"My Way" by Frank Sinatra: Everything You Didn't Know

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone,
and welcome to another episode of Too Much Information, the
show that brings you the secret histories and little known
facts behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows and more.
We are your fedora wearing friends of Factoids. You're chairman

(00:23):
of the board. As in I'm bored, Let's listen to
TMI regrets. We have a few, including that last joke,
which worked a lot better on paper. My name is
Jordan Runtag and I'm Alex Heigel. And today we are
talking about one of the most enduring songs of the
last half century, a song that's been embraced as a
stirring anthem of defiant individualism or a hymn to self

(00:46):
delusion and self aggrandizement, depending on which side you're on.
We are talking about My Way, made famous by Old
Blue Eyes himself, Holwoken's very own Frances Albert Sinatra. It's
self reflective lyrics and especially for Sinatra on the eve
of his retirement, at the request of his friend, a
young pup by the name of Paul Anka, who was

(01:07):
just twenty six years old when he wrote the words
to a pre existing French pop tune. Now, folks, I'm
going to veer into what may seem like a shameless
plug for a moment, but bear with me. I swear
it's not intended to be one of my new projects.
My friends at iHeart had me working on as a
talk show hosted by Paul Anka, appropriately titled Our Way.
Working on this show has led me to become pretty

(01:28):
friendly with Paul, and he's been very generous in sharing
his memories of frank and what it was like writing
these lyrics for his friend and idol. I was just
so fascinated by the story, and when I realized that
this spring was the fifty fifth anniversary of the song,
I figured it was as good an excuse as any
to dive in. Oh does that mean it can sign
up for AARP?

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Now?

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Is that sixty five? Okay?

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Just me.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
If there's anyone under forty who knows these rules, it's
me Higel. What are your thoughts on this song? Or Sinatra? Oh?

Speaker 3 (01:58):
I mean, you know, I'm Italian and like I gotta,
I can't say a bad word about Frankie on air
on Area He's hilarious. He's like one of the greatest
Napoleon complexes and music.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
I don't even know if he's small. He might be
the his Napoleon complex is so strong that it transcends
his height.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Yeah, I mean he was. I know, he was like
really real thin. I mean in my college house, we
had a picture of his mug shot up on.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
The wall, which I realized is probably a problem. Is
a cliche?

Speaker 3 (02:24):
Well it's a cliche, but it's also a problem because
wasn't that for when he got picked up for stature rape?

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Oh I didn't know that. Oh. Oh, I assumed it
was like for like driving a golf cart through a
window or something, which we'll touch on. No, but we'll
get to that. No, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
I mean I predictably I fall into the sort of
middle aged white in olden days what they would call
a hipster listening habits of Frank, which means I like
stuff like all the Nelson Raal stuff we small hours,
and then some of the weirder stuff with like when
we had like electric bass on the records Watertown.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
That's Watertown. Yeah, that's in here we're gonna talk about
that is weird concept album that nobody bought. It sold
thirty thousand copies at a time when stuff wasn't selling
thirty thousand copies.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
Yeah, so yeah, I mean he's great. He's also hilarious
and embarrassing in the way that so many prominent Italians
are like you're like our family, Yeah, you're Andrew Croomo's
so yeah, I don't know, he's frank.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
What are you gonna say about Frankie Frank He's frank. Yeah.
I mean I kind of took Sinatra for granted, as
you know, is the case with so many musical touchstones
that were born knowing He's just sort of become part
of the architecture. Obviously, everyone talks about the brilliance of
his phrasing. I think it was Charlton Heston who said
that every song he sings as a four minute movie.

(03:48):
You had something to say about his phrasing earlier, which
I wasn't aware of.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
Oh well, I mean, so Sinatra in like the he's
really interesting because crooning as a like singing genre really
kind of had just come into form, because you know,
prior it was like shouting, like you had to be
heard over a big band like Caruso. Yeah, Caruso were
like I'm thinking of like the jump blues, Like there's

(04:13):
like four Big Joe Williams, but like, you know, these
guys who would like come in and you could hear
them singing from like the back of a bar. And
so consequently, like even your guys like Cap Callaway, once
they started having access to good studio technology, they were
still kind of in that vein. But because Sinatra bridged that,
he was able to like really bring all this depth
and nuance into, you know, this storytelling aspect into his
vocal performances, because he wasn't singing to the rafters, he

(04:36):
wasn't like trying to force his body to put out
as much sound as possible. But he like got all
that phrasing admittedly from Billie Holliday, who you know obviously
did not live long enough to profit off of it.
Or you know, as this story is told time and
time again, white guy took something from a black lady
and took it further to the bank than she did.

(04:57):
But you know, he's like such a big influence on
people that it's it's easy to understand how like guys
like Jim Morrison would have picked up his vocal phrasing
having heard Fraim before Billie Holiday. You know, so I
don't know if I can really begrudge him that, but
I think he's fascinating because of that, you.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
Know, I mean just to explicitly state crooning really became
an R form because of just the technological advance, but
of microphones. Yeah, that's that's what I mean.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
Is really yeah, and then you think about it, I mean, yeah,
it's like illustrating the difference between like Bessie Smith or
like one of those people who's like forty fives, like
even they're old, like or thirty. They're really old, like
Depression era ones sound like they're you know, it's so
blown out. And then you're like, holy shit, I can
sing soft into this thing.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
You can hear my lips sound, you can hear the breathing. Yeah.
Well yeah, I mean.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
It was my favorite moment of that is on that
on that Rod Stewart record, the first two just have
mistakes all over them, not Gasolene Alley, but the two
he made with the Faces crew, And.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
There's one I think it's every picture.

Speaker 3 (06:03):
Yeah, where he just like audibly like tries to come
into bar early and you just hear him go yeah
and then like back off the bike real quick.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
So it's just I mean, it's really funny.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
When you think about the way that singing evolved to
catch up to the technology rather than the other way around.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, and the other thing that I didn't really think
about until researching this episode, and you hear people say this,
how I kind of took a dim view of Sinatra
and people of his ilk because I'm a Beatles guy
and a Bob Dylan guy and a singer songwriter guy,
and so anyone who didn't write their own material. I
was just kind of like, you know, well, there was

(06:41):
a certain level of respect I felt like I couldn't
achieve for him. But you hear all these people claiming
that Sinatra invented the concept album. That's the phrase you
always hear, sure, and there really is some truth to that,
because he was the first to use the LP as
a medium. You know, even if he didn't write the
songs himself, he would choose every track himself and work
with the arranger very closely, or in some cases work

(07:03):
with the songwriters personally to kind of impart whatever mood
he wanted, And so he would create these albums that
were an entire mood. I just I appreciate the way
that he would sing too. He would stand in the
middle of an orchestra, no headphones or anything, and just
like be part of the music. I just I love that.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
Yeah, and went deaf, did he? I mean, I assume
that's really bad for you?

Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah? Well back to My Way for me. There are
two distinct ways to look at My Way. The first
as a lyrical autobiography or a sort of musical mission
statement of a very singular man, Frank Sinatra. It was
one of the eleven songs he sang and his famous
nineteen seventy one retirement concert, a show that was meant
to wrap up his public life. The retirement lasted two years,

(07:52):
but let's let's not talk about that. My Way was
intended to be a swan song for a career that
endured for a then impressive three decades, from Bobby Soxsers
to the Beatles and beyond. And there were many times
when Frank was counted out, but like the former boxer
that he was, he kept getting back up. And the
song's a summation of his rich life, sung by a

(08:13):
guy who'd truly seen it all, and only he could
summon the prerequisite swagger to pull off lines like the
record shows I took the blows and did it my way.
I forgot.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
He was also like basically the first guy to start
an artist owned record label too.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
I can't he can't sell short for that, oh repriz. Yeah,
I mean let the record show. Frank always knew how
to make a buck. It was very quick to act
when he realized that someone was taking a buck from him,
unless they were the mafia. Yes, so My Way. One
way of looking at it is as a musical biography
of autobiography of Frank Sinatra himself. But to me, the

(08:53):
songs endured because of what it's done for regular people.
Singing My Way is like the musical equivalent of wearing
a Superman cape or a fine tuxedo, take your pick.
The real theme of My Way is that every life
is a triumph, not just Frank Sinatras. That's why it
regularly tops karaoke charts around the world, and it's also

(09:13):
the most popular song be requested at funerals. It's the
center point of event diagram between Trump's inaugural ball any
funeral for murdered rapper Nipsey Hustle. It's arguably the only
thing those two events have in common. This isn't my
favorite song by any stretch, sorry, mister Anka, but I'd
argue that for good or ill, it lays claim to

(09:35):
the closest thing we've had to a new national anthem
in the last one hundred years. And I don't necessarily
mean that as a compliment. It's a song that defines
American individualism and American exceptionalism. But on a more positive slant,
it's a song that will live forever because it makes
whoever sings it feels like there's somebody damn it well

(09:56):
said thank you. I should have saved that for a kicker. Well,
you know what, Let's screw the factoid teasing. Let's just
jump right in, folks. Here was everything you didn't know
about My Way, made popular by Frank Sinatra. I call

(10:19):
this section having the gall the French origins of My Way.
That's good, that's proud of that. Yeah, thank you. The
song My Way has this origins in Heigel's beloved France,
where it was a hit in February nineteen sixty eight
under the name gomb Debut. Dude, can you say that
for me? My French accent is so bad? Gomb debuted

(10:41):
Thank You, which means as usual, and it was a
hit by the French crooner Claude Francois. I'm not familiar,
but the Guardian would describe him thus, if it's possible
to imagine a surrealistic glic Rod Stewart, nothing anyone would
want to Francoise? Was it our second mention of Rod

(11:02):
ste in the first five minutes of this program?

Speaker 3 (11:05):
So deeply unappealing? Like didn't they already have that? Wasn't
it an old sex pest?

