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Feature
Between a Rock and a Sinatra
(Page 2 of 2)
Let’s keep this party polite
Never get out of my sight
Stick with me baby, I’m the guy that you came in with
They might be reminded of how constricted they are in their dealings with the fairer sex, even as, it seems, all the barriers have come down. Part of Sinatra’s old-style manliness was also about sophistication and knowingness, of course; his up-tempo music (always played by the top hands in the business) exudes a class and refinement that rock, devoted to spirit over craft and rooted despite its best efforts in the adolescent, simply does not possess.
I’m not sure Sinatra ever quite convinces us that he is as happy as the music and words of these songs instruct him to be—more often than not, the joy seems fleeting, as in “Summer Wind”—but the sense of five-carat style and once again, mastery, come through. That mastery, so evident to older listeners, can still sneak up on Sinatra’s lost generations.
It happened the night of my own wedding reception, when, watching my bride dance with her father to “Summer Wind,” it occurred to me that Frank Sinatra was undefeated, stronger than rock.
AND YET, TO TWIST the words of Andrew Marvell: at my back I always hear rock’s wicked guitars thundering near. This past summer, the wires carried news of the death of Bo Diddley, one of rock’s pioneering instrumentalists and bandleaders, who created a syncopated guitar style that is routinely copped, in song after song, right up to the present day. I read a few obituaries and then headed over to YouTube, where I saw an astounding video of Diddley performing “Road Runner”—barely a minute and a half of intoxicating, percussive rhythm. It was almost enough to make me forget why I’d turned away from rock in the first place. And to be fair to rock, it’s not just a backbeat that Sinatra’s music lacks. It’s words that sound like they could be spoken by characters in today’s movies and songs. However crude or simplistic many rock lyrics were, and however self-conscious and pretentious they have become (especially in comparison with those of the Gershwins or Cole Porter), it’s also true that rock’s informal, profane, hipster vocabulary was the language of at least the last third of the century.
Regardless of the tiresome debates about the literary value of rock song lyrics—which invariably become a debate, really, about the literary value of Bob Dylan song lyrics, the only ones worth arguing about—there’s no point denying that Sinatra’s remoteness from a younger audience has to do not just with how he sings, but what he sings. While he was releasing September of My Years, Dylan listeners were hearing this:
Now Ophelia, she’s ’neath the window For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession’s her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
That makes for a steep linguistic contrast with Sinatra’s instruction that, say, love and marriage go together like the horse and carriage. Hearses can ride in carriages, too, and to younger ears, accustomed by now to all manner of wordplay in rock songs, such lines sound stale and dead. I’ve winced at my share of Sinatra lyrics. Only the singer’s skill compensates—that is, assuming the listener considers such singing compelling in the first place. If he doesn’t, then he is left with a dead singer singing dead words.
Sinatra expressed his own views about rock early on. Speaking in 1957, he made himself infamous among the younger crowd by declaring that “Rock ’n’ roll smells phony and false. It is sung, played and written for the most part by cretinous goons and by means of its almost imbecilic reiteration, and sly, lewd, in plain fact, dirty lyrics…it manages to be the martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the earth.” He never renounced this judgment, though in time he covered some pop-oriented material, including George Harrison’s “Something,” which he remarkably called one of the greatest love songs ever written. Near the end of his life he consented to the novelty album Duets, featuring the likes of Bono, Anita Baker, and others who sang along to his pre-recorded renditions. The album, which became a top-seller, was an ingenious bit of marketing, if not music, and it also made clear that the old musical divisions were breaking down. His views of their work aside, aging pop royalty had come to crave the Sinatra affiliation, a professional way of marrying up.
Yet even when they paid him tribute, the rockers could never let go of their self-regard. At a televised 80th birthday tribute in 1995, Bruce Springsteen praised Sinatra’s music for evoking a “nasty sense of freedom,” whatever that meant (it sounded like an outtake from “Born to Run”). In an embarrassing tribute at the Grammys a year earlier, Bono celebrated Sinatra for setting an example that rock stars wanted to emulate: that is, he had “bad attitude” and snarl and edge, he was a tough guy, and he was not to be “messed with.” Sinatra, Bono seemed to imply, was really a rocker! Rather than acknowledging that Sinatra’s greatness embodied something separate from and mostly incompatible with rock, Bono instead argued that his virtues were really rock’s virtues. It doesn’t get more patronizing than that. The rockers can’t necessarily be blamed for trafficking in Sinatra caricatures that had, after all, been around for decades. But the Sinatra tough-guy persona was much more complicated than the facile public image of a pre-rock and roll bad boy.
Hamill writes that Sinatra “perfected the role of the Tender Tough Guy and passed it on to several generations of Americans…[He] created a new model for American masculinity.” Maybe; it’s difficult to believe that there is a single model, anymore, for American masculinity. But it’s certainly true that Sinatra’s great ballad albums, song after song about the pain of lost love, depict a raw vulnerability, at times even what sounds like helplessness, that is far riskier than what most male pop singers would hazard today—even as, paradoxically, touchy-feely men are so much more in vogue than they were in the 1950s. When a typical wimp singer of today like, say, R.E.M.’s wormlike Michael Stipe, goes groveling in song, nobody is surprised; he risks nothing by exposing himself. Angst is all that he has to sell.
