dean had a name. I was the kid, and we're

50:16

on our bath roads because all the fun was in the

50:18

steam room when our shows were

50:20

over it. We won't go into that. So

50:24

he at dinner, he said, I'm quitting

50:26

and I wan to do one more album with Don And he

50:28

said, you never wrote me a

50:30

song. So I go home to New York.

50:32

I sit down. In five hours, I

50:35

finished the lyric of my Way, and

50:37

I fly out to Vegas the next night and

50:41

he said, kid, I love it. Two months later

50:43

he called and said from

50:45

a studio in La he said, kid,

50:48

listen to this, and he played it over

50:50

the phone. That's the first time I heard it. I

50:53

started crying because my life

50:55

changed, so did His was such a big hit.

50:57

He stayed for ten years.

50:59

That your point, he was retiring, but he

51:01

stayed ten more years because the song

51:04

was huge.

51:04

But when you finished that, because the song still,

51:07

that song still holds up still. When

51:10

you finished it, did you know that it was a

51:12

hit? Did you know that?

51:13

I know it was different and very special.

51:15

Different.

51:15

Yeah, you don't it was a spiritual

51:17

moment for me. I believe that a lot of creative

51:20

people are really sensing some

51:22

kind of spiritualism in creative

51:25

and I knew that it was different than everything

51:27

else that had ever written. And I

51:30

was kind of metaphorically writing

51:32

it with him in mind, because I was moved

51:34

to the fact that he was leaving. So I

51:36

wrote it as if he were writing. But it just came

51:38

together, and it hit me very

51:41

very hard that I knew it was. It was going

51:43

to be something very special.

51:44

We all knew so.

51:47

In the history books, it says that Frank Sinatra

51:49

recorded My Way on December thirtieth, nineteen

51:51

sixty eight, at Western Records in LA where

51:54

so many classic sixties pop tunes were cut.

51:56

There's a favorite haunt of Jordan's beloved

51:58

Brian Wilson, who worked on What Else Pet

52:01

Sounds there. Sinatra was a night

52:03

owl, as Paul Anka is to this day.

52:05

Yeah, guys up like all night. But

52:07

this was a rare afternoon recording session. At

52:10

roughly three pm, forty musicians strolled

52:12

into the studio. If you're interested,

52:15

Lou Levy took over his pianist for this song

52:17

with Sinatra. Regular Bill Miller cut his hand

52:19

on a shart of glass. Miller did, however,

52:21

conduct the orchestra for the recording. But

52:24

here's where it gets weird, he

52:27

said, not knowing

52:29

what this story was going to be.

52:33

There's a story that the recording of My Way was attended

52:35

by none other than George guitar

52:38

beatle Harrison. Is

52:41

that his popular damn that just came out of my

52:43

mouth? I'm an idiot. This story

52:45

comes from his wife, Patty Boyd, who discussed

52:47

it in both her memoir and in twenty twenty two

52:49

photo book, which contains a photo of her, George

52:52

and Sinatra at a recording studio control

52:54

booth, and the caption reads, while

52:56

in Los Angeles, George and I were invited to go and

52:58

meet Frank Sinatra and his recording studio. Thrilled,

53:01

we were ushered upstairs to the control room, where Frank

53:03

was surrounded by many guys at the mixing desk. We

53:05

briefly met him before he disappeared downstairs.

53:08

We then watched as he proceeded to sing My Way

53:10

with a full orchestra. Wow, it

53:13

was extraordinary. It

53:15

doesn't recite quite as well as

53:17

it reads, although with the whole period no

53:19

exclamation point. Wow, it

53:21

was extraordinary.

53:23

She's English. Listen.

53:25

Yeah, right, he

53:27

listened back to this one take and said, Okay,

53:29

that's it, let's go. We pulled himTo

53:32

Limos to a club. When we got there, George

53:34

quite rightly thought he would sit next to Frank, but

53:36

the big guys from the Bronx moved him down the table.

53:39

And you have firsthand confirmation of this story

53:42

from Patty.

53:43

Yeah, she interviewed her for this book and she said

53:45

that she was there the night Frank recorded My

53:47

Way. But she lied

53:49

to your faces. True. Yeah, she's

53:53

been lying to all of us this whole goddamn

53:56

time. She's never even met George. How

53:59

far does this rabbit hole go? Never

54:01

met Eric Clapton, never met any of these people.

54:04

So Beatle nerds and Sinatra nerds are

54:06

probably two of the most archival obsessed

54:08

sub fans. Yeah, they have receipts

54:11

and prove that Patty's

54:14

incorrect. George and Patty

54:16

were in LA in mid November to,

54:19

among other things, appear on the Smothers Brothers Comedy

54:21

Hour TV show and record with Apple artist

54:24

Jackie Lomax. Jackie

54:29

Lomax pull out

54:31

some weird Beatle thing. What's he known for.

54:33

He was in a Liverpool band when the Beatles

54:35

were in their Cavern days, and then he was one of the

54:37

first artists signed to Apple Records,

54:39

the Beatles record label that they started in

54:41

nineteen sixty eight, and George

54:44

Harrison took him under his wing and

54:46

gave him a song that he'd written called Sour

54:49

Milk Sea, which is written around the same

54:51

time that George is writing songs for the White album.

54:53

It's like a good song. It deserved to do

54:55

a lot better. And I want to say

54:57

it's got some crazy star to

55:00

line up with. Eric

55:04

Clapton's on it, Nicky Hopkins on it, Ringos

55:07

on it, Paul McCartney's on it, a

55:10

lot of the Wrecking Crew guys like Larry Nektel

55:12

and Joe Osborne and Klaus

55:15

Vorman's on it too. Yeah, it's got like a

55:17

really stacked lineup. But yeah,

55:20

didn't didn't really do much. Thank

55:22

you, Jordan.

55:24

We need a little audio stinger for when your Beatles is

55:27

done every episode. Soyer

55:29

Milk Sea is so disgusting, I

55:31

know, awful, awful turnip

55:33

phrase. So,

55:36

having said all that, evidence suggests that George and Patty

55:38

dropped in on Sinatra November twelfth, nineteen

55:40

sixty eight, during which time he recorded

55:42

the songs Little Green Apples, Gentle

55:44

on My Mind and by the time I get to Phoenix

55:47

for his album Cycles. Frank's

55:49

preferred technique was to work live in the studio by

55:51

standing in the middle of an orchestra, and he often

55:53

only did one or two takes. So

55:56

it is possible that Sinatra performed a version of

55:58

My Way for the benefit of George and his super

56:00

hot model wife, or

56:03

she's.

