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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to another episode of Too Much Information, the

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Speaker 1: show that brings you the secret histories and little known

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Speaker 1: facts behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows and more.

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Speaker 1: We are your fedora wearing friends of Factoids. You're chairman

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Speaker 1: of the board. As in I'm bored, Let's listen to

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Speaker 1: TMI regrets. We have a few, including that last joke,

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Speaker 1: which worked a lot better on paper. My name is

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Speaker 1: Jordan Runtag and I'm Alex Heigel. And today we are

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Speaker 1: talking about one of the most enduring songs of the

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Speaker 1: last half century, a song that's been embraced as a

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Speaker 1: stirring anthem of defiant individualism or a hymn to self

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Speaker 1: delusion and self aggrandizement, depending on which side you're on.

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Speaker 1: We are talking about My Way, made famous by Old

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Speaker 1: Blue Eyes himself, Holwoken's very own Frances Albert Sinatra. It's

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Speaker 1: self reflective lyrics and especially for Sinatra on the eve

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Speaker 1: of his retirement, at the request of his friend, a

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Speaker 1: young pup by the name of Paul Anka, who was

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Speaker 1: just twenty six years old when he wrote the words

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Speaker 1: to a pre existing French pop tune. Now, folks, I'm

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Speaker 1: going to veer into what may seem like a shameless

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Speaker 1: plug for a moment, but bear with me. I swear

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Speaker 1: it's not intended to be one of my new projects.

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Speaker 1: My friends at iHeart had me working on as a

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Speaker 1: talk show hosted by Paul Anka, appropriately titled Our Way.

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Speaker 1: Working on this show has led me to become pretty

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Speaker 1: friendly with Paul, and he's been very generous in sharing

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Speaker 1: his memories of frank and what it was like writing

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Speaker 1: these lyrics for his friend and idol. I was just

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Speaker 1: so fascinated by the story, and when I realized that

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Speaker 1: this spring was the fifty fifth anniversary of the song,

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Speaker 1: I figured it was as good an excuse as any

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Speaker 1: to dive in. Oh does that mean it can sign

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Speaker 1: up for AARP?

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Speaker 2: Now?

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Speaker 1: Is that sixty five? Okay?

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Speaker 2: Just me.

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Speaker 1: If there's anyone under forty who knows these rules, it's

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Speaker 1: me Higel. What are your thoughts on this song? Or Sinatra? Oh?

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Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I'm Italian and like I gotta,

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Speaker 3: I can't say a bad word about Frankie on air

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Speaker 3: on Area He's hilarious. He's like one of the greatest

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Speaker 3: Napoleon complexes and music.

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Speaker 1: I don't even know if he's small. He might be

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Speaker 1: the his Napoleon complex is so strong that it transcends

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Speaker 1: his height.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean he was. I know, he was like

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Speaker 3: really real thin. I mean in my college house, we

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Speaker 3: had a picture of his mug shot up on.

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Speaker 1: The wall, which I realized is probably a problem. Is

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Speaker 1: a cliche?

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Speaker 3: Well it's a cliche, but it's also a problem because

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Speaker 3: wasn't that for when he got picked up for stature rape?

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Speaker 1: Oh I didn't know that. Oh. Oh, I assumed it

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Speaker 1: was like for like driving a golf cart through a

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Speaker 1: window or something, which we'll touch on. No, but we'll

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Speaker 1: get to that. No, I don't know.

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Speaker 3: I mean I predictably I fall into the sort of

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Speaker 3: middle aged white in olden days what they would call

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Speaker 3: a hipster listening habits of Frank, which means I like

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Speaker 3: stuff like all the Nelson Raal stuff we small hours,

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Speaker 3: and then some of the weirder stuff with like when

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Speaker 3: we had like electric bass on the records Watertown.

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Speaker 1: That's Watertown. Yeah, that's in here we're gonna talk about

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Speaker 1: that is weird concept album that nobody bought. It sold

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Speaker 1: thirty thousand copies at a time when stuff wasn't selling

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Speaker 1: thirty thousand copies.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah, I mean he's great. He's also hilarious

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Speaker 3: and embarrassing in the way that so many prominent Italians

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Speaker 3: are like you're like our family, Yeah, you're Andrew Croomo's

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Speaker 3: so yeah, I don't know, he's frank.

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Speaker 1: What are you gonna say about Frankie Frank He's frank. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean I kind of took Sinatra for granted, as

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Speaker 1: you know, is the case with so many musical touchstones

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Speaker 1: that were born knowing He's just sort of become part

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Speaker 1: of the architecture. Obviously, everyone talks about the brilliance of

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Speaker 1: his phrasing. I think it was Charlton Heston who said

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Speaker 1: that every song he sings as a four minute movie.

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Speaker 1: You had something to say about his phrasing earlier, which

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Speaker 1: I wasn't aware of.

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Speaker 3: Oh well, I mean, so Sinatra in like the he's

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Speaker 3: really interesting because crooning as a like singing genre really

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Speaker 3: kind of had just come into form, because you know,

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Speaker 3: prior it was like shouting, like you had to be

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Speaker 3: heard over a big band like Caruso. Yeah, Caruso were

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Speaker 3: like I'm thinking of like the jump blues, Like there's

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Speaker 3: like four Big Joe Williams, but like, you know, these

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Speaker 3: guys who would like come in and you could hear

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Speaker 3: them singing from like the back of a bar. And

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Speaker 3: so consequently, like even your guys like Cap Callaway, once

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Speaker 3: they started having access to good studio technology, they were

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Speaker 3: still kind of in that vein. But because Sinatra bridged that,

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Speaker 3: he was able to like really bring all this depth

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Speaker 3: and nuance into, you know, this storytelling aspect into his

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Speaker 3: vocal performances, because he wasn't singing to the rafters, he

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Speaker 3: wasn't like trying to force his body to put out

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Speaker 3: as much sound as possible. But he like got all

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Speaker 3: that phrasing admittedly from Billie Holliday, who you know obviously

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Speaker 3: did not live long enough to profit off of it.

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Speaker 3: Or you know, as this story is told time and

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Speaker 3: time again, white guy took something from a black lady

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Speaker 3: and took it further to the bank than she did.

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Speaker 3: But you know, he's like such a big influence on

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Speaker 3: people that it's it's easy to understand how like guys

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Speaker 3: like Jim Morrison would have picked up his vocal phrasing

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Speaker 3: having heard Fraim before Billie Holiday. You know, so I

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Speaker 3: don't know if I can really begrudge him that, but

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Speaker 3: I think he's fascinating because of that, you.

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Speaker 1: Know, I mean just to explicitly state crooning really became

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Speaker 1: an R form because of just the technological advance, but

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Speaker 1: of microphones. Yeah, that's that's what I mean.

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Speaker 3: Is really yeah, and then you think about it, I mean, yeah,

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Speaker 3: it's like illustrating the difference between like Bessie Smith or

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Speaker 3: like one of those people who's like forty fives, like

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Speaker 3: even they're old, like or thirty. They're really old, like

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Speaker 3: Depression era ones sound like they're you know, it's so

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Speaker 3: blown out. And then you're like, holy shit, I can

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Speaker 3: sing soft into this thing.

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Speaker 1: You can hear my lips sound, you can hear the breathing. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean.

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Speaker 3: It was my favorite moment of that is on that

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Speaker 3: on that Rod Stewart record, the first two just have

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Speaker 3: mistakes all over them, not Gasolene Alley, but the two

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Speaker 3: he made with the Faces crew, And.

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Speaker 1: There's one I think it's every picture.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, where he just like audibly like tries to come

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Speaker 3: into bar early and you just hear him go yeah

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Speaker 3: and then like back off the bike real quick.

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Speaker 1: So it's just I mean, it's really funny.

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Speaker 3: When you think about the way that singing evolved to

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Speaker 3: catch up to the technology rather than the other way around.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and the other thing that I didn't really think

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Speaker 1: about until researching this episode, and you hear people say this,

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Speaker 1: how I kind of took a dim view of Sinatra

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Speaker 1: and people of his ilk because I'm a Beatles guy

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Speaker 1: and a Bob Dylan guy and a singer songwriter guy,

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Speaker 1: and so anyone who didn't write their own material. I

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Speaker 1: was just kind of like, you know, well, there was

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Speaker 1: a certain level of respect I felt like I couldn't

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Speaker 1: achieve for him. But you hear all these people claiming

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Speaker 1: that Sinatra invented the concept album. That's the phrase you

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Speaker 1: always hear, sure, and there really is some truth to that,

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Speaker 1: because he was the first to use the LP as

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Speaker 1: a medium. You know, even if he didn't write the

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Speaker 1: songs himself, he would choose every track himself and work

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Speaker 1: with the arranger very closely, or in some cases work

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Speaker 1: with the songwriters personally to kind of impart whatever mood

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Speaker 1: he wanted, And so he would create these albums that

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Speaker 1: were an entire mood. I just I appreciate the way

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Speaker 1: that he would sing too. He would stand in the

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Speaker 1: middle of an orchestra, no headphones or anything, and just

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Speaker 1: like be part of the music. I just I love that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and went deaf, did he? I mean, I assume

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Speaker 3: that's really bad for you?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? Well back to My Way for me. There are

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Speaker 1: two distinct ways to look at My Way. The first

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Speaker 1: as a lyrical autobiography or a sort of musical mission

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Speaker 1: statement of a very singular man, Frank Sinatra. It was

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Speaker 1: one of the eleven songs he sang and his famous

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one retirement concert, a show that was meant

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Speaker 1: to wrap up his public life. The retirement lasted two years,

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Speaker 1: but let's let's not talk about that. My Way was

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Speaker 1: intended to be a swan song for a career that

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Speaker 1: endured for a then impressive three decades, from Bobby Soxsers

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Speaker 1: to the Beatles and beyond. And there were many times

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Speaker 1: when Frank was counted out, but like the former boxer

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Speaker 1: that he was, he kept getting back up. And the

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Speaker 1: song's a summation of his rich life, sung by a

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Speaker 1: guy who'd truly seen it all, and only he could

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Speaker 1: summon the prerequisite swagger to pull off lines like the

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Speaker 1: record shows I took the blows and did it my way.

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Speaker 1: I forgot.

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Speaker 3: He was also like basically the first guy to start

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Speaker 3: an artist owned record label too.

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Speaker 1: I can't he can't sell short for that, oh repriz. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean let the record show. Frank always knew how

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Speaker 1: to make a buck. It was very quick to act

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Speaker 1: when he realized that someone was taking a buck from him,

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Speaker 1: unless they were the mafia. Yes, so My Way. One

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Speaker 1: way of looking at it is as a musical biography

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Speaker 1: of autobiography of Frank Sinatra himself. But to me, the

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Speaker 1: songs endured because of what it's done for regular people.

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Speaker 1: Singing My Way is like the musical equivalent of wearing

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Speaker 1: a Superman cape or a fine tuxedo, take your pick.

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Speaker 1: The real theme of My Way is that every life

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Speaker 1: is a triumph, not just Frank Sinatras. That's why it

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Speaker 1: regularly tops karaoke charts around the world, and it's also

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Speaker 1: the most popular song be requested at funerals. It's the

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Speaker 1: center point of event diagram between Trump's inaugural ball any

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Speaker 1: funeral for murdered rapper Nipsey Hustle. It's arguably the only

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Speaker 1: thing those two events have in common. This isn't my

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Speaker 1: favorite song by any stretch, sorry, mister Anka, but I'd

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Speaker 1: argue that for good or ill, it lays claim to

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Speaker 1: the closest thing we've had to a new national anthem

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Speaker 1: in the last one hundred years. And I don't necessarily

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Speaker 1: mean that as a compliment. It's a song that defines

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Speaker 1: American individualism and American exceptionalism. But on a more positive slant,

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Speaker 1: it's a song that will live forever because it makes

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Speaker 1: whoever sings it feels like there's somebody damn it well

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Speaker 1: said thank you. I should have saved that for a kicker. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know what, Let's screw the factoid teasing. Let's just

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Speaker 1: jump right in, folks. Here was everything you didn't know

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Speaker 1: about My Way, made popular by Frank Sinatra. I call

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Speaker 1: this section having the gall the French origins of My Way.

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Speaker 1: That's good, that's proud of that. Yeah, thank you. The

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Speaker 1: song My Way has this origins in Heigel's beloved France,

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Speaker 1: where it was a hit in February nineteen sixty eight

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Speaker 1: under the name gomb Debut. Dude, can you say that

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Speaker 1: for me? My French accent is so bad? Gomb debuted

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Speaker 1: Thank You, which means as usual, and it was a

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Speaker 1: hit by the French crooner Claude Francois. I'm not familiar,

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Speaker 1: but the Guardian would describe him thus, if it's possible

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Speaker 1: to imagine a surrealistic glic Rod Stewart, nothing anyone would

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Speaker 1: want to Francoise? Was it our second mention of Rod

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Speaker 1: ste in the first five minutes of this program?

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Speaker 3: So deeply unappealing? Like didn't they already have that? Wasn't

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Speaker 3: it an old sex pest?

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Speaker 1: Serge Gainsburg? Yeah, I had the pause and figure out

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Speaker 1: which French singer you're talking about.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, he's not a good He's not as good as

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Speaker 3: a singer as Rod Stewart, but as far as lush,

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Speaker 3: disgusting men convinced of their own genius, go like, he's got.

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Speaker 1: To be up there right. I don't think Rod Stewart's

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Speaker 1: convinced of his own genius. I think he's full aware

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Speaker 1: of what he is. Okay, interesting take. Claude Francois would

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Speaker 1: also have a hit with another song that would be

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Speaker 1: we worked in English, this time Feelings by Morris Albert,

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Speaker 1: which was a huge hit. Though my way shares the

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Speaker 1: same melody as his golic cousin. The words have absolutely

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Speaker 1: nothing in common. Written by Parisian composer Jacques Riveau, who

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Speaker 1: wrote three other songs that day, and Giles Tibaut the

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Speaker 1: lyrics to comb debutued chronicle couple whose relationship is disintegrating

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Speaker 1: due to the boredom of every day life, hence the

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Speaker 1: title as usual, And it's quite the gloomy little number

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Speaker 1: in a uniquely French kind of way. It opens with

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Speaker 1: the line I get up, I shake you, you don't

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Speaker 1: wake up as usual? Weird, and it closes with we

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Speaker 1: will make love as usual, we will fake it as usual,

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Speaker 1: especially for nineteen sixty eight too. Yeah that's great, brutal

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. Singer Claude France Will received a co write

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Speaker 1: on the song because he tweaked the lyrics to be

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Speaker 1: more autobiographical, which is a hell of a thing to admit.

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Speaker 1: He'd recently split up with the Iconic Yeah yea Chantu

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeahs say that the French pop.

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Speaker 3: I don't even know the first I heard of that

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Speaker 3: bullet It was from mad Men, and then no one's

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Speaker 3: ever talked about it ever since.

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Iconic Yeah Yeah Chantus France, Gaul France gall

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Speaker 1: their name is Redundant. I just can't wait for the

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Speaker 1: section to be over.

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Speaker 3: Sorry, I don't want to get into a whole thing

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Speaker 3: about yeah yeah, but.

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Speaker 1: Please get into a whole thing about yeah yeah. This

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Speaker 1: isn't that long of an episode. What is the point

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Speaker 1: of it. It's just like louds music. It's French pop.

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Speaker 1: It's French pop filtered through lounge. Yeah, all right. Did

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Speaker 1: we need that at the time, No, but they did.

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Speaker 1: It's not about us, just so funny had the good music.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's just so funny that at the

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Speaker 3: height of like the British rock revolution and you know,

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Speaker 3: soul in America, the French were like, what if we

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Speaker 3: took our already boring music and made it more precious

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Speaker 3: and fanciful.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think a lot of European countries in

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Speaker 1: the sixties did that. I mean Germany had I think

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Speaker 1: it was called Schlager.

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Speaker 3: Germany had nothing before there was a huge blank carry

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Speaker 3: between Wagner and crowd rock, and when the Beatles were

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Speaker 3: in Hamburg, there's the only interesting things that happened in

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Speaker 3: German music.

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Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it's you're correct. I sorry, but Schlager

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Speaker 1: was like German. Yeah yeah, it was like, just that's

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Speaker 1: not locking awful. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, it was just

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Speaker 1: In case you think this story can't get even more

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Speaker 1: frenchly melodramatic, Claude Francois died a decade after the release

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Speaker 1: of Comb Debbie Twod while changing a light bulb in

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Speaker 1: a bathroom lamp while in his bathtub. That is how

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Speaker 1: the French Rod Stewart died. That sounds like a Polish joke,

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Speaker 1: gonna ry embarrassing people.

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Speaker 3: Can't rock and roll electrocute themselves in bathtubs accidentally invented. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 3: what a decrepit culture. You should have shut it down

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Speaker 3: after Camu.

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Speaker 1: That was their high point.

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Speaker 3: It's just been a ever since Gerard Depardue started getting

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Speaker 3: starring roles. It's just been all downhill from there. So

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Speaker 3: what are we talking about again?

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Speaker 1: David Bowie? Yes, yes, she didn't think were going to

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Speaker 1: get the David Bowie in this episode, did you, Folks?

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Speaker 1: In the mid sixties, it was fairly common for successful

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Speaker 1: European hits to be rewritten with English lyrics and issued

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Speaker 1: in the lucrative US and UK markets. That's the backstory

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Speaker 1: of songs like Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks,

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Speaker 1: which was another French song. The Beach Boys almost released

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Speaker 1: that song in the early seventies before deciding to shelvet.

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Speaker 1: Dusty Springsfield's torch song you Don't Have to Say You

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Speaker 1: Love Me was originally an operatic Italian pop song. Beyond

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Speaker 1: the Sea made popular by Bobby Darren was a French

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Speaker 1: song called Lamaire by Charles Trenet. It's now or never

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Speaker 1: made popular for me at least by Elvis Presley was

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Speaker 1: an Italian standard called Oslo Mio. Pretty famous song. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so it is Lamaire, though, I mean that's Across the

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Speaker 1: Sea by Bobby Darren. Yeah, that's why I mentioned it.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you did say that. Sorry, disassociate because it's

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Speaker 1: to bok about the French for too long. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I just went back into a fugue state. All this

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Speaker 1: to say, it became a fairly common practice for young

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Speaker 1: songwriters under contract to British or America and publishers to

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Speaker 1: get commissioned to write English lyrics to these European imports,

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Speaker 1: and one such writer was none other than a young

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Speaker 1: David Bowie. Before Paul Anker reworked Come Debbie Tuta's My

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Speaker 1: Way for Frank Sinatra, a pre fame, pre space oddity.

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Speaker 1: Bowie was the first to take a shot at it.

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Speaker 1: This was nineteen sixty seven or early nineteen sixty eight,

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Speaker 1: right around the time he was singing about the Laughing Gnome, so,

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Speaker 1: as you may expect, the results were not spectacular. Bowie

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Speaker 1: himself would dismiss his attempts in a two thousand and

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Speaker 1: two interview by saying, I wrote this god awful lyric.

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Speaker 1: God it was dreadful, but I think he's been a

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Speaker 1: little hard on himself. The lyrics are better than you

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Speaker 1: might expect for a twenty one year old. Bowie's early

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Speaker 1: hero was a man named Anthony Newley, who was a

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Speaker 1: British light entertainment star who's best known to our demographic

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Speaker 1: for co writing the songs in nineteen seventy one's Willie

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Speaker 1: Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. He's been described as the

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Speaker 1: British equivalent of Stephen Sondheim, which feels generous. But he

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Speaker 1: was also married to Joan Collins, so he is that

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Speaker 1: gone for him, which is nice. All this to say,

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Speaker 1: it's not too much of a stretch to see why

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Speaker 1: Bowie would have been drawn to a melody like this.

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Speaker 1: His version was called even a Fool Learns to Love,

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Speaker 1: and Anthony Newly had a big song called what kind

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Speaker 1: of fool am I? So, as usual, David Bowie's influences

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Speaker 1: are not warn lightly. His lyrics went like this, I'll

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Speaker 1: try to give my approximation to the meter that they

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Speaker 1: would have had in My Way melody. There was a time,

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Speaker 1: the laughing time I took my heart to every party,

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Speaker 1: They'd point my way, how are you today? Will you

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Speaker 1: make us laugh? Chase our blues away? They're a funny man.

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Speaker 1: Won't let them down. No, he'd dance in prance and

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Speaker 1: be their clown that time, the laughing time, when even

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Speaker 1: a fool learns to love? That's tough to sing. Thank you,

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Speaker 1: thank you. That's it's hard to find where those words

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Speaker 1: fit in the melody that I know. There is a

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Speaker 1: demo version of Bowie singing these lyrics, which went unheard

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Speaker 1: until a BBC Arena documentary on My Way in nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy eight. Fittingly, it was directed by famed UK TV

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Speaker 1: documentarian Alan Yentobb, who directed the seminal Bowie dot Cracked

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Speaker 1: Actor for the BBC a few years earlier, which if

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Speaker 1: you're a Bowie fan you should definitely check it out.