That’s what makes Sinatra’s lost-love music so compelling; he’s no tofu-eater. He hangs out with gangsters, for crying out loud. Yet here he is telling us: I thought I found the gal I could trust What a bust This is how the story ends: She’s gonna turn me down and say, “Why can’t we be just friends?”
The whole tough/tender circle is squared in “One for My Baby,” a classic Sinatra performance. Here the two personas come together: the hard-living guy, alone in the bar after hours, still knocking back the booze, but left alone with the bartender to lament the “end of a brief episode.” And there are those vintage lines at the end that mark off Sinatra’s era from the coming rock age: “This torch that I found/It’s gotta be drowned/Or it soon might explode.” The rock instinct is just the opposite: the torch should be lubricated for maximum flammability, the better to express in a howl that will be regarded, on sheer force alone, as art. And we’re all invited to witness the conflagration, still guided by the predominant aesthetic of the last half-century, as set down by Jack Kerouac: “The only people for me are the mad ones…” If you’re not one of them, you’re not really in the game. To refuse to go mad, to just tip Joe and then walk home alone, seems somehow inauthentic in this rock world. In his music, at least, Sinatra never did go mad, never relinquished control. Among many other things, his work dramatized the great discipline it takes to resist the temptations that loss offers for letting everything go. That’s a long way from the rock vision of following impulse where it leads.
LISTENING TO SINATRA NOW, having come to him so late, feels something like being one of those early middle-aged characters in his great 1950s ballads, who suddenly wakes to discover that the answers he thought he had weren’t answers at all. Or perhaps it’s more like the musical equivalent of realizing that your father was right all along. After the initial sheepishness, a certain satisfaction, even liberation, results, and Sinatra’s music becomes a great undiscovered thing about middle age, a strong and unexpected bulwark to hold up against the advancing years, its pedigree matchless, its worth already proven.
But it’s altogether different from the exuberance of youth, when it was you who knew better, and your poor old man who didn’t know diddley.
Comments
Leave a Comment
Alice Moore| 12.31.08 @ 8:09AM
High quality music will always have adherents. With the advent of Beethoven and the Romantic Era in music; there probably was fear that Mozart, Haydn and Bach would be forgotten. Didn't happen.
Rock music had its virtuosos in Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix and lyricist teams such as Lennon/McCartney. Rock music has many parallels to the Romantic Era. There were the instrumental pyrotechnicists like Paganini and Liszt. Larger than life personalities in the persons of Wagner and Tchaikovsky were the norm. They even embraced the hare brained ideologies of their day. This observation is nothing new. My point being they didn't obliterate Bach and Mozart. Today's entertainers(most who are of lesser talent than the Romantics)won't bury Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby.
Bob Scutari| 12.31.08 @ 12:35PM
When the dust settles and all that matters is the music, the mastery of Frank Sinatra will be alive and relevant to future generations. As long as there is a love of music and the pull of human emotion, Sinatra's music will be reborn every day.
No matter your age, generation or music orientation, just go outside today and you will hear the voice of Frank Sinatra . His genius is that he, unlike any other musical artist, continues to sing only to You!
sre| 12.31.08 @ 12:45PM
After reading about your father-in-law dancing to Sinatra's "Summer Wind" with his daughter at your reception, I read the lyrics.
My God, how did the man ever finish that dance?
Note to self: DO NOT play Summer Wind at my daughter's wedding if I don't want to make a fool of myself.
Sean C.| 12.31.08 @ 12:49PM
I also discovered Sinatra late -- although this was in the 90s -- and would concur with a lot of what Mr. Beston says here. Finally breaking through the standards of "authenticity" that I had held up as somehow superior in rocknroll type music, it was exhilarating to be able to discover not only Sinatra but the whole world of the great songwriters (Gershwins/Rodgers & Hart/Berlin/etc etc.) and the great singers and arrangers, jazz and popular. I basically abandoned listening to other forms music for a long time. Ultimately, though, I returned to rocknroll and other forms with more discerning and appreciative ears, I think.
The boxes are self-defeating when painted too thickly, but you do need an understanding of the different disciplines at work to fully appreciate a piece of music.
stmichrick| 12.31.08 @ 1:31PM
As alluded to here; it will be a long time before another entertainer is able to appeal on so many levels. To bobbysoxers, jazz afficianados, pop muzak fans, musicians of all stripes, film buffs and anyone who enjoyed watching someone who obviously lived the emotions he sings about.
His virtuosity will endure.
Pat Boyle| 12.31.08 @ 2:11PM
In these days of cultural relativity what I will now say is shocking - rock and roll (and rap) is degenerate.