56:04

Spent most of the sixties in a drugs

56:09

I will say it probably sucked to

56:11

be patty board around Frank Sinatra. He

56:13

liked all bonds, Oh yeah,

56:15

and he was a weird, angry little man.

56:20

Hey mc garter was a blonde though, that's

56:22

true, I guess I'm thinking of I mean, he

56:25

just divorced me a Pharaoh. M hm.

56:27

He's like, he's hey, now, I got a long haired

56:29

Mia in front of me because

56:33

me and Pharaoh cut her hair famously against

56:35

Frank's wishes. Something possibly I.

56:38

Thought it was when she was on Peyton Place

56:40

and it was almost like a Britney Spears moment where she

56:42

was like, I'm sick of this. I'm sick of being like because

56:44

Peyton Place was like this, like the Dawson's

56:46

Creak of its day, and

56:49

she was this teen star and she was like trying

56:51

to rebel against that. That's that's my dim

56:53

memory of that. I don't know. I

56:55

wasn't there.

56:59

It is also worth noting, to further

57:01

puncture an elderly legends

57:04

recollections of her youth, that Western

57:06

Studios where My Waiver was recorded is all

57:09

on one floor and doesn't have an upstairs

57:11

downstairs. So you,

57:13

Patty Boyd, you've

57:15

had it too easy for too damn Longe,

57:19

for holding your feet to the fire.

57:21

She just sold all the love notes she got

57:23

from Eric Clapton and the painting they use

57:26

for the Leila album cover. Sad

57:29

between the George years and the Eric Clapton

57:32

years. He's got a lot of good stuff. Always makes

57:34

me sad when these people of a certain age part

57:36

with their treasures, and that these big auctions.

57:39

You gotta have something when you don't have any talent. She's

57:43

a photographer. In a cute

57:45

coda to the Beatles Sinatra connection,

57:48

Frank would later record George's Something,

57:50

calling it one of the best love songs written

57:53

in fifty or one hundred years.

57:54

And he also introduced it as my favorite Lennon

57:57

McCartney composition.

57:58

Yes, which I'm sure annoyed George

58:01

to no ends, but it must have given

58:03

him a small amount of satisfaction

58:05

because Frank had reportedly rejected

58:08

a song that Paul McCartney had pitched

58:10

him at the rule.

58:14

Uh cut to Paul angrily driving a tug

58:17

boat, his fists white

58:20

knuckled as he listens to.

58:23

But still yeah, of course

58:25

in his like eighties mullet phase. Oh

58:27

I'm just I'm just so angry right now,

58:32

that's a really that's a very good Paul. I'm

58:35

I'm yeah, I'm very impressed. And you

58:37

know I would know, and she would

58:39

you would. No. So

58:42

the song that Paul pitched him was called Suicide,

58:46

which is somehow worse

58:48

than Sour Milk Sea for a title.

58:50

I'll talk about him over correcting, trying

58:52

to fix his image as the lame Beatle.

58:55

No, it gets worse. He wrote the song as

58:57

a teenager back in Liverpool, a

59:00

tongue in cheek Sinatra parody, because

59:02

remember, one of the first songs that Paul ever wrote was

59:04

when I'm sixty four. This is the era when he

59:07

was trying to make a go of writing, like, you

59:09

know, music hall songs. So

59:11

when the man himself came calling, Paul

59:14

had no problem sending one of the greatest interpreters

59:16

a popular song, a joke tune that

59:19

he'd written as a fourteen year old. This

59:22

is one of the ways that Paul McCartney and Paul Anka are

59:24

different. Paul Anka had the wherewithal

59:26

to be afraid when Sinatra asked

59:28

him for a song. Paul was like, Oh, yeah, there's this thing

59:30

I wrote when I was foring a teenage bullshit.

59:33

I wrote to make fun of you. Uh.

59:38

McCartney has told this story many

59:40

times over the years, often in the most

59:42

avuncular Paul McCartney esque way

59:44

possible. Here's one incarnation

59:47

of that. I was once wrung up by

59:49

the great Frank Sinatra himself. I

59:51

was in the studio and a phone call came in.

59:53

I goes, I goes hello

59:56

Frank, and he said, have you got a song?

59:59

I've heard about it all that. I

1:00:01

said, I've got just the song. I'll send it right over.

1:00:04

I secretly hoped, as a songwriter that he'd

1:00:06

ask so I had one ready, but he turned

1:00:08

it down. I think it was something to do

1:00:10

with the fact that it was called suicide. A

1:00:14

fragment of this song can be heard on Paul's

1:00:16

debut solo album nineteen seventies

1:00:18

McCartney. I think it's at the end

1:00:20

of a song called Glasses, which is

1:00:23

just like a musical tone poem piece where he's

1:00:25

just playing glasses filled with water and it

1:00:27

cuts into that, segues into

1:00:29

that. Yeah.

1:00:32

Interestingly, George Harrison claims that his

1:00:34

song Isn't It a Pity, a standout

1:00:36

album cut from his epic nineteen seventy

1:00:38

triple disc All Things Must Pass, was

1:00:41

also offered a Sinatra at some point before

1:00:43

he recorded it, but apparently

1:00:45

that didn't come together. See what I did there?

1:00:48

Either? I did friends not doing

1:00:50

Isn't It a Pity? Would be hilarious. Isn't It a

1:00:52

shame? Bit Jack? And

1:00:58

yet there's a Sinatra connection

1:01:00

with a third member of the Fab Four,

1:01:03

Ringo Starr. Ringo's

1:01:05

wife, Maureen, was a huge fan

1:01:07

of Sinatra, and for her twenty second

1:01:09

birthday in nineteen sixty eight, he somehow

1:01:11

got Sinatra to record a special version

1:01:14

of The Ladies a Tramp retitled

1:01:17

Marine's a champ all

1:01:19

out. They roped in Sinatra's

1:01:21

longtime lyricist Sammy Kahn to pen

1:01:23

lines like this is pretty good. She married

1:01:26

Ringo and she could have had

1:01:28

Paul. That's why the

1:01:31

ladies a champ. That's pretty good.