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Speaker 1: That is when he is at his cochist. That's the

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Speaker 1: one where he's like paranoid in the back of a limo,

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Speaker 1: thinking that they're being followed in La and I mean

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Speaker 1: living on milk and peppers and cocaine. Who among us? Yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: there was.

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Speaker 4: A time, the laughing time he took his plot to every.

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Speaker 1: Party they find.

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Speaker 2: His way Holly, you today, William make us laugh.

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Speaker 1: Jay sadly, I don't believe Bowie's version of the proto

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00:19:12,200 --> 00:19:16,040
Speaker 1: My Way has been officially released. Ultimately, the world would

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Speaker 1: get a very different version of comb debut Twode. As

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Speaker 1: Bowie would recall during an interview with the legendary British

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Speaker 1: journalist Michael Parkinson. I wrote some really terrible lyrics. I

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Speaker 1: sent it back and thought that'll be the last I

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Speaker 1: hear of that. Then I heard the song on the

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Speaker 1: radio and I thought, that's that tune. It must be

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Speaker 1: my song. But hang on, those are different lyrics and

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Speaker 1: it was Sinatra singing My Way. Bowie was somewhat understandably

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Speaker 1: pissed off by the fact that his lyrics had been

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Speaker 1: elbowed in favor of somebody Else's Paul Anka will Discover.

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Speaker 1: He added in the Parkinson interview that the success of

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Speaker 1: Sinatra's version quote really made me angry for so long,

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Speaker 1: for about a year. Eventually, I thought, I can write

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Speaker 1: something as big as that, and I'll write one that

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00:19:57,080 --> 00:19:59,840
Speaker 1: sounds a bit like it. So I did Life on Mars,

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Speaker 1: which was sort of my revenge trip on my Way.

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00:20:03,480 --> 00:20:05,920
Speaker 1: Bowie acknowledged the influence on the back cover of his

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one album Hunky Dory, writing inspired by Frankie

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00:20:10,880 --> 00:20:14,040
Speaker 1: next to the song's title, do you know that Life

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00:20:14,080 --> 00:20:17,680
Speaker 1: on Mars was My Way? Yeah? I told you We're

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Speaker 1: gonna get to some interesting places in this episode. Can

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Speaker 1: you imagine frank singing that song? This is a part

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Speaker 1: of me that wonders if there was a time when

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00:20:25,160 --> 00:20:28,240
Speaker 1: he was like trying to grab on to pop cultural relevance,

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00:20:28,440 --> 00:20:32,240
Speaker 1: he would have. There's some truly wild clips of frank

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00:20:32,680 --> 00:20:35,280
Speaker 1: in like anahrew Jacket and Love Beads with the Fifth

386
00:20:35,280 --> 00:20:39,320
Speaker 1: Dimension on like some TV special. It is it is

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00:20:39,400 --> 00:20:45,600
Speaker 1: something who made that pairing a talent booker was that high?

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00:20:44,040 --> 00:20:47,639
Speaker 1: I mean it kind of worked earlier in the decade

389
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Speaker 1: he did a TV special with Elvis.

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Speaker 3: I just imagine every single of those misplaced interactions going

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00:20:53,840 --> 00:20:57,679
Speaker 3: like Phil Hartman's impression of him on SNL with Connor,

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00:20:57,840 --> 00:21:01,840
Speaker 3: like just being utterly baffled but still like aggressively in

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00:21:02,000 --> 00:21:07,800
Speaker 3: charge and a weird dick. But now enter Anka. I

394
00:21:07,840 --> 00:21:09,520
Speaker 3: was trying to think of an enter Sandman thing, but

395
00:21:09,560 --> 00:21:12,119
Speaker 3: I realized I don't actually ever say enter Sandman in

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Speaker 3: that song.

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Speaker 4: Yeah now anyway, So, but we missed out to mister

398
00:21:19,240 --> 00:21:24,000
Speaker 4: Paul anchor Paul Anka, not the semi low tier brand

399
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Speaker 4: of Bluetooth accessories.

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Speaker 1: And on your thanks, Anka singer songwriter teen Idol, youngest

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Speaker 1: member of the rat Pack and personal friend and co

402
00:21:33,880 --> 00:21:38,719
Speaker 1: worker of Jordan Runt Toss. I hear from it more

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Speaker 1: than my own family anyway.

404
00:21:41,200 --> 00:21:43,280
Speaker 3: Anka has struck it big in the nineteen fifties with

405
00:21:43,320 --> 00:21:46,040
Speaker 3: songs like Diana, which he wrote when he was fifteen. Man,

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00:21:46,080 --> 00:21:50,760
Speaker 3: that's like a Jackson Brown writing these these days, like

407
00:21:50,880 --> 00:21:53,560
Speaker 3: sixteen or seventeen, after he'd been heartbroken by like a

408
00:21:53,600 --> 00:21:57,800
Speaker 3: decade older Nico blowing his mind sexually.

409
00:21:57,920 --> 00:22:02,639
Speaker 1: I just saw him something he oo Puppy Love, another

410
00:22:02,720 --> 00:22:06,160
Speaker 1: one of his songs, Lonely Boys the deathless, TikTok hit

411
00:22:06,600 --> 00:22:08,680
Speaker 1: put your Head on My Shoulder, which Paul loves to

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00:22:08,800 --> 00:22:11,080
Speaker 1: change to put your legs on my shoulder, to shock

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00:22:11,160 --> 00:22:12,639
Speaker 1: me during tapings.

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00:22:13,320 --> 00:22:17,880
Speaker 3: Pause to let that one, belly fop, Johnny Carson's Tonight

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00:22:17,920 --> 00:22:19,960
Speaker 3: Show theme, which was actually the instrumental version of a

416
00:22:19,960 --> 00:22:22,760
Speaker 3: song he'd written for a Nette Fornicello, and get this

417
00:22:23,840 --> 00:22:26,920
Speaker 3: not for nothing, folks. He also wrote Buddy Holly's last

418
00:22:26,960 --> 00:22:28,600
Speaker 3: single it Doesn't Matter Anymore?

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00:22:28,640 --> 00:22:31,760
Speaker 1: Did you know that? I didn't? I mean for real?

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00:22:31,840 --> 00:22:36,520
Speaker 1: Though his own hit songs, the Tonight Show theme, Frankie

421
00:22:36,520 --> 00:22:39,919
Speaker 1: and Annette songs, and Buddy Holly's last single and this

422
00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:43,480
Speaker 1: is pre my way. The man is an octopus tendrils

423
00:22:43,480 --> 00:22:49,520
Speaker 1: and everything. The man is an octopus eight arms or otherwise.

424
00:22:52,359 --> 00:22:53,840
Speaker 1: I don't even know where I was coming with that.

425
00:22:54,320 --> 00:22:58,960
Speaker 1: This was all before the Beatles. Naturally, Hey you Bob

426
00:22:59,040 --> 00:23:03,320
Speaker 1: Dylan too, well he didn't have the same chart success though. No,

427
00:23:03,520 --> 00:23:06,320
Speaker 1: but there wasn't money to be made from writing your

428
00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:09,440
Speaker 1: own songs until the Beatles came. What year was free Yllain?

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00:23:10,680 --> 00:23:13,800
Speaker 1: I think sixty three? What year they come to America?

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00:23:14,080 --> 00:23:20,239
Speaker 1: February sixty four? How about that? Well, come on, there

431
00:23:20,320 --> 00:23:21,400
Speaker 1: wasn't hit potential.

432
00:23:21,520 --> 00:23:23,920
Speaker 3: What Jordan and I are debating is that essentially the

433
00:23:23,960 --> 00:23:25,960
Speaker 3: old model of the music industry was that you would

434
00:23:25,960 --> 00:23:28,960
Speaker 3: have professional songwriters. This is a tinpan alley kind of

435
00:23:29,040 --> 00:23:32,200
Speaker 3: situation where it was literally a lot of Russian Jews

436
00:23:32,280 --> 00:23:35,720
Speaker 3: sitting at pianos in New York banging out songs like

437
00:23:35,800 --> 00:23:38,520
Speaker 3: on an eight hour shift, which would then be scouted

438
00:23:39,000 --> 00:23:43,520
Speaker 3: and shipped to whatever kooner singer of the day was

439
00:23:43,600 --> 00:23:46,119
Speaker 3: going to sing it their label or their agent or

440
00:23:46,160 --> 00:23:49,000
Speaker 3: whatever deemed was going to be hit for them. And

441
00:23:49,040 --> 00:23:51,399
Speaker 3: then this changed with Bob Dylan. Not that I'm a

442
00:23:51,480 --> 00:23:54,840
Speaker 3: Dylan stand I'm just arguing for like historical accuracy and

443
00:23:54,880 --> 00:23:58,760
Speaker 3: not everything being about the damn Beatles. You know, Dylan

444
00:23:58,920 --> 00:24:04,000
Speaker 3: really revolutionized publishing rights and songwriters singing and writing their

445
00:24:04,040 --> 00:24:05,639
Speaker 3: own songs, because it used to be even if you

446
00:24:05,640 --> 00:24:07,960
Speaker 3: were a singer and you wrote your own song, it

447
00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:09,879
Speaker 3: would just immediately get taken away from you.

448
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:11,800
Speaker 1: And he and his voice.

449
00:24:11,920 --> 00:24:15,199
Speaker 3: Completely revolutionized that. And I would argue the commercial impact

450
00:24:15,200 --> 00:24:16,800
Speaker 3: came from people covering his songs.

451
00:24:18,160 --> 00:24:20,680
Speaker 1: Oh certainly, yeah, but I think that came later. We're

452
00:24:20,680 --> 00:24:22,560
Speaker 1: tabling this, We're gonna have it out on this some

453
00:24:22,640 --> 00:24:24,240
Speaker 1: other time. I'm not talking about who's doing a first.

454
00:24:24,240 --> 00:24:25,600
Speaker 1: I'm talking about who did it in a way that

455
00:24:25,680 --> 00:24:28,080
Speaker 1: made so much money that everyone was like, oh, we

456
00:24:28,119 --> 00:24:29,160
Speaker 1: got to do that now.

457
00:24:29,760 --> 00:24:33,560
Speaker 3: Oh okay, just changing the rules of debate on me. Yeah, okay,

458
00:24:33,640 --> 00:24:37,640
Speaker 3: that's fine. Paul was on vacation in southern France, where

459
00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:40,480
Speaker 3: he spent most of the sixties bouncing between Vegas and Europe,

460
00:24:40,600 --> 00:24:43,560
Speaker 3: and when he first heard combe debutide on the radio,

461
00:24:43,920 --> 00:24:46,159
Speaker 3: and as he would say, it was a song, but

462
00:24:46,240 --> 00:24:48,760
Speaker 3: I felt there was something different in it. Something about

463
00:24:48,760 --> 00:24:51,000
Speaker 3: the melody of the tune captivated him, and he tracked

464
00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:54,120
Speaker 3: down the publishers. He got them to sign the adaptation,

465
00:24:54,400 --> 00:24:58,439
Speaker 3: recording and publishing rights over to him for one dollar,

466
00:24:58,720 --> 00:25:02,560
Speaker 3: an astounding feat of negotiating, as long as the melodies

467
00:25:02,640 --> 00:25:06,000
Speaker 3: composers would retain their original share of royalty rights.

468
00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:08,280
Speaker 1: I just want to say, it's funny because we have

469
00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:10,879
Speaker 1: to license my way for the podcast I'm working on,

470
00:25:11,040 --> 00:25:15,680
Speaker 1: and it's extremely easy to get that song cleared because

471
00:25:15,920 --> 00:25:17,800
Speaker 1: even though he doesn't own all of it anymore, they're

472
00:25:17,800 --> 00:25:20,160
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, because they're so great.

473
00:25:20,160 --> 00:25:23,200
Speaker 1: Sure him for turning that song into what it's become.

474
00:25:23,400 --> 00:25:25,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, this would have been at some point in early

475
00:25:26,040 --> 00:25:28,919
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty eight, and for a few months Paul just

476
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:32,119
Speaker 3: sat on his new investment, just mulling it over, you know,

477
00:25:33,240 --> 00:25:36,680
Speaker 3: looking at this little French nest egg in these files.

478
00:25:37,480 --> 00:25:39,919
Speaker 3: And that is until his buddy Frank Sinatra called him

479
00:25:39,960 --> 00:25:41,920
Speaker 3: up one night and invited him to dinner.

480
00:25:44,320 --> 00:25:46,240
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be

481
00:25:46,359 --> 00:25:49,160
Speaker 1: right back with more too much information in just a moment.

482
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:03,320
Speaker 3: Now we segue into the history of the rat Pack.

483
00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:08,760
Speaker 3: Just the best name for a bunch of filthy rich celebrities.

484
00:26:10,520 --> 00:26:13,480
Speaker 3: Anko was significantly younger than Frank, something like twenty six

485
00:26:13,600 --> 00:26:17,000
Speaker 3: year difference. They met when Paul Anka started headlining at

486
00:26:17,000 --> 00:26:19,040
Speaker 3: the Sands Hotel in Vegas when he was just sixteen

487
00:26:19,119 --> 00:26:21,080
Speaker 3: years old, and at the time that was the home

488
00:26:21,080 --> 00:26:22,080
Speaker 3: base for the rat Pack.

489
00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:29,920
Speaker 1: Frank and Dean No like Dean Dean forgot his last

490
00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:33,720
Speaker 1: name for a second mark Frank Sinadra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis,

491
00:26:33,720 --> 00:26:36,520
Speaker 1: and so forth. But they were actually the second generation

492
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:40,280
Speaker 1: the popularized ones rat Pack UH one point zero as

493
00:26:40,320 --> 00:26:44,480
Speaker 1: you put it, rat Pack Beta version was led referred

494
00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:47,600
Speaker 1: to Humphrey Bogart and his running, drinking and smoking buddies

495
00:26:47,800 --> 00:26:50,280
Speaker 1: who would hang out in Vegas. According to a possibly

496
00:26:50,320 --> 00:26:53,479
Speaker 1: apocryphal story, the term was coined by Bogie's wife, Lauren Bakal,

497
00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:57,360
Speaker 1: who walked in on Humphrey and his cronies and said, insultingly,

498
00:26:57,600 --> 00:27:00,840
Speaker 1: don't you look like a regular rat pack? I know

499
00:27:00,920 --> 00:27:05,840
Speaker 1: it smelled crazy in there. It was like pre the

500
00:27:05,920 --> 00:27:08,320
Speaker 1: rise of commercial deodorants. You're talking about a bunch of

501
00:27:08,400 --> 00:27:13,680
Speaker 1: chain smoking alcoholics. Sinatra woorl lavender. Apparently lavender was a

502
00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:18,200
Speaker 1: scent that he liked very much. Oh smells like cancer. Uh.

503
00:27:18,359 --> 00:27:21,400
Speaker 3: Lauren Pocau would later be linked romantically with Sinatra after

504
00:27:21,680 --> 00:27:24,679
Speaker 3: Bogert kicked It in nineteen fifty seven. So perhaps she

505
00:27:24,880 --> 00:27:27,040
Speaker 3: was really the one that we owed the transference of

506
00:27:27,080 --> 00:27:27,919
Speaker 3: that nickname over to.

507
00:27:28,640 --> 00:27:31,320
Speaker 1: He died, He wasn't hanging out. That's the different use

508
00:27:31,320 --> 00:27:31,840
Speaker 1: of kicked it.

509
00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:36,119
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, sorry, he died horribly of lung and throat cancer.

510
00:27:36,200 --> 00:27:40,600
Speaker 3: Up right, Yeah, seriously, don't smoke, especially as.

511
00:27:40,600 --> 00:27:48,119
Speaker 1: Much as he did unfiltered sawdust. Yeah, Frank, it should

512
00:27:48,119 --> 00:27:50,440
Speaker 1: be said, never referred to his group as the rat pack.

513
00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:54,800
Speaker 3: Apparently he called it the Clan, which is so much worse.

514
00:27:57,760 --> 00:27:59,560
Speaker 3: Now here's where we get into parsing it, because if

515
00:27:59,600 --> 00:28:01,800
Speaker 3: you sticks some else in front of clan, it sounds fine,

516
00:28:01,840 --> 00:28:02,760
Speaker 3: like the rat clan.

517
00:28:03,560 --> 00:28:08,120
Speaker 1: That's hilarious, that's cute, the rat family. Just again, you're

518
00:28:08,160 --> 00:28:13,080
Speaker 1: just spinning out things that are adorable. The clan. Yeah,

519
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:15,280
Speaker 1: he did spell it with the c though, so at

520
00:28:15,359 --> 00:28:19,160
Speaker 1: least he had the awareness there. Paul Anka would tell

521
00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:22,080
Speaker 1: me that after all the shows that they would do,

522
00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:24,680
Speaker 1: there was like a steam room that all the rat

523
00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:27,119
Speaker 1: Pack guys would go to and they would invite Paul along,

524
00:28:27,560 --> 00:28:31,919
Speaker 1: and Frank had everybody They had a made custom robes

525
00:28:31,920 --> 00:28:34,680
Speaker 1: that he would embroider with the nicknames Frank gave everybody nicknamed.

526
00:28:34,880 --> 00:28:36,720
Speaker 1: Paul was the kid because he was still like a

527
00:28:36,760 --> 00:28:40,360
Speaker 1: teenager at this time. I think Frank's was the Pope.

528
00:28:40,480 --> 00:28:46,160
Speaker 1: I want to say Dean's was Dago because racism, and

529
00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:51,160
Speaker 1: Sammy's was Smoky. I think for smoking the bear, is

530
00:28:51,200 --> 00:28:56,200
Speaker 1: that racist? I think so, I assume, yeah, Okay.

531
00:28:56,280 --> 00:28:59,680
Speaker 3: Anyway, Sinatra's history with Vegas really began in nineteen fifty three,

532
00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:01,920
Speaker 3: when he started singing in the Copa room at the Sands.

533
00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 3: The hotel was aptly named At this point in Vegas history,

534
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:08,360
Speaker 3: the town was still a dusty desert outpost. The Sands

535
00:29:08,360 --> 00:29:10,840
Speaker 3: Hotel was one of the first truly elegant establishments, and

536
00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:13,800
Speaker 3: Frank who would be joined by Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Junior,

537
00:29:13,800 --> 00:29:18,320
Speaker 3: Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop. Listed in descending order of rank.

538
00:29:18,600 --> 00:29:23,760
Speaker 3: You noted so Dean Martin, Lieutenant, Sammy Davis, Secretary, Peter

539
00:29:23,920 --> 00:29:27,400
Speaker 3: Lawford Assistant to the Secretary, and Joey Bishop intern.

540
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:30,440
Speaker 1: Yeah. The only cool thing about Joey Bishop is that

541
00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:32,480
Speaker 1: he gave Regis philip In his big break. He had

542
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:34,360
Speaker 1: a talk show and then Regis philbim was like is

543
00:29:34,560 --> 00:29:37,160
Speaker 1: Ed McMahon. Basically, I don't care about that.

544
00:29:38,600 --> 00:29:40,760
Speaker 3: This group was largely responsible for bringing a dose of

545
00:29:40,800 --> 00:29:42,920
Speaker 3: glamour to the town and helping make Las Vegas a

546
00:29:42,920 --> 00:29:46,760
Speaker 3: tourist destination. Prior to this, hoteliers were struggling to fill

547
00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:49,520
Speaker 3: their new casino resorts. Now people flocked to the area

548
00:29:49,560 --> 00:29:51,640
Speaker 3: for a chance to rub shoulders with Sinatra and Co,

549
00:29:51,960 --> 00:29:54,520
Speaker 3: who were famous for treating the town as their personal playground.

550
00:29:54,720 --> 00:29:56,920
Speaker 3: You'd see them at casinos, dropping in on each other's

551
00:29:56,960 --> 00:29:59,440
Speaker 3: performance as it lounges up and down the strip. As

552
00:29:59,440 --> 00:30:02,440
Speaker 3: a result, they were treated like kings by the powers

553
00:30:02,440 --> 00:30:04,480
Speaker 3: that be in the town and generally allowed to do

554
00:30:04,520 --> 00:30:07,920
Speaker 3: whatever they wanted. Sometimes this would result in hilariously diva

555
00:30:08,080 --> 00:30:11,000
Speaker 3: esque or divo esque, not like the band, but the

556
00:30:11,040 --> 00:30:13,800
Speaker 3: masculine form of the word diva. The joke is always

557
00:30:13,800 --> 00:30:16,120
Speaker 3: better when you explain it. For example, one of the

558
00:30:16,160 --> 00:30:19,000
Speaker 3: matre d's at the Kopa Room, a guy named George Levin,

559
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:21,680
Speaker 3: recalled that Sinatra had a phobia of mushrooms. When he

560
00:30:21,760 --> 00:30:24,280
Speaker 3: discovered some of his dish at the White Gloved Garden

561
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:26,440
Speaker 3: Room restaurant, he was displeased.

