On May 15th this year, as exam fever struck the students of this college, one man died whose entire life was a testament to living life focused on far more important things than such trivialities. Francis Albert Sinatra, probably the coolest man of the century, had eighty-two very good years; everything he did was imbued with a transcendental charisma and spirit. "The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin'" (note the all important apostrophe) by Bill Zehme is a sort of self-help book based on the philosophy (or probably more the myth) of Sinatra, summed up by man himself; "I'm not one of those complicated, mixed up cats. I'm nor lookin' for the secret to life or the answer to life. I just go on from day to day, takin' what comes", and replete with the Chairman of the Board's ("What Board?" he always used to say) observations on wine, women and song and what little else there was to life (What is the only way to beat mortality? "Live each day like it may be the final day." How does one best face failure? "Don't despair. You have to scrape bottom to appreciate life and start livin' again.)
The story is familiar; Sinatra brought himself up from the streets of Hoboken, New Jersey to become an icon as teenage "bobbysoxers" swooned over the underfed kid, his career collapsed along with his personal life, before resurrecting in the mid-Fifties with "From Here to Eternity" and collaborations with Nelson Riddle. It would be quite an understatement to say he led a full life. As Adam Gopnik wrote in The New Yorker, "No other pop-culture figure had dramatised in a body of work what it is like to actually live a life - to start out as a kid, become a grownup and end up an old man."
After his death, naturally enough most media focus was on the more salacious aspects of that life, the alleged Mafia links, the four wives and the womanising, drinking and gambling of the Rat Pack. The Voice was dismissed as a sort of aural illusion, a special effect the capacity of which to evoke the deepest joy and the deepest heartbreak had no basis in the man's own life. Yet Sinatra suffered his fair share of heartbreak in his life (he confessed to Montgomery Clift that he was close to suicide over the collapse of his relationship with Ava Gardner), and plenty of friends, associates and ordinary people who happened to cross his path testified to his kindness, humility and essential decency. He loathed bigotry of any kind and refused to sing the original lyric of "Old Man River" ("Darkies all work on the Mississippi" would become "We all work on the Mississippi") Naturally this was all overshadowed in the public imagination by his alleged faults. The massive yearning romanticism he expressed is regarded as somehow "invalidated" by his carousing. Pop culture again reduces personality and character to the level of Flatland.
Another method of belittling Sinatra's talent was to argue that he owed much of his success to songwriters, arrangers and bandleaders; ever since Lennon and McCartney we seem to regard singing one's own songs as somehow purer, more genuine then those of someone else. Perhaps this is why so little popular music has the wit, style, ebullience and cleverness of Sinatra's day. Similarly, actors are regarded as more genuine artists if they also direct, script and produce their work. The old Hollywood system probably produced more classics because a team of talented professionals just did their job with no great desire for total control ("Casablanca" and "Bringing Up Baby" spring to mind) than today's rush for a phoney synergy.
Few singers had such a gift for phrasing, such a love of language and talent for verbal play. He was hugely comfortable with polysyllables ("unphotographable" and "congeals" are among the many unpromising words given life in his delivery); his greatest songs are probably Cole Porter's elegant, witty and tender compositions.
Sinatra developed an iron artistic self-confidence through hard work and turning his weaknesses into strengths. The apparent effortlessness of his performances came after much rehearsal. Most agree that the high point of his career was the string of albums he recorded in the mid-fifties with the arranger Nelson Riddle. These would range from the romantic ('Close to You'), the woozily romantic ('Nice 'n' Easy), the blackly despairing ('Only the Lonely'), the only slightly less blackly despairing ('In the Wee Small Hours') to his most famous works, "A Swingin' Time" and "Songs for Swingin' Lovers", two albums that can only be described as swingin'. It was as if he was showing the world what he could do. Exuberance, despair, loneliness, romance, joy - easy. All his songs from this era have a dash and splendour missing from most contemporary music.
Compare "I've got you under my skin" with Radiohead's "Creep." Both deal with more or less the same basic theme, the all too familiar one of unrequited love. Thom Yorke whinges away in a rather overwrought fashion with no great conviction of anything apart from his own despair. This is solipsistic music, the focus is on the self, ("I'm a creep/I'm a weirdo/What the hell am I doing here?") Yet Sinatra is as full as verve and panache as ever, with the emotional note ringing true nevertheless. The tone is rueful, graceful and stylish, and also far more focused on the other party.
As a movie actor, Sinatra won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for "From Here to Eternity" He hated doing more than a few takes, feeling that the spontaneity would be lost. While making "Guys and Dolls" he had numerous clashes with the archetypal Method actor Marlon Brando, whose incessant demand for more takes tried Sinatra's patience to the limit. He appeared in a few genuine classics; "From Here to Eternity", "The Manchurian Candidate", "The Man with the Golden Arm" at least, as well as the entertaining "Von Ryan's Express", " High Society" and "Anchors Away!"
"My Way" of course is Sinatra's best known song. He himself resented its valedictorial, nostalgic tone; he didn't want the end to be near at all. But who can deny its superbly corny, schmaltzy grandeur? Inevitably "My Way" was much played in the aftermath of Sinatra's death. Yet for a finale, surely more appropriate would have been the last song he actually recorded, "One more for the road" on the second "Duets" album. This is a bar room ballad, as Frank and the barman are left alone in the wee hours of the morning, Frank needing a listening ear after "a brief episode." It is a sad yet strong song, and, knowing that it would be the final song he would record, the final line is doubly heartbreaking: "Make it one more for my baby/And one more for the road/It's a long, long, long, long road" The final "long" is filled with a great weariness but also a great dignity. Sinatra had style, he had charm, he was a little wild to say the least, he had panache and verve and all those other things, yet its his sad songs of loneliness, where his soul is openly on display, that show us that most of all his was a human being. He was a man and there is no need for any other epitaph.