1:01:33

And though we've not met,

1:01:35

I'm convinced she's a gem. I'm

1:01:38

just fs but to me she's

1:01:40

big m mainly because

1:01:43

she prefers me to them.

1:01:46

That's why the lady is a champ.

1:01:48

That's pretty good. That's pretty funny,

1:01:50

Sammy cohn Man. And

1:01:53

this gift, the song this Gift for Ringo's

1:01:55

wife was actually the very first record

1:01:58

press for the Beatles record label Apple,

1:02:00

giving it the catalog number Apple one,

1:02:03

making it one of the rarest records on

1:02:05

the planet and worth god

1:02:08

knows how much. And you can hear it online

1:02:11

a very kind of low quality version of it circulating

1:02:14

online, which I will. I think I can splice

1:02:16

in here without getting in trouble with copyrights.

1:02:22

Oh, I forgot one thing that you'll enjoy as a comic

1:02:25

book fan. When Paul presented

1:02:27

Sinatra with suicide, he

1:02:30

commissioned a Marvel comic book artist

1:02:32

named Bob Larkin No

1:02:36

to do a watercolor

1:02:38

portrait of Paul dressed

1:02:40

like Frank in a Fedora standing

1:02:43

next to Frank in a Fedora. I'm

1:02:45

gonna send it to you right now because i want your live reaction

1:02:48

to this. It's and you know, Paul McCartney's

1:02:50

my favorite human on the planet. But it's pretty

1:02:52

cringe. Oh my god.

1:02:55

I like how he deliberately gave him an ill

1:02:57

fitting hat like

1:03:00

a too small Fedora to make him look like

1:03:02

even more of a tool.

1:03:06

Classic so Sinatra

1:03:09

not only turning down a Beatles song, but turning

1:03:11

down a Beatles song after he presented

1:03:14

him with a portrait of the two of them

1:03:16

standing together. That is cringe as hell. God,

1:03:18

he's so kind of love it though. I'm so thirsty,

1:03:21

I know, even

1:03:23

the look at his face and this picture is

1:03:25

so earnest and eager. I love it

1:03:28

like a kid playing dress up with his dad.

1:03:32

The candy cigarette. All

1:03:35

right. This concludes our Beatle section

1:03:37

of this episode. As

1:03:41

you meditate on that, we'll be right back

1:03:43

with more too much information after these

1:03:45

messages. My

1:03:59

Way entered the Billboard charts in the last

1:04:01

week of March nineteen sixty nine at number

1:04:03

sixty nine. There you Go, making

1:04:05

it nice highest new entry there, making

1:04:09

it the highest new entry that week. Six

1:04:11

weeks later, it reached its peak at only number

1:04:13

twenty seven, nice lower than Sinatra's

1:04:16

previous top forty single cycles.

1:04:20

This is surprising given the song of that stature,

1:04:22

but it's in good company, however. Other

1:04:24

beloved classics that missed the Hot one hundred

1:04:27

entirely include Robin's Dancing

1:04:29

on My Own a Crime, Garth

1:04:31

Brooks' Friends in Low Places, Tom

1:04:34

Petty and The Heartbreaker's American Girl, David

1:04:37

Bowie's Heroes, Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah,

1:04:40

The ramones I Want to Be Sedated, Billy

1:04:42

Joel's New York State of Mind, Dean

1:04:44

Martin's Ain't That a Kick in the Head, Elvis

1:04:47

Costello's Alison Cole Plays

1:04:49

the Scientist, Grace Jones Pull

1:04:51

Up to the Bumper, the Postal Services,

1:04:53

Such Great Heights, Weezer's Island

1:04:56

in the Sun, and George Thoroughgood

1:04:58

and The Destroyers Bad to the Bone.

1:05:00

All of those missed the Hot one hundred

1:05:02

entirely.

1:05:03

Kind of amazing to mention Grace Jones and George

1:05:05

Thoroughgood in the same breath, especially

1:05:08

because.

1:05:09

Her all observed it better. Well,

1:05:13

what's it about pull up to the bumper?

1:05:16

Yeah? Isn't it about like going to the car wash?

1:05:20

Yes, Jordan, you

1:05:23

sweet child, going to a

1:05:25

parking garage. My way didn't

1:05:27

fit with the spirit of nineteen sixty nine

1:05:29

in the United States, Q Along

1:05:31

the Watchtower or Fortunate Sun here, but

1:05:34

it fared slightly better in the UK, where

1:05:36

it peaked at number five and reentered

1:05:38

the charts six times between nineteen

1:05:41

seventy and nineteen seventy one. All

1:05:43

told, its spent by my count seventy

1:05:46

five weeks in the UK Top forty,

1:05:48

which was a record until it was broken

1:05:50

by Wham's Last Christmas in nineteen eighty

1:05:52

four, Fairytale of New York by the Poges

1:05:55

and Christy McCall in nineteen eighty seven, and All

1:05:57

I Want for Christmas Is You in nineteen ninety four.

1:05:59

But to this day it holds fourth

1:06:01

place on the list of songs that have the most

1:06:04

weeks on the Top forty in the UK,

1:06:06

and it's the only non Christmas one, so I think

1:06:08

it's the only one that earned it, so it would really be number one.

1:06:12

That's pretty wild, the number of weeks that song spent

1:06:14

in the top forty yeah

1:06:17

in the United States, My Way would be Sinatra's

1:06:19

last top forty hit until nineteen eighty

1:06:22

when he returned with New York New York. But

1:06:25

that didn't stop Frank from kind of growing

1:06:27

to hate My Way after a while. He

1:06:30

performed the tune at his farewell concert, along

1:06:32

with ten other songs that he felt summed up his life,

1:06:34

which I'm sure was a very high honor for Polanka.