562
00:30:27,520 --> 00:30:30,440
Speaker 1: As Levin would later recall, everything was silver at that time,

563
00:30:30,600 --> 00:30:33,600
Speaker 1: silver plates and silver toppings. Frank lifts the cover up

564
00:30:33,600 --> 00:30:36,240
Speaker 1: in their mushrooms. He took the bowl and threw it

565
00:30:36,280 --> 00:30:38,600
Speaker 1: over his head. I stepped to the side and I

566
00:30:38,640 --> 00:30:41,680
Speaker 1: started to laugh. Frank gets up and he starts coming

567
00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:44,280
Speaker 1: after me, and I run into the kitchen. He comes

568
00:30:44,280 --> 00:30:46,320
Speaker 1: after me into the kitchen and says to me, you

569
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:49,000
Speaker 1: want to fight. I said, I'm not a fighter, I'm

570
00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:53,880
Speaker 1: a lover. Were they making eye contact anyway? Sinatra? He says.

571
00:30:53,920 --> 00:30:57,080
Speaker 1: Sinatra broke up. He hugged me and that was it.

572
00:30:57,120 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 1: Sinatra wud ultimately depart the Sands for the newly build

573
00:31:00,120 --> 00:31:06,480
Speaker 1: Caesar's Palace. On September eleventh, nineteen sixty seven. The lead

574
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:08,520
Speaker 1: in the New York Times piece covering his exit read,

575
00:31:08,840 --> 00:31:11,200
Speaker 1: Frank Sinatra walked out on his contract with the Sands

576
00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:14,400
Speaker 1: Hotel last night because the management quote cut off his credit.

577
00:31:14,720 --> 00:31:17,480
Speaker 1: A spokesman for the singer said, today, you see the

578
00:31:17,480 --> 00:31:22,000
Speaker 1: Sands have been sold to Howard Hughes and old pissbottle Howie,

579
00:31:22,080 --> 00:31:24,640
Speaker 1: who was not as lax in his attitudes towards Sinatra's

580
00:31:24,640 --> 00:31:25,320
Speaker 1: casino debts.

581
00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:28,080
Speaker 3: Truly hilarious nickname. Thank you for putting that in there.

582
00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:31,480
Speaker 3: You know, C's famously died surrounded by or did he

583
00:31:31,560 --> 00:31:33,760
Speaker 3: clean up first? So he died among him? He didn't

584
00:31:33,800 --> 00:31:34,239
Speaker 3: clean up.

585
00:31:34,280 --> 00:31:37,400
Speaker 1: No, he died with broken the hypodermic needles broken off

586
00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:40,520
Speaker 1: under his skin and was like seventy six pounds.

587
00:31:40,240 --> 00:31:45,280
Speaker 3: Surrounded by jars of his own piss and long gross fingernails.

588
00:31:45,600 --> 00:31:49,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, long hair and beard watching the same weird sixty

589
00:31:49,680 --> 00:31:52,160
Speaker 1: sci fi movie Ice Station Zebra over and over and

590
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:53,040
Speaker 1: over again and.

591
00:31:53,280 --> 00:31:58,560
Speaker 3: Yeah again, who among us? Sinatra's rage at this turn

592
00:31:58,600 --> 00:32:01,760
Speaker 3: of events was swift. According to witnesses, he climbed onto

593
00:32:01,800 --> 00:32:04,440
Speaker 3: one of the casino tables and began screaming before throwing

594
00:32:04,440 --> 00:32:07,080
Speaker 3: a chair at the casino boss. The pit boss then

595
00:32:07,120 --> 00:32:10,280
Speaker 3: responded by punching him in the face. Sinatra left the

596
00:32:10,280 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 3: hotel via the most dramatic and immediate route. He drove

597
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:16,560
Speaker 3: a golf cart through a window, and the following day

598
00:32:17,120 --> 00:32:19,600
Speaker 3: upped sticks to Seas Palace.

599
00:32:20,320 --> 00:32:22,520
Speaker 1: Very nicely read I just want to praise you for that.

600
00:32:22,520 --> 00:32:26,800
Speaker 1: That was extremely well delivered. Oh well, thank you. So

601
00:32:26,880 --> 00:32:29,320
Speaker 1: that wasn't very cool. But on the flip side, or

602
00:32:29,560 --> 00:32:32,800
Speaker 1: was it, well, you put it that way, it was

603
00:32:32,960 --> 00:32:36,640
Speaker 1: very cool. But this is very cool too. S Ultra

604
00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:39,280
Speaker 1: also put himself on the line to help fight racial

605
00:32:39,320 --> 00:32:42,920
Speaker 1: segregation in Las Vegas in the mid fifties. Hotel owners

606
00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:45,200
Speaker 1: knew they had the book Black Acts because the revenue

607
00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:48,240
Speaker 1: they brought was enormous, but headliners like Lena Horne and

608
00:32:48,280 --> 00:32:50,880
Speaker 1: Fat Stamino were forbidden from meeting in the dining room

609
00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:54,880
Speaker 1: at the venues where they performed. Instead, they were sequestion

610
00:32:55,000 --> 00:32:57,560
Speaker 1: in the kitchen or sometimes a dressing room. There's a

611
00:32:57,560 --> 00:33:00,320
Speaker 1: famous story where Frank saw Inn that King Cole eating

612
00:33:00,320 --> 00:33:03,200
Speaker 1: in his dressing room by himself. Sinatra invited him to

613
00:33:03,240 --> 00:33:05,160
Speaker 1: be his guest at his table in the whites only

614
00:33:05,200 --> 00:33:09,480
Speaker 1: dining room, summoning a hutzpa that only fifties era Sinatra

615
00:33:09,520 --> 00:33:12,760
Speaker 1: could muster. He told the hotel management that if African

616
00:33:12,760 --> 00:33:15,120
Speaker 1: Americans weren't allowed in the dining room, he would have

617
00:33:15,160 --> 00:33:18,480
Speaker 1: the entire weight staff fired. I have no idea whether

618
00:33:18,520 --> 00:33:20,320
Speaker 1: or not he actually had the authority to do that,

619
00:33:20,440 --> 00:33:24,080
Speaker 1: but surely no one doubted him. He would also assign

620
00:33:24,160 --> 00:33:26,280
Speaker 1: some of his bodyguards to follow some of the black

621
00:33:26,320 --> 00:33:29,200
Speaker 1: acts around, telling them, if anyone looks at them, the

622
00:33:29,240 --> 00:33:33,240
Speaker 1: black art is funny, break both their legs. That does rule.

623
00:33:33,920 --> 00:33:35,520
Speaker 1: I love a guy who gave money to both the

624
00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:40,400
Speaker 1: NAACP and the mob. That seems that's nice. Yeah, he's

625
00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:46,200
Speaker 1: just he's leveling all sides. Yeah. Sinatra threatened to end

626
00:33:46,240 --> 00:33:48,959
Speaker 1: the rat Pack's popular summat at the Sands Show if

627
00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:51,440
Speaker 1: Sammy Davis Junior wasn't allowed to stay at the same

628
00:33:51,440 --> 00:33:54,880
Speaker 1: hotel with the others. Hotel management gave in the Sinatra's

629
00:33:54,920 --> 00:33:57,920
Speaker 1: demands and Sammy was given a suite, helping to pave

630
00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:02,000
Speaker 1: the way for equal treatment of black entertainment in the city. Well,

631
00:34:02,040 --> 00:34:04,160
Speaker 1: since we're talking about the rat pack and Vegas, we

632
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:06,520
Speaker 1: should really close the loop and touch on the mob

633
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:10,640
Speaker 1: and JFK. Sinatra met Kennedy through second tier rat packer

634
00:34:10,680 --> 00:34:14,160
Speaker 1: Peter Lawford, who was married to JFK's sister, Patricia Kennedy

635
00:34:14,160 --> 00:34:18,719
Speaker 1: at the time. Frank contributed Kennedy's campaign theme tune, which

636
00:34:18,760 --> 00:34:22,200
Speaker 1: was a revamped version of Sammy Cohn's High Hopes. With

637
00:34:22,320 --> 00:34:24,920
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty election against Richard Nixon started to look

638
00:34:24,920 --> 00:34:28,520
Speaker 1: a little too close for comfort, Kennedy patriarch Joe Senior

639
00:34:28,560 --> 00:34:32,120
Speaker 1: put in a call to Sinatra and supposedly said, I'm

640
00:34:32,120 --> 00:34:34,040
Speaker 1: going to ask you a favor. I need your help

641
00:34:34,040 --> 00:34:36,560
Speaker 1: in Illinois and West Virginia. I want you to talk

642
00:34:36,600 --> 00:34:38,200
Speaker 1: to the guys you know in the mob to get

643
00:34:38,200 --> 00:34:41,680
Speaker 1: the unions of both states to vote for Kennedy. Frank

644
00:34:41,719 --> 00:34:43,840
Speaker 1: had known these guys since he was singing in bootleg

645
00:34:43,880 --> 00:34:46,319
Speaker 1: saloons in the thirties, but his ties with them had

646
00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:49,240
Speaker 1: really become cemented when he started working in Las Vegas,

647
00:34:49,320 --> 00:34:52,040
Speaker 1: because Vegas was where all the mobsters went in the

648
00:34:52,040 --> 00:34:54,560
Speaker 1: forties and fifties, because all the illegal stuff they did

649
00:34:54,600 --> 00:34:59,759
Speaker 1: back east was legal there. Brothels, gambling. Surely there are

650
00:34:59,760 --> 00:35:05,719
Speaker 1: others of things, hunting men for sport, I assume. Yeah,

651
00:35:06,040 --> 00:35:08,880
Speaker 1: Suddenly they went from being organized crime kingpins in the

652
00:35:08,880 --> 00:35:12,200
Speaker 1: East to being legitimate businessmen in Las Vegas on you

653
00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:15,560
Speaker 1: guys have seen The Godfather, right. Plus it was out

654
00:35:15,600 --> 00:35:19,160
Speaker 1: in the desert where law enforcement and regulations weren't very strict,

655
00:35:19,239 --> 00:35:21,959
Speaker 1: so it was a good place to kind of dip

656
00:35:22,000 --> 00:35:24,840
Speaker 1: your toes in legitimate business without having to really be

657
00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:28,399
Speaker 1: all that strict about it. Anyway, when Joe Kennedy asked

658
00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:30,959
Speaker 1: for help, Frank put in a call to Chicago mob

659
00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:35,000
Speaker 1: boss San Jiancana. Sam liked hanging out with Frank because

660
00:35:35,040 --> 00:35:37,319
Speaker 1: he liked hanging out with famous people, and Frank liked

661
00:35:37,320 --> 00:35:39,959
Speaker 1: hanging out with mob guys because it enhanced this bad

662
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:43,759
Speaker 1: boy reputation, So it's a perfect match. Samsu and Khana

663
00:35:43,800 --> 00:35:46,240
Speaker 1: had a vested interest in Kennedy owing him a favor

664
00:35:46,400 --> 00:35:49,319
Speaker 1: since the FBI were tailing him day and night, and

665
00:35:49,440 --> 00:35:51,760
Speaker 1: he figured that having a sitting president in his corner

666
00:35:51,760 --> 00:35:55,759
Speaker 1: would be pretty helpful for calling off the dogs. This

667
00:35:55,880 --> 00:35:59,080
Speaker 1: backfired when JFK went and appointed his brother Robert as

668
00:35:59,120 --> 00:36:03,280
Speaker 1: Attorney General. RFK famously became one of the most fervent

669
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:08,120
Speaker 1: anti mafia crusaders this country has ever seen. The mobsters

670
00:36:08,160 --> 00:36:11,719
Speaker 1: were apparently furious at these little, ungrateful Boston brats who

671
00:36:11,760 --> 00:36:16,600
Speaker 1: were biting the pinky ring clad hands that fed them. No,

672
00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:24,400
Speaker 1: not even no, no, that's good. Just tried carefully, you know, sensitively.

673
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:28,040
Speaker 1: This is still a sensitive topic in the community. I

674
00:36:28,400 --> 00:36:30,480
Speaker 1: have distant family members who split on the ground whenever

675
00:36:30,560 --> 00:36:36,640
Speaker 1: RFK is mentioned. I don't I was making that up. Well.

676
00:36:36,680 --> 00:36:39,680
Speaker 1: This is all cited as a circumstantial evidence by conspiracy

677
00:36:39,719 --> 00:36:41,840
Speaker 1: theorists who say that the mob at a hand and

678
00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:47,000
Speaker 1: killing JFK in November nineteen sixty three. Another way Frank

679
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:50,200
Speaker 1: possibly helped set the wheels in motion for the most

680
00:36:50,200 --> 00:36:54,840
Speaker 1: infamous assassination in American history is by introducing JFK to

681
00:36:54,960 --> 00:36:58,440
Speaker 1: was former girlfriend, Judith Campbell. Campbell would go on to

682
00:36:58,440 --> 00:37:03,280
Speaker 1: become Kennedy's mistress as well as Sam gen Conna's mistress. Ooh.

683
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:07,080
Speaker 1: This is a relatively open secret in government circles, and

684
00:37:07,120 --> 00:37:10,720
Speaker 1: the Court at Camelot was understandably freaked that the president

685
00:37:10,840 --> 00:37:13,200
Speaker 1: was sharing a girlfriend with one of the most prominent

686
00:37:13,239 --> 00:37:16,680
Speaker 1: mob bosses in the country. Who his own brother was

687
00:37:16,719 --> 00:37:19,319
Speaker 1: trying to put away. This is like breaking bad the

688
00:37:19,360 --> 00:37:22,279
Speaker 1: way the layers here. I mean, you couldn't even write this.

689
00:37:22,440 --> 00:37:24,040
Speaker 1: It seems to what do you I mean, like, yeah,

690
00:37:24,080 --> 00:37:25,560
Speaker 1: what do you even put it? When there was like

691
00:37:25,640 --> 00:37:27,440
Speaker 1: one of the biggest musicians in the world was like

692
00:37:28,760 --> 00:37:31,400
Speaker 1: in bed with the mob and the president was fighting

693
00:37:31,480 --> 00:37:33,920
Speaker 1: the mob and the president was also sleeping with the

694
00:37:33,960 --> 00:37:37,640
Speaker 1: mob guy's girlfriend. Like you imagine that. That's like a

695
00:37:37,680 --> 00:37:41,239
Speaker 1: Shakespeare farce. I mean, that's like a right people would

696
00:37:41,239 --> 00:37:46,120
Speaker 1: the comparison be like it was like some Italian prime

697
00:37:46,160 --> 00:37:49,759
Speaker 1: minister Berlosconi. Well, Pearl SCARONI, yeah, just did it for

698
00:37:49,800 --> 00:37:53,600
Speaker 1: real with porn stars. But who's like the big male

699
00:37:53,719 --> 00:37:56,320
Speaker 1: star that It's got to be some country to be hilarious.

700
00:37:56,320 --> 00:38:01,560
Speaker 1: It was some country just in Timberlake. No, no, well,

701
00:38:01,880 --> 00:38:03,160
Speaker 1: finish what you're asking.

702
00:38:04,120 --> 00:38:06,080
Speaker 3: Luke Combs, like if what it was like the most

703
00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:09,279
Speaker 3: like milk toast, like good old boy country artist and

704
00:38:09,320 --> 00:38:13,120
Speaker 3: he was like, you know, trying to impressure Joe Biden.

705
00:38:13,280 --> 00:38:15,160
Speaker 3: But at the same time he was also like in

706
00:38:15,480 --> 00:38:19,160
Speaker 3: QAnon and one of the QAnon women.

707
00:38:19,239 --> 00:38:22,680
Speaker 1: Was having sex with Joe Biden. Does that make sense?

708
00:38:22,920 --> 00:38:24,960
Speaker 1: Sinatra was a milk toast though. I feel like he

709
00:38:25,080 --> 00:38:27,120
Speaker 1: still had kind of but he was like mainstream appeal,

710
00:38:27,200 --> 00:38:29,239
Speaker 1: you know. I mean like that's what I'm saying. JT.

711
00:38:30,040 --> 00:38:33,640
Speaker 1: His time is pasted. Also at Franks by nineteen sixty.

712
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:38,680
Speaker 1: I'm warning you, you're just like the community is getting

713
00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:39,560
Speaker 1: mad at me. You are.

714
00:38:39,640 --> 00:38:44,160
Speaker 3: You are pushing a lot of my buttons today.

715
00:38:44,680 --> 00:38:47,160
Speaker 1: I mean, Okay, how is Luke Colmbs more like Sinatra

716
00:38:47,280 --> 00:38:49,480
Speaker 1: than JT? I don't know, he just had that big hit.

717
00:38:49,560 --> 00:38:52,240
Speaker 1: I was thinking like chart topping, you know, like Okay,

718
00:38:52,320 --> 00:38:55,000
Speaker 1: I just think, yeah, I don't know, they aren't like

719
00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:58,000
Speaker 1: all the male stars now, like coming from country. I

720
00:38:58,120 --> 00:39:00,600
Speaker 1: just heard of this guy jelly Roll. You heard of him,

721
00:39:00,719 --> 00:39:05,000
Speaker 1: jelly Roll Morton. No. No, he's a large man with

722
00:39:05,080 --> 00:39:09,600
Speaker 1: face tattoos. So it is jelly Roll Morton. No. I

723
00:39:09,640 --> 00:39:11,839
Speaker 1: don't think he had a face tattoo. No, I don't

724
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:15,440
Speaker 1: care to know about that. Yeah, you wouldn't would make

725
00:39:15,480 --> 00:39:21,560
Speaker 1: you unhappy. FBI chief slash garbage human Jaggar Hoover wrote

726
00:39:21,600 --> 00:39:26,360
Speaker 1: irate memos to Bobby Kennedy while wearing women's underpants. Probably yes,

727
00:39:26,880 --> 00:39:29,759
Speaker 1: the hypocrisy of Jaeger Hoover that's a whole other podcast.

728
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:34,439
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, my fun my, funniest niche fact about Old

729
00:39:34,560 --> 00:39:39,440
Speaker 3: Hooves is, uh, j Eddie Hooves as we call him

730
00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:44,160
Speaker 3: around the way. Uh. Matti Klarwine is this famous like

731
00:39:44,200 --> 00:39:47,279
Speaker 3: psychedelic album sleeve designer painter from the sixties. He did

732
00:39:47,280 --> 00:39:50,839
Speaker 3: the cover of a Braxis by Santana, and he also

733
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:53,359
Speaker 3: did the cover of Live Evil, which is a Miles

734
00:39:53,440 --> 00:39:56,880
Speaker 3: Davis live album, and on the back half of it

735
00:39:56,920 --> 00:40:01,839
Speaker 3: is this repulsive frog beat looking thing that's very like

736
00:40:01,920 --> 00:40:04,759
Speaker 3: obviously psychedelic, and he said his facial model for it

737
00:40:04,800 --> 00:40:06,600
Speaker 3: was j Eddie Hooves.

738
00:40:07,440 --> 00:40:10,680
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Oh, you can totally tell. Yeah, So that's funny.

739
00:40:10,840 --> 00:40:14,920
Speaker 1: That is very funny. So Jaeger Hoover wrote furious memos

740
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:17,040
Speaker 1: to Bobby Kennedy about the fact that his brother was

741
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:21,120
Speaker 1: sleeping with a mobster's mole. Is that what you'd call her? Oh,

742
00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:25,800
Speaker 1: mobster's girlfriend. Yeah. Needless to say, all of us strain

743
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:29,960
Speaker 1: the friendship between Sinatra and JFK, and soon relations between

744
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:33,280
Speaker 1: them began to sour. But the real split between Frank

745
00:40:33,320 --> 00:40:37,000
Speaker 1: and JFK came in March nineteen sixty two, when Kennedy

746
00:40:37,040 --> 00:40:39,920
Speaker 1: was supposed to visit Sinatra at his home in Palm Springs.

747
00:40:40,560 --> 00:40:43,080
Speaker 1: Frank was so thrilled about hosting the President that he

748
00:40:43,120 --> 00:40:45,520
Speaker 1: went all out and had his tennis court turned into

749
00:40:45,560 --> 00:40:49,319
Speaker 1: a helicopter pad for the President's Marine one chopper to land.

750
00:40:49,800 --> 00:40:52,640
Speaker 1: But then at the last minute, Kennedy called and told

751
00:40:52,680 --> 00:40:54,360
Speaker 1: him that he was going to stay down the street

752
00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:58,879
Speaker 1: with Bing Crosby instead. Bing Crosby a well known Republican

753
00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:02,880
Speaker 1: who also had mop It's worth noting. Kennedy claimed that

754
00:41:02,920 --> 00:41:05,520
Speaker 1: this was due to security concerns, but Sinatra knew it

755
00:41:05,560 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 1: was because Bobby Kennedy was putting the muscle on JFK

756
00:41:08,920 --> 00:41:12,640
Speaker 1: to distance himself from him, and consequently Sinatra took it

757
00:41:12,680 --> 00:41:15,680
Speaker 1: as a betrayal. He was so mad that he went

758
00:41:15,719 --> 00:41:19,040
Speaker 1: into the backyard at night, turned on the lights and

759
00:41:19,160 --> 00:41:25,120
Speaker 1: smashed up the helipad with a sledgehammer, with Vince Grolty's

760
00:41:25,840 --> 00:41:30,000
Speaker 1: Christmas Time is Ar playing in the background. Oh that's

761
00:41:30,040 --> 00:41:31,759
Speaker 1: so funny. How mad do you have to be to

762
00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:35,040
Speaker 1: smash up an entire helipad by yourself with a sledgehammer?