Speaker 1 (11:11):
Serge Gainsburg? Yeah, I had the pause and figure out
which French singer you're talking about.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
Yeah, he's not a good He's not as good as
a singer as Rod Stewart, but as far as lush,
disgusting men convinced of their own genius, go like, he's got.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
To be up there right. I don't think Rod Stewart's
convinced of his own genius. I think he's full aware
of what he is. Okay, interesting take. Claude Francois would
also have a hit with another song that would be
we worked in English, this time Feelings by Morris Albert,
which was a huge hit. Though my way shares the
same melody as his golic cousin. The words have absolutely

(11:45):
nothing in common. Written by Parisian composer Jacques Riveau, who
wrote three other songs that day, and Giles Tibaut the
lyrics to comb debutued chronicle couple whose relationship is disintegrating
due to the boredom of every day life, hence the
title as usual, And it's quite the gloomy little number

(12:06):
in a uniquely French kind of way. It opens with
the line I get up, I shake you, you don't
wake up as usual? Weird, and it closes with we
will make love as usual, we will fake it as usual,
especially for nineteen sixty eight too. Yeah that's great, brutal

(12:28):
Yeah yeah. Singer Claude France Will received a co write
on the song because he tweaked the lyrics to be
more autobiographical, which is a hell of a thing to admit.
He'd recently split up with the Iconic Yeah yea Chantu
Yeah yeahs say that the French pop.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
I don't even know the first I heard of that
bullet It was from mad Men, and then no one's
ever talked about it ever since.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
I'm sorry, Iconic Yeah Yeah Chantus France, Gaul France gall
their name is Redundant. I just can't wait for the
section to be over.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
Sorry, I don't want to get into a whole thing
about yeah yeah, but.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
Please get into a whole thing about yeah yeah. This
isn't that long of an episode. What is the point
of it. It's just like louds music. It's French pop.
It's French pop filtered through lounge. Yeah, all right. Did
we need that at the time, No, but they did.
It's not about us, just so funny had the good music.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
Yeah, I mean, it's just so funny that at the
height of like the British rock revolution and you know,
soul in America, the French were like, what if we
took our already boring music and made it more precious
and fanciful.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
I mean, I think a lot of European countries in
the sixties did that. I mean Germany had I think
it was called Schlager.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
Germany had nothing before there was a huge blank carry
between Wagner and crowd rock, and when the Beatles were
in Hamburg, there's the only interesting things that happened in
German music.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
I mean, yeah, it's you're correct. I sorry, but Schlager
was like German. Yeah yeah, it was like, just that's
not locking awful. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, it was just
In case you think this story can't get even more
frenchly melodramatic, Claude Francois died a decade after the release
of Comb Debbie Twod while changing a light bulb in

(14:13):
a bathroom lamp while in his bathtub. That is how
the French Rod Stewart died. That sounds like a Polish joke,
gonna ry embarrassing people.

Speaker 3 (14:32):
Can't rock and roll electrocute themselves in bathtubs accidentally invented. Yeah, yeah,
what a decrepit culture. You should have shut it down
after Camu.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
That was their high point.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
It's just been a ever since Gerard Depardue started getting
starring roles. It's just been all downhill from there. So
what are we talking about again?

Speaker 1 (14:56):
David Bowie? Yes, yes, she didn't think were going to
get the David Bowie in this episode, did you, Folks?
In the mid sixties, it was fairly common for successful
European hits to be rewritten with English lyrics and issued
in the lucrative US and UK markets. That's the backstory
of songs like Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks,
which was another French song. The Beach Boys almost released

(15:19):
that song in the early seventies before deciding to shelvet.
Dusty Springsfield's torch song you Don't Have to Say You
Love Me was originally an operatic Italian pop song. Beyond
the Sea made popular by Bobby Darren was a French
song called Lamaire by Charles Trenet. It's now or never
made popular for me at least by Elvis Presley was
an Italian standard called Oslo Mio. Pretty famous song. Yeah,

(15:42):
so it is Lamaire, though, I mean that's Across the
Sea by Bobby Darren. Yeah, that's why I mentioned it.
Oh yeah, you did say that. Sorry, disassociate because it's
to bok about the French for too long. Yeah. Yeah,
I just went back into a fugue state. All this
to say, it became a fairly common practice for young
songwriters under contract to British or America and publishers to
get commissioned to write English lyrics to these European imports,

(16:04):
and one such writer was none other than a young
David Bowie. Before Paul Anker reworked Come Debbie Tuta's My
Way for Frank Sinatra, a pre fame, pre space oddity.
Bowie was the first to take a shot at it.
This was nineteen sixty seven or early nineteen sixty eight,
right around the time he was singing about the Laughing Gnome, so,
as you may expect, the results were not spectacular. Bowie

(16:28):
himself would dismiss his attempts in a two thousand and
two interview by saying, I wrote this god awful lyric.
God it was dreadful, but I think he's been a
little hard on himself. The lyrics are better than you
might expect for a twenty one year old. Bowie's early
hero was a man named Anthony Newley, who was a
British light entertainment star who's best known to our demographic

(16:50):
for co writing the songs in nineteen seventy one's Willie
Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. He's been described as the
British equivalent of Stephen Sondheim, which feels generous. But he
was also married to Joan Collins, so he is that
gone for him, which is nice. All this to say,
it's not too much of a stretch to see why
Bowie would have been drawn to a melody like this.

(17:12):
His version was called even a Fool Learns to Love,
and Anthony Newly had a big song called what kind
of fool am I? So, as usual, David Bowie's influences
are not warn lightly. His lyrics went like this, I'll
try to give my approximation to the meter that they
would have had in My Way melody. There was a time,

(17:33):
the laughing time I took my heart to every party,
They'd point my way, how are you today? Will you
make us laugh? Chase our blues away? They're a funny man.
Won't let them down. No, he'd dance in prance and
be their clown that time, the laughing time, when even

(17:59):
a fool learns to love? That's tough to sing. Thank you,
thank you. That's it's hard to find where those words
fit in the melody that I know. There is a
demo version of Bowie singing these lyrics, which went unheard
until a BBC Arena documentary on My Way in nineteen
seventy eight. Fittingly, it was directed by famed UK TV

(18:22):
documentarian Alan Yentobb, who directed the seminal Bowie dot Cracked
Actor for the BBC a few years earlier, which if
you're a Bowie fan you should definitely check it out.
That is when he is at his cochist. That's the
one where he's like paranoid in the back of a limo,
thinking that they're being followed in La and I mean
living on milk and peppers and cocaine. Who among us? Yes, yeah,

(18:46):
there was.

Speaker 4 (18:46):
A time, the laughing time he took his plot to every.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
Party they find.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
His way Holly, you today, William make us laugh.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
Jay sadly, I don't believe Bowie's version of the proto
My Way has been officially released. Ultimately, the world would
get a very different version of comb debut Twode. As
Bowie would recall during an interview with the legendary British
journalist Michael Parkinson. I wrote some really terrible lyrics. I
sent it back and thought that'll be the last I

(19:28):
hear of that. Then I heard the song on the
radio and I thought, that's that tune. It must be
my song. But hang on, those are different lyrics and
it was Sinatra singing My Way. Bowie was somewhat understandably
pissed off by the fact that his lyrics had been
elbowed in favor of somebody Else's Paul Anka will Discover.
He added in the Parkinson interview that the success of

(19:48):
Sinatra's version quote really made me angry for so long,
for about a year. Eventually, I thought, I can write
something as big as that, and I'll write one that
sounds a bit like it. So I did Life on Mars,
which was sort of my revenge trip on my Way.
Bowie acknowledged the influence on the back cover of his
nineteen seventy one album Hunky Dory, writing inspired by Frankie

(20:10):
next to the song's title, do you know that Life
on Mars was My Way? Yeah? I told you We're
gonna get to some interesting places in this episode. Can
you imagine frank singing that song? This is a part
of me that wonders if there was a time when
he was like trying to grab on to pop cultural relevance,
he would have. There's some truly wild clips of frank

(20:32):
in like anahrew Jacket and Love Beads with the Fifth
Dimension on like some TV special. It is it is
something who made that pairing a talent booker was that high?
I mean it kind of worked earlier in the decade
he did a TV special with Elvis.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
I just imagine every single of those misplaced interactions going
like Phil Hartman's impression of him on SNL with Connor,
like just being utterly baffled but still like aggressively in
charge and a weird dick. But now enter Anka. I
was trying to think of an enter Sandman thing, but
I realized I don't actually ever say enter Sandman in

(21:12):
that song.

Speaker 4 (21:12):
Yeah now anyway, So, but we missed out to mister
Paul anchor Paul Anka, not the semi low tier brand
of Bluetooth accessories.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
And on your thanks, Anka singer songwriter teen Idol, youngest
member of the rat Pack and personal friend and co
worker of Jordan Runt Toss. I hear from it more
than my own family anyway.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
Anka has struck it big in the nineteen fifties with
songs like Diana, which he wrote when he was fifteen. Man,
that's like a Jackson Brown writing these these days, like
sixteen or seventeen, after he'd been heartbroken by like a
decade older Nico blowing his mind sexually.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
I just saw him something he oo Puppy Love, another
one of his songs, Lonely Boys the deathless, TikTok hit
put your Head on My Shoulder, which Paul loves to
change to put your legs on my shoulder, to shock
me during tapings.

Speaker 3 (22:13):
Pause to let that one, belly fop, Johnny Carson's Tonight
Show theme, which was actually the instrumental version of a
song he'd written for a Nette Fornicello, and get this
not for nothing, folks. He also wrote Buddy Holly's last
single it Doesn't Matter Anymore?

Speaker 1 (22:28):
Did you know that? I didn't? I mean for real?
Though his own hit songs, the Tonight Show theme, Frankie
and Annette songs, and Buddy Holly's last single and this
is pre my way. The man is an octopus tendrils
and everything. The man is an octopus eight arms or otherwise.

(22:52):
I don't even know where I was coming with that.
This was all before the Beatles. Naturally, Hey you Bob
Dylan too, well he didn't have the same chart success though. No,
but there wasn't money to be made from writing your
own songs until the Beatles came. What year was free Yllain?
I think sixty three? What year they come to America?

(23:14):
February sixty four? How about that? Well, come on, there
wasn't hit potential.