1:06:38

But then Sinatra decided two years later

1:06:40

to come out of retirement, and his return

1:06:42

to the stage meant that audiences would come to expect

1:06:45

what had become a signature song, and

1:06:47

Sinatra started to resent it. Introducing

1:06:50

My Way at a nineteen eighty four concert at Carnegie

1:06:52

Hall, he told the audience, we have a song

1:06:55

we haven't done in a long time. We're going to drop

1:06:57

it in here right now. I think we did it for

1:06:59

about ten years and it got to be a real pain

1:07:01

and that you know where. During

1:07:03

a gig at London's Albert Hall that same

1:07:06

year, he muttered under the instrumental outro,

1:07:08

I can't stand this song myself. Music

1:07:13

critic Will Friedwald explained,

1:07:15

or over intellectualized the precise reasons

1:07:17

why the bomb bast of My Way might have bothered

1:07:20

Frank. In a piece for NPR called a

1:07:22

toast to my Way, America's anthem

1:07:25

of self determination, he

1:07:27

says it's this song that really inflates

1:07:29

Frank and inflates his persona to stadium

1:07:32

size proportions. Whereas Sinatra's trademark

1:07:34

is patented approach. The thing that people like

1:07:36

most about Sinatra before My Way was the

1:07:38

intimacy, the idea that this is

1:07:40

a guy who's experienced life and love

1:07:43

the same way as we have. It's

1:07:45

kind of the ethos of crooning, really,

1:07:47

that kind of intimacy, that closeness. And

1:07:50

my Way's not really a krooner song.

1:07:54

No, No, it's a

1:07:56

belter. It's a torch song. No, it's a barn burner.

1:07:59

What's the the old show

1:08:01

busy term for what my Way is a

1:08:03

dud? No, I'm kidding.

1:08:05

Uh yeah, it is funny when you put it

1:08:07

like that.

1:08:08

It's like he's got this you know, huge, sensitive, soft

1:08:10

spoke inside. Allegedly,

1:08:14

some of his records would have you believe.

1:08:16

When he's not driving golf carts through

1:08:18

the dose, belting about his life

1:08:20

of personal triumphs, Sinatra's

1:08:25

youngest daughter, Tina, conveyed the two diametrically

1:08:28

opposed, but equally true views

1:08:30

of the song in two separate interviews.

1:08:33

Talking to NPR, she recalled the first time

1:08:35

she ever heard her father sing My Way. You

1:08:38

could feel the energy, electricity in the room.

1:08:41

That song became his that first night.

1:08:43

I think it was a song waiting for him to happen.

1:08:47

Well, that's true, she said. In a two

1:08:49

thousand interview with the BBC show Hard Talk,

1:08:52

he Sinatra always thought

1:08:54

the song was self serving and self indulgent.

1:08:56

He didn't like it. That song stuck

1:08:58

and he couldn't get it off his shoe. Frank

1:09:01

Sinatra Enterprise as vice president. Charles

1:09:04

Pegone meanwhile, soft pedaled

1:09:06

Frank's feelings on My Way in an

1:09:08

interview with songfacts dot Com.

1:09:10

I don't think he hated it as much as he disliked

1:09:13

it, he said. I don't think he hated

1:09:15

any of those songs. I just think he probably

1:09:17

may have gotten tired of people yelling for it

1:09:19

and of singing it. It's a fan favorite,

1:09:22

but I wouldn't say it's a Sinatra favorite,

1:09:24

Sorry, Paul Man. Frank Sinatra would have loved

1:09:26

the TikTok generation at his concert

1:09:33

Can You Say Hi to My Mom? Punched

1:09:35

and beats a fifteen year old girl? Uh

1:09:40

So.

1:09:41

It might not have been a favorite of Old Blue Eyes,

1:09:43

but it was certainly a favorite of many other singers. The

1:09:45

list of artists who record My Way include Aretha

1:09:48

Franklin, Tom Jones, Dion Warwick,

1:09:50

and Andy Williams. Elvis Presley

1:09:52

began performing the song and concert during the mid seventies,

1:09:55

despite Anka's suggestions that the song didn't suit

1:09:57

him. It was included in the setlist for his

1:09:59

famous Aloha from Hawaii Satellite Concerts,

1:10:02

where it was a cute callback to the nineteen sixty timex

1:10:04

TV special Welcome Home Elvis, which

1:10:07

featured Sinatra and Elvis dueting on a medley

1:10:09

of Love Me Tender and Witchcraft. Each

1:10:12

man does the other one's songs, and it's kind of cute,

1:10:15

despite some of the mean things

1:10:17

that frank had said.

1:10:17

About rock and rolls the genre in the past.

1:10:20

After Elvis's death in nineteen seventy seven, a

1:10:22

live version of My Way was released as a single, going

1:10:25

to number twenty two in the US, or higher

1:10:27

than Frank's original, which probably

1:10:29

chopped his ass A bit. Presley's

1:10:34

version is featured in the climax of the two thousand film

1:10:36

Three Thousand Miles to Graceland, in which Paul

1:10:38

Anka has a cameo as a casino boss

1:10:40

who hates Elvis. Anka would

1:10:42

say that his view of Elvis's cover has softened in

1:10:44

the wake of his death, and now he hears it as a sort of eulogy.

1:10:48

The Gypsy Kings recorded a Spanish language rendition

1:10:50

of the song called Ami Minerira, and Jay

1:10:52

Z interpolated Paul Anka's version

1:10:54

of his track I did it my way, but

1:10:58

without a doubt and in the popular consciousness, I

1:11:00

like to believe. The most famous cover version of the

1:11:02

song is the version recorded

1:11:05

in nineteen seventy nine by The Sex

1:11:07

Pistols for the Julian Temple

1:11:09

mockumentary The Great Rock and Roll

1:11:11

Swindle.

1:11:13

Have you ever seen that? Not good? Oh?

1:11:15

Not good? I don't even know what it's about.

1:11:17

I mean, they're people who would say it. I don't know.

1:11:19

The Sex Pistols were like a joke band, Like

1:11:22

really they literally would not let

1:11:24

Sid play bass live, so you were just hearing

1:11:26

like cacophonists, drums and really loud

1:11:28

guitar. Half the time, and I read

1:11:31

a book it's called Twelve Days in America

1:11:33

when I was like fifteen. That kind of soured me on

1:11:35

them in particular because they were like touring

1:11:37

through America and it was just wildly

1:11:40

obvious to anyone that Sid was falling apart,

1:11:42

literally dying, and they were just so pissed

1:11:44

off about the whole thing. And you know, American

1:11:47

audiences were really to them. And they only

1:11:49

had one American tour, but that was the show that culminated

1:11:51

in them in San Francisco when

1:11:53

Johnny Rodden took to the stage and just said, everget the

1:11:56

feeling you've been cheated after like

1:11:58

three songs and walked off.