763
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:40,239
Speaker 1: I mean, Frank, Oh, a rageful man, to be sure, yes, yes,

764
00:41:40,560 --> 00:41:43,520
Speaker 1: also a slight one, you know. I don't think he

765
00:41:43,600 --> 00:41:45,759
Speaker 1: was that. This is post Bobby Socks or era.

766
00:41:45,920 --> 00:41:49,040
Speaker 3: He was like he got some he had some drinking

767
00:41:49,080 --> 00:41:51,360
Speaker 3: weight on him, but I think he was ever like beefy.

768
00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:55,720
Speaker 1: You know, Paul was talking the other day. This was great.

769
00:41:55,760 --> 00:41:58,839
Speaker 1: I mean, just it's so weird that, like, I talked

770
00:41:58,880 --> 00:42:01,160
Speaker 1: to this guy fairly text with this guy at a

771
00:42:01,160 --> 00:42:04,040
Speaker 1: fairly regular basis. He was like, yeah, and that King Cole.

772
00:42:04,080 --> 00:42:06,239
Speaker 1: He was really grateful to Frank about, you know, all

773
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:08,319
Speaker 1: that he did for him, helping integrate you know, the

774
00:42:08,320 --> 00:42:11,400
Speaker 1: casinos and stuff, and helping fight racism in Vegas. But

775
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:14,319
Speaker 1: he didn't really like hanging out with Frank because and

776
00:42:14,400 --> 00:42:16,000
Speaker 1: his voice kind of trolled off, and I was like,

777
00:42:16,040 --> 00:42:18,640
Speaker 1: well why, He's like, well, it's a tough crowd to

778
00:42:18,680 --> 00:42:21,319
Speaker 1: hang out with. They just it was tough to keep

779
00:42:21,400 --> 00:42:24,800
Speaker 1: up with Frank and those guys just drinking wise, joking wise,

780
00:42:24,880 --> 00:42:29,440
Speaker 1: everything wise, really racially. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it

781
00:42:29,520 --> 00:42:32,880
Speaker 1: was in hell for Sam a man. Yeah, oh my

782
00:42:32,920 --> 00:42:37,360
Speaker 1: god god. Yeah. So yeah, So Frank was really heartbroken

783
00:42:37,440 --> 00:42:40,560
Speaker 1: that JFK blew him off and making matters worse for him.

784
00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:43,759
Speaker 1: The mafia still thought he was buddy buddy with the Kennedys,

785
00:42:43,960 --> 00:42:47,080
Speaker 1: and so they didn't trust him anymore either. And the

786
00:42:47,120 --> 00:42:49,160
Speaker 1: real falling out with Frank and the mob cam when

787
00:42:49,200 --> 00:42:52,520
Speaker 1: then the Vada Gaming Commission started to investigate mob run

788
00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:56,640
Speaker 1: casinos in nineteen sixty three, which possibly not coincidentally, was

789
00:42:56,640 --> 00:43:00,680
Speaker 1: the year that JFK was murdered. Ji and con blamed

790
00:43:00,760 --> 00:43:05,000
Speaker 1: this investigation in the mob run casinos on Sinatra, which

791
00:43:05,120 --> 00:43:08,600
Speaker 1: was untrue, but he severed their relationship, and Mobster started

792
00:43:08,600 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 1: openly talking about assassinating Sinatra and Dean or poking Sammy

793
00:43:13,280 --> 00:43:16,440
Speaker 1: Davis's other eye out he lost an eye in a

794
00:43:16,480 --> 00:43:19,359
Speaker 1: car accident in the fifties. All of this is charming. Yeah,

795
00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:21,799
Speaker 1: that's Dube because you know that was the one that

796
00:43:21,880 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 1: he could have pulled off with zero repercussions. Kill and

797
00:43:27,560 --> 00:43:29,880
Speaker 1: Frank or Dean Martin probably would have gotten some notice

798
00:43:29,880 --> 00:43:32,040
Speaker 1: from the press, but they you would have been able

799
00:43:32,080 --> 00:43:35,040
Speaker 1: to kill Sammy Davis because of racism or blind him,

800
00:43:35,080 --> 00:43:37,959
Speaker 1: I'll say. Evidence of all this came to light after

801
00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:42,960
Speaker 1: the FBI wiretapped g and Conna's phones. Frank's FBI file, meanwhile,

802
00:43:43,040 --> 00:43:46,280
Speaker 1: has nothing to sneeze at either. He was under surveillance

803
00:43:46,320 --> 00:43:49,080
Speaker 1: since the forties due to his new deal politics during

804
00:43:49,080 --> 00:43:53,400
Speaker 1: the Roosevelt administration. Sinatra has a file that totals some

805
00:43:53,520 --> 00:43:57,160
Speaker 1: twenty four hundred and three pages, some of which include

806
00:43:57,160 --> 00:44:00,040
Speaker 1: accounts of him as a target of death threats and

807
00:44:00,160 --> 00:44:03,799
Speaker 1: extortion schemes. Hell yeah, so this is a rough time

808
00:44:03,800 --> 00:44:07,440
Speaker 1: for Frank Kenny. Administration didn't like him, the mobsters didn't

809
00:44:07,480 --> 00:44:09,919
Speaker 1: like him. He was on his way out musically because

810
00:44:09,920 --> 00:44:12,759
Speaker 1: the Beatles had kind of supplanted him by the late sixties.

811
00:44:13,400 --> 00:44:15,600
Speaker 1: He was having a tough time and this is why

812
00:44:15,640 --> 00:44:19,640
Speaker 1: he started to think about retirement. Heigel, take us there,

813
00:44:20,600 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 1: retirement and you and you a primer, what can it

814
00:44:25,719 --> 00:44:31,600
Speaker 1: do for you? Around the same time, Sinatra's divorce from

815
00:44:31,640 --> 00:44:34,239
Speaker 1: twenty one year old Mia Pharaoh was almost finalized. That

816
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:37,480
Speaker 1: was was that over Rosemary's Baby? Yeah? Yeah, they were

817
00:44:37,480 --> 00:44:40,720
Speaker 1: supposed to make a movie together and Rosemary's Baby shoot

818
00:44:40,800 --> 00:44:44,560
Speaker 1: ran long and she refused to leave, and then she

819
00:44:44,760 --> 00:44:48,040
Speaker 1: was served divorce papers on the set. And if I recall,

820
00:44:48,080 --> 00:44:53,640
Speaker 1: Harkley ran into the open embrace of Roman Polanski Black

821
00:44:54,239 --> 00:44:56,759
Speaker 1: not the man you want comforting you. Yeah, but I

822
00:44:56,760 --> 00:44:58,279
Speaker 1: do want to say she was on the right side

823
00:44:58,280 --> 00:45:00,919
Speaker 1: of history there. Well, yeah, what movie did he make.

824
00:45:01,080 --> 00:45:01,880
Speaker 1: Oh it was bad.

825
00:45:02,680 --> 00:45:04,880
Speaker 3: It has to be called like running wild or like

826
00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:08,000
Speaker 3: you know. No, he did a lot of like serious

827
00:45:09,040 --> 00:45:09,239
Speaker 3: with the.

828
00:45:09,320 --> 00:45:13,239
Speaker 1: Golden arm Manchurian Candidate, et cetera, et cetera. I think

829
00:45:13,239 --> 00:45:15,840
Speaker 1: it was called the Detective. That was kind of on

830
00:45:15,920 --> 00:45:19,440
Speaker 1: the nose. Yeah.

831
00:45:19,800 --> 00:45:22,200
Speaker 3: So, at his wits end, Sinatra decided he was going

832
00:45:22,239 --> 00:45:26,160
Speaker 3: to retire from public life again who among us? While

833
00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:30,040
Speaker 3: in Miami making the thriller Lady and Cement. Yeah, this

834
00:45:30,120 --> 00:45:33,680
Speaker 3: is I'm talking about Lady and Cement.

835
00:45:34,040 --> 00:45:40,120
Speaker 1: Oh what's it about? I think Lady Cement referred to

836
00:45:40,360 --> 00:45:45,239
Speaker 1: murdered mob victims. No, I get it. Okay, did you not?

837
00:45:45,440 --> 00:45:49,239
Speaker 1: Did you? I thought you were thinking about like like

838
00:45:49,320 --> 00:45:51,560
Speaker 1: some Benny Hill like woman who's like, you know, in

839
00:45:51,600 --> 00:45:54,400
Speaker 1: a bikini running around and excellently falling into a wheelbarrow

840
00:45:54,400 --> 00:45:56,680
Speaker 1: of like wet Cement. And I mean it was Raquel Welch.

841
00:45:56,760 --> 00:45:58,359
Speaker 1: So can it be both true?

842
00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:03,200
Speaker 3: So he called Paul Anka to dinner and said, kid,

843
00:46:03,280 --> 00:46:06,560
Speaker 3: we're going to do dinner and told him per Anka's recollection.

844
00:46:06,840 --> 00:46:09,000
Speaker 3: I'm quitting the business. I'm sick of it. I'm getting

845
00:46:09,000 --> 00:46:11,359
Speaker 3: the hell out, but I'm doing one more album and

846
00:46:11,400 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 3: you never wrote me that song. There had been a

847
00:46:14,040 --> 00:46:16,720
Speaker 3: long standing and possibly tongue in cheek request from Sinatra

848
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:18,400
Speaker 3: to Paul to write him a song, but Anka was

849
00:46:18,400 --> 00:46:21,680
Speaker 3: always too intimidated. He would say, I couldn't. I was

850
00:46:21,719 --> 00:46:24,040
Speaker 3: scared to death. I was writing all this teen stuff.

851
00:46:24,360 --> 00:46:26,480
Speaker 3: In a different interview, he added, you have to remember,

852
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:28,640
Speaker 3: as you're growing and maturing and working at your craft,

853
00:46:28,760 --> 00:46:31,200
Speaker 3: that's not overnight. There's a certain kind of song that

854
00:46:31,239 --> 00:46:33,520
Speaker 3: you write for your age, and your intellect comes from

855
00:46:33,600 --> 00:46:36,080
Speaker 3: learning your craft and maturing as a person. I would

856
00:46:36,080 --> 00:46:37,840
Speaker 3: never would have written the song when I was younger.

857
00:46:38,080 --> 00:46:40,880
Speaker 3: I wasn't capable. But Sinatra was always talking about aging.

858
00:46:41,120 --> 00:46:43,799
Speaker 3: He hated getting old, he hated old age, and the

859
00:46:43,840 --> 00:46:46,279
Speaker 3: song is about being old. You're old, your vintage. But

860
00:46:46,320 --> 00:46:47,879
Speaker 3: it bugged me that I couldn't write him a song

861
00:46:48,239 --> 00:46:49,920
Speaker 3: because I loved him and adored him like all of

862
00:46:50,040 --> 00:46:52,839
Speaker 3: us did. So I decided that day I was going

863
00:46:52,880 --> 00:46:55,719
Speaker 3: to do it. The day finally came when Anka was

864
00:46:55,719 --> 00:46:58,080
Speaker 3: back in his apartment in New York City. It was

865
00:46:58,160 --> 00:47:01,399
Speaker 3: just after one am once tore me City night, when

866
00:47:01,440 --> 00:47:04,440
Speaker 3: Anka sat down his IBM electric typewriter and began putting

867
00:47:04,440 --> 00:47:06,520
Speaker 3: words to the French melody that he'd loved so much.

868
00:47:07,480 --> 00:47:09,560
Speaker 3: He put himself in Frank's shoes and began to write

869
00:47:09,560 --> 00:47:12,280
Speaker 3: the song he felt Frank would have written. I thought,

870
00:47:12,719 --> 00:47:14,719
Speaker 3: what would Frank do with this melody if he were

871
00:47:14,719 --> 00:47:17,480
Speaker 3: a writer. All of a sudden, it just came to me.

872
00:47:17,880 --> 00:47:20,600
Speaker 3: And now the end is near. I faced the final curtain.

873
00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:23,680
Speaker 3: The lyrics went from being about a dead love affair

874
00:47:23,760 --> 00:47:25,960
Speaker 3: to a man looking back fondly on a life he'd

875
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:32,160
Speaker 3: lived on his own terms and the mobs. Even the

876
00:47:32,160 --> 00:47:35,600
Speaker 3: word choice was steeped in Sinatra's own unique dialect. I

877
00:47:35,719 --> 00:47:37,920
Speaker 3: used words that I would never use, Anka said, I

878
00:47:38,080 --> 00:47:39,880
Speaker 3: ate it up and spit it out, But that's the

879
00:47:39,880 --> 00:47:42,320
Speaker 3: way he talked. The rat pack guys. They like to

880
00:47:42,360 --> 00:47:45,440
Speaker 3: talk like mob guys. Musically, it was interesting because it

881
00:47:45,480 --> 00:47:47,960
Speaker 3: had an interval of a sixth, which is an aspiring

882
00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:50,719
Speaker 3: interval because it likes to resolve to a fifth, and

883
00:47:50,760 --> 00:47:54,400
Speaker 3: gave the song stirring and theemic quality. And for the title,

884
00:47:54,600 --> 00:47:57,160
Speaker 3: Anka more or less looked to the zeitgeist. He said,

885
00:47:57,200 --> 00:48:00,520
Speaker 3: I read a lot of periodicals and I noticed everything

886
00:48:00,600 --> 00:48:02,920
Speaker 3: was my this and my that. We were in the

887
00:48:02,960 --> 00:48:05,719
Speaker 3: me generation and Frank became the guy for me to

888
00:48:05,840 --> 00:48:09,000
Speaker 3: use to say that. Anka ultimately finished the song as

889
00:48:09,000 --> 00:48:11,279
Speaker 3: the sun came up at dawn, and at last he

890
00:48:11,360 --> 00:48:13,200
Speaker 3: knew he had a song that was worthy of his idol.

891
00:48:13,840 --> 00:48:16,240
Speaker 3: He called Sinatra, who is at Caesar's Palace in Vegas,

892
00:48:16,400 --> 00:48:18,480
Speaker 3: having already crashed his golf cart through a window of

893
00:48:18,480 --> 00:48:21,480
Speaker 3: the sands, and said, I've got something really special for you.

894
00:48:22,200 --> 00:48:24,000
Speaker 3: He recorded a demo of the song and flew to

895
00:48:24,080 --> 00:48:27,120
Speaker 3: Vegas to play it for Sinatra, who immediately replied, I'm

896
00:48:27,120 --> 00:48:30,160
Speaker 3: doing it. Two months later went by before Anka got

897
00:48:30,200 --> 00:48:32,600
Speaker 3: a call from Frank. He says, kid, listen to this,

898
00:48:32,760 --> 00:48:35,479
Speaker 3: and puts the phone up to the speaker. I heard

899
00:48:35,480 --> 00:48:37,920
Speaker 3: My Way playing for the first time, and I started

900
00:48:37,920 --> 00:48:38,320
Speaker 3: to cry.

901
00:48:38,960 --> 00:48:42,359
Speaker 1: That's cute. Yeah, I mean, I actually have tape of

902
00:48:42,440 --> 00:48:46,120
Speaker 1: Paul talking about writing My Way on a recent episode

903
00:48:46,360 --> 00:48:49,360
Speaker 1: of our podcast Our Way. We had Gail King on

904
00:48:49,680 --> 00:48:53,040
Speaker 1: this week's episode, actually, and the topic came up, and

905
00:48:53,760 --> 00:48:55,520
Speaker 1: I don't think he'd mind if I spiced that in

906
00:48:55,600 --> 00:48:57,840
Speaker 1: right here. It's just cool. It was rare that we

907
00:48:57,880 --> 00:49:00,360
Speaker 1: actually get to hear the person who wrote whatever it

908
00:49:00,480 --> 00:49:03,480
Speaker 1: is we're talking about discussing it, and it's a nice

909
00:49:03,480 --> 00:49:07,200
Speaker 1: little plug for the show. So here we go, put

910
00:49:07,200 --> 00:49:08,719
Speaker 1: a little teaser in for that right here.

911
00:49:08,880 --> 00:49:12,480
Speaker 2: Well, I started with those guys, Gail back in the

912
00:49:12,520 --> 00:49:16,400
Speaker 2: early fifties. I went to Vegas at fifty eight, and then

913
00:49:16,400 --> 00:49:18,600
Speaker 2: I wound up with the rat Pack, and there with

914
00:49:18,880 --> 00:49:21,879
Speaker 2: guys I idolized, Sinatra, Sammy Davis, who was the most

915
00:49:21,920 --> 00:49:25,520
Speaker 2: talented of everybody, and Dean Martin, and you know, through

916
00:49:25,560 --> 00:49:28,080
Speaker 2: those years I got to know them well, but I

917
00:49:28,120 --> 00:49:30,800
Speaker 2: was still the kid. You know. These guys were twice

918
00:49:30,840 --> 00:49:33,000
Speaker 2: my age, but I was working for the mob like

919
00:49:33,040 --> 00:49:36,280
Speaker 2: they were, and they controlled and we had our life

920
00:49:36,320 --> 00:49:39,120
Speaker 2: and we were having and frolicking and having fun. But

921
00:49:39,160 --> 00:49:41,600
Speaker 2: I'd always wanted to write for Sinatra because he was

922
00:49:41,800 --> 00:49:44,760
Speaker 2: like the guy. And I was at the Fountain Blue

923
00:49:44,760 --> 00:49:49,319
Speaker 2: Hotel in the late sixties. He was in town doing

924
00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:52,560
Speaker 2: a film called Lady in Cement, and with the guys

925
00:49:52,600 --> 00:49:54,799
Speaker 2: we worked for, it could have been a documentary, you know,

926
00:49:55,640 --> 00:49:59,000
Speaker 2: but he was he was very cool. And he called

927
00:49:59,040 --> 00:50:01,400
Speaker 2: me up and he said, dinner, dinner, I want to

928
00:50:01,400 --> 00:50:03,200
Speaker 2: talk to you. So I went to dinner with him.

929
00:50:03,440 --> 00:50:05,440
Speaker 2: So we're at dinner and one thing led to another.

930
00:50:05,440 --> 00:50:07,560
Speaker 2: He said, kid, I'm quitting show because I've had enough.

931
00:50:07,640 --> 00:50:13,280
Speaker 2: I'm tired. Rat packs over. Yeah, we all had nicknames.

932
00:50:13,320 --> 00:50:15,719
Speaker 2: Sammy had a name, Dean had a name. I was

933
00:50:15,719 --> 00:50:17,960
Speaker 2: the kid, and we're on our bath roads because all

934
00:50:18,000 --> 00:50:20,640
Speaker 2: the fun was in the steam room when our shows

935
00:50:20,640 --> 00:50:24,319
Speaker 2: were over it. We won't go into that. So he

936
00:50:24,840 --> 00:50:26,840
Speaker 2: at dinner, he said, I'm quitting and I wan to

937
00:50:26,880 --> 00:50:28,759
Speaker 2: do one more album with Don And he said, you

938
00:50:28,880 --> 00:50:32,239
Speaker 2: never wrote me a song. So I go home to

939
00:50:32,360 --> 00:50:35,440
Speaker 2: New York. I sit down. In five hours, I finished

940
00:50:35,440 --> 00:50:38,279
Speaker 2: the lyric of my Way, and I fly out to

941
00:50:38,360 --> 00:50:42,480
Speaker 2: Vegas the next night and he said, kid, I love it.

942
00:50:42,520 --> 00:50:46,440
Speaker 2: Two months later he called and said from a studio

943
00:50:46,719 --> 00:50:48,840
Speaker 2: in La he said, kid, listen to this, and he

944
00:50:48,880 --> 00:50:51,560
Speaker 2: played it over the phone. That's the first time I

945
00:50:51,560 --> 00:50:55,719
Speaker 2: heard it. I started crying because my life changed, so

946
00:50:55,840 --> 00:50:57,080
Speaker 2: did His was such a big hit.

947
00:50:57,400 --> 00:50:58,880
Speaker 1: He stayed for ten years.

948
00:50:59,600 --> 00:51:02,200
Speaker 2: That your point, he was retiring, but he stayed ten

949
00:51:02,239 --> 00:51:04,600
Speaker 2: more years because the song was huge.

950
00:51:04,880 --> 00:51:07,680
Speaker 1: But when you finished that, because the song still, that

951
00:51:07,800 --> 00:51:11,040
Speaker 1: song still holds up still. When you finished it, did

952
00:51:11,080 --> 00:51:13,359
Speaker 1: you know that it was a hit? Did you know that?

953
00:51:13,440 --> 00:51:15,080
Speaker 2: I know it was different and very special.

954
00:51:15,160 --> 00:51:15,480
Speaker 1: Different.

955
00:51:15,600 --> 00:51:18,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't it was a spiritual moment for me.

956
00:51:18,800 --> 00:51:22,040
Speaker 2: I believe that a lot of creative people are really

957
00:51:22,080 --> 00:51:26,360
Speaker 2: sensing some kind of spiritualism in creative and I knew

958
00:51:26,360 --> 00:51:28,920
Speaker 2: that it was different than everything else that had ever written.