In antropology you might study a set of pottery embelishments. Typically these markings will become more elaborate and exhibit greater sophistication over time. Then in many such sequences the decorations become simpler and more crude. This is technically called a degenerate sequence. A similar pattern can be seen in many cultural expressions. A culture exapands in sophistication. Some may stay at the peak over long periods of time but some others become degenerate. They lose their informational content. They sucumb to entropy. They fall from what are called a high cultural state to primitiveness.
Rock and Roll, and even more so Rap, is degenerate in this technical sense. At its height American pop songs had clever and even profound lyrics. They formerly used sophisticated musical devices and their singers could actually sing. None of those characteristics are true today.
Most modern singers can't sing in the sense that singing has been understood to exist in all human cultures for at least the last few centuries and probably since before Homo arose.
There are no openings in rap groups for an orchestrator. Rap just didn't abandon melody. It also abanoned rhythm. Sophisticated rhythms were soul of the great black musicians the "royals" - Count Bassie, Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington.
It isn't just a style change. Rap is crude in every dimension. It is degenerate.
Grampa Guy| 12.31.08 @ 2:47PM
An article even more comfortable the second time around.
And, let's not forget, the man could dance with Gene Kelly and act with Montgomery Clift, all the while looking like he was born to be there. God rest your noble soul, Francis Albert.
Steveo| 12.31.08 @ 3:25PM
As a guy who had an 8 track tape of Rossini overtures mixed in with the Led Zeppelin, I would like to think I have tried to appreciate the great ones. Sinatra, Crosby, Gene Kelly, etc are about romance as a beautiful thing, with its highs and lows. The sexuality seemed slight, an undertone. Rock always seemed inundated with sexuality, like a teenager overcome by their hormones. Hence, bands like Mother Love Bone, and albums with names like OU812. Geez!!
Everly Waverly| 12.31.08 @ 3:30PM
Sinatra is still relevant, at least to me, I can understand the lyrics. From Here to Eternity was a neat movie, except for the depressing parts. My favorite CD is "Sinatra At The Sands", great stuff, Count Basie is crisp and rich.
A few weeks ago on PBS California's Gold was an hour on Frank's Palm Springs compound. Wow, the guy lived the good life, and did anyone know he collected model trains. Model train collector, I had no idea, presents a different image of the man.
wrjonas| 12.31.08 @ 3:48PM
If anyone wants to see two guys having fun and do a little singing in front of the camera you gotta see Sinatra and Crosby doing "What a Swell Party" from High Society.
Mike| 12.31.08 @ 5:50PM
Wow...being born in 1966, too, it amazes me how this article reflects where I am in life, also.
I was in love with, nay wedded to, rock music for a long time. But something strange happened: rock didn't age well. Not at all.
Real music stands the test of time, which is primarily why classical music is still relevant, and Sinatra still an attraction.
Paul M. Mock| 12.31.08 @ 7:45PM
I was 13 in 1968 when I discovered Mr. S and his music. It was the height of the free-love, acid rock era. I eschewed that form of music and when I heard that voice and that HONESTY in his recordings I fell and feel hard. I was bullied and made fun of all through high school and college for loving Sinatra's music. I now have a rather extensive collection of all things Sinatra. Now at the age of 54, I am delightfully finding out that a whole new college age generation is doing just as I did. There are some young people out there with collections that rival mine...and I'm kinda jealous they are able to find it all as easily as they can now! Nah...not really. As long as Mr. S and his incredible body of work are passed along, he will be with us forever.
Gerard| 12.31.08 @ 8:55PM
There are some advantages to living in Philadelphia. Great museums, world class universities with only the requisite percentage of hard core lefty professors, a World Series winner of a baseball team, an NFL team that enjoyed vanquishing its archenemy by 38 points. And a city daffier about Sinatra than any other. My late father collected 45s of his hits before my birth. Most men can recite random lyrics from his songs. But most of all, there is Sid Mark. Who has dedicated more than 50 years of his life to the presentation and preservation of Frank Sinatra's musical body. He still regularly sells out advertising on his Friday evening and Sunday morning radio shows- blessedly, on the station that presents Rush, Sean and G. Beck. In fact, Frank Jr.- a worthy champion of his father's music in his own right- was a recent guest of one Sid Mark broadcast. In metro Philly, Frank Sr. remains a vital life force for many of us.
William Tucker| 12.31.08 @ 11:00PM
To me the real quality of Sinatra's voice was that it sounded so AVERAGE. They've discovered something in computer graphics - that when you take a lot of faces and average their qualities, the faces become more attractive. So it was with Sinatra. It wasn't that his voice was so distinctive but that it sounded just like everybody sounds to themselves when they sing in the shower. And that was what the persona that Sinatra cultivated as well. He was just the average guy, surprised by love, surprised by his lonliness, surprised to realize how much he loved that girl now that she is gone. It was music that everybody could identify with:
So I'm the guy who turned out a lover,
I'm not the guy who cared about fortune and such
Never cared much
Oh, look at me now!
Lorene| 1.1.09 @ 7:26AM
I was not a swooning Sinatra teenager, however, I was buying his 78's in the 40's. Most of my favorites are from his reprise era. He really came into his own at that time. I'm now transferring my record