1:12:00

Well, and he wasn't a part of this documentary,

1:12:02

right, Yeah. My favorite fact about Sid Vicious

1:12:04

is that his favorite food is Chinese food, because

1:12:07

he said it made pretty colors when he threw up. But

1:12:10

you didn't think you'd hear that from me, No, I didn't.

1:12:13

But Sid us

1:12:15

a famously doomed bass player

1:12:18

who would achieve a measure of

1:12:21

iconiz What am I looking for? A

1:12:23

measure of infamy?

1:12:26

Yeah?

1:12:26

But infamy but also like doomed

1:12:29

romance. When Alex Cox put out Sid

1:12:32

and Nancy and sort of romanticized

1:12:34

their disgusting, codependent,

1:12:37

drug fueled relationship which ended

1:12:39

in murder by the way. So anyway,

1:12:42

where was I going with that? Listen

1:12:44

to the clash.

1:12:45

Ah. My

1:12:50

favorite thing about Sid Vicious is that

1:12:53

I think Freddie Mercury might have been bullshiting

1:12:55

when he said this, but he was like, yeah, I

1:12:57

met one of them at a party once and I called

1:12:59

Sid Vicious Simon Ferocious and he didn't

1:13:01

like that very much. Oh yeah, that's

1:13:03

incredible. There

1:13:06

must be Simon Farotius Darling arguably

1:13:08

a better name. Yeah.

1:13:11

The lyrics were changed by said and his girlfriend Nancy

1:13:13

Spongeen to include numerous obscenities

1:13:15

that were not you would have

1:13:17

a hard time believing. Perhaps in Anka's original,

1:13:22

Vicious took a dig at his ex band

1:13:24

namee Johnny Rotten by referring to a pratt

1:13:26

who wears hats, because

1:13:29

Johnny Rotten wore hats and was

1:13:31

kind of a dick. On

1:13:34

one hand, their version of My Way could

1:13:36

be viewed as a mocking bit of punk performance

1:13:38

art a la the version of God Save the Queen.

1:13:41

But on the other hand, the ethos of

1:13:43

the song has a remarkable core

1:13:45

of punk rock hutzpah, let's

1:13:48

call it. The song

1:13:50

appeared on the Sex Pistols album The Great Rock and Roll

1:13:52

Swindle, which was issued

1:13:54

after two members of the band died. It was

1:13:56

the film came out two years after their breakup, so then

1:13:58

the album dragged on after Rotten had

1:14:01

already left, and then Vicious died, so

1:14:04

the song's obviously. His version of the song

1:14:06

obviously drew criticism from all the right

1:14:08

places. Sid died of a heroin

1:14:10

overdose when he was eaten jay

1:14:12

Or had just been released.

1:14:13

On bail for killing Nancy. I think Dorothy

1:14:16

Squire's a Welsh singer who features in the film,

1:14:18

and she'd had a UK hit the song. Herself

1:14:21

was quoted as saying Vicious should

1:14:23

be crucified. He should have been crucified

1:14:25

before he crucified that song. But

1:14:28

hearing from quite a different source. Anton LeVay,

1:14:30

the founder of the Church of Satan, had nothing but

1:14:33

nice things to say about in his memoir The

1:14:35

Secret Life of a Satanist. Arguably

1:14:38

the greatest fan of this version of my.

1:14:40

Way will folks, if you can believe it, Leonard

1:14:43

Cohen, who

1:14:46

spoke eloquently of it. He

1:14:48

said I never liked this song except when sid

1:14:50

Vicious did it. Sung straight,

1:14:53

it somehow deprives the appetite of a certain

1:14:55

taste we'd like to have on our lips. When

1:14:57

sid Vicious did it, he provided that other side

1:15:00

the song, the certainty, the

1:15:02

self congratulation. The daily heroism

1:15:04

of Sinatra's version is completely exploded by this

1:15:06

desperate, mad, humorous voice. I

1:15:09

can't go round in a raincoat and fedora looking

1:15:11

over my life saying I did it my way well

1:15:14

for ten minutes in some American bar over a

1:15:16

Gin and Tonic. You might be able to get away with it. But

1:15:18

sid Vicius's rendition takes in everybody.

1:15:21

Everybody is messed up like that. Everybody

1:15:23

is the mad hero of his own drama. It explodes

1:15:25

the whole culture this self presentation can take place

1:15:28

in. So it completes the solve the song

1:15:30

for me that rules.

1:15:33

Yeah, just Leonard Cohen to make the sex

1:15:35

pistols sound deep. Paul

1:15:39

Anka, perhaps unsurprisingly, never heard

1:15:41

this sex Pistols version until Martin Scorsese

1:15:44

came his way, Oh.

1:15:51

Jordan, until until

1:15:56

old Marty brown eyes. Ah,

1:16:00

Martinus Scorsese said,

1:16:02

super eyes. I

1:16:04

assume spiritually he does Martin

1:16:07

Scorsese. He's Italian.

1:16:09

Have you ever met an Italian with blue eyes? Yeah?

1:16:11

Oh, Frank, well yeah,

1:16:13

but his family was probably from the

1:16:15

North, because that's where all the vampires come from.

1:16:17

That's not a real Italian. Yeah,

1:16:19

he's got Martin's got beautiful brown eyes. Just

1:16:22

get lost in uh.

1:16:27

About Martin Scorsese got

1:16:29

in touch with Paul Ankett to secure the rights

1:16:31

for My Way for the closing credits of Goodfellas,

1:16:34

the Said Vicious version. Anka tells

1:16:36

the story of Marty giving him a call asking permission,

1:16:38

and Anka says, I said.

1:16:40

Great, who's doing it? He said, the sex Pistols?

1:16:42

I said who? He said, said Vicious

1:16:44

of the sex Pistols. I'm

1:16:46

not the front of that line. You know, I'm

1:16:49

buried under music. I said, I don't know

1:16:51

who the hell that is. So he sent

1:16:53

it to me.

1:16:54

I was jolted. I said no, to

1:16:56

be honest. Then I started thinking, who

1:16:58

am I to tear down somebody's right in terms of interpreting

1:17:01

a song that meant a lot to them. Now I did

1:17:03

my homework. The guy went to Paris, got a jazz

1:17:05

band. They pulled amps apart to get the sound. I

1:17:07

said, this guy is sincere about it. It's the only

1:17:09

way he can present it. I called Marty back

1:17:12

and told.