959
00:51:29,080 --> 00:51:33,000
Speaker 2: And I was kind of metaphorically writing it with him

960
00:51:33,040 --> 00:51:35,000
Speaker 2: in mind, because I was moved to the fact that

961
00:51:35,040 --> 00:51:37,480
Speaker 2: he was leaving. So I wrote it as if he

962
00:51:37,520 --> 00:51:40,319
Speaker 2: were writing. But it just came together, and it hit

963
00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:43,040
Speaker 2: me very very hard that I knew it was. It

964
00:51:43,080 --> 00:51:44,840
Speaker 2: was going to be something very special.

965
00:51:44,920 --> 00:51:46,759
Speaker 1: We all knew so.

966
00:51:47,280 --> 00:51:49,960
Speaker 3: In the history books, it says that Frank Sinatra recorded

967
00:51:50,000 --> 00:51:52,840
Speaker 3: My Way on December thirtieth, nineteen sixty eight, at Western

968
00:51:52,880 --> 00:51:55,720
Speaker 3: Records in LA where so many classic sixties pop tunes

969
00:51:55,719 --> 00:51:59,360
Speaker 3: were cut. There's a favorite haunt of Jordan's beloved Brian Wilson,

970
00:51:59,440 --> 00:52:02,880
Speaker 3: who worked on What Else Pet Sounds there. Sinatra was

971
00:52:02,920 --> 00:52:05,279
Speaker 3: a night owl, as Paul Anka is to this day.

972
00:52:05,719 --> 00:52:08,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, guys up like all night. But this was a

973
00:52:08,280 --> 00:52:12,360
Speaker 1: rare afternoon recording session. At roughly three pm, forty musicians

974
00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:16,480
Speaker 1: strolled into the studio. If you're interested, Lou Levy took

975
00:52:16,520 --> 00:52:18,919
Speaker 1: over his pianist for this song with Sinatra. Regular Bill

976
00:52:18,960 --> 00:52:21,880
Speaker 1: Miller cut his hand on a shart of glass. Miller did, however,

977
00:52:21,960 --> 00:52:25,440
Speaker 1: conduct the orchestra for the recording. But here's where it

978
00:52:25,440 --> 00:52:30,440
Speaker 1: gets weird, he said, not knowing what this story was

979
00:52:30,480 --> 00:52:30,920
Speaker 1: going to be.

980
00:52:33,000 --> 00:52:34,920
Speaker 3: There's a story that the recording of My Way was

981
00:52:34,920 --> 00:52:41,040
Speaker 3: attended by none other than George guitar beatle Harrison. Is

982
00:52:41,080 --> 00:52:43,359
Speaker 3: that his popular damn that just came out of my mouth?

983
00:52:43,560 --> 00:52:46,680
Speaker 3: I'm an idiot. This story comes from his wife, Patty Boyd,

984
00:52:46,719 --> 00:52:49,000
Speaker 3: who discussed it in both her memoir and in twenty

985
00:52:49,040 --> 00:52:51,320
Speaker 3: twenty two photo book, which contains a photo of her,

986
00:52:51,920 --> 00:52:54,920
Speaker 3: George and Sinatra at a recording studio control booth, and

987
00:52:54,960 --> 00:52:57,800
Speaker 3: the caption reads, while in Los Angeles, George and I

988
00:52:57,880 --> 00:52:59,560
Speaker 3: were invited to go and meet Frank Sinatra and his

989
00:52:59,600 --> 00:53:02,839
Speaker 3: recording studio. Thrilled, we were ushered upstairs to the control room,

990
00:53:02,840 --> 00:53:05,239
Speaker 3: where Frank was surrounded by many guys at the mixing desk.

991
00:53:05,800 --> 00:53:08,759
Speaker 3: We briefly met him before he disappeared downstairs. We then

992
00:53:08,800 --> 00:53:10,880
Speaker 3: watched as he proceeded to sing My Way with a

993
00:53:10,880 --> 00:53:16,919
Speaker 3: full orchestra. Wow, it was extraordinary. It doesn't recite quite

994
00:53:16,960 --> 00:53:19,280
Speaker 3: as well as it reads, although with the whole period

995
00:53:19,320 --> 00:53:22,839
Speaker 3: no exclamation point. Wow, it was extraordinary.

996
00:53:23,480 --> 00:53:25,479
Speaker 1: She's English. Listen.

997
00:53:25,560 --> 00:53:29,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, he listened back to this one take and said, Okay,

998
00:53:29,880 --> 00:53:32,920
Speaker 3: that's it, let's go. We pulled himTo Limos to a club.

999
00:53:33,239 --> 00:53:35,560
Speaker 3: When we got there, George quite rightly thought he would

1000
00:53:35,560 --> 00:53:37,600
Speaker 3: sit next to Frank, but the big guys from the

1001
00:53:37,600 --> 00:53:41,000
Speaker 3: Bronx moved him down the table. And you have firsthand

1002
00:53:41,040 --> 00:53:42,600
Speaker 3: confirmation of this story from Patty.

1003
00:53:43,160 --> 00:53:45,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, she interviewed her for this book and she said

1004
00:53:45,680 --> 00:53:48,120
Speaker 1: that she was there the night Frank recorded My Way.

1005
00:53:48,160 --> 00:53:54,120
Speaker 1: But she lied to your faces. True. Yeah, she's been

1006
00:53:54,280 --> 00:53:56,960
Speaker 1: lying to all of us this whole goddamn time. She's

1007
00:53:57,000 --> 00:54:00,600
Speaker 1: never even met George. How far does this rabbit hole go?

1008
00:54:01,440 --> 00:54:03,720
Speaker 1: Never met Eric Clapton, never met any of these people.

1009
00:54:04,000 --> 00:54:06,840
Speaker 3: So Beatle nerds and Sinatra nerds are probably two of

1010
00:54:06,840 --> 00:54:11,400
Speaker 3: the most archival obsessed sub fans. Yeah, they have receipts

1011
00:54:11,600 --> 00:54:17,040
Speaker 3: and prove that Patty's incorrect. George and Patty were in

1012
00:54:17,239 --> 00:54:20,560
Speaker 3: LA in mid November to, among other things, appear on

1013
00:54:20,600 --> 00:54:23,359
Speaker 3: the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour TV show and record with

1014
00:54:23,400 --> 00:54:31,640
Speaker 3: Apple artist Jackie Lomax. Jackie Lomax pull out some weird

1015
00:54:31,680 --> 00:54:32,799
Speaker 3: Beatle thing. What's he known for.

1016
00:54:33,120 --> 00:54:35,400
Speaker 1: He was in a Liverpool band when the Beatles were

1017
00:54:35,400 --> 00:54:37,160
Speaker 1: in their Cavern days, and then he was one of

1018
00:54:37,200 --> 00:54:40,040
Speaker 1: the first artists signed to Apple Records, the Beatles record

1019
00:54:40,080 --> 00:54:44,000
Speaker 1: label that they started in nineteen sixty eight, and George

1020
00:54:44,000 --> 00:54:47,600
Speaker 1: Harrison took him under his wing and gave him a

1021
00:54:47,640 --> 00:54:50,120
Speaker 1: song that he'd written called Sour Milk Sea, which is

1022
00:54:50,160 --> 00:54:52,640
Speaker 1: written around the same time that George is writing songs

1023
00:54:52,640 --> 00:54:55,160
Speaker 1: for the White album. It's like a good song. It

1024
00:54:55,239 --> 00:54:57,680
Speaker 1: deserved to do a lot better. And I want to

1025
00:54:57,680 --> 00:55:01,120
Speaker 1: say it's got some crazy star to line up with.

1026
00:55:04,560 --> 00:55:07,520
Speaker 1: Eric Clapton's on it, Nicky Hopkins on it, Ringos on it,

1027
00:55:07,640 --> 00:55:11,160
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney's on it, a lot of the Wrecking Crew

1028
00:55:11,200 --> 00:55:15,640
Speaker 1: guys like Larry Nektel and Joe Osborne and Klaus Vorman's

1029
00:55:15,640 --> 00:55:19,240
Speaker 1: on it too. Yeah, it's got like a really stacked lineup.

1030
00:55:19,320 --> 00:55:23,360
Speaker 1: But yeah, didn't didn't really do much. Thank you, Jordan.

1031
00:55:24,560 --> 00:55:26,520
Speaker 3: We need a little audio stinger for when your Beatles

1032
00:55:26,880 --> 00:55:30,400
Speaker 3: is done every episode. Soyer Milk Sea is so disgusting,

1033
00:55:31,000 --> 00:55:36,840
Speaker 3: I know, awful, awful turnip phrase. So, having said all that,

1034
00:55:36,920 --> 00:55:39,280
Speaker 3: evidence suggests that George and Patty dropped in on Sinatra

1035
00:55:39,360 --> 00:55:42,760
Speaker 3: November twelfth, nineteen sixty eight, during which time he recorded

1036
00:55:42,760 --> 00:55:45,879
Speaker 3: the songs Little Green Apples, Gentle on My Mind and

1037
00:55:45,960 --> 00:55:48,600
Speaker 3: by the time I get to Phoenix for his album Cycles.

1038
00:55:49,280 --> 00:55:51,560
Speaker 3: Frank's preferred technique was to work live in the studio

1039
00:55:51,640 --> 00:55:53,560
Speaker 3: by standing in the middle of an orchestra, and he

1040
00:55:53,640 --> 00:55:56,520
Speaker 3: often only did one or two takes. So it is

1041
00:55:56,520 --> 00:55:58,880
Speaker 3: possible that Sinatra performed a version of My Way for

1042
00:55:58,880 --> 00:56:02,160
Speaker 3: the benefit of George and his super hot model wife,

1043
00:56:03,440 --> 00:56:04,239
Speaker 3: or she's.

1044
00:56:04,360 --> 00:56:09,640
Speaker 1: Spent most of the sixties in a drugs I will

1045
00:56:09,640 --> 00:56:13,160
Speaker 1: say it probably sucked to be patty board around Frank Sinatra.

1046
00:56:13,480 --> 00:56:16,720
Speaker 1: He liked all bonds, Oh yeah, and he was a weird,

1047
00:56:16,920 --> 00:56:22,040
Speaker 1: angry little man. Hey mc garter was a blonde though,

1048
00:56:22,760 --> 00:56:24,960
Speaker 1: that's true, I guess I'm thinking of I mean, he

1049
00:56:25,080 --> 00:56:27,320
Speaker 1: just divorced me a Pharaoh. M hm.

1050
00:56:27,320 --> 00:56:29,360
Speaker 3: He's like, he's hey, now, I got a long haired

1051
00:56:29,400 --> 00:56:33,680
Speaker 3: Mia in front of me because me and Pharaoh cut

1052
00:56:33,680 --> 00:56:38,120
Speaker 3: her hair famously against Frank's wishes. Something possibly I.

1053
00:56:38,080 --> 00:56:40,279
Speaker 1: Thought it was when she was on Peyton Place and

1054
00:56:40,320 --> 00:56:42,239
Speaker 1: it was almost like a Britney Spears moment where she

1055
00:56:42,320 --> 00:56:43,919
Speaker 1: was like, I'm sick of this. I'm sick of being

1056
00:56:44,040 --> 00:56:46,760
Speaker 1: like because Peyton Place was like this, like the Dawson's

1057
00:56:46,800 --> 00:56:50,080
Speaker 1: Creak of its day, and she was this teen star

1058
00:56:50,160 --> 00:56:52,399
Speaker 1: and she was like trying to rebel against that. That's

1059
00:56:52,440 --> 00:56:55,839
Speaker 1: that's my dim memory of that. I don't know. I

1060
00:56:55,920 --> 00:56:56,439
Speaker 1: wasn't there.

1061
00:56:59,480 --> 00:57:03,400
Speaker 3: It is also worth noting, to further puncture an elderly

1062
00:57:03,760 --> 00:57:07,799
Speaker 3: legends recollections of her youth, that Western Studios where My

1063
00:57:07,840 --> 00:57:10,399
Speaker 3: Waiver was recorded is all on one floor and doesn't

1064
00:57:10,440 --> 00:57:15,799
Speaker 3: have an upstairs downstairs. So you, Patty Boyd, you've had

1065
00:57:15,840 --> 00:57:19,920
Speaker 3: it too easy for too damn Longe, for holding your

1066
00:57:19,920 --> 00:57:20,800
Speaker 3: feet to the fire.

1067
00:57:21,880 --> 00:57:24,080
Speaker 1: She just sold all the love notes she got from

1068
00:57:24,160 --> 00:57:26,600
Speaker 1: Eric Clapton and the painting they use for the Leila

1069
00:57:26,640 --> 00:57:31,720
Speaker 1: album cover. Sad between the George years and the Eric

1070
00:57:31,720 --> 00:57:34,080
Speaker 1: Clapton years. He's got a lot of good stuff. Always

1071
00:57:34,120 --> 00:57:36,080
Speaker 1: makes me sad when these people of a certain age

1072
00:57:36,160 --> 00:57:39,640
Speaker 1: part with their treasures, and that these big auctions. You

1073
00:57:39,680 --> 00:57:43,480
Speaker 1: gotta have something when you don't have any talent. She's

1074
00:57:43,520 --> 00:57:47,680
Speaker 1: a photographer. In a cute coda to the Beatles Sinatra connection,

1075
00:57:48,120 --> 00:57:51,640
Speaker 1: Frank would later record George's Something, calling it one of

1076
00:57:51,680 --> 00:57:55,040
Speaker 1: the best love songs written in fifty or one hundred years.

1077
00:57:54,760 --> 00:57:58,880
Speaker 3: And he also introduced it as my favorite Lennon McCartney composition.

1078
00:57:58,920 --> 00:58:02,320
Speaker 1: Yes, which I'm sure annoyed George to no ends, but

1079
00:58:02,800 --> 00:58:05,640
Speaker 1: it must have given him a small amount of satisfaction

1080
00:58:05,760 --> 00:58:09,960
Speaker 1: because Frank had reportedly rejected a song that Paul McCartney

1081
00:58:09,960 --> 00:58:13,400
Speaker 1: had pitched him at the rule.

1082
00:58:14,880 --> 00:58:18,160
Speaker 3: Uh cut to Paul angrily driving a tug boat, his

1083
00:58:18,480 --> 00:58:21,520
Speaker 3: fists white knuckled as he listens to.

1084
00:58:23,000 --> 00:58:27,040
Speaker 1: But still yeah, of course in his like eighties mullet phase.

1085
00:58:27,400 --> 00:58:32,440
Speaker 1: Oh I'm just I'm just so angry right now, that's

1086
00:58:32,480 --> 00:58:35,960
Speaker 1: a really that's a very good Paul. I'm I'm yeah,

1087
00:58:36,000 --> 00:58:38,160
Speaker 1: I'm very impressed. And you know I would know, and

1088
00:58:38,880 --> 00:58:42,880
Speaker 1: she would you would. No. So the song that Paul

1089
00:58:42,920 --> 00:58:48,800
Speaker 1: pitched him was called Suicide, which is somehow worse than

1090
00:58:48,880 --> 00:58:51,600
Speaker 1: Sour Milk Sea for a title. I'll talk about him

1091
00:58:51,600 --> 00:58:55,840
Speaker 1: over correcting, trying to fix his image as the lame Beatle. No,

1092
00:58:55,960 --> 00:58:58,480
Speaker 1: it gets worse. He wrote the song as a teenager

1093
00:58:58,600 --> 00:59:03,160
Speaker 1: back in Liverpool, a tongue in cheek Sinatra parody, because remember,

1094
00:59:03,200 --> 00:59:04,920
Speaker 1: one of the first songs that Paul ever wrote was

1095
00:59:04,920 --> 00:59:06,960
Speaker 1: when I'm sixty four. This is the era when he

1096
00:59:07,080 --> 00:59:09,200
Speaker 1: was trying to make a go of writing, like, you know,

1097
00:59:09,400 --> 00:59:13,280
Speaker 1: music hall songs. So when the man himself came calling,

1098
00:59:13,960 --> 00:59:16,800
Speaker 1: Paul had no problem sending one of the greatest interpreters

1099
00:59:16,840 --> 00:59:19,840
Speaker 1: a popular song, a joke tune that he'd written as

1100
00:59:19,880 --> 00:59:22,800
Speaker 1: a fourteen year old. This is one of the ways

1101
00:59:22,840 --> 00:59:25,400
Speaker 1: that Paul McCartney and Paul Anka are different. Paul Anka

1102
00:59:25,640 --> 00:59:28,840
Speaker 1: had the wherewithal to be afraid when Sinatra asked him

1103
00:59:28,840 --> 00:59:30,640
Speaker 1: for a song. Paul was like, Oh, yeah, there's this

1104
00:59:30,680 --> 00:59:32,920
Speaker 1: thing I wrote when I was foring a teenage bullshit.

1105
00:59:33,000 --> 00:59:38,880
Speaker 1: I wrote to make fun of you. Uh. McCartney has

1106
00:59:38,920 --> 00:59:41,920
Speaker 1: told this story many times over the years, often in

1107
00:59:42,000 --> 00:59:46,400
Speaker 1: the most avuncular Paul McCartney esque way possible. Here's one

1108
00:59:46,560 --> 00:59:49,360
Speaker 1: incarnation of that. I was once wrung up by the

1109
00:59:49,400 --> 00:59:52,280
Speaker 1: great Frank Sinatra himself. I was in the studio and

1110
00:59:52,320 --> 00:59:57,240
Speaker 1: a phone call came in. I goes, I goes hello Frank,

1111
00:59:57,560 --> 00:59:59,680
Speaker 1: and he said, have you got a song? I've heard

1112
00:59:59,680 --> 01:00:02,919
Speaker 1: about it all that. I said, I've got just the song.

1113
01:00:03,000 --> 01:00:05,720
Speaker 1: I'll send it right over. I secretly hoped, as a

1114
01:00:05,760 --> 01:00:08,360
Speaker 1: songwriter that he'd ask so I had one ready, but

1115
01:00:08,440 --> 01:00:10,720
Speaker 1: he turned it down. I think it was something to

1116
01:00:10,760 --> 01:00:14,440
Speaker 1: do with the fact that it was called suicide. A

1117
01:00:14,480 --> 01:00:17,080
Speaker 1: fragment of this song can be heard on Paul's debut

1118
01:00:17,200 --> 01:00:20,720
Speaker 1: solo album nineteen seventies McCartney. I think it's at the

1119
01:00:20,800 --> 01:00:23,280
Speaker 1: end of a song called Glasses, which is just like

1120
01:00:23,320 --> 01:00:26,280
Speaker 1: a musical tone poem piece where he's just playing glasses

1121
01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:32,800
Speaker 1: filled with water and it cuts into that, segues into that. Yeah. Interestingly,

1122
01:00:32,880 --> 01:00:35,600
Speaker 1: George Harrison claims that his song Isn't It a Pity,

1123
01:00:35,800 --> 01:00:39,080
Speaker 1: a standout album cut from his epic nineteen seventy triple

1124
01:00:39,120 --> 01:00:42,520
Speaker 1: disc All Things Must Pass, was also offered a Sinatra

1125
01:00:42,600 --> 01:00:45,840
Speaker 1: at some point before he recorded it, but apparently that

1126
01:00:45,880 --> 01:00:49,280
Speaker 1: didn't come together. See what I did there? Either? I

1127
01:00:49,320 --> 01:00:51,960
Speaker 1: did friends not doing Isn't It a Pity? Would be hilarious.

1128
01:00:52,280 --> 01:00:59,440
Speaker 1: Isn't It a shame? Bit Jack? And yet there's a

1129
01:00:59,480 --> 01:01:02,760
Speaker 1: Sinatra connection with a third member of the Fab Four,

1130
01:01:03,440 --> 01:01:08,160
Speaker 1: Ringo Starr. Ringo's wife, Maureen, was a huge fan of Sinatra,

1131
01:01:08,440 --> 01:01:11,000
Speaker 1: and for her twenty second birthday in nineteen sixty eight,

1132
01:01:11,320 --> 01:01:14,240
Speaker 1: he somehow got Sinatra to record a special version of

1133
01:01:14,280 --> 01:01:19,720
Speaker 1: The Ladies a Tramp retitled Marine's a champ all out.

1134
01:01:20,320 --> 01:01:23,840
Speaker 1: They roped in Sinatra's longtime lyricist Sammy Kahn to pen

1135
01:01:23,960 --> 01:01:27,880
Speaker 1: lines like this is pretty good. She married Ringo and

1136
01:01:27,920 --> 01:01:32,320
Speaker 1: she could have had Paul. That's why the ladies a champ.