Speaker 3 (23:21):
What Jordan and I are debating is that essentially the
old model of the music industry was that you would
have professional songwriters. This is a tinpan alley kind of
situation where it was literally a lot of Russian Jews
sitting at pianos in New York banging out songs like
on an eight hour shift, which would then be scouted
and shipped to whatever kooner singer of the day was

(23:43):
going to sing it their label or their agent or
whatever deemed was going to be hit for them. And
then this changed with Bob Dylan. Not that I'm a
Dylan stand I'm just arguing for like historical accuracy and
not everything being about the damn Beatles. You know, Dylan
really revolutionized publishing rights and songwriters singing and writing their

(24:04):
own songs, because it used to be even if you
were a singer and you wrote your own song, it
would just immediately get taken away from you.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
And he and his voice.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
Completely revolutionized that. And I would argue the commercial impact
came from people covering his songs.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
Oh certainly, yeah, but I think that came later. We're
tabling this, We're gonna have it out on this some
other time. I'm not talking about who's doing a first.
I'm talking about who did it in a way that
made so much money that everyone was like, oh, we
got to do that now.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
Oh okay, just changing the rules of debate on me. Yeah, okay,
that's fine. Paul was on vacation in southern France, where
he spent most of the sixties bouncing between Vegas and Europe,
and when he first heard combe debutide on the radio,
and as he would say, it was a song, but
I felt there was something different in it. Something about
the melody of the tune captivated him, and he tracked

(24:51):
down the publishers. He got them to sign the adaptation,
recording and publishing rights over to him for one dollar,
an astounding feat of negotiating, as long as the melodies
composers would retain their original share of royalty rights.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
I just want to say, it's funny because we have
to license my way for the podcast I'm working on,
and it's extremely easy to get that song cleared because
even though he doesn't own all of it anymore, they're
just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, because they're so great.
Sure him for turning that song into what it's become.

Speaker 3 (25:23):
Yeah, this would have been at some point in early
nineteen sixty eight, and for a few months Paul just
sat on his new investment, just mulling it over, you know,
looking at this little French nest egg in these files.
And that is until his buddy Frank Sinatra called him
up one night and invited him to dinner.

Speaker 1 (25:44):
We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be
right back with more too much information in just a moment.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
Now we segue into the history of the rat Pack.
Just the best name for a bunch of filthy rich celebrities.
Anko was significantly younger than Frank, something like twenty six
year difference. They met when Paul Anka started headlining at
the Sands Hotel in Vegas when he was just sixteen
years old, and at the time that was the home

(26:21):
base for the rat Pack.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
Frank and Dean No like Dean Dean forgot his last
name for a second mark Frank Sinadra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis,
and so forth. But they were actually the second generation
the popularized ones rat Pack UH one point zero as
you put it, rat Pack Beta version was led referred

(26:44):
to Humphrey Bogart and his running, drinking and smoking buddies
who would hang out in Vegas. According to a possibly
apocryphal story, the term was coined by Bogie's wife, Lauren Bakal,
who walked in on Humphrey and his cronies and said, insultingly,
don't you look like a regular rat pack? I know
it smelled crazy in there. It was like pre the

(27:05):
rise of commercial deodorants. You're talking about a bunch of
chain smoking alcoholics. Sinatra woorl lavender. Apparently lavender was a
scent that he liked very much. Oh smells like cancer. Uh.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
Lauren Pocau would later be linked romantically with Sinatra after
Bogert kicked It in nineteen fifty seven. So perhaps she
was really the one that we owed the transference of
that nickname over to.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
He died, He wasn't hanging out. That's the different use
of kicked it.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
Oh yeah, sorry, he died horribly of lung and throat cancer.
Up right, Yeah, seriously, don't smoke, especially as.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
Much as he did unfiltered sawdust. Yeah, Frank, it should
be said, never referred to his group as the rat pack.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
Apparently he called it the Clan, which is so much worse.
Now here's where we get into parsing it, because if
you sticks some else in front of clan, it sounds fine,
like the rat clan.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
That's hilarious, that's cute, the rat family. Just again, you're
just spinning out things that are adorable. The clan. Yeah,
he did spell it with the c though, so at
least he had the awareness there. Paul Anka would tell
me that after all the shows that they would do,
there was like a steam room that all the rat

(28:24):
Pack guys would go to and they would invite Paul along,
and Frank had everybody They had a made custom robes
that he would embroider with the nicknames Frank gave everybody nicknamed.
Paul was the kid because he was still like a
teenager at this time. I think Frank's was the Pope.
I want to say Dean's was Dago because racism, and

(28:47):
Sammy's was Smoky. I think for smoking the bear, is
that racist? I think so, I assume, yeah, Okay.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
Anyway, Sinatra's history with Vegas really began in nineteen fifty three,
when he started singing in the Copa room at the Sands.
The hotel was aptly named At this point in Vegas history,
the town was still a dusty desert outpost. The Sands
Hotel was one of the first truly elegant establishments, and
Frank who would be joined by Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Junior,
Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop. Listed in descending order of rank.

(29:18):
You noted so Dean Martin, Lieutenant, Sammy Davis, Secretary, Peter
Lawford Assistant to the Secretary, and Joey Bishop intern.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
Yeah. The only cool thing about Joey Bishop is that
he gave Regis philip In his big break. He had
a talk show and then Regis philbim was like is
Ed McMahon. Basically, I don't care about that.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
This group was largely responsible for bringing a dose of
glamour to the town and helping make Las Vegas a
tourist destination. Prior to this, hoteliers were struggling to fill
their new casino resorts. Now people flocked to the area
for a chance to rub shoulders with Sinatra and Co,
who were famous for treating the town as their personal playground.
You'd see them at casinos, dropping in on each other's
performance as it lounges up and down the strip. As

(29:59):
a result, they were treated like kings by the powers
that be in the town and generally allowed to do
whatever they wanted. Sometimes this would result in hilariously diva
esque or divo esque, not like the band, but the
masculine form of the word diva. The joke is always
better when you explain it. For example, one of the
matre d's at the Kopa Room, a guy named George Levin,
recalled that Sinatra had a phobia of mushrooms. When he

(30:21):
discovered some of his dish at the White Gloved Garden
Room restaurant, he was displeased.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
As Levin would later recall, everything was silver at that time,
silver plates and silver toppings. Frank lifts the cover up
in their mushrooms. He took the bowl and threw it
over his head. I stepped to the side and I
started to laugh. Frank gets up and he starts coming
after me, and I run into the kitchen. He comes
after me into the kitchen and says to me, you
want to fight. I said, I'm not a fighter, I'm

(30:49):
a lover. Were they making eye contact anyway? Sinatra? He says.
Sinatra broke up. He hugged me and that was it.
Sinatra wud ultimately depart the Sands for the newly build
Caesar's Palace. On September eleventh, nineteen sixty seven. The lead
in the New York Times piece covering his exit read,
Frank Sinatra walked out on his contract with the Sands

(31:11):
Hotel last night because the management quote cut off his credit.
A spokesman for the singer said, today, you see the
Sands have been sold to Howard Hughes and old pissbottle Howie,
who was not as lax in his attitudes towards Sinatra's
casino debts.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
Truly hilarious nickname. Thank you for putting that in there.
You know, C's famously died surrounded by or did he
clean up first? So he died among him? He didn't
clean up.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
No, he died with broken the hypodermic needles broken off
under his skin and was like seventy six pounds.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
Surrounded by jars of his own piss and long gross fingernails.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
Yeah, long hair and beard watching the same weird sixty
sci fi movie Ice Station Zebra over and over and
over again and.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah again, who among us? Sinatra's rage at this turn
of events was swift. According to witnesses, he climbed onto
one of the casino tables and began screaming before throwing
a chair at the casino boss. The pit boss then
responded by punching him in the face. Sinatra left the
hotel via the most dramatic and immediate route. He drove

(32:13):
a golf cart through a window, and the following day
upped sticks to Seas Palace.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
Very nicely read I just want to praise you for that.
That was extremely well delivered. Oh well, thank you. So
that wasn't very cool. But on the flip side, or
was it, well, you put it that way, it was
very cool. But this is very cool too. S Ultra
also put himself on the line to help fight racial
segregation in Las Vegas in the mid fifties. Hotel owners

(32:42):
knew they had the book Black Acts because the revenue
they brought was enormous, but headliners like Lena Horne and
Fat Stamino were forbidden from meeting in the dining room
at the venues where they performed. Instead, they were sequestion
in the kitchen or sometimes a dressing room. There's a
famous story where Frank saw Inn that King Cole eating
in his dressing room by himself. Sinatra invited him to

(33:03):
be his guest at his table in the whites only
dining room, summoning a hutzpa that only fifties era Sinatra
could muster. He told the hotel management that if African
Americans weren't allowed in the dining room, he would have
the entire weight staff fired. I have no idea whether
or not he actually had the authority to do that,
but surely no one doubted him. He would also assign

(33:24):
some of his bodyguards to follow some of the black
acts around, telling them, if anyone looks at them, the
black art is funny, break both their legs. That does rule.
I love a guy who gave money to both the
NAACP and the mob. That seems that's nice. Yeah, he's
just he's leveling all sides. Yeah. Sinatra threatened to end

(33:46):
the rat Pack's popular summat at the Sands Show if
Sammy Davis Junior wasn't allowed to stay at the same
hotel with the others. Hotel management gave in the Sinatra's
demands and Sammy was given a suite, helping to pave
the way for equal treatment of black entertainment in the city. Well,
since we're talking about the rat pack and Vegas, we
should really close the loop and touch on the mob

(34:06):
and JFK. Sinatra met Kennedy through second tier rat packer
Peter Lawford, who was married to JFK's sister, Patricia Kennedy
at the time. Frank contributed Kennedy's campaign theme tune, which
was a revamped version of Sammy Cohn's High Hopes. With
In nineteen sixty election against Richard Nixon started to look
a little too close for comfort, Kennedy patriarch Joe Senior

(34:28):
put in a call to Sinatra and supposedly said, I'm
going to ask you a favor. I need your help
in Illinois and West Virginia. I want you to talk
to the guys you know in the mob to get
the unions of both states to vote for Kennedy. Frank
had known these guys since he was singing in bootleg
saloons in the thirties, but his ties with them had
really become cemented when he started working in Las Vegas,

(34:49):
because Vegas was where all the mobsters went in the
forties and fifties, because all the illegal stuff they did
back east was legal there. Brothels, gambling. Surely there are
others of things, hunting men for sport, I assume. Yeah,
Suddenly they went from being organized crime kingpins in the
East to being legitimate businessmen in Las Vegas on you

(35:12):
guys have seen The Godfather, right. Plus it was out
in the desert where law enforcement and regulations weren't very strict,
so it was a good place to kind of dip
your toes in legitimate business without having to really be
all that strict about it. Anyway, when Joe Kennedy asked
for help, Frank put in a call to Chicago mob
boss San Jiancana. Sam liked hanging out with Frank because

(35:35):
he liked hanging out with famous people, and Frank liked
hanging out with mob guys because it enhanced this bad
boy reputation, So it's a perfect match. Samsu and Khana
had a vested interest in Kennedy owing him a favor
since the FBI were tailing him day and night, and
he figured that having a sitting president in his corner
would be pretty helpful for calling off the dogs. This

(35:55):
backfired when JFK went and appointed his brother Robert as
Attorney General. RFK famously became one of the most fervent
anti mafia crusaders this country has ever seen. The mobsters
were apparently furious at these little, ungrateful Boston brats who
were biting the pinky ring clad hands that fed them. No,

(36:17):
not even no, no, that's good. Just tried carefully, you know, sensitively.
This is still a sensitive topic in the community. I
have distant family members who split on the ground whenever
RFK is mentioned. I don't I was making that up. Well.
This is all cited as a circumstantial evidence by conspiracy

(36:39):
theorists who say that the mob at a hand and
killing JFK in November nineteen sixty three. Another way Frank
possibly helped set the wheels in motion for the most
infamous assassination in American history is by introducing JFK to
was former girlfriend, Judith Campbell. Campbell would go on to
become Kennedy's mistress as well as Sam gen Conna's mistress. Ooh.