1:17:12

Him do it. I don't care. It's music. It's

1:17:14

art. Art has no time.

1:17:16

You put it in the hands of someone that believes in it. That's

1:17:18

just what music is about. To get it out there. Honestly,

1:17:21

that's a great take from Paul.

1:17:22

That's very Paul. He That's exactly

1:17:24

how he is. He's a cool guy.

1:17:26

I want to use the term I need to start using

1:17:28

the phrase I'm not the front of that line

1:17:31

to talk about things I'm not into.

1:17:33

He is so many great terms aphrase.

1:17:35

Yeah, not

1:17:38

at the front of that line.

1:17:39

Ancher remains very particular about how the song gets

1:17:41

used, though Frank's version was included in a two thousand

1:17:43

and six episode of The Sopranos titled Mo

1:17:45

and Joe, and also in a twenty fourteen

1:17:48

episode mad Men called The Strategy,

1:17:50

which takes place in nineteen sixty nine. It

1:17:53

comes on the radio as ad executive Don

1:17:56

Draper, who you may have heard of, stars.

1:17:59

In the show. You see. It's a play

1:18:01

on the phrase admin commercial

1:18:03

executives is there nineteen

1:18:05

sixties, Who's well, let's say their lives

1:18:08

Got a little mad Sundays

1:18:11

on TBS right

1:18:14

up after Young Sheldon. Yeah,

1:18:17

I don't know you would like it all

1:18:21

week up and trying to tell you how much I think you'd like

1:18:23

mad Men in all weeks and now it's boring.

1:18:26

Well, you know what I watched last night instead of checking

1:18:28

out mad Men? Finally what Hanso

1:18:30

the Razor Sort of Vengeance,

1:18:33

which is a samurai film from the seventies

1:18:35

that is one of the most bad things I've ever

1:18:37

seen. As

1:18:39

I broke it down earlier. It is seventy five percent

1:18:42

sultifyingly dull dialogue about

1:18:44

period political drama in the age

1:18:46

of Damnos in Japan, about

1:18:50

twenty five more percent of gassing up its protagonists

1:18:53

dick good,

1:18:55

fifteen percent of graphic

1:18:57

sex scenes shot in like borderline

1:19:00

in psychedelic ways, another

1:19:02

five percent of truly poorly

1:19:04

choreographed samurai fights. And the entire

1:19:06

thing is soundtrack to like a seventies funk

1:19:09

soundtrack. Incredible movie.

1:19:12

Does that insult you? Does that offend you?

1:19:14

Yeah? As I mentioned, avoiding

1:19:16

one of your.

1:19:18

Beloved pieces of American art to watch,

1:19:20

just garbage, just trash. How

1:19:22

does that make you feel? White boy?

1:19:24

That doesn't sound like trashy.

1:19:25

It was awful. It's a truly awful film.

1:19:29

He has this thing where he's like, he's

1:19:31

like, you know, the police have gotten so corrupt that we've

1:19:33

been torturing suspects with interrogation

1:19:36

techniques, so I have to understand all of them.

1:19:38

So he's been like literally torturing himself

1:19:41

self, mutilating and everything. And in

1:19:43

a prolonged scene, he gets out

1:19:45

of this an onsen

1:19:48

Japanese spa kind of thing and

1:19:51

places his penis on a sort of wooden

1:19:53

stand that clearly has been

1:19:56

hammed carved with an outline

1:19:58

like an indentation for his talking balls,

1:20:01

and then proceeds to wail on it with a

1:20:03

wooden club. This goes on, and

1:20:06

we do see his penis in soft focus

1:20:10

and then like a when you say soft

1:20:13

focus.

1:20:14

Ah, and then like

1:20:16

a boxer, he then submerges

1:20:18

his penis in a bag of rice, which he does

1:20:20

by repeatedly from

1:20:24

a standing position. And again

1:20:26

this goes on. This film really lingers,

1:20:29

awful.

1:20:30

Awful piece of movie, awful piece

1:20:32

of cinema, but truly fascinating. Anyway,

1:20:35

I prioritize that over your recommendations. Jordan

1:20:38

ah,

1:20:41

he smiles, but it hurts him.

1:20:44

I am so mean to you, so

1:20:47

so mean. What were you talking about?

1:20:49

Yeah, so, I guess they hear the song on the radio. It's

1:20:52

a whole thing with Peggy who. I'm told they

1:20:56

dance the dance alone in their office or something.

1:21:01

It's about the death of American masculinity.

1:21:04

In the inherent trust in American

1:21:06

institutions, in

1:21:08

the family unit, and yeah,

1:21:10

yeah, it's a good time, okay.

1:21:14

The sex Pistols version has been using some high profile

1:21:17

productions as well, including a twenty ten episode

1:21:19

of The Simpsons So well Past its Prime

1:21:21

Simpsons, and the twenty fourteen

1:21:23

episode of Californication. Jordan, I

1:21:26

dare you without wikipediaing

1:21:29

and I will hear tell me about Californication.

1:21:32

David the Covny is a college professor

1:21:34

who I believe sleeps with a lot

1:21:36

of students. That's that's all I close.

1:21:38

I think he's a became screen

1:21:40

Yeah, he's screenwriter and all of his movies are all

1:21:43

of his books are named after Slayer albums.

1:21:45

How is that close? I don't know. I wanted to

1:21:47

give you one that's this very kind, that's uncharacteristically

1:21:50

kind for a thing I care not a whit about.

1:21:52

I watch take a season of that show in college

1:21:54

because when they we got our internet hooked up at

1:21:56

our apartment, they were like, you.

1:21:58

Get the free show Time. Okay,

1:22:01

just watch whatever garbage came on showtime,

1:22:03

and this was one of them. Not a good show.

1:22:05

Does have Natasha mcelhorn in there as

1:22:08

David Decompany's ex wife, and she's.

1:22:10

A pretty lady. Not a good series.

1:22:12

Much like the Samurai movie I was just talking about, which

1:22:14

again is called Hanso the Razer.