1137
01:01:32,360 --> 01:01:36,560
Speaker 1: That's pretty good. And though we've not met, I'm convinced

1138
01:01:36,560 --> 01:01:40,640
Speaker 1: she's a gem. I'm just fs but to me she's

1139
01:01:40,720 --> 01:01:46,280
Speaker 1: big m mainly because she prefers me to them. That's

1140
01:01:46,360 --> 01:01:49,840
Speaker 1: why the lady is a champ. That's pretty good. That's

1141
01:01:49,880 --> 01:01:54,520
Speaker 1: pretty funny, Sammy cohn Man. And this gift, the song

1142
01:01:54,640 --> 01:01:57,720
Speaker 1: this Gift for Ringo's wife was actually the very first

1143
01:01:57,800 --> 01:02:01,040
Speaker 1: record press for the Beatles record label Apple, giving it

1144
01:02:01,120 --> 01:02:04,320
Speaker 1: the catalog number Apple one, making it one of the

1145
01:02:04,440 --> 01:02:09,640
Speaker 1: rarest records on the planet and worth god knows how much.

1146
01:02:10,080 --> 01:02:12,080
Speaker 1: And you can hear it online a very kind of

1147
01:02:12,160 --> 01:02:15,280
Speaker 1: low quality version of it circulating online, which I will.

1148
01:02:15,320 --> 01:02:17,280
Speaker 1: I think I can splice in here without getting in

1149
01:02:17,280 --> 01:02:24,280
Speaker 1: trouble with copyrights. Oh, I forgot one thing that you'll

1150
01:02:24,360 --> 01:02:27,880
Speaker 1: enjoy as a comic book fan. When Paul presented Sinatra

1151
01:02:28,160 --> 01:02:33,240
Speaker 1: with suicide, he commissioned a Marvel comic book artist named

1152
01:02:33,440 --> 01:02:39,680
Speaker 1: Bob Larkin No to do a watercolor portrait of Paul

1153
01:02:40,000 --> 01:02:43,720
Speaker 1: dressed like Frank in a Fedora standing next to Frank

1154
01:02:44,040 --> 01:02:46,640
Speaker 1: in a Fedora. I'm gonna send it to you right

1155
01:02:46,640 --> 01:02:49,080
Speaker 1: now because i want your live reaction to this. It's

1156
01:02:49,160 --> 01:02:51,560
Speaker 1: and you know, Paul McCartney's my favorite human on the planet.

1157
01:02:51,560 --> 01:02:54,960
Speaker 1: But it's pretty cringe. Oh my god.

1158
01:02:55,680 --> 01:02:58,200
Speaker 3: I like how he deliberately gave him an ill fitting

1159
01:02:58,280 --> 01:03:02,240
Speaker 3: hat like a too small Fedora to make him look

1160
01:03:02,280 --> 01:03:03,760
Speaker 3: like even more of a tool.

1161
01:03:06,040 --> 01:03:11,120
Speaker 1: Classic so Sinatra not only turning down a Beatles song,

1162
01:03:11,200 --> 01:03:14,240
Speaker 1: but turning down a Beatles song after he presented him

1163
01:03:14,520 --> 01:03:16,960
Speaker 1: with a portrait of the two of them standing together.

1164
01:03:17,080 --> 01:03:19,560
Speaker 1: That is cringe as hell. God, he's so kind of

1165
01:03:19,600 --> 01:03:23,920
Speaker 1: love it though. I'm so thirsty, I know, even the

1166
01:03:23,960 --> 01:03:26,600
Speaker 1: look at his face and this picture is so earnest

1167
01:03:26,640 --> 01:03:29,920
Speaker 1: and eager. I love it like a kid playing dress

1168
01:03:29,960 --> 01:03:35,760
Speaker 1: up with his dad. The candy cigarette. All right. This

1169
01:03:35,880 --> 01:03:42,280
Speaker 1: concludes our Beatle section of this episode. As you meditate

1170
01:03:42,320 --> 01:03:44,520
Speaker 1: on that, we'll be right back with more too much

1171
01:03:44,560 --> 01:04:00,920
Speaker 1: information after these messages. My Way entered the Billboard charts

1172
01:04:00,960 --> 01:04:03,240
Speaker 1: in the last week of March nineteen sixty nine at

1173
01:04:03,280 --> 01:04:06,400
Speaker 1: number sixty nine. There you Go, making it nice highest

1174
01:04:06,440 --> 01:04:11,040
Speaker 1: new entry there, making it the highest new entry that week.

1175
01:04:11,400 --> 01:04:13,920
Speaker 1: Six weeks later, it reached its peak at only number

1176
01:04:13,960 --> 01:04:19,520
Speaker 1: twenty seven, nice lower than Sinatra's previous top forty single cycles.

1177
01:04:20,200 --> 01:04:22,640
Speaker 1: This is surprising given the song of that stature, but

1178
01:04:22,760 --> 01:04:26,240
Speaker 1: it's in good company, however. Other beloved classics that missed

1179
01:04:26,280 --> 01:04:29,720
Speaker 1: the Hot one hundred entirely include Robin's Dancing on My

1180
01:04:29,760 --> 01:04:34,400
Speaker 1: Own a Crime, Garth Brooks' Friends in Low Places, Tom

1181
01:04:34,440 --> 01:04:38,840
Speaker 1: Petty and The Heartbreaker's American Girl, David Bowie's Heroes, Jeff

1182
01:04:38,880 --> 01:04:42,600
Speaker 1: Buckley's Hallelujah, The ramones I Want to Be Sedated, Billy

1183
01:04:42,680 --> 01:04:45,520
Speaker 1: Joel's New York State of Mind, Dean Martin's Ain't That

1184
01:04:45,560 --> 01:04:49,520
Speaker 1: a Kick in the Head, Elvis Costello's Alison Cole Plays

1185
01:04:49,520 --> 01:04:52,760
Speaker 1: the Scientist, Grace Jones Pull Up to the Bumper, the

1186
01:04:52,800 --> 01:04:56,600
Speaker 1: Postal Services, Such Great Heights, Weezer's Island in the Sun,

1187
01:04:57,280 --> 01:05:00,480
Speaker 1: and George Thoroughgood and The Destroyers Bad to the Bone.

1188
01:05:00,520 --> 01:05:03,320
Speaker 1: All of those missed the Hot one hundred entirely.

1189
01:05:03,560 --> 01:05:06,400
Speaker 3: Kind of amazing to mention Grace Jones and George Thoroughgood

1190
01:05:06,400 --> 01:05:09,440
Speaker 3: in the same breath, especially because.

1191
01:05:09,240 --> 01:05:15,080
Speaker 1: Her all observed it better. Well, what's it about pull

1192
01:05:15,160 --> 01:05:17,280
Speaker 1: up to the bumper? Yeah? Isn't it about like going

1193
01:05:17,320 --> 01:05:25,320
Speaker 1: to the car wash? Yes, Jordan, you sweet child, going

1194
01:05:25,360 --> 01:05:28,360
Speaker 1: to a parking garage. My way didn't fit with the

1195
01:05:28,400 --> 01:05:31,280
Speaker 1: spirit of nineteen sixty nine in the United States, Q

1196
01:05:31,520 --> 01:05:35,320
Speaker 1: Along the Watchtower or Fortunate Sun here, but it fared

1197
01:05:35,360 --> 01:05:37,760
Speaker 1: slightly better in the UK, where it peaked at number

1198
01:05:37,760 --> 01:05:41,560
Speaker 1: five and reentered the charts six times between nineteen seventy

1199
01:05:41,600 --> 01:05:45,040
Speaker 1: and nineteen seventy one. All told, its spent by my

1200
01:05:45,160 --> 01:05:48,760
Speaker 1: count seventy five weeks in the UK Top forty, which

1201
01:05:48,840 --> 01:05:51,720
Speaker 1: was a record until it was broken by Wham's Last

1202
01:05:51,760 --> 01:05:54,680
Speaker 1: Christmas in nineteen eighty four, Fairytale of New York by

1203
01:05:54,680 --> 01:05:56,960
Speaker 1: the Poges and Christy McCall in nineteen eighty seven, and

1204
01:05:57,160 --> 01:05:59,439
Speaker 1: All I Want for Christmas Is You in nineteen ninety four.

1205
01:05:59,600 --> 01:06:02,600
Speaker 1: But to this day it holds fourth place on the

1206
01:06:02,640 --> 01:06:05,000
Speaker 1: list of songs that have the most weeks on the

1207
01:06:05,040 --> 01:06:07,680
Speaker 1: Top forty in the UK, and it's the only non

1208
01:06:07,760 --> 01:06:09,520
Speaker 1: Christmas one, so I think it's the only one that

1209
01:06:09,520 --> 01:06:12,480
Speaker 1: earned it, so it would really be number one. That's

1210
01:06:12,480 --> 01:06:14,360
Speaker 1: pretty wild, the number of weeks that song spent in

1211
01:06:14,360 --> 01:06:18,720
Speaker 1: the top forty yeah in the United States, My Way

1212
01:06:18,760 --> 01:06:22,000
Speaker 1: would be Sinatra's last top forty hit until nineteen eighty

1213
01:06:22,040 --> 01:06:25,440
Speaker 1: when he returned with New York New York. But that

1214
01:06:25,480 --> 01:06:28,160
Speaker 1: didn't stop Frank from kind of growing to hate My

1215
01:06:28,280 --> 01:06:31,040
Speaker 1: Way after a while. He performed the tune at his

1216
01:06:31,040 --> 01:06:33,680
Speaker 1: farewell concert, along with ten other songs that he felt

1217
01:06:33,680 --> 01:06:35,560
Speaker 1: summed up his life, which I'm sure was a very

1218
01:06:35,640 --> 01:06:40,120
Speaker 1: high honor for Polanka. But then Sinatra decided two years

1219
01:06:40,200 --> 01:06:42,880
Speaker 1: later to come out of retirement, and his return to

1220
01:06:42,920 --> 01:06:45,280
Speaker 1: the stage meant that audiences would come to expect what

1221
01:06:45,440 --> 01:06:49,120
Speaker 1: had become a signature song, and Sinatra started to resent it.

1222
01:06:50,000 --> 01:06:52,400
Speaker 1: Introducing My Way at a nineteen eighty four concert at

1223
01:06:52,400 --> 01:06:55,000
Speaker 1: Carnegie Hall, he told the audience, we have a song

1224
01:06:55,040 --> 01:06:56,800
Speaker 1: we haven't done in a long time. We're going to

1225
01:06:56,880 --> 01:06:58,840
Speaker 1: drop it in here right now. I think we did

1226
01:06:58,880 --> 01:07:00,600
Speaker 1: it for about ten years and it got to be

1227
01:07:00,640 --> 01:07:04,000
Speaker 1: a real pain and that you know where. During a

1228
01:07:04,000 --> 01:07:06,920
Speaker 1: gig at London's Albert Hall that same year, he muttered

1229
01:07:06,960 --> 01:07:10,480
Speaker 1: under the instrumental outro, I can't stand this song myself.

1230
01:07:13,040 --> 01:07:17,320
Speaker 1: Music critic Will Friedwald explained, or over intellectualized the precise

1231
01:07:17,400 --> 01:07:19,720
Speaker 1: reasons why the bomb bast of My Way might have

1232
01:07:19,800 --> 01:07:22,960
Speaker 1: bothered Frank. In a piece for NPR called a toast

1233
01:07:22,960 --> 01:07:27,640
Speaker 1: to my Way, America's anthem of self determination, he says

1234
01:07:27,960 --> 01:07:30,680
Speaker 1: it's this song that really inflates Frank and inflates his

1235
01:07:30,720 --> 01:07:35,640
Speaker 1: persona to stadium size proportions. Whereas Sinatra's trademark is patented approach.

1236
01:07:35,920 --> 01:07:38,120
Speaker 1: The thing that people like most about Sinatra before My

1237
01:07:38,240 --> 01:07:40,960
Speaker 1: Way was the intimacy, the idea that this is a

1238
01:07:41,000 --> 01:07:44,120
Speaker 1: guy who's experienced life and love the same way as

1239
01:07:44,160 --> 01:07:47,800
Speaker 1: we have. It's kind of the ethos of crooning, really,

1240
01:07:47,920 --> 01:07:52,080
Speaker 1: that kind of intimacy, that closeness. And my Way's not

1241
01:07:52,160 --> 01:07:56,840
Speaker 1: really a krooner song. No, No, it's a belter. It's

1242
01:07:56,880 --> 01:08:00,080
Speaker 1: a torch song. No, it's a barn burner. What's the

1243
01:08:00,080 --> 01:08:02,960
Speaker 1: the old show busy term for what my Way is

1244
01:08:03,240 --> 01:08:07,440
Speaker 1: a dud? No, I'm kidding. Uh yeah, it is funny

1245
01:08:07,440 --> 01:08:08,160
Speaker 1: when you put it like that.

1246
01:08:08,240 --> 01:08:10,560
Speaker 3: It's like he's got this you know, huge, sensitive, soft

1247
01:08:10,560 --> 01:08:16,440
Speaker 3: spoke inside. Allegedly, some of his records would have you believe.

1248
01:08:16,200 --> 01:08:19,479
Speaker 1: When he's not driving golf carts through the dose, belting

1249
01:08:19,520 --> 01:08:26,880
Speaker 1: about his life of personal triumphs, Sinatra's youngest daughter, Tina,

1250
01:08:26,960 --> 01:08:30,720
Speaker 1: conveyed the two diametrically opposed, but equally true views of

1251
01:08:30,760 --> 01:08:34,640
Speaker 1: the song in two separate interviews. Talking to NPR, she

1252
01:08:34,760 --> 01:08:36,880
Speaker 1: recalled the first time she ever heard her father sing

1253
01:08:36,920 --> 01:08:40,760
Speaker 1: My Way. You could feel the energy, electricity in the room.

1254
01:08:41,120 --> 01:08:44,120
Speaker 1: That song became his that first night. I think it

1255
01:08:44,160 --> 01:08:48,360
Speaker 1: was a song waiting for him to happen. Well, that's true,

1256
01:08:48,600 --> 01:08:50,679
Speaker 1: she said. In a two thousand interview with the BBC

1257
01:08:50,800 --> 01:08:54,840
Speaker 1: show Hard Talk, he Sinatra always thought the song was

1258
01:08:54,880 --> 01:08:58,160
Speaker 1: self serving and self indulgent. He didn't like it. That

1259
01:08:58,280 --> 01:09:00,400
Speaker 1: song stuck and he couldn't get it off his shoe.

1260
01:09:01,680 --> 01:09:05,800
Speaker 1: Frank Sinatra Enterprise as vice president. Charles Pegone meanwhile, soft

1261
01:09:05,840 --> 01:09:08,680
Speaker 1: pedaled Frank's feelings on My Way in an interview with

1262
01:09:08,800 --> 01:09:12,080
Speaker 1: songfacts dot Com. I don't think he hated it as

1263
01:09:12,160 --> 01:09:15,120
Speaker 1: much as he disliked it, he said. I don't think

1264
01:09:15,160 --> 01:09:17,360
Speaker 1: he hated any of those songs. I just think he

1265
01:09:17,400 --> 01:09:19,880
Speaker 1: probably may have gotten tired of people yelling for it

1266
01:09:19,960 --> 01:09:22,680
Speaker 1: and of singing it. It's a fan favorite, but I

1267
01:09:22,680 --> 01:09:25,960
Speaker 1: wouldn't say it's a Sinatra favorite, Sorry, Paul Man. Frank

1268
01:09:26,000 --> 01:09:29,080
Speaker 1: Sinatra would have loved the TikTok generation at his concert

1269
01:09:33,160 --> 01:09:36,479
Speaker 1: Can You Say Hi to My Mom? Punched and beats

1270
01:09:36,479 --> 01:09:41,040
Speaker 1: a fifteen year old girl? Uh So.

1271
01:09:41,200 --> 01:09:43,400
Speaker 3: It might not have been a favorite of Old Blue Eyes,

1272
01:09:43,439 --> 01:09:45,280
Speaker 3: but it was certainly a favorite of many other singers.

1273
01:09:45,760 --> 01:09:48,679
Speaker 3: The list of artists who record My Way include Aretha Franklin,

1274
01:09:48,880 --> 01:09:53,080
Speaker 3: Tom Jones, Dion Warwick, and Andy Williams. Elvis Presley began

1275
01:09:53,120 --> 01:09:55,679
Speaker 3: performing the song and concert during the mid seventies, despite

1276
01:09:55,720 --> 01:09:58,519
Speaker 3: Anka's suggestions that the song didn't suit him. It was

1277
01:09:58,560 --> 01:10:01,200
Speaker 3: included in the setlist for his famous Aloha from Hawaii

1278
01:10:01,200 --> 01:10:03,479
Speaker 3: Satellite Concerts, where it was a cute callback to the

1279
01:10:03,560 --> 01:10:07,719
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty timex TV special Welcome Home Elvis, which featured

1280
01:10:07,720 --> 01:10:10,200
Speaker 3: Sinatra and Elvis dueting on a medley of Love Me

1281
01:10:10,280 --> 01:10:13,960
Speaker 3: Tender and Witchcraft. Each man does the other one's songs,

1282
01:10:14,000 --> 01:10:16,880
Speaker 3: and it's kind of cute, despite some of the mean

1283
01:10:16,960 --> 01:10:18,120
Speaker 3: things that frank had said.

1284
01:10:17,920 --> 01:10:19,599
Speaker 1: About rock and rolls the genre in the past.

1285
01:10:20,640 --> 01:10:23,280
Speaker 3: After Elvis's death in nineteen seventy seven, a live version

1286
01:10:23,280 --> 01:10:25,080
Speaker 3: of My Way was released as a single, going to

1287
01:10:25,160 --> 01:10:28,200
Speaker 3: number twenty two in the US, or higher than Frank's original,

1288
01:10:28,240 --> 01:10:34,400
Speaker 3: which probably chopped his ass A bit. Presley's version is

1289
01:10:34,400 --> 01:10:36,439
Speaker 3: featured in the climax of the two thousand film Three

1290
01:10:36,439 --> 01:10:39,000
Speaker 3: Thousand Miles to Graceland, in which Paul Anka has a

1291
01:10:39,040 --> 01:10:42,760
Speaker 3: cameo as a casino boss who hates Elvis. Anka would

1292
01:10:42,800 --> 01:10:44,840
Speaker 3: say that his view of Elvis's cover has softened in

1293
01:10:44,840 --> 01:10:46,360
Speaker 3: the wake of his death, and now he hears it

1294
01:10:46,400 --> 01:10:49,280
Speaker 3: as a sort of eulogy. The Gypsy Kings recorded a

1295
01:10:49,320 --> 01:10:52,400
Speaker 3: Spanish language rendition of the song called Ami Minerira, and

1296
01:10:52,479 --> 01:10:55,640
Speaker 3: Jay Z interpolated Paul Anka's version of his track I

1297
01:10:55,720 --> 01:10:59,040
Speaker 3: did it my way, but without a doubt and in

1298
01:10:59,080 --> 01:11:01,679
Speaker 3: the popular consciousness, I like to believe. The most famous

1299
01:11:01,720 --> 01:11:05,080
Speaker 3: cover version of the song is the version recorded in

1300
01:11:05,120 --> 01:11:08,839
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy nine by The Sex Pistols for the Julian

1301
01:11:08,960 --> 01:11:12,320
Speaker 3: Temple mockumentary The Great Rock and Roll Swindle.

1302
01:11:13,080 --> 01:11:15,639
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen that? Not good? Oh? Not good?

1303
01:11:15,680 --> 01:11:18,120
Speaker 1: I don't even know what it's about. I mean, they're

1304
01:11:18,120 --> 01:11:19,280
Speaker 1: people who would say it. I don't know.

1305
01:11:19,320 --> 01:11:22,840
Speaker 3: The Sex Pistols were like a joke band, Like really

1306
01:11:23,400 --> 01:11:25,720
Speaker 3: they literally would not let Sid play bass live, so

1307
01:11:25,760 --> 01:11:29,200
Speaker 3: you were just hearing like cacophonists, drums and really loud guitar.

1308
01:11:29,240 --> 01:11:32,000
Speaker 3: Half the time, and I read a book it's called

1309
01:11:32,000 --> 01:11:34,200
Speaker 3: Twelve Days in America when I was like fifteen. That

1310
01:11:34,280 --> 01:11:36,640
Speaker 3: kind of soured me on them in particular because they

1311
01:11:36,640 --> 01:11:40,200
Speaker 3: were like touring through America and it was just wildly

1312
01:11:40,240 --> 01:11:43,360
Speaker 3: obvious to anyone that Sid was falling apart, literally dying,

1313
01:11:43,439 --> 01:11:45,840
Speaker 3: and they were just so pissed off about the whole thing.

1314
01:11:45,920 --> 01:11:48,880
Speaker 3: And you know, American audiences were really to them. And

1315
01:11:48,920 --> 01:11:50,640
Speaker 3: they only had one American tour, but that was the

1316
01:11:50,640 --> 01:11:54,320
Speaker 3: show that culminated in them in San Francisco when Johnny

1317
01:11:54,400 --> 01:11:56,000
Speaker 3: Rodden took to the stage and just said, everget the

1318
01:11:56,000 --> 01:11:59,519
Speaker 3: feeling you've been cheated after like three songs and walked off.

1319
01:12:00,160 --> 01:12:03,160
Speaker 1: Well, and he wasn't a part of this documentary, right, Yeah.