(37:03):
This is a relatively open secret in government circles, and
the Court at Camelot was understandably freaked that the president
was sharing a girlfriend with one of the most prominent
mob bosses in the country. Who his own brother was
trying to put away. This is like breaking bad the
way the layers here. I mean, you couldn't even write this.
It seems to what do you I mean, like, yeah,

(37:24):
what do you even put it? When there was like
one of the biggest musicians in the world was like
in bed with the mob and the president was fighting
the mob and the president was also sleeping with the
mob guy's girlfriend. Like you imagine that. That's like a
Shakespeare farce. I mean, that's like a right people would
the comparison be like it was like some Italian prime

(37:46):
minister Berlosconi. Well, Pearl SCARONI, yeah, just did it for
real with porn stars. But who's like the big male
star that It's got to be some country to be hilarious.
It was some country just in Timberlake. No, no, well,
finish what you're asking.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
Luke Combs, like if what it was like the most
like milk toast, like good old boy country artist and
he was like, you know, trying to impressure Joe Biden.
But at the same time he was also like in
QAnon and one of the QAnon women.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
Was having sex with Joe Biden. Does that make sense?
Sinatra was a milk toast though. I feel like he
still had kind of but he was like mainstream appeal,
you know. I mean like that's what I'm saying. JT.
His time is pasted. Also at Franks by nineteen sixty.
I'm warning you, you're just like the community is getting
mad at me. You are.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
You are pushing a lot of my buttons today.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
I mean, Okay, how is Luke Colmbs more like Sinatra
than JT? I don't know, he just had that big hit.
I was thinking like chart topping, you know, like Okay,
I just think, yeah, I don't know, they aren't like
all the male stars now, like coming from country. I
just heard of this guy jelly Roll. You heard of him,
jelly Roll Morton. No. No, he's a large man with

(39:05):
face tattoos. So it is jelly Roll Morton. No. I
don't think he had a face tattoo. No, I don't
care to know about that. Yeah, you wouldn't would make
you unhappy. FBI chief slash garbage human Jaggar Hoover wrote
irate memos to Bobby Kennedy while wearing women's underpants. Probably yes,

(39:26):
the hypocrisy of Jaeger Hoover that's a whole other podcast.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
Oh yeah, my fun my, funniest niche fact about Old
Hooves is, uh, j Eddie Hooves as we call him
around the way. Uh. Matti Klarwine is this famous like
psychedelic album sleeve designer painter from the sixties. He did
the cover of a Braxis by Santana, and he also

(39:50):
did the cover of Live Evil, which is a Miles
Davis live album, and on the back half of it
is this repulsive frog beat looking thing that's very like
obviously psychedelic, and he said his facial model for it
was j Eddie Hooves.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
Oh yeah, Oh, you can totally tell. Yeah, So that's funny.
That is very funny. So Jaeger Hoover wrote furious memos
to Bobby Kennedy about the fact that his brother was
sleeping with a mobster's mole. Is that what you'd call her? Oh,
mobster's girlfriend. Yeah. Needless to say, all of us strain
the friendship between Sinatra and JFK, and soon relations between

(40:30):
them began to sour. But the real split between Frank
and JFK came in March nineteen sixty two, when Kennedy
was supposed to visit Sinatra at his home in Palm Springs.
Frank was so thrilled about hosting the President that he
went all out and had his tennis court turned into
a helicopter pad for the President's Marine one chopper to land.
But then at the last minute, Kennedy called and told

(40:52):
him that he was going to stay down the street
with Bing Crosby instead. Bing Crosby a well known Republican
who also had mop It's worth noting. Kennedy claimed that
this was due to security concerns, but Sinatra knew it
was because Bobby Kennedy was putting the muscle on JFK
to distance himself from him, and consequently Sinatra took it
as a betrayal. He was so mad that he went

(41:15):
into the backyard at night, turned on the lights and
smashed up the helipad with a sledgehammer, with Vince Grolty's
Christmas Time is Ar playing in the background. Oh that's
so funny. How mad do you have to be to
smash up an entire helipad by yourself with a sledgehammer?

(41:35):
I mean, Frank, Oh, a rageful man, to be sure, yes, yes,
also a slight one, you know. I don't think he
was that. This is post Bobby Socks or era.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
He was like he got some he had some drinking
weight on him, but I think he was ever like beefy.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
You know, Paul was talking the other day. This was great.
I mean, just it's so weird that, like, I talked
to this guy fairly text with this guy at a
fairly regular basis. He was like, yeah, and that King Cole.
He was really grateful to Frank about, you know, all
that he did for him, helping integrate you know, the
casinos and stuff, and helping fight racism in Vegas. But
he didn't really like hanging out with Frank because and

(42:14):
his voice kind of trolled off, and I was like,
well why, He's like, well, it's a tough crowd to
hang out with. They just it was tough to keep
up with Frank and those guys just drinking wise, joking wise,
everything wise, really racially. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it
was in hell for Sam a man. Yeah, oh my
god god. Yeah. So yeah, So Frank was really heartbroken

(42:37):
that JFK blew him off and making matters worse for him.
The mafia still thought he was buddy buddy with the Kennedys,
and so they didn't trust him anymore either. And the
real falling out with Frank and the mob cam when
then the Vada Gaming Commission started to investigate mob run
casinos in nineteen sixty three, which possibly not coincidentally, was
the year that JFK was murdered. Ji and con blamed

(43:00):
this investigation in the mob run casinos on Sinatra, which
was untrue, but he severed their relationship, and Mobster started
openly talking about assassinating Sinatra and Dean or poking Sammy
Davis's other eye out he lost an eye in a
car accident in the fifties. All of this is charming. Yeah,
that's Dube because you know that was the one that

(43:21):
he could have pulled off with zero repercussions. Kill and
Frank or Dean Martin probably would have gotten some notice
from the press, but they you would have been able
to kill Sammy Davis because of racism or blind him,
I'll say. Evidence of all this came to light after
the FBI wiretapped g and Conna's phones. Frank's FBI file, meanwhile,

(43:43):
has nothing to sneeze at either. He was under surveillance
since the forties due to his new deal politics during
the Roosevelt administration. Sinatra has a file that totals some
twenty four hundred and three pages, some of which include
accounts of him as a target of death threats and
extortion schemes. Hell yeah, so this is a rough time

(44:03):
for Frank Kenny. Administration didn't like him, the mobsters didn't
like him. He was on his way out musically because
the Beatles had kind of supplanted him by the late sixties.
He was having a tough time and this is why
he started to think about retirement. Heigel, take us there,
retirement and you and you a primer, what can it

(44:25):
do for you? Around the same time, Sinatra's divorce from
twenty one year old Mia Pharaoh was almost finalized. That
was was that over Rosemary's Baby? Yeah? Yeah, they were
supposed to make a movie together and Rosemary's Baby shoot
ran long and she refused to leave, and then she
was served divorce papers on the set. And if I recall,

(44:48):
Harkley ran into the open embrace of Roman Polanski Black
not the man you want comforting you. Yeah, but I
do want to say she was on the right side
of history there. Well, yeah, what movie did he make.
Oh it was bad.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
It has to be called like running wild or like
you know. No, he did a lot of like serious
with the.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
Golden arm Manchurian Candidate, et cetera, et cetera. I think
it was called the Detective. That was kind of on
the nose. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
So, at his wits end, Sinatra decided he was going
to retire from public life again who among us? While
in Miami making the thriller Lady and Cement. Yeah, this
is I'm talking about Lady and Cement.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
Oh what's it about? I think Lady Cement referred to
murdered mob victims. No, I get it. Okay, did you not?
Did you? I thought you were thinking about like like
some Benny Hill like woman who's like, you know, in
a bikini running around and excellently falling into a wheelbarrow

(45:54):
of like wet Cement. And I mean it was Raquel Welch.
So can it be both true?