1:22:17

Not to be confused the well,

1:22:19

hang on, there's several

1:22:22

hans of the Razor movies. It's a trilogy,

1:22:25

and I am, of course talking about

1:22:28

Hanso the Razor of

1:22:31

Justice, not Hanso the Razer

1:22:33

The Snare released the following year, or

1:22:35

Hanso the Raizer Who's Got the Gold

1:22:38

released a year after that.

1:22:41

I mean, this is interesting to me because Hanso the Razers

1:22:43

sort of Justice. The movie you watched was released

1:22:45

on December thirtieth, nineteen seventy

1:22:47

two, four years after the

1:22:49

very day that Frank Sinatra went into the studio

1:22:51

to record My Way. See It All connects.

1:22:54

Yes, it

1:22:57

should probably come as no surprise at this anthem

1:22:59

for unre pen individualism has become

1:23:01

extremely popular with politicians.

1:23:04

For example, my Way was a favorite

1:23:06

of former Serbian president Slobodam Melosovich.

1:23:10

He often played it in his cell at a loud

1:23:12

volume during his trial

1:23:15

for crimes Crimes

1:23:17

against Humanity in two thousand and

1:23:19

two. Are

1:23:24

endorsement of this song

1:23:26

under if Paul knows that, I hope

1:23:28

he's not going to listen to this. He

1:23:30

listened to our Taco Bell one. Yeah,

1:23:33

that was funny. He wanted to like see

1:23:35

what was under my fingernails, so we like listened

1:23:37

to shows I worked on with that Like he just googled

1:23:39

me, like I didn't send him anything. And the thing

1:23:41

he listened to was our hour and a

1:23:43

half treaties on Taco Bell

1:23:46

And somehow he was like, this is the

1:23:48

guy for me. I'll work with this guy. Yeah.

1:23:54

On a slightly less genocidal

1:23:57

note, although maybe not really, former

1:23:59

German Chancellor Gerard Schroeder,

1:24:03

Former German Chancellor Gerhard

1:24:06

Schroeder requested my

1:24:08

Way for his final send off or

1:24:10

Zapfren's strike in German prior

1:24:13

to the inauguration of Angela Merkel, more

1:24:16

than seven million German television viewers

1:24:18

watched tears well up in his eyes as

1:24:21

a military band saw him off with a version

1:24:23

of My Way embarrassing. Not

1:24:27

a serious people. You

1:24:30

notice I don't like anyone. Yeah,

1:24:34

cool, There's going to be a country, a

1:24:36

culture you like Mauritana,

1:24:40

Mike Ronesia because

1:24:42

it's small Eritrea Poienker

1:24:48

himself has noticed that this song appears

1:24:50

to uh, what I'll generously

1:24:53

call a certain kind of person, and

1:24:56

this category also includes Vladimir Putin.

1:25:00

He's an egomaniac, Anka says. When

1:25:02

I went to Russia, he's walking me through the museum

1:25:04

and giving me cavia out of tubs. Loving

1:25:07

my Way. You've got every malignant

1:25:09

egomaniac love it. I

1:25:12

don't know. It just did what it did. It has a

1:25:14

life. It's like your children, and

1:25:16

a fluke of editing that is in no way

1:25:18

intentional. You hear that, Apple podcast

1:25:20

commentswers. Donald Trump chose

1:25:23

this song as the first dance at his presidential

1:25:25

inauguration. He danced to it with his wife

1:25:27

Malania at the Liberty Ball is second

1:25:30

inaugural ball of the evening. Two

1:25:32

days earlier, Nancy Sinatra, Frank's

1:25:34

daughter was asked on Twitter what she thought of

1:25:37

Trump using the song. Her

1:25:39

reply, just remember the first

1:25:41

line of the song. Those

1:25:43

of you not familiar, The first line is and

1:25:46

now the end is near, and so I

1:25:48

face the final kurt that's

1:25:51

ominous? Is

1:25:53

she wrong? Speaking of the final curtain?

1:25:56

Let's talk about death Baby, We

1:25:58

should really take a look at the morbid streak that runs

1:26:01

through my way. It is, after all,

1:26:03

sung from the point of view of a man looking back

1:26:05

on his life, presumably at

1:26:07

its end. Hence it's

1:26:09

become a very popular song at funerals.

1:26:12

In a two thousand and five survey by Cooperative

1:26:15

Funeral Care, this song is

1:26:17

at the top of the song's most requested

1:26:19

at funerals in the UK. Spokesman

1:26:21

Phil Edwards said it is that timeless

1:26:23

appeal. The words sum up what so

1:26:25

many people feel about their lives and

1:26:28

how they would like their loved ones to remember them.

1:26:31

Nipsey Hustles, we mentioned, had it played at his

1:26:33

funeral, and performance artist Marina Bramovich

1:26:35

had requested it if he played at hers. And

1:26:38

Warren Buffett has recorded his own

1:26:40

version himself, featuring

1:26:43

new lyrics written by his friend Paul

1:26:45

Anka. I believe I

1:26:47

think I'm allowed to share this. He's recording

1:26:50

a hologram version of himself singing

1:26:52

of a song to be played at his own funeral.

1:26:55

I hope I didn't just break some kind of serious NDA.

1:27:00

Himself is well aware of the song's reputation as

1:27:02

a real perspective check on mortality.

1:27:05

He says, the content of that lyric hit everybody.

1:27:08

Back then, when I wrote it, I saw we were

1:27:10

getting into the MEMI me generation. I

1:27:12

was only twenty six. Boys

1:27:14

scientifically don't become adults until they're

1:27:17

thirty. But somehow it hit

1:27:19

everybody. People get married to it,

1:27:21

get buried to it. Guys write me letters

1:27:23

from death row. They say they identify with it.

1:27:25

I've sung my Way for Putin for Trump.

1:27:28

Narcissism runs rampant, but when it's under

1:27:30

control, this is the perfect song in

1:27:33

terms of wrapping up one's life. We're

1:27:35

all ego driven. Read enough Freud

1:27:37

and you get that he's a very

1:27:39

interesting, well read, fascinating guy.

1:27:41

Yeah, for sure. Many

1:27:43

people play My Way at funerals, but a

1:27:45

bunch of people have killed each other over

1:27:48

My Way. Welcome

1:27:50

to the segment we like to call the my

1:27:53

Way, MOI. It does, Oh that's good.

1:27:55

That's good. No, it's not. No,

1:27:58

it is.

1:28:00

No.