1320
01:12:03,200 --> 01:12:05,759
Speaker 1: My favorite fact about Sid Vicious is that his favorite

1321
01:12:05,760 --> 01:12:07,800
Speaker 1: food is Chinese food, because he said it made pretty

1322
01:12:07,800 --> 01:12:11,200
Speaker 1: colors when he threw up. But you didn't think you'd

1323
01:12:11,240 --> 01:12:15,000
Speaker 1: hear that from me, No, I didn't. But Sid us

1324
01:12:15,840 --> 01:12:19,920
Speaker 1: a famously doomed bass player who would achieve a measure

1325
01:12:19,960 --> 01:12:25,880
Speaker 1: of iconiz What am I looking for? A measure of infamy?

1326
01:12:26,640 --> 01:12:26,840
Speaker 2: Yeah?

1327
01:12:26,880 --> 01:12:30,719
Speaker 3: But infamy but also like doomed romance. When Alex Cox

1328
01:12:30,760 --> 01:12:37,320
Speaker 3: put out Sid and Nancy and sort of romanticized their disgusting, codependent,

1329
01:12:37,400 --> 01:12:40,880
Speaker 3: drug fueled relationship which ended in murder by the way.

1330
01:12:41,520 --> 01:12:44,400
Speaker 3: So anyway, where was I going with that? Listen to

1331
01:12:44,439 --> 01:12:44,840
Speaker 3: the clash.

1332
01:12:45,640 --> 01:12:53,240
Speaker 1: Ah. My favorite thing about Sid Vicious is that I

1333
01:12:53,240 --> 01:12:55,760
Speaker 1: think Freddie Mercury might have been bullshiting when he said this,

1334
01:12:55,880 --> 01:12:57,840
Speaker 1: but he was like, yeah, I met one of them

1335
01:12:57,880 --> 01:13:00,360
Speaker 1: at a party once and I called Sid Vicious Simon

1336
01:13:00,400 --> 01:13:03,479
Speaker 1: Ferocious and he didn't like that very much. Oh yeah,

1337
01:13:03,479 --> 01:13:08,479
Speaker 1: that's incredible. There must be Simon Farotius Darling arguably a

1338
01:13:08,479 --> 01:13:11,040
Speaker 1: better name. Yeah.

1339
01:13:11,240 --> 01:13:13,479
Speaker 3: The lyrics were changed by said and his girlfriend Nancy

1340
01:13:13,520 --> 01:13:17,639
Speaker 3: Spongeen to include numerous obscenities that were not you would

1341
01:13:17,680 --> 01:13:22,679
Speaker 3: have a hard time believing. Perhaps in Anka's original, Vicious

1342
01:13:22,720 --> 01:13:25,559
Speaker 3: took a dig at his ex band namee Johnny Rotten

1343
01:13:25,600 --> 01:13:30,000
Speaker 3: by referring to a pratt who wears hats, because Johnny

1344
01:13:30,080 --> 01:13:34,200
Speaker 3: Rotten wore hats and was kind of a dick. On

1345
01:13:34,280 --> 01:13:36,800
Speaker 3: one hand, their version of My Way could be viewed

1346
01:13:36,880 --> 01:13:39,439
Speaker 3: as a mocking bit of punk performance art a la

1347
01:13:39,520 --> 01:13:42,000
Speaker 3: the version of God Save the Queen. But on the

1348
01:13:42,040 --> 01:13:45,120
Speaker 3: other hand, the ethos of the song has a remarkable

1349
01:13:45,520 --> 01:13:50,280
Speaker 3: core of punk rock hutzpah, let's call it. The song

1350
01:13:50,320 --> 01:13:52,160
Speaker 3: appeared on the Sex Pistols album The Great Rock and

1351
01:13:52,240 --> 01:13:55,840
Speaker 3: Roll Swindle, which was issued after two members of the

1352
01:13:55,880 --> 01:13:57,880
Speaker 3: band died. It was the film came out two years

1353
01:13:57,880 --> 01:14:00,200
Speaker 3: after their breakup, so then the album dragged on after

1354
01:14:00,640 --> 01:14:04,280
Speaker 3: Rotten had already left, and then Vicious died, so the

1355
01:14:04,320 --> 01:14:07,799
Speaker 3: song's obviously. His version of the song obviously drew criticism

1356
01:14:07,880 --> 01:14:10,439
Speaker 3: from all the right places. Sid died of a heroin

1357
01:14:10,479 --> 01:14:14,200
Speaker 3: overdose when he was eaten jay Or had just been released.

1358
01:14:13,800 --> 01:14:17,120
Speaker 1: On bail for killing Nancy. I think Dorothy Squire's a

1359
01:14:17,120 --> 01:14:19,240
Speaker 1: Welsh singer who features in the film, and she'd had

1360
01:14:19,280 --> 01:14:22,120
Speaker 1: a UK hit the song. Herself was quoted as saying

1361
01:14:22,640 --> 01:14:25,559
Speaker 1: Vicious should be crucified. He should have been crucified before

1362
01:14:25,560 --> 01:14:30,160
Speaker 1: he crucified that song. But hearing from quite a different source.

1363
01:14:30,200 --> 01:14:32,599
Speaker 1: Anton LeVay, the founder of the Church of Satan, had

1364
01:14:32,640 --> 01:14:34,879
Speaker 1: nothing but nice things to say about in his memoir

1365
01:14:35,240 --> 01:14:39,040
Speaker 1: The Secret Life of a Satanist. Arguably the greatest fan

1366
01:14:39,160 --> 01:14:40,320
Speaker 1: of this version of my.

1367
01:14:40,320 --> 01:14:44,320
Speaker 3: Way will folks, if you can believe it, Leonard Cohen,

1368
01:14:45,920 --> 01:14:49,800
Speaker 3: who spoke eloquently of it. He said I never liked

1369
01:14:49,840 --> 01:14:53,000
Speaker 3: this song except when sid Vicious did it. Sung straight,

1370
01:14:53,120 --> 01:14:55,960
Speaker 3: it somehow deprives the appetite of a certain taste we'd

1371
01:14:56,000 --> 01:14:58,559
Speaker 3: like to have on our lips. When sid Vicious did it,

1372
01:14:58,640 --> 01:15:02,120
Speaker 3: he provided that other side the song, the certainty, the

1373
01:15:02,160 --> 01:15:05,679
Speaker 3: self congratulation. The daily heroism of Sinatra's version is completely

1374
01:15:05,720 --> 01:15:09,519
Speaker 3: exploded by this desperate, mad, humorous voice. I can't go

1375
01:15:09,600 --> 01:15:11,960
Speaker 3: round in a raincoat and fedora looking over my life

1376
01:15:11,960 --> 01:15:14,800
Speaker 3: saying I did it my way well for ten minutes

1377
01:15:14,840 --> 01:15:16,880
Speaker 3: in some American bar over a Gin and Tonic. You

1378
01:15:16,960 --> 01:15:18,920
Speaker 3: might be able to get away with it. But sid

1379
01:15:18,960 --> 01:15:22,439
Speaker 3: Vicius's rendition takes in everybody. Everybody is messed up like that.

1380
01:15:22,760 --> 01:15:25,280
Speaker 3: Everybody is the mad hero of his own drama. It

1381
01:15:25,400 --> 01:15:28,120
Speaker 3: explodes the whole culture this self presentation can take place in.

1382
01:15:28,560 --> 01:15:32,320
Speaker 3: So it completes the solve the song for me that rules.

1383
01:15:33,080 --> 01:15:36,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, just Leonard Cohen to make the sex pistols sound deep.

1384
01:15:39,280 --> 01:15:42,920
Speaker 1: Paul Anka, perhaps unsurprisingly, never heard this sex Pistols version

1385
01:15:42,960 --> 01:15:52,120
Speaker 1: until Martin Scorsese came his way, Oh.

1386
01:15:51,520 --> 01:16:02,200
Speaker 3: Jordan, until until old Marty brown eyes. Ah, Martinus Scorsese said,

1387
01:16:02,720 --> 01:16:08,760
Speaker 3: super eyes. I assume spiritually he does Martin Scorsese. He's Italian.

1388
01:16:09,360 --> 01:16:12,240
Speaker 1: Have you ever met an Italian with blue eyes? Yeah? Oh, Frank,

1389
01:16:12,840 --> 01:16:15,719
Speaker 1: well yeah, but his family was probably from the North,

1390
01:16:15,760 --> 01:16:18,040
Speaker 1: because that's where all the vampires come from. That's not

1391
01:16:18,080 --> 01:16:21,719
Speaker 1: a real Italian. Yeah, he's got Martin's got beautiful brown eyes.

1392
01:16:21,920 --> 01:16:24,080
Speaker 1: Just get lost in uh.

1393
01:16:27,280 --> 01:16:30,559
Speaker 3: About Martin Scorsese got in touch with Paul Ankett to

1394
01:16:30,640 --> 01:16:33,200
Speaker 3: secure the rights for My Way for the closing credits

1395
01:16:33,240 --> 01:16:36,519
Speaker 3: of Goodfellas, the Said Vicious version. Anka tells the story

1396
01:16:36,560 --> 01:16:39,599
Speaker 3: of Marty giving him a call asking permission, and Anka says,

1397
01:16:39,720 --> 01:16:40,240
Speaker 3: I said.

1398
01:16:40,080 --> 01:16:42,640
Speaker 1: Great, who's doing it? He said, the sex Pistols? I

1399
01:16:42,680 --> 01:16:45,519
Speaker 1: said who? He said, said Vicious of the sex Pistols.

1400
01:16:46,600 --> 01:16:49,000
Speaker 1: I'm not the front of that line. You know, I'm

1401
01:16:49,000 --> 01:16:51,360
Speaker 1: buried under music. I said, I don't know who the

1402
01:16:51,400 --> 01:16:53,600
Speaker 1: hell that is. So he sent it to me.

1403
01:16:54,000 --> 01:16:57,120
Speaker 3: I was jolted. I said no, to be honest. Then

1404
01:16:57,120 --> 01:17:00,000
Speaker 3: I started thinking, who am I to tear down somebody's

1405
01:17:00,080 --> 01:17:02,040
Speaker 3: right in terms of interpreting a song that meant a

1406
01:17:02,080 --> 01:17:04,120
Speaker 3: lot to them. Now I did my homework. The guy

1407
01:17:04,160 --> 01:17:06,439
Speaker 3: went to Paris, got a jazz band. They pulled amps

1408
01:17:06,479 --> 01:17:08,559
Speaker 3: apart to get the sound. I said, this guy is

1409
01:17:08,600 --> 01:17:10,800
Speaker 3: sincere about it. It's the only way he can present it.

1410
01:17:11,120 --> 01:17:12,400
Speaker 3: I called Marty back and told.

1411
01:17:12,320 --> 01:17:14,639
Speaker 1: Him do it. I don't care. It's music. It's art.

1412
01:17:14,840 --> 01:17:15,679
Speaker 1: Art has no time.

1413
01:17:16,080 --> 01:17:17,639
Speaker 3: You put it in the hands of someone that believes

1414
01:17:17,640 --> 01:17:19,599
Speaker 3: in it. That's just what music is about. To get

1415
01:17:19,640 --> 01:17:22,519
Speaker 3: it out there. Honestly, that's a great take from Paul.

1416
01:17:22,640 --> 01:17:25,839
Speaker 1: That's very Paul. He That's exactly how he is. He's

1417
01:17:25,880 --> 01:17:26,479
Speaker 1: a cool guy.

1418
01:17:26,800 --> 01:17:28,559
Speaker 3: I want to use the term I need to start

1419
01:17:28,600 --> 01:17:30,880
Speaker 3: using the phrase I'm not the front of that line

1420
01:17:31,280 --> 01:17:33,080
Speaker 3: to talk about things I'm not into.

1421
01:17:33,320 --> 01:17:38,120
Speaker 1: He is so many great terms aphrase. Yeah, not at

1422
01:17:38,120 --> 01:17:39,160
Speaker 1: the front of that line.

1423
01:17:39,400 --> 01:17:41,639
Speaker 3: Ancher remains very particular about how the song gets used,

1424
01:17:41,640 --> 01:17:43,640
Speaker 3: though Frank's version was included in a two thousand and

1425
01:17:43,680 --> 01:17:46,840
Speaker 3: six episode of The Sopranos titled Mo and Joe, and

1426
01:17:46,880 --> 01:17:50,360
Speaker 3: also in a twenty fourteen episode mad Men called The Strategy,

1427
01:17:50,680 --> 01:17:54,160
Speaker 3: which takes place in nineteen sixty nine. It comes on

1428
01:17:54,200 --> 01:17:58,240
Speaker 3: the radio as ad executive Don Draper, who you may

1429
01:17:58,280 --> 01:17:59,920
Speaker 3: have heard of, stars.

1430
01:17:59,520 --> 01:18:01,800
Speaker 1: In the show. You see. It's a play on the

1431
01:18:01,800 --> 01:18:06,920
Speaker 1: phrase admin commercial executives is there nineteen sixties, Who's well,

1432
01:18:07,000 --> 01:18:11,920
Speaker 1: let's say their lives Got a little mad Sundays on

1433
01:18:12,000 --> 01:18:17,559
Speaker 1: TBS right up after Young Sheldon. Yeah, I don't know

1434
01:18:18,000 --> 01:18:22,439
Speaker 1: you would like it all week up and trying to

1435
01:18:22,439 --> 01:18:24,120
Speaker 1: tell you how much I think you'd like mad Men

1436
01:18:24,160 --> 01:18:25,599
Speaker 1: in all weeks and now it's boring.

1437
01:18:26,280 --> 01:18:27,920
Speaker 3: Well, you know what I watched last night instead of

1438
01:18:28,040 --> 01:18:32,280
Speaker 3: checking out mad Men? Finally what Hanso the Razor Sort

1439
01:18:32,320 --> 01:18:35,160
Speaker 3: of Vengeance, which is a samurai film from the seventies

1440
01:18:35,160 --> 01:18:37,880
Speaker 3: that is one of the most bad things I've ever seen.

1441
01:18:39,560 --> 01:18:41,720
Speaker 3: As I broke it down earlier. It is seventy five

1442
01:18:41,760 --> 01:18:46,439
Speaker 3: percent sultifyingly dull dialogue about period political drama in the

1443
01:18:46,479 --> 01:18:51,240
Speaker 3: age of Damnos in Japan, about twenty five more percent

1444
01:18:51,240 --> 01:18:56,640
Speaker 3: of gassing up its protagonists dick good, fifteen percent of

1445
01:18:57,120 --> 01:19:01,080
Speaker 3: graphic sex scenes shot in like borderline in psychedelic ways,

1446
01:19:01,840 --> 01:19:06,080
Speaker 3: another five percent of truly poorly choreographed samurai fights. And

1447
01:19:06,120 --> 01:19:09,800
Speaker 3: the entire thing is soundtrack to like a seventies funk soundtrack.

1448
01:19:10,680 --> 01:19:13,960
Speaker 3: Incredible movie. Does that insult you? Does that offend you?

1449
01:19:14,120 --> 01:19:16,760
Speaker 1: Yeah? As I mentioned, avoiding one of your.

1450
01:19:18,240 --> 01:19:22,080
Speaker 3: Beloved pieces of American art to watch, just garbage, just trash.

1451
01:19:22,800 --> 01:19:24,200
Speaker 3: How does that make you feel? White boy?

1452
01:19:24,280 --> 01:19:25,759
Speaker 1: That doesn't sound like trashy.

1453
01:19:25,920 --> 01:19:29,559
Speaker 3: It was awful. It's a truly awful film. He has

1454
01:19:29,600 --> 01:19:31,840
Speaker 3: this thing where he's like, he's like, you know, the

1455
01:19:31,840 --> 01:19:34,760
Speaker 3: police have gotten so corrupt that we've been torturing suspects

1456
01:19:34,760 --> 01:19:38,439
Speaker 3: with interrogation techniques, so I have to understand all of them.

1457
01:19:38,479 --> 01:19:42,280
Speaker 3: So he's been like literally torturing himself self, mutilating and everything.

1458
01:19:42,720 --> 01:19:45,519
Speaker 3: And in a prolonged scene, he gets out of this

1459
01:19:46,360 --> 01:19:51,880
Speaker 3: an onsen Japanese spa kind of thing and places his

1460
01:19:51,960 --> 01:19:55,680
Speaker 3: penis on a sort of wooden stand that clearly has

1461
01:19:55,760 --> 01:19:59,680
Speaker 3: been hammed carved with an outline like an indentation for

1462
01:19:59,720 --> 01:20:02,880
Speaker 3: his talking balls, and then proceeds to wail on it

1463
01:20:02,920 --> 01:20:07,320
Speaker 3: with a wooden club. This goes on, and we do

1464
01:20:07,400 --> 01:20:11,840
Speaker 3: see his penis in soft focus and then like a

1465
01:20:12,000 --> 01:20:14,439
Speaker 3: when you say soft focus.

1466
01:20:14,040 --> 01:20:18,519
Speaker 1: Ah, and then like a boxer, he then submerges his

1467
01:20:18,560 --> 01:20:20,680
Speaker 1: penis in a bag of rice, which he does by

1468
01:20:20,760 --> 01:20:27,000
Speaker 1: repeatedly from a standing position. And again this goes on.

1469
01:20:27,360 --> 01:20:30,680
Speaker 1: This film really lingers, awful.

1470
01:20:30,479 --> 01:20:35,479
Speaker 3: Awful piece of movie, awful piece of cinema, but truly fascinating. Anyway,

1471
01:20:35,560 --> 01:20:42,160
Speaker 3: I prioritize that over your recommendations. Jordan ah, he smiles,

1472
01:20:42,200 --> 01:20:42,920
Speaker 3: but it hurts him.

1473
01:20:44,280 --> 01:20:48,559
Speaker 1: I am so mean to you, so so mean. What

1474
01:20:48,600 --> 01:20:49,360
Speaker 1: were you talking about?

1475
01:20:49,920 --> 01:20:51,719
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I guess they hear the song on the radio.

1476
01:20:51,920 --> 01:20:56,000
Speaker 3: It's a whole thing with Peggy who. I'm told they

1477
01:20:56,120 --> 01:21:02,080
Speaker 3: dance the dance alone in their office or something. It's

1478
01:21:02,080 --> 01:21:04,759
Speaker 3: about the death of American masculinity.

1479
01:21:04,520 --> 01:21:09,559
Speaker 1: In the inherent trust in American institutions, in the family unit,

1480
01:21:09,760 --> 01:21:14,680
Speaker 1: and yeah, yeah, it's a good time, okay.

1481
01:21:14,800 --> 01:21:17,000
Speaker 3: The sex Pistols version has been using some high profile

1482
01:21:17,040 --> 01:21:19,479
Speaker 3: productions as well, including a twenty ten episode of The

1483
01:21:19,520 --> 01:21:23,280
Speaker 3: Simpsons So well Past its Prime Simpsons, and the twenty

1484
01:21:23,360 --> 01:21:28,880
Speaker 3: fourteen episode of Californication. Jordan, I dare you without wikipediaing

1485
01:21:29,120 --> 01:21:31,760
Speaker 3: and I will hear tell me about Californication.

1486
01:21:32,320 --> 01:21:35,719
Speaker 1: David the Covny is a college professor who I believe

1487
01:21:35,760 --> 01:21:38,519
Speaker 1: sleeps with a lot of students. That's that's all I close.

1488
01:21:38,640 --> 01:21:41,800
Speaker 3: I think he's a became screen Yeah, he's screenwriter and

1489
01:21:41,840 --> 01:21:44,080
Speaker 3: all of his movies are all of his books are

1490
01:21:44,120 --> 01:21:45,439
Speaker 3: named after Slayer albums.

1491
01:21:45,640 --> 01:21:47,680
Speaker 1: How is that close? I don't know. I wanted to

1492
01:21:47,680 --> 01:21:50,439
Speaker 1: give you one that's this very kind, that's uncharacteristically kind

1493
01:21:50,720 --> 01:21:52,880
Speaker 1: for a thing I care not a whit about.

1494
01:21:52,800 --> 01:21:54,839
Speaker 3: I watch take a season of that show in college

1495
01:21:54,880 --> 01:21:56,880
Speaker 3: because when they we got our internet hooked up at

1496
01:21:56,880 --> 01:21:58,320
Speaker 3: our apartment, they were like, you.

1497
01:21:58,280 --> 01:22:02,559
Speaker 1: Get the free show Time. Okay, just watch whatever garbage

1498
01:22:02,560 --> 01:22:05,040
Speaker 1: came on showtime, and this was one of them. Not

1499
01:22:05,120 --> 01:22:07,960
Speaker 1: a good show. Does have Natasha mcelhorn in there as

1500
01:22:08,240 --> 01:22:10,599
Speaker 1: David Decompany's ex wife, and she's.

1501
01:22:10,400 --> 01:22:13,200
Speaker 3: A pretty lady. Not a good series. Much like the

1502
01:22:13,240 --> 01:22:15,519
Speaker 3: Samurai movie I was just talking about, which again is

1503
01:22:15,560 --> 01:22:19,760
Speaker 3: called Hanso the Razer. Not to be confused the well,

1504
01:22:19,920 --> 01:22:23,920
Speaker 3: hang on, there's several hans of the Razor movies. It's

1505
01:22:23,960 --> 01:22:28,679
Speaker 3: a trilogy, and I am, of course talking about Hanso

1506
01:22:28,760 --> 01:22:34,000
Speaker 3: the Razor of Justice, not Hanso the Razer The Snare

1507
01:22:34,280 --> 01:22:37,360
Speaker 3: released the following year, or Hanso the Raizer Who's Got

1508
01:22:37,360 --> 01:22:40,000
Speaker 3: the Gold released a year after that.