Speaker 3 (46:00):
So he called Paul Anka to dinner and said, kid,
we're going to do dinner and told him per Anka's recollection.
I'm quitting the business. I'm sick of it. I'm getting
the hell out, but I'm doing one more album and
you never wrote me that song. There had been a
long standing and possibly tongue in cheek request from Sinatra
to Paul to write him a song, but Anka was
always too intimidated. He would say, I couldn't. I was

(46:21):
scared to death. I was writing all this teen stuff.
In a different interview, he added, you have to remember,
as you're growing and maturing and working at your craft,
that's not overnight. There's a certain kind of song that
you write for your age, and your intellect comes from
learning your craft and maturing as a person. I would
never would have written the song when I was younger.
I wasn't capable. But Sinatra was always talking about aging.
He hated getting old, he hated old age, and the

(46:43):
song is about being old. You're old, your vintage. But
it bugged me that I couldn't write him a song
because I loved him and adored him like all of
us did. So I decided that day I was going
to do it. The day finally came when Anka was
back in his apartment in New York City. It was
just after one am once tore me City night, when
Anka sat down his IBM electric typewriter and began putting

(47:04):
words to the French melody that he'd loved so much.
He put himself in Frank's shoes and began to write
the song he felt Frank would have written. I thought,
what would Frank do with this melody if he were
a writer. All of a sudden, it just came to me.
And now the end is near. I faced the final curtain.
The lyrics went from being about a dead love affair
to a man looking back fondly on a life he'd

(47:26):
lived on his own terms and the mobs. Even the
word choice was steeped in Sinatra's own unique dialect. I
used words that I would never use, Anka said, I
ate it up and spit it out, But that's the
way he talked. The rat pack guys. They like to
talk like mob guys. Musically, it was interesting because it
had an interval of a sixth, which is an aspiring

(47:48):
interval because it likes to resolve to a fifth, and
gave the song stirring and theemic quality. And for the title,
Anka more or less looked to the zeitgeist. He said,
I read a lot of periodicals and I noticed everything
was my this and my that. We were in the
me generation and Frank became the guy for me to
use to say that. Anka ultimately finished the song as

(48:09):
the sun came up at dawn, and at last he
knew he had a song that was worthy of his idol.
He called Sinatra, who is at Caesar's Palace in Vegas,
having already crashed his golf cart through a window of
the sands, and said, I've got something really special for you.
He recorded a demo of the song and flew to
Vegas to play it for Sinatra, who immediately replied, I'm
doing it. Two months later went by before Anka got

(48:30):
a call from Frank. He says, kid, listen to this,
and puts the phone up to the speaker. I heard
My Way playing for the first time, and I started
to cry.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
That's cute. Yeah, I mean, I actually have tape of
Paul talking about writing My Way on a recent episode
of our podcast Our Way. We had Gail King on
this week's episode, actually, and the topic came up, and
I don't think he'd mind if I spiced that in
right here. It's just cool. It was rare that we
actually get to hear the person who wrote whatever it

(49:00):
is we're talking about discussing it, and it's a nice
little plug for the show. So here we go, put
a little teaser in for that right here.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
Well, I started with those guys, Gail back in the
early fifties. I went to Vegas at fifty eight, and then
I wound up with the rat Pack, and there with
guys I idolized, Sinatra, Sammy Davis, who was the most
talented of everybody, and Dean Martin, and you know, through
those years I got to know them well, but I
was still the kid. You know. These guys were twice

(49:30):
my age, but I was working for the mob like
they were, and they controlled and we had our life
and we were having and frolicking and having fun. But
I'd always wanted to write for Sinatra because he was
like the guy. And I was at the Fountain Blue
Hotel in the late sixties. He was in town doing
a film called Lady in Cement, and with the guys

(49:52):
we worked for, it could have been a documentary, you know,
but he was he was very cool. And he called
me up and he said, dinner, dinner, I want to
talk to you. So I went to dinner with him.
So we're at dinner and one thing led to another.
He said, kid, I'm quitting show because I've had enough.
I'm tired. Rat packs over. Yeah, we all had nicknames.

(50:13):
Sammy had a name, Dean had a name. I was
the kid, and we're on our bath roads because all
the fun was in the steam room when our shows
were over it. We won't go into that. So he
at dinner, he said, I'm quitting and I wan to
do one more album with Don And he said, you
never wrote me a song. So I go home to
New York. I sit down. In five hours, I finished

(50:35):
the lyric of my Way, and I fly out to
Vegas the next night and he said, kid, I love it.
Two months later he called and said from a studio
in La he said, kid, listen to this, and he
played it over the phone. That's the first time I
heard it. I started crying because my life changed, so

(50:55):
did His was such a big hit.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
He stayed for ten years.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
That your point, he was retiring, but he stayed ten
more years because the song was huge.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
But when you finished that, because the song still, that
song still holds up still. When you finished it, did
you know that it was a hit? Did you know that?

Speaker 2 (51:13):
I know it was different and very special.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
Different.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
Yeah, you don't it was a spiritual moment for me.
I believe that a lot of creative people are really
sensing some kind of spiritualism in creative and I knew
that it was different than everything else that had ever written.
And I was kind of metaphorically writing it with him
in mind, because I was moved to the fact that
he was leaving. So I wrote it as if he

(51:37):
were writing. But it just came together, and it hit
me very very hard that I knew it was. It
was going to be something very special.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
We all knew so.

Speaker 3 (51:47):
In the history books, it says that Frank Sinatra recorded
My Way on December thirtieth, nineteen sixty eight, at Western
Records in LA where so many classic sixties pop tunes
were cut. There's a favorite haunt of Jordan's beloved Brian Wilson,
who worked on What Else Pet Sounds there. Sinatra was
a night owl, as Paul Anka is to this day.

Speaker 1 (52:05):
Yeah, guys up like all night. But this was a
rare afternoon recording session. At roughly three pm, forty musicians
strolled into the studio. If you're interested, Lou Levy took
over his pianist for this song with Sinatra. Regular Bill
Miller cut his hand on a shart of glass. Miller did, however,
conduct the orchestra for the recording. But here's where it
gets weird, he said, not knowing what this story was

(52:30):
going to be.

Speaker 3 (52:33):
There's a story that the recording of My Way was
attended by none other than George guitar beatle Harrison. Is
that his popular damn that just came out of my mouth?
I'm an idiot. This story comes from his wife, Patty Boyd,
who discussed it in both her memoir and in twenty
twenty two photo book, which contains a photo of her,
George and Sinatra at a recording studio control booth, and

(52:54):
the caption reads, while in Los Angeles, George and I
were invited to go and meet Frank Sinatra and his
recording studio. Thrilled, we were ushered upstairs to the control room,
where Frank was surrounded by many guys at the mixing desk.
We briefly met him before he disappeared downstairs. We then
watched as he proceeded to sing My Way with a
full orchestra. Wow, it was extraordinary. It doesn't recite quite

(53:16):
as well as it reads, although with the whole period
no exclamation point. Wow, it was extraordinary.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
She's English. Listen.

Speaker 3 (53:25):
Yeah, right, he listened back to this one take and said, Okay,
that's it, let's go. We pulled himTo Limos to a club.
When we got there, George quite rightly thought he would
sit next to Frank, but the big guys from the
Bronx moved him down the table. And you have firsthand
confirmation of this story from Patty.

Speaker 1 (53:43):
Yeah, she interviewed her for this book and she said
that she was there the night Frank recorded My Way.
But she lied to your faces. True. Yeah, she's been
lying to all of us this whole goddamn time. She's
never even met George. How far does this rabbit hole go?
Never met Eric Clapton, never met any of these people.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
So Beatle nerds and Sinatra nerds are probably two of
the most archival obsessed sub fans. Yeah, they have receipts
and prove that Patty's incorrect. George and Patty were in
LA in mid November to, among other things, appear on
the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour TV show and record with
Apple artist Jackie Lomax. Jackie Lomax pull out some weird

(54:31):
Beatle thing. What's he known for.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
He was in a Liverpool band when the Beatles were
in their Cavern days, and then he was one of
the first artists signed to Apple Records, the Beatles record
label that they started in nineteen sixty eight, and George
Harrison took him under his wing and gave him a
song that he'd written called Sour Milk Sea, which is
written around the same time that George is writing songs
for the White album. It's like a good song. It

(54:55):
deserved to do a lot better. And I want to
say it's got some crazy star to line up with.
Eric Clapton's on it, Nicky Hopkins on it, Ringos on it,
Paul McCartney's on it, a lot of the Wrecking Crew
guys like Larry Nektel and Joe Osborne and Klaus Vorman's

(55:15):
on it too. Yeah, it's got like a really stacked lineup.
But yeah, didn't didn't really do much. Thank you, Jordan.

Speaker 3 (55:24):
We need a little audio stinger for when your Beatles
is done every episode. Soyer Milk Sea is so disgusting,
I know, awful, awful turnip phrase. So, having said all that,
evidence suggests that George and Patty dropped in on Sinatra
November twelfth, nineteen sixty eight, during which time he recorded
the songs Little Green Apples, Gentle on My Mind and

(55:45):
by the time I get to Phoenix for his album Cycles.
Frank's preferred technique was to work live in the studio
by standing in the middle of an orchestra, and he
often only did one or two takes. So it is
possible that Sinatra performed a version of My Way for
the benefit of George and his super hot model wife,
or she's.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
Spent most of the sixties in a drugs I will
say it probably sucked to be patty board around Frank Sinatra.
He liked all bonds, Oh yeah, and he was a weird,
angry little man. Hey mc garter was a blonde though,
that's true, I guess I'm thinking of I mean, he

(56:25):
just divorced me a Pharaoh. M hm.

Speaker 3 (56:27):
He's like, he's hey, now, I got a long haired
Mia in front of me because me and Pharaoh cut
her hair famously against Frank's wishes. Something possibly I.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Thought it was when she was on Peyton Place and
it was almost like a Britney Spears moment where she
was like, I'm sick of this. I'm sick of being
like because Peyton Place was like this, like the Dawson's
Creak of its day, and she was this teen star
and she was like trying to rebel against that. That's
that's my dim memory of that. I don't know. I
wasn't there.

Speaker 3 (56:59):
It is also worth noting, to further puncture an elderly
legends recollections of her youth, that Western Studios where My
Waiver was recorded is all on one floor and doesn't
have an upstairs downstairs. So you, Patty Boyd, you've had
it too easy for too damn Longe, for holding your

(57:19):
feet to the fire.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
She just sold all the love notes she got from
Eric Clapton and the painting they use for the Leila
album cover. Sad between the George years and the Eric
Clapton years. He's got a lot of good stuff. Always
makes me sad when these people of a certain age
part with their treasures, and that these big auctions. You
gotta have something when you don't have any talent. She's

(57:43):
a photographer. In a cute coda to the Beatles Sinatra connection,
Frank would later record George's Something, calling it one of
the best love songs written in fifty or one hundred years.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
And he also introduced it as my favorite Lennon McCartney composition.

Speaker 1 (57:58):
Yes, which I'm sure annoyed George to no ends, but
it must have given him a small amount of satisfaction
because Frank had reportedly rejected a song that Paul McCartney
had pitched him at the rule.