1:28:01

Go Google, it's weird. There's a whole Wikipedia

1:28:03

entry from My Way killings, as well

1:28:05

as an entire New York Times article from twenty

1:28:08

ten. Within just a decade,

1:28:10

it was suspected that at least twelve people were killed

1:28:12

in connection to singing Frank's hit song

1:28:14

My Way. The song is a phenomenon in the

1:28:16

Philippines, where karaoke is something

1:28:19

of the national sport. There

1:28:21

are upwards of a dozen karaoke bars

1:28:23

in each village or barangay.

1:28:26

As you hopefully note for all of our people

1:28:29

interested in Filipino, they

1:28:31

really know how to cook a pig. Yeah

1:28:34

they do, yeah,

1:28:36

As.

1:28:37

An article in Esqui. As an article

1:28:39

in Esquire Philippines explains, life

1:28:41

in the Philippines is hard, especially for the

1:28:43

predominant sector of society living under the poverty

1:28:45

line. It makes sense that karaoke, which

1:28:48

is only about P five per song roughly

1:28:51

a dime, became a sweet escape to forget

1:28:53

life struggles for a while. It also

1:28:55

makes sense why they be angry at people who inadvertently

1:28:58

ruined that sliver of peace in

1:29:00

that country, as is the case with the US.

1:29:03

My Way is one of the most popular songs to sing,

1:29:06

and versions of the song have been known to provoke fights

1:29:08

at karaoke bars, where naturally there

1:29:10

is quite a lot of drinking going on, and occasionally

1:29:13

this violence escalates to death. Some

1:29:15

people have been killed for singing out of tune, some

1:29:18

people were killed for hogging the microphone,

1:29:20

and quite a few were killed for singing

1:29:22

the song on repeat for hours at end like

1:29:24

that. One guy even wrote a Vice article up playing

1:29:26

the Boys are back in Town like forty times

1:29:28

on a jukebox and John

1:29:31

Molaney talking about doing it with What's

1:29:33

New pussy Cat. Yeah,

1:29:36

there's one thing you can say about this country. No one killed

1:29:38

either of them. Yeah. As a result,

1:29:40

many bars don't even offer it on their playlists,

1:29:43

and even if they do, many customers won't dare

1:29:45

to sing the song in public without getting a private

1:29:47

room so that their off tuned vocals

1:29:50

will not inadvertently cause death.

1:29:53

A sill in Filipino

1:29:55

Congress.

1:29:56

Was proposed to set a

1:29:58

curfew on karaoke to lessen

1:30:00

alcohol related deaths or

1:30:02

violence.

1:30:04

One follows the other. Some critics and sociologists

1:30:07

postulated that the triumphalist

1:30:10

Sure Bravado of the song paired with alcohol

1:30:13

makes for a uniquely combustible situation.

1:30:17

Butch Albarasen, the owner

1:30:19

of a Manila based singing school, elaborated

1:30:21

on this in a twenty ten interview with the Huffington

1:30:23

Post. The lyrics, as he explained,

1:30:25

evoke feelings of pride and arrogance in the

1:30:28

singer, as if you're somebody when you're really

1:30:30

nobody. It cover ups your failures.

1:30:32

That's why it leads to fight. In

1:30:35

two thousand and seven, a.

1:30:36

Twenty nine year old man singing My Way was reportedly

1:30:38

shot to death by the karaoke bars bouncer

1:30:40

when he accidentally got off rhythm

1:30:43

while singing My Way and struggled to get

1:30:45

back on track. When he wouldn't

1:30:47

stop singing, the guard pulled out a thirty eight and

1:30:50

killed him. Three years later, in twenty

1:30:52

ten, a chairman of

1:30:54

a Tondo village was shot alongside his

1:30:56

aid by motorcycle riding

1:30:58

gunmen while singing the song

1:31:00

during a Christmas party. The chairman

1:31:03

died on the spot, while the aide survived

1:31:05

in critical condition. It's

1:31:08

said that the killing was possibly politically motivated,

1:31:10

but this interpretation is

1:31:12

more fun. A

1:31:14

man was killed and being very flip. The

1:31:17

my Way killing struck again in twenty eighteen

1:31:19

when a sixty year old man was stabbed by his

1:31:21

neighbor, who was twenty eight, during a birthday party.

1:31:24

According to reports, the senior grabbed the mic

1:31:26

from his neighbor just when my Way was about

1:31:28

to play. A fistfight ensued,

1:31:31

and the younger man stabbed the

1:31:33

elder, who was pronounced dead.

1:31:36

At the hospital. Regrets

1:31:41

they all had a few. Well,

1:31:43

folks, the end is near, and

1:31:46

we face the final curtain, but we will end

1:31:48

on a quote from not aforementioned

1:31:50

NPR piece, a toast to our Way. It's

1:31:53

from Jason King, a professor at NYU's

1:31:55

Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music.

1:31:58

He says, you could read my Way as a kind of metaphor

1:32:01

for the World War II generation that Frank Sinatra

1:32:03

represented, looking back at the twentieth

1:32:05

century history in this kind of cosmic

1:32:07

defiance, saying, look, I

1:32:10

did it the way I wanted to do it, and

1:32:12

I did it right. I'm looking back

1:32:14

at all this history and

1:32:16

I'm okay with it. I

1:32:19

won't be I'm okay with this

1:32:21

episode. I'll be

1:32:23

on my deathbed, still trying to hate,

1:32:29

trying to he died doing what he

1:32:31

loved, being a hater. Yeah,

1:32:37

great song. It's good to try though,

1:32:39

it's good to try. It's nice that you're still trying well.

1:32:42

You know, you get older, your mellow a bit, so you gotta work

1:32:44

a little bit harder to put your hating hours

1:32:46

in.

1:32:48

You just lose the fire you had as a young hater.

1:32:53

This has been too much information, folks. I'm

1:32:55

Alex Haiegel, Jack, and

1:32:58

I'm shortan run talk next

1:33:00

time. Too

1:33:06

Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio.

1:33:08

The show's executive producers are Noel Brown

1:33:11

and Jordan Runtog. The show's supervising

1:33:13

producer is Michael Alder June. The

1:33:15

show was researched, written and hosted

1:33:17

by Jordan Runtog and Alex Heigel, with original

1:33:20

music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk

1:33:22

Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please

1:33:24

subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts

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1:33:30

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