1509
01:22:41,200 --> 01:22:42,920
Speaker 1: I mean, this is interesting to me because Hanso the

1510
01:22:42,960 --> 01:22:45,519
Speaker 1: Razers sort of Justice. The movie you watched was released

1511
01:22:45,520 --> 01:22:49,720
Speaker 1: on December thirtieth, nineteen seventy two, four years after the

1512
01:22:49,840 --> 01:22:51,960
Speaker 1: very day that Frank Sinatra went into the studio to

1513
01:22:52,000 --> 01:22:57,519
Speaker 1: record My Way. See It All connects. Yes, it should

1514
01:22:57,520 --> 01:22:59,960
Speaker 1: probably come as no surprise at this anthem for unre

1515
01:23:00,120 --> 01:23:05,200
Speaker 1: pen individualism has become extremely popular with politicians. For example,

1516
01:23:05,640 --> 01:23:09,280
Speaker 1: my Way was a favorite of former Serbian president Slobodam Melosovich.

1517
01:23:10,600 --> 01:23:12,679
Speaker 1: He often played it in his cell at a loud

1518
01:23:12,760 --> 01:23:19,080
Speaker 1: volume during his trial for crimes Crimes against Humanity in

1519
01:23:19,080 --> 01:23:26,720
Speaker 1: two thousand and two. Are endorsement of this song under

1520
01:23:26,760 --> 01:23:29,040
Speaker 1: if Paul knows that, I hope he's not going to

1521
01:23:29,080 --> 01:23:33,120
Speaker 1: listen to this. He listened to our Taco Bell one. Yeah,

1522
01:23:33,160 --> 01:23:35,600
Speaker 1: that was funny. He wanted to like see what was

1523
01:23:35,680 --> 01:23:37,880
Speaker 1: under my fingernails, so we like listened to shows I

1524
01:23:37,920 --> 01:23:39,880
Speaker 1: worked on with that Like he just googled me, like

1525
01:23:39,920 --> 01:23:42,160
Speaker 1: I didn't send him anything. And the thing he listened

1526
01:23:42,160 --> 01:23:45,719
Speaker 1: to was our hour and a half treaties on Taco

1527
01:23:45,840 --> 01:23:48,960
Speaker 1: Bell And somehow he was like, this is the guy

1528
01:23:49,040 --> 01:23:55,200
Speaker 1: for me. I'll work with this guy. Yeah. On a

1529
01:23:55,280 --> 01:23:59,760
Speaker 1: slightly less genocidal note, although maybe not really, former German

1530
01:23:59,840 --> 01:24:08,240
Speaker 1: Chancellor Gerard Schroeder, Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder requested my

1531
01:24:08,360 --> 01:24:12,040
Speaker 1: Way for his final send off or Zapfren's strike in

1532
01:24:12,120 --> 01:24:16,599
Speaker 1: German prior to the inauguration of Angela Merkel, more than

1533
01:24:16,720 --> 01:24:20,120
Speaker 1: seven million German television viewers watched tears well up in

1534
01:24:20,120 --> 01:24:23,000
Speaker 1: his eyes as a military band saw him off with

1535
01:24:23,080 --> 01:24:28,080
Speaker 1: a version of My Way embarrassing. Not a serious people.

1536
01:24:30,320 --> 01:24:35,240
Speaker 1: You notice I don't like anyone. Yeah, cool, There's going

1537
01:24:35,280 --> 01:24:40,800
Speaker 1: to be a country, a culture you like Mauritana, Mike

1538
01:24:40,880 --> 01:24:49,720
Speaker 1: Ronesia because it's small Eritrea Poienker himself has noticed that

1539
01:24:49,760 --> 01:24:53,960
Speaker 1: this song appears to uh, what I'll generously call a

1540
01:24:54,000 --> 01:24:59,160
Speaker 1: certain kind of person, and this category also includes Vladimir Putin.

1541
01:25:00,320 --> 01:25:03,240
Speaker 1: He's an egomaniac, Anka says. When I went to Russia,

1542
01:25:03,439 --> 01:25:05,879
Speaker 1: he's walking me through the museum and giving me cavia

1543
01:25:05,960 --> 01:25:09,720
Speaker 1: out of tubs. Loving my Way. You've got every malignant

1544
01:25:09,720 --> 01:25:13,120
Speaker 1: egomaniac love it. I don't know. It just did what

1545
01:25:13,160 --> 01:25:15,719
Speaker 1: it did. It has a life. It's like your children,

1546
01:25:16,360 --> 01:25:19,400
Speaker 1: and a fluke of editing that is in no way intentional.

1547
01:25:19,560 --> 01:25:23,120
Speaker 1: You hear that, Apple podcast commentswers. Donald Trump chose this

1548
01:25:23,240 --> 01:25:26,559
Speaker 1: song as the first dance at his presidential inauguration. He

1549
01:25:26,640 --> 01:25:28,839
Speaker 1: danced to it with his wife Malania at the Liberty

1550
01:25:28,880 --> 01:25:33,360
Speaker 1: Ball is second inaugural ball of the evening. Two days earlier,

1551
01:25:33,600 --> 01:25:36,640
Speaker 1: Nancy Sinatra, Frank's daughter was asked on Twitter what she

1552
01:25:36,720 --> 01:25:40,920
Speaker 1: thought of Trump using the song. Her reply, just remember

1553
01:25:40,960 --> 01:25:44,479
Speaker 1: the first line of the song. Those of you not familiar,

1554
01:25:44,600 --> 01:25:47,000
Speaker 1: The first line is and now the end is near,

1555
01:25:47,560 --> 01:25:53,280
Speaker 1: and so I face the final kurt that's ominous? Is

1556
01:25:53,320 --> 01:25:56,880
Speaker 1: she wrong? Speaking of the final curtain? Let's talk about

1557
01:25:56,920 --> 01:25:59,880
Speaker 1: death Baby, We should really take a look at the

1558
01:25:59,880 --> 01:26:03,320
Speaker 1: morbid streak that runs through my way. It is, after all,

1559
01:26:03,439 --> 01:26:05,320
Speaker 1: sung from the point of view of a man looking

1560
01:26:05,360 --> 01:26:09,960
Speaker 1: back on his life, presumably at its end. Hence it's

1561
01:26:09,960 --> 01:26:13,120
Speaker 1: become a very popular song at funerals. In a two

1562
01:26:13,160 --> 01:26:17,000
Speaker 1: thousand and five survey by Cooperative Funeral Care, this song

1563
01:26:17,080 --> 01:26:19,519
Speaker 1: is at the top of the song's most requested at

1564
01:26:19,520 --> 01:26:23,160
Speaker 1: funerals in the UK. Spokesman Phil Edwards said it is

1565
01:26:23,240 --> 01:26:26,120
Speaker 1: that timeless appeal. The words sum up what so many

1566
01:26:26,200 --> 01:26:28,680
Speaker 1: people feel about their lives and how they would like

1567
01:26:28,720 --> 01:26:32,519
Speaker 1: their loved ones to remember them. Nipsey Hustles, we mentioned,

1568
01:26:32,520 --> 01:26:35,240
Speaker 1: had it played at his funeral, and performance artist Marina

1569
01:26:35,320 --> 01:26:38,600
Speaker 1: Bramovich had requested it if he played at hers. And

1570
01:26:38,680 --> 01:26:43,240
Speaker 1: Warren Buffett has recorded his own version himself, featuring new

1571
01:26:43,320 --> 01:26:47,920
Speaker 1: lyrics written by his friend Paul Anka. I believe I

1572
01:26:47,920 --> 01:26:51,200
Speaker 1: think I'm allowed to share this. He's recording a hologram

1573
01:26:51,280 --> 01:26:53,839
Speaker 1: version of himself singing of a song to be played

1574
01:26:53,880 --> 01:26:56,679
Speaker 1: at his own funeral. I hope I didn't just break

1575
01:26:56,680 --> 01:27:01,080
Speaker 1: some kind of serious NDA. Himself is well aware of

1576
01:27:01,120 --> 01:27:04,640
Speaker 1: the song's reputation as a real perspective check on mortality.

1577
01:27:05,520 --> 01:27:08,559
Speaker 1: He says, the content of that lyric hit everybody. Back then,

1578
01:27:08,600 --> 01:27:10,760
Speaker 1: when I wrote it, I saw we were getting into

1579
01:27:10,800 --> 01:27:14,879
Speaker 1: the MEMI me generation. I was only twenty six. Boys

1580
01:27:14,880 --> 01:27:18,800
Speaker 1: scientifically don't become adults until they're thirty. But somehow it

1581
01:27:18,880 --> 01:27:22,360
Speaker 1: hit everybody. People get married to it, get buried to it.

1582
01:27:22,640 --> 01:27:24,640
Speaker 1: Guys write me letters from death row. They say they

1583
01:27:24,720 --> 01:27:28,040
Speaker 1: identify with it. I've sung my Way for Putin for Trump.

1584
01:27:28,720 --> 01:27:32,040
Speaker 1: Narcissism runs rampant, but when it's under control, this is

1585
01:27:32,040 --> 01:27:34,759
Speaker 1: the perfect song in terms of wrapping up one's life.

1586
01:27:35,000 --> 01:27:38,040
Speaker 1: We're all ego driven. Read enough Freud and you get

1587
01:27:38,080 --> 01:27:42,080
Speaker 1: that he's a very interesting, well read, fascinating guy. Yeah,

1588
01:27:42,120 --> 01:27:45,559
Speaker 1: for sure. Many people play My Way at funerals, but

1589
01:27:45,840 --> 01:27:48,679
Speaker 1: a bunch of people have killed each other over My Way.

1590
01:27:50,520 --> 01:27:53,679
Speaker 1: Welcome to the segment we like to call the my Way, MOI.

1591
01:27:53,720 --> 01:27:58,080
Speaker 1: It does, Oh that's good. That's good. No, it's not. No,

1592
01:27:58,200 --> 01:27:58,599
Speaker 1: it is.

1593
01:28:00,720 --> 01:28:00,800
Speaker 2: No.

1594
01:28:01,040 --> 01:28:03,800
Speaker 3: Go Google, it's weird. There's a whole Wikipedia entry from

1595
01:28:03,800 --> 01:28:06,720
Speaker 3: My Way killings, as well as an entire New York

1596
01:28:06,760 --> 01:28:10,559
Speaker 3: Times article from twenty ten. Within just a decade, it

1597
01:28:10,600 --> 01:28:12,760
Speaker 3: was suspected that at least twelve people were killed in

1598
01:28:12,800 --> 01:28:16,040
Speaker 3: connection to singing Frank's hit song My Way. The song

1599
01:28:16,120 --> 01:28:19,040
Speaker 3: is a phenomenon in the Philippines, where karaoke is something

1600
01:28:19,040 --> 01:28:22,759
Speaker 3: of the national sport. There are upwards of a dozen

1601
01:28:22,840 --> 01:28:27,679
Speaker 3: karaoke bars in each village or barangay. As you hopefully

1602
01:28:27,720 --> 01:28:31,840
Speaker 3: note for all of our people interested in Filipino, they

1603
01:28:31,880 --> 01:28:37,240
Speaker 3: really know how to cook a pig. Yeah they do, yeah, As.

1604
01:28:37,080 --> 01:28:40,760
Speaker 1: An article in Esqui. As an article in Esquire Philippines explains,

1605
01:28:41,000 --> 01:28:43,880
Speaker 1: life in the Philippines is hard, especially for the predominant

1606
01:28:43,920 --> 01:28:46,720
Speaker 1: sector of society living under the poverty line. It makes

1607
01:28:46,760 --> 01:28:49,680
Speaker 1: sense that karaoke, which is only about P five per

1608
01:28:49,720 --> 01:28:53,280
Speaker 1: song roughly a dime, became a sweet escape to forget

1609
01:28:53,280 --> 01:28:55,960
Speaker 1: life struggles for a while. It also makes sense why

1610
01:28:55,960 --> 01:28:58,960
Speaker 1: they be angry at people who inadvertently ruined that sliver

1611
01:28:59,040 --> 01:29:02,640
Speaker 1: of peace in that country, as is the case with

1612
01:29:02,680 --> 01:29:05,120
Speaker 1: the US. My Way is one of the most popular

1613
01:29:05,160 --> 01:29:07,760
Speaker 1: songs to sing, and versions of the song have been

1614
01:29:07,800 --> 01:29:10,880
Speaker 1: known to provoke fights at karaoke bars, where naturally there

1615
01:29:10,920 --> 01:29:13,200
Speaker 1: is quite a lot of drinking going on, and occasionally

1616
01:29:13,240 --> 01:29:16,439
Speaker 1: this violence escalates to death. Some people have been killed

1617
01:29:16,439 --> 01:29:19,080
Speaker 1: for singing out of tune, some people were killed for

1618
01:29:19,120 --> 01:29:22,040
Speaker 1: hogging the microphone, and quite a few were killed for

1619
01:29:22,080 --> 01:29:24,599
Speaker 1: singing the song on repeat for hours at end like that.

1620
01:29:24,640 --> 01:29:26,800
Speaker 1: One guy even wrote a Vice article up playing the

1621
01:29:26,840 --> 01:29:29,040
Speaker 1: Boys are back in Town like forty times on a

1622
01:29:29,120 --> 01:29:33,320
Speaker 1: jukebox and John Molaney talking about doing it with What's

1623
01:29:33,400 --> 01:29:37,200
Speaker 1: New pussy Cat. Yeah, there's one thing you can say

1624
01:29:37,240 --> 01:29:39,679
Speaker 1: about this country. No one killed either of them. Yeah.

1625
01:29:40,040 --> 01:29:42,120
Speaker 1: As a result, many bars don't even offer it on

1626
01:29:42,120 --> 01:29:45,280
Speaker 1: their playlists, and even if they do, many customers won't

1627
01:29:45,320 --> 01:29:47,280
Speaker 1: dare to sing the song in public without getting a

1628
01:29:47,280 --> 01:29:50,360
Speaker 1: private room so that their off tuned vocals will not

1629
01:29:50,479 --> 01:29:56,480
Speaker 1: inadvertently cause death. A sill in Filipino Congress.

1630
01:29:56,120 --> 01:30:00,519
Speaker 3: Was proposed to set a curfew on karaoke to lessen

1631
01:30:00,560 --> 01:30:03,360
Speaker 3: alcohol related deaths or violence.

1632
01:30:04,920 --> 01:30:07,840
Speaker 1: One follows the other. Some critics and sociologists postulated that

1633
01:30:07,880 --> 01:30:13,160
Speaker 1: the triumphalist Sure Bravado of the song paired with alcohol

1634
01:30:13,360 --> 01:30:19,000
Speaker 1: makes for a uniquely combustible situation. Butch Albarasen, the owner

1635
01:30:19,000 --> 01:30:21,680
Speaker 1: of a Manila based singing school, elaborated on this in

1636
01:30:21,720 --> 01:30:24,799
Speaker 1: a twenty ten interview with the Huffington Post. The lyrics,

1637
01:30:24,840 --> 01:30:27,840
Speaker 1: as he explained, evoke feelings of pride and arrogance in

1638
01:30:27,920 --> 01:30:30,559
Speaker 1: the singer, as if you're somebody when you're really nobody.

1639
01:30:31,200 --> 01:30:34,080
Speaker 1: It cover ups your failures. That's why it leads to fight.

1640
01:30:35,000 --> 01:30:36,280
Speaker 1: In two thousand and seven, a.

1641
01:30:36,200 --> 01:30:38,439
Speaker 3: Twenty nine year old man singing My Way was reportedly

1642
01:30:38,439 --> 01:30:41,000
Speaker 3: shot to death by the karaoke bars bouncer when he

1643
01:30:41,080 --> 01:30:44,920
Speaker 3: accidentally got off rhythm while singing My Way and struggled

1644
01:30:44,920 --> 01:30:48,439
Speaker 3: to get back on track. When he wouldn't stop singing,

1645
01:30:48,479 --> 01:30:50,759
Speaker 3: the guard pulled out a thirty eight and killed him.

1646
01:30:51,080 --> 01:30:54,680
Speaker 3: Three years later, in twenty ten, a chairman of a

1647
01:30:54,760 --> 01:30:58,799
Speaker 3: Tondo village was shot alongside his aid by motorcycle riding

1648
01:30:58,840 --> 01:31:02,920
Speaker 3: gunmen while singing the song during a Christmas party. The

1649
01:31:03,000 --> 01:31:05,840
Speaker 3: chairman died on the spot, while the aide survived in

1650
01:31:05,880 --> 01:31:10,640
Speaker 3: critical condition. It's said that the killing was possibly politically motivated,

1651
01:31:10,760 --> 01:31:15,639
Speaker 3: but this interpretation is more fun. A man was killed

1652
01:31:15,840 --> 01:31:18,720
Speaker 3: and being very flip. The my Way killing struck again

1653
01:31:18,760 --> 01:31:20,800
Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen when a sixty year old man was

1654
01:31:20,840 --> 01:31:23,280
Speaker 3: stabbed by his neighbor, who was twenty eight, during a

1655
01:31:23,320 --> 01:31:26,639
Speaker 3: birthday party. According to reports, the senior grabbed the mic

1656
01:31:26,680 --> 01:31:29,120
Speaker 3: from his neighbor just when my Way was about to play.

1657
01:31:29,760 --> 01:31:33,880
Speaker 3: A fistfight ensued, and the younger man stabbed the elder,

1658
01:31:34,120 --> 01:31:36,160
Speaker 3: who was pronounced dead.

1659
01:31:36,160 --> 01:31:44,240
Speaker 1: At the hospital. Regrets they all had a few. Well, folks,

1660
01:31:44,760 --> 01:31:47,679
Speaker 1: the end is near, and we face the final curtain,

1661
01:31:47,720 --> 01:31:50,680
Speaker 1: but we will end on a quote from not aforementioned

1662
01:31:50,800 --> 01:31:53,960
Speaker 1: NPR piece, a toast to our Way. It's from Jason King,

1663
01:31:54,000 --> 01:31:57,519
Speaker 1: a professor at NYU's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music.

1664
01:31:58,760 --> 01:32:00,519
Speaker 1: He says, you could read my Way as a kind

1665
01:32:00,520 --> 01:32:02,920
Speaker 1: of metaphor for the World War II generation that Frank

1666
01:32:03,000 --> 01:32:06,720
Speaker 1: Sinatra represented, looking back at the twentieth century history in

1667
01:32:06,800 --> 01:32:10,680
Speaker 1: this kind of cosmic defiance, saying, look, I did it

1668
01:32:10,720 --> 01:32:12,840
Speaker 1: the way I wanted to do it, and I did

1669
01:32:12,880 --> 01:32:16,680
Speaker 1: it right. I'm looking back at all this history and

1670
01:32:16,840 --> 01:32:20,920
Speaker 1: I'm okay with it. I won't be I'm okay with

1671
01:32:20,960 --> 01:32:28,040
Speaker 1: this episode. I'll be on my deathbed, still trying to hate,

1672
01:32:29,560 --> 01:32:37,559
Speaker 1: trying to he died doing what he loved, being a hater. Yeah,

1673
01:32:37,600 --> 01:32:40,439
Speaker 1: great song. It's good to try though, it's good to try.

1674
01:32:40,479 --> 01:32:42,439
Speaker 1: It's nice that you're still trying well.

1675
01:32:42,520 --> 01:32:44,120
Speaker 3: You know, you get older, your mellow a bit, so

1676
01:32:44,120 --> 01:32:46,120
Speaker 3: you gotta work a little bit harder to put your

1677
01:32:46,160 --> 01:32:47,000
Speaker 3: hating hours in.

1678
01:32:48,800 --> 01:32:50,800
Speaker 1: You just lose the fire you had as a young hater.

1679
01:32:53,520 --> 01:32:57,120
Speaker 1: This has been too much information, folks. I'm Alex Haiegel, Jack,

1680
01:32:58,000 --> 01:33:06,919
Speaker 1: and I'm shortan run talk next time. Too Much Information

1681
01:33:07,040 --> 01:33:10,400
Speaker 1: was a production of iHeartRadio. The show's executive producers are

1682
01:33:10,439 --> 01:33:13,880
Speaker 1: Noel Brown and Jordan Runtog. The show's supervising producer is

1683
01:33:13,960 --> 01:33:17,519
Speaker 1: Michael Alder June. The show was researched, written and hosted

1684
01:33:17,560 --> 01:33:20,599
Speaker 1: by Jordan Runtog and Alex Heigel, with original music by

1685
01:33:20,640 --> 01:33:23,400
Speaker 1: Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like

1686
01:33:23,479 --> 01:33:25,599
Speaker 1: what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review.

1687
01:33:25,880 --> 01:33:30,160
Speaker 1: For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1688
01:33:30,439 --> 01:33:32,120
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.