Speaker 3 (58:14):
Uh cut to Paul angrily driving a tug boat, his
fists white knuckled as he listens to.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
But still yeah, of course in his like eighties mullet phase.
Oh I'm just I'm just so angry right now, that's
a really that's a very good Paul. I'm I'm yeah,
I'm very impressed. And you know I would know, and
she would you would. No. So the song that Paul
pitched him was called Suicide, which is somehow worse than

(58:48):
Sour Milk Sea for a title. I'll talk about him
over correcting, trying to fix his image as the lame Beatle. No,
it gets worse. He wrote the song as a teenager
back in Liverpool, a tongue in cheek Sinatra parody, because remember,
one of the first songs that Paul ever wrote was
when I'm sixty four. This is the era when he
was trying to make a go of writing, like, you know,

(59:09):
music hall songs. So when the man himself came calling,
Paul had no problem sending one of the greatest interpreters
a popular song, a joke tune that he'd written as
a fourteen year old. This is one of the ways
that Paul McCartney and Paul Anka are different. Paul Anka
had the wherewithal to be afraid when Sinatra asked him
for a song. Paul was like, Oh, yeah, there's this

(59:30):
thing I wrote when I was foring a teenage bullshit.
I wrote to make fun of you. Uh. McCartney has
told this story many times over the years, often in
the most avuncular Paul McCartney esque way possible. Here's one
incarnation of that. I was once wrung up by the
great Frank Sinatra himself. I was in the studio and

(59:52):
a phone call came in. I goes, I goes hello Frank,
and he said, have you got a song? I've heard
about it all that. I said, I've got just the song.
I'll send it right over. I secretly hoped, as a
songwriter that he'd ask so I had one ready, but
he turned it down. I think it was something to
do with the fact that it was called suicide. A

(01:00:14):
fragment of this song can be heard on Paul's debut
solo album nineteen seventies McCartney. I think it's at the
end of a song called Glasses, which is just like
a musical tone poem piece where he's just playing glasses
filled with water and it cuts into that, segues into that. Yeah. Interestingly,
George Harrison claims that his song Isn't It a Pity,

(01:00:35):
a standout album cut from his epic nineteen seventy triple
disc All Things Must Pass, was also offered a Sinatra
at some point before he recorded it, but apparently that
didn't come together. See what I did there? Either? I
did friends not doing Isn't It a Pity? Would be hilarious.
Isn't It a shame? Bit Jack? And yet there's a

(01:00:59):
Sinatra connection with a third member of the Fab Four,
Ringo Starr. Ringo's wife, Maureen, was a huge fan of Sinatra,
and for her twenty second birthday in nineteen sixty eight,
he somehow got Sinatra to record a special version of
The Ladies a Tramp retitled Marine's a champ all out.

(01:01:20):
They roped in Sinatra's longtime lyricist Sammy Kahn to pen
lines like this is pretty good. She married Ringo and
she could have had Paul. That's why the ladies a champ.
That's pretty good. And though we've not met, I'm convinced
she's a gem. I'm just fs but to me she's

(01:01:40):
big m mainly because she prefers me to them. That's
why the lady is a champ. That's pretty good. That's
pretty funny, Sammy cohn Man. And this gift, the song
this Gift for Ringo's wife was actually the very first
record press for the Beatles record label Apple, giving it

(01:02:01):
the catalog number Apple one, making it one of the
rarest records on the planet and worth god knows how much.
And you can hear it online a very kind of
low quality version of it circulating online, which I will.
I think I can splice in here without getting in
trouble with copyrights. Oh, I forgot one thing that you'll

(01:02:24):
enjoy as a comic book fan. When Paul presented Sinatra
with suicide, he commissioned a Marvel comic book artist named
Bob Larkin No to do a watercolor portrait of Paul
dressed like Frank in a Fedora standing next to Frank
in a Fedora. I'm gonna send it to you right

(01:02:46):
now because i want your live reaction to this. It's
and you know, Paul McCartney's my favorite human on the planet.
But it's pretty cringe. Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
I like how he deliberately gave him an ill fitting
hat like a too small Fedora to make him look
like even more of a tool.

Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
Classic so Sinatra not only turning down a Beatles song,
but turning down a Beatles song after he presented him
with a portrait of the two of them standing together.
That is cringe as hell. God, he's so kind of
love it though. I'm so thirsty, I know, even the
look at his face and this picture is so earnest

(01:03:26):
and eager. I love it like a kid playing dress
up with his dad. The candy cigarette. All right. This
concludes our Beatle section of this episode. As you meditate
on that, we'll be right back with more too much
information after these messages. My Way entered the Billboard charts

(01:04:00):
in the last week of March nineteen sixty nine at
number sixty nine. There you Go, making it nice highest
new entry there, making it the highest new entry that week.
Six weeks later, it reached its peak at only number
twenty seven, nice lower than Sinatra's previous top forty single cycles.
This is surprising given the song of that stature, but

(01:04:22):
it's in good company, however. Other beloved classics that missed
the Hot one hundred entirely include Robin's Dancing on My
Own a Crime, Garth Brooks' Friends in Low Places, Tom
Petty and The Heartbreaker's American Girl, David Bowie's Heroes, Jeff
Buckley's Hallelujah, The ramones I Want to Be Sedated, Billy
Joel's New York State of Mind, Dean Martin's Ain't That

(01:04:45):
a Kick in the Head, Elvis Costello's Alison Cole Plays
the Scientist, Grace Jones Pull Up to the Bumper, the
Postal Services, Such Great Heights, Weezer's Island in the Sun,
and George Thoroughgood and The Destroyers Bad to the Bone.
All of those missed the Hot one hundred entirely.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
Kind of amazing to mention Grace Jones and George Thoroughgood
in the same breath, especially because.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Her all observed it better. Well, what's it about pull
up to the bumper? Yeah? Isn't it about like going
to the car wash? Yes, Jordan, you sweet child, going
to a parking garage. My way didn't fit with the
spirit of nineteen sixty nine in the United States, Q

(01:05:31):
Along the Watchtower or Fortunate Sun here, but it fared
slightly better in the UK, where it peaked at number
five and reentered the charts six times between nineteen seventy
and nineteen seventy one. All told, its spent by my
count seventy five weeks in the UK Top forty, which
was a record until it was broken by Wham's Last

(01:05:51):
Christmas in nineteen eighty four, Fairytale of New York by
the Poges and Christy McCall in nineteen eighty seven, and
All I Want for Christmas Is You in nineteen ninety four.
But to this day it holds fourth place on the
list of songs that have the most weeks on the
Top forty in the UK, and it's the only non
Christmas one, so I think it's the only one that
earned it, so it would really be number one. That's

(01:06:12):
pretty wild, the number of weeks that song spent in
the top forty yeah in the United States, My Way
would be Sinatra's last top forty hit until nineteen eighty
when he returned with New York New York. But that
didn't stop Frank from kind of growing to hate My
Way after a while. He performed the tune at his
farewell concert, along with ten other songs that he felt

(01:06:33):
summed up his life, which I'm sure was a very
high honor for Polanka. But then Sinatra decided two years
later to come out of retirement, and his return to
the stage meant that audiences would come to expect what
had become a signature song, and Sinatra started to resent it.
Introducing My Way at a nineteen eighty four concert at
Carnegie Hall, he told the audience, we have a song

(01:06:55):
we haven't done in a long time. We're going to
drop it in here right now. I think we did
it for about ten years and it got to be
a real pain and that you know where. During a
gig at London's Albert Hall that same year, he muttered
under the instrumental outro, I can't stand this song myself.
Music critic Will Friedwald explained, or over intellectualized the precise

(01:07:17):
reasons why the bomb bast of My Way might have
bothered Frank. In a piece for NPR called a toast
to my Way, America's anthem of self determination, he says
it's this song that really inflates Frank and inflates his
persona to stadium size proportions. Whereas Sinatra's trademark is patented approach.
The thing that people like most about Sinatra before My

(01:07:38):
Way was the intimacy, the idea that this is a
guy who's experienced life and love the same way as
we have. It's kind of the ethos of crooning, really,
that kind of intimacy, that closeness. And my Way's not
really a krooner song. No, No, it's a belter. It's
a torch song. No, it's a barn burner. What's the

(01:08:00):
the old show busy term for what my Way is
a dud? No, I'm kidding. Uh yeah, it is funny
when you put it like that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:08):
It's like he's got this you know, huge, sensitive, soft
spoke inside. Allegedly, some of his records would have you believe.

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
When he's not driving golf carts through the dose, belting
about his life of personal triumphs, Sinatra's youngest daughter, Tina,
conveyed the two diametrically opposed, but equally true views of
the song in two separate interviews. Talking to NPR, she
recalled the first time she ever heard her father sing

(01:08:36):
My Way. You could feel the energy, electricity in the room.
That song became his that first night. I think it
was a song waiting for him to happen. Well, that's true,
she said. In a two thousand interview with the BBC
show Hard Talk, he Sinatra always thought the song was
self serving and self indulgent. He didn't like it. That

(01:08:58):
song stuck and he couldn't get it off his shoe.
Frank Sinatra Enterprise as vice president. Charles Pegone meanwhile, soft
pedaled Frank's feelings on My Way in an interview with
songfacts dot Com. I don't think he hated it as
much as he disliked it, he said. I don't think
he hated any of those songs. I just think he
probably may have gotten tired of people yelling for it

(01:09:19):
and of singing it. It's a fan favorite, but I
wouldn't say it's a Sinatra favorite, Sorry, Paul Man. Frank
Sinatra would have loved the TikTok generation at his concert
Can You Say Hi to My Mom? Punched and beats
a fifteen year old girl? Uh So.

Speaker 3 (01:09:41):
It might not have been a favorite of Old Blue Eyes,
but it was certainly a favorite of many other singers.
The list of artists who record My Way include Aretha Franklin,
Tom Jones, Dion Warwick, and Andy Williams. Elvis Presley began
performing the song and concert during the mid seventies, despite
Anka's suggestions that the song didn't suit him. It was
included in the setlist for his famous Aloha from Hawaii
Satellite Concerts, where it was a cute callback to the

(01:10:03):
nineteen sixty timex TV special Welcome Home Elvis, which featured
Sinatra and Elvis dueting on a medley of Love Me
Tender and Witchcraft. Each man does the other one's songs,
and it's kind of cute, despite some of the mean
things that frank had said.

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
About rock and rolls the genre in the past.

Speaker 3 (01:10:20):
After Elvis's death in nineteen seventy seven, a live version
of My Way was released as a single, going to
number twenty two in the US, or higher than Frank's original,
which probably chopped his ass A bit. Presley's version is
featured in the climax of the two thousand film Three
Thousand Miles to Graceland, in which Paul Anka has a
cameo as a casino boss who hates Elvis. Anka would

(01:10:42):
say that his view of Elvis's cover has softened in
the wake of his death, and now he hears it
as a sort of eulogy. The Gypsy Kings recorded a
Spanish language rendition of the song called Ami Minerira, and
Jay Z interpolated Paul Anka's version of his track I
did it my way, but without a doubt and in
the popular consciousness, I like to believe. The most famous
cover version of the song is the version recorded in

(01:11:05):
nineteen seventy nine by The Sex Pistols for the Julian
Temple mockumentary The Great Rock and Roll Swindle.

Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
Have you ever seen that? Not good? Oh? Not good?
I don't even know what it's about. I mean, they're
people who would say it. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:11:19):
The Sex Pistols were like a joke band, Like really
they literally would not let Sid play bass live, so
you were just hearing like cacophonists, drums and really loud guitar.
Half the time, and I read a book it's called
Twelve Days in America when I was like fifteen. That
kind of soured me on them in particular because they
were like touring through America and it was just wildly

(01:11:40):
obvious to anyone that Sid was falling apart, literally dying,
and they were just so pissed off about the whole thing.
And you know, American audiences were really to them. And
they only had one American tour, but that was the
show that culminated in them in San Francisco when Johnny
Rodden took to the stage and just said, everget the
feeling you've been cheated after like three songs and walked off.

Speaker 1 (01:12:00):
Well, and he wasn't a part of this documentary, right, Yeah.
My favorite fact about Sid Vicious is that his favorite
food is Chinese food, because he said it made pretty
colors when he threw up. But you didn't think you'd
hear that from me, No, I didn't. But Sid us
a famously doomed bass player who would achieve a measure
of iconiz What am I looking for? A measure of infamy?

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:12:26):
But infamy but also like doomed romance. When Alex Cox
put out Sid and Nancy and sort of romanticized their disgusting, codependent,
drug fueled relationship which ended in murder by the way.
So anyway, where was I going with that? Listen to
the clash.

Speaker 1 (01:12:45):
Ah. My favorite thing about Sid Vicious is that I
think Freddie Mercury might have been bullshiting when he said this,
but he was like, yeah, I met one of them
at a party once and I called Sid Vicious Simon
Ferocious and he didn't like that very much. Oh yeah,
that's incredible. There must be Simon Farotius Darling arguably a

(01:13:08):
better name. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:11):
The lyrics were changed by said and his girlfriend Nancy
Spongeen to include numerous obscenities that were not you would
have a hard time believing. Perhaps in Anka's original, Vicious
took a dig at his ex band namee Johnny Rotten
by referring to a pratt who wears hats, because Johnny
Rotten wore hats and was kind of a dick. On

(01:13:34):
one hand, their version of My Way could be viewed
as a mocking bit of punk performance art a la
the version of God Save the Queen. But on the
other hand, the ethos of the song has a remarkable
core of punk rock hutzpah, let's call it. The song
appeared on the Sex Pistols album The Great Rock and
Roll Swindle, which was issued after two members of the

(01:13:55):
band died. It was the film came out two years
after their breakup, so then the album dragged on after
Rotten had already left, and then Vicious died, so the
song's obviously. His version of the song obviously drew criticism
from all the right places. Sid died of a heroin
overdose when he was eaten jay Or had just been released.

Speaker 1 (01:14:13):
On bail for killing Nancy. I think Dorothy Squire's a
Welsh singer who features in the film, and she'd had
a UK hit the song. Herself was quoted as saying
Vicious should be crucified. He should have been crucified before
he crucified that song. But hearing from quite a different source.
Anton LeVay, the founder of the Church of Satan, had
nothing but nice things to say about in his memoir

(01:14:35):
The Secret Life of a Satanist. Arguably the greatest fan
of this version of my.

Speaker 3 (01:14:40):
Way will folks, if you can believe it, Leonard Cohen,
who spoke eloquently of it. He said I never liked
this song except when sid Vicious did it. Sung straight,
it somehow deprives the appetite of a certain taste we'd
like to have on our lips. When sid Vicious did it,
he provided that other side the song, the certainty, the

(01:15:02):
self congratulation. The daily heroism of Sinatra's version is completely
exploded by this desperate, mad, humorous voice. I can't go
round in a raincoat and fedora looking over my life
saying I did it my way well for ten minutes
in some American bar over a Gin and Tonic. You
might be able to get away with it. But sid
Vicius's rendition takes in everybody. Everybody is messed up like that.

(01:15:22):
Everybody is the mad hero of his own drama. It
explodes the whole culture this self presentation can take place in.
So it completes the solve the song for me that rules.

Speaker 1 (01:15:33):
Yeah, just Leonard Cohen to make the sex pistols sound deep.
Paul Anka, perhaps unsurprisingly, never heard this sex Pistols version
until Martin Scorsese came his way, Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:15:51):
Jordan, until until old Marty brown eyes. Ah, Martinus Scorsese said,
super eyes. I assume spiritually he does Martin Scorsese. He's Italian.

Speaker 1 (01:16:09):
Have you ever met an Italian with blue eyes? Yeah? Oh, Frank,
well yeah, but his family was probably from the North,
because that's where all the vampires come from. That's not
a real Italian. Yeah, he's got Martin's got beautiful brown eyes.
Just get lost in uh.

Speaker 3 (01:16:27):
About Martin Scorsese got in touch with Paul Ankett to
secure the rights for My Way for the closing credits
of Goodfellas, the Said Vicious version. Anka tells the story
of Marty giving him a call asking permission, and Anka says,
I said.

Speaker 1 (01:16:40):
Great, who's doing it? He said, the sex Pistols? I
said who? He said, said Vicious of the sex Pistols.
I'm not the front of that line. You know, I'm
buried under music. I said, I don't know who the
hell that is. So he sent it to me.

Speaker 3 (01:16:54):
I was jolted. I said no, to be honest. Then
I started thinking, who am I to tear down somebody's
right in terms of interpreting a song that meant a
lot to them. Now I did my homework. The guy
went to Paris, got a jazz band. They pulled amps
apart to get the sound. I said, this guy is
sincere about it. It's the only way he can present it.
I called Marty back and told.

Speaker 1 (01:17:12):
Him do it. I don't care. It's music. It's art.
Art has no time.

Speaker 3 (01:17:16):
You put it in the hands of someone that believes
in it. That's just what music is about. To get
it out there. Honestly, that's a great take from Paul.

Speaker 1 (01:17:22):
That's very Paul. He That's exactly how he is. He's
a cool guy.

Speaker 3 (01:17:26):
I want to use the term I need to start
using the phrase I'm not the front of that line
to talk about things I'm not into.

Speaker 1 (01:17:33):
He is so many great terms aphrase. Yeah, not at
the front of that line.

Speaker 3 (01:17:39):
Ancher remains very particular about how the song gets used,
though Frank's version was included in a two thousand and
six episode of The Sopranos titled Mo and Joe, and
also in a twenty fourteen episode mad Men called The Strategy,
which takes place in nineteen sixty nine. It comes on
the radio as ad executive Don Draper, who you may
have heard of, stars.

Speaker 1 (01:17:59):
In the show. You see. It's a play on the
phrase admin commercial executives is there nineteen sixties, Who's well,
let's say their lives Got a little mad Sundays on
TBS right up after Young Sheldon. Yeah, I don't know
you would like it all week up and trying to

(01:18:22):
tell you how much I think you'd like mad Men
in all weeks and now it's boring.

Speaker 3 (01:18:26):
Well, you know what I watched last night instead of
checking out mad Men? Finally what Hanso the Razor Sort
of Vengeance, which is a samurai film from the seventies
that is one of the most bad things I've ever seen.
As I broke it down earlier. It is seventy five
percent sultifyingly dull dialogue about period political drama in the

(01:18:46):
age of Damnos in Japan, about twenty five more percent
of gassing up its protagonists dick good, fifteen percent of
graphic sex scenes shot in like borderline in psychedelic ways,
another five percent of truly poorly choreographed samurai fights. And
the entire thing is soundtrack to like a seventies funk soundtrack.

(01:19:10):
Incredible movie. Does that insult you? Does that offend you?

Speaker 1 (01:19:14):
Yeah? As I mentioned, avoiding one of your.

Speaker 3 (01:19:18):
Beloved pieces of American art to watch, just garbage, just trash.
How does that make you feel? White boy?

Speaker 1 (01:19:24):
That doesn't sound like trashy.

Speaker 3 (01:19:25):
It was awful. It's a truly awful film. He has
this thing where he's like, he's like, you know, the
police have gotten so corrupt that we've been torturing suspects
with interrogation techniques, so I have to understand all of them.
So he's been like literally torturing himself self, mutilating and everything.
And in a prolonged scene, he gets out of this

(01:19:46):
an onsen Japanese spa kind of thing and places his
penis on a sort of wooden stand that clearly has
been hammed carved with an outline like an indentation for
his talking balls, and then proceeds to wail on it
with a wooden club. This goes on, and we do

(01:20:07):
see his penis in soft focus and then like a
when you say soft focus.

Speaker 1 (01:20:14):
Ah, and then like a boxer, he then submerges his
penis in a bag of rice, which he does by
repeatedly from a standing position. And again this goes on.
This film really lingers, awful.

Speaker 3 (01:20:30):
Awful piece of movie, awful piece of cinema, but truly fascinating. Anyway,
I prioritize that over your recommendations. Jordan ah, he smiles,
but it hurts him.

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
I am so mean to you, so so mean. What
were you talking about?

Speaker 3 (01:20:49):
Yeah, so, I guess they hear the song on the radio.
It's a whole thing with Peggy who. I'm told they
dance the dance alone in their office or something. It's
about the death of American masculinity.

Speaker 1 (01:21:04):
In the inherent trust in American institutions, in the family unit,
and yeah, yeah, it's a good time, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:21:14):
The sex Pistols version has been using some high profile
productions as well, including a twenty ten episode of The
Simpsons So well Past its Prime Simpsons, and the twenty
fourteen episode of Californication. Jordan, I dare you without wikipediaing
and I will hear tell me about Californication.

Speaker 1 (01:21:32):
David the Covny is a college professor who I believe
sleeps with a lot of students. That's that's all I close.

Speaker 3 (01:21:38):
I think he's a became screen Yeah, he's screenwriter and
all of his movies are all of his books are
named after Slayer albums.

Speaker 1 (01:21:45):
How is that close? I don't know. I wanted to
give you one that's this very kind, that's uncharacteristically kind
for a thing I care not a whit about.

Speaker 3 (01:21:52):
I watch take a season of that show in college
because when they we got our internet hooked up at
our apartment, they were like, you.

Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
Get the free show Time. Okay, just watch whatever garbage
came on showtime, and this was one of them. Not
a good show. Does have Natasha mcelhorn in there as
David Decompany's ex wife, and she's.

Speaker 3 (01:22:10):
A pretty lady. Not a good series. Much like the
Samurai movie I was just talking about, which again is
called Hanso the Razer. Not to be confused the well,
hang on, there's several hans of the Razor movies. It's
a trilogy, and I am, of course talking about Hanso
the Razor of Justice, not Hanso the Razer The Snare

(01:22:34):
released the following year, or Hanso the Raizer Who's Got
the Gold released a year after that.

Speaker 1 (01:22:41):
I mean, this is interesting to me because Hanso the
Razers sort of Justice. The movie you watched was released
on December thirtieth, nineteen seventy two, four years after the
very day that Frank Sinatra went into the studio to
record My Way. See It All connects. Yes, it should
probably come as no surprise at this anthem for unre
pen individualism has become extremely popular with politicians. For example,

(01:23:05):
my Way was a favorite of former Serbian president Slobodam Melosovich.
He often played it in his cell at a loud
volume during his trial for crimes Crimes against Humanity in
two thousand and two. Are endorsement of this song under

(01:23:26):
if Paul knows that, I hope he's not going to
listen to this. He listened to our Taco Bell one. Yeah,
that was funny. He wanted to like see what was
under my fingernails, so we like listened to shows I
worked on with that Like he just googled me, like
I didn't send him anything. And the thing he listened
to was our hour and a half treaties on Taco
Bell And somehow he was like, this is the guy

(01:23:49):
for me. I'll work with this guy. Yeah. On a
slightly less genocidal note, although maybe not really, former German
Chancellor Gerard Schroeder, Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder requested my
Way for his final send off or Zapfren's strike in

(01:24:12):
German prior to the inauguration of Angela Merkel, more than
seven million German television viewers watched tears well up in
his eyes as a military band saw him off with
a version of My Way embarrassing. Not a serious people.
You notice I don't like anyone. Yeah, cool, There's going

(01:24:35):
to be a country, a culture you like Mauritana, Mike
Ronesia because it's small Eritrea Poienker himself has noticed that
this song appears to uh, what I'll generously call a
certain kind of person, and this category also includes Vladimir Putin.

(01:25:00):
He's an egomaniac, Anka says. When I went to Russia,
he's walking me through the museum and giving me cavia
out of tubs. Loving my Way. You've got every malignant
egomaniac love it. I don't know. It just did what
it did. It has a life. It's like your children,
and a fluke of editing that is in no way intentional.
You hear that, Apple podcast commentswers. Donald Trump chose this

(01:25:23):
song as the first dance at his presidential inauguration. He
danced to it with his wife Malania at the Liberty
Ball is second inaugural ball of the evening. Two days earlier,
Nancy Sinatra, Frank's daughter was asked on Twitter what she
thought of Trump using the song. Her reply, just remember
the first line of the song. Those of you not familiar,

(01:25:44):
The first line is and now the end is near,
and so I face the final kurt that's ominous? Is
she wrong? Speaking of the final curtain? Let's talk about
death Baby, We should really take a look at the
morbid streak that runs through my way. It is, after all,
sung from the point of view of a man looking

(01:26:05):
back on his life, presumably at its end. Hence it's
become a very popular song at funerals. In a two
thousand and five survey by Cooperative Funeral Care, this song
is at the top of the song's most requested at
funerals in the UK. Spokesman Phil Edwards said it is
that timeless appeal. The words sum up what so many

(01:26:26):
people feel about their lives and how they would like
their loved ones to remember them. Nipsey Hustles, we mentioned,
had it played at his funeral, and performance artist Marina
Bramovich had requested it if he played at hers. And
Warren Buffett has recorded his own version himself, featuring new
lyrics written by his friend Paul Anka. I believe I

(01:26:47):
think I'm allowed to share this. He's recording a hologram
version of himself singing of a song to be played
at his own funeral. I hope I didn't just break
some kind of serious NDA. Himself is well aware of
the song's reputation as a real perspective check on mortality.
He says, the content of that lyric hit everybody. Back then,

(01:27:08):
when I wrote it, I saw we were getting into
the MEMI me generation. I was only twenty six. Boys
scientifically don't become adults until they're thirty. But somehow it
hit everybody. People get married to it, get buried to it.
Guys write me letters from death row. They say they
identify with it. I've sung my Way for Putin for Trump.

(01:27:28):
Narcissism runs rampant, but when it's under control, this is
the perfect song in terms of wrapping up one's life.
We're all ego driven. Read enough Freud and you get
that he's a very interesting, well read, fascinating guy. Yeah,
for sure. Many people play My Way at funerals, but
a bunch of people have killed each other over My Way.

(01:27:50):
Welcome to the segment we like to call the my Way, MOI.
It does, Oh that's good. That's good. No, it's not. No,
it is.

Speaker 2 (01:28:00):
No.

Speaker 3 (01:28:01):
Go Google, it's weird. There's a whole Wikipedia entry from
My Way killings, as well as an entire New York
Times article from twenty ten. Within just a decade, it
was suspected that at least twelve people were killed in
connection to singing Frank's hit song My Way. The song
is a phenomenon in the Philippines, where karaoke is something
of the national sport. There are upwards of a dozen

(01:28:22):
karaoke bars in each village or barangay. As you hopefully
note for all of our people interested in Filipino, they
really know how to cook a pig. Yeah they do, yeah, As.

Speaker 1 (01:28:37):
An article in Esqui. As an article in Esquire Philippines explains,
life in the Philippines is hard, especially for the predominant
sector of society living under the poverty line. It makes
sense that karaoke, which is only about P five per
song roughly a dime, became a sweet escape to forget
life struggles for a while. It also makes sense why
they be angry at people who inadvertently ruined that sliver

(01:28:59):
of peace in that country, as is the case with
the US. My Way is one of the most popular
songs to sing, and versions of the song have been
known to provoke fights at karaoke bars, where naturally there
is quite a lot of drinking going on, and occasionally
this violence escalates to death. Some people have been killed
for singing out of tune, some people were killed for

(01:29:19):
hogging the microphone, and quite a few were killed for
singing the song on repeat for hours at end like that.
One guy even wrote a Vice article up playing the
Boys are back in Town like forty times on a
jukebox and John Molaney talking about doing it with What's
New pussy Cat. Yeah, there's one thing you can say
about this country. No one killed either of them. Yeah.

(01:29:40):
As a result, many bars don't even offer it on
their playlists, and even if they do, many customers won't
dare to sing the song in public without getting a
private room so that their off tuned vocals will not
inadvertently cause death. A sill in Filipino Congress.

Speaker 3 (01:29:56):
Was proposed to set a curfew on karaoke to lessen
alcohol related deaths or violence.

Speaker 1 (01:30:04):
One follows the other. Some critics and sociologists postulated that
the triumphalist Sure Bravado of the song paired with alcohol
makes for a uniquely combustible situation. Butch Albarasen, the owner
of a Manila based singing school, elaborated on this in
a twenty ten interview with the Huffington Post. The lyrics,
as he explained, evoke feelings of pride and arrogance in

(01:30:27):
the singer, as if you're somebody when you're really nobody.
It cover ups your failures. That's why it leads to fight.
In two thousand and seven, a.

Speaker 3 (01:30:36):
Twenty nine year old man singing My Way was reportedly
shot to death by the karaoke bars bouncer when he
accidentally got off rhythm while singing My Way and struggled
to get back on track. When he wouldn't stop singing,
the guard pulled out a thirty eight and killed him.
Three years later, in twenty ten, a chairman of a
Tondo village was shot alongside his aid by motorcycle riding

(01:30:58):
gunmen while singing the song during a Christmas party. The
chairman died on the spot, while the aide survived in
critical condition. It's said that the killing was possibly politically motivated,
but this interpretation is more fun. A man was killed
and being very flip. The my Way killing struck again
in twenty eighteen when a sixty year old man was

(01:31:20):
stabbed by his neighbor, who was twenty eight, during a
birthday party. According to reports, the senior grabbed the mic
from his neighbor just when my Way was about to play.
A fistfight ensued, and the younger man stabbed the elder,
who was pronounced dead.

Speaker 1 (01:31:36):
At the hospital. Regrets they all had a few. Well, folks,
the end is near, and we face the final curtain,
but we will end on a quote from not aforementioned
NPR piece, a toast to our Way. It's from Jason King,
a professor at NYU's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music.

(01:31:58):
He says, you could read my Way as a kind
of metaphor for the World War II generation that Frank
Sinatra represented, looking back at the twentieth century history in
this kind of cosmic defiance, saying, look, I did it
the way I wanted to do it, and I did
it right. I'm looking back at all this history and
I'm okay with it. I won't be I'm okay with

(01:32:20):
this episode. I'll be on my deathbed, still trying to hate,
trying to he died doing what he loved, being a hater. Yeah,
great song. It's good to try though, it's good to try.
It's nice that you're still trying well.

Speaker 3 (01:32:42):
You know, you get older, your mellow a bit, so
you gotta work a little bit harder to put your
hating hours in.

Speaker 1 (01:32:48):
You just lose the fire you had as a young hater.
This has been too much information, folks. I'm Alex Haiegel, Jack,
and I'm shortan run talk next time. Too Much Information
was a production of iHeartRadio. The show's executive producers are

(01:33:10):
Noel Brown and Jordan Runtog. The show's supervising producer is
Michael Alder June. The show was researched, written and hosted
by Jordan Runtog and Alex Heigel, with original music by
Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like
what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review.
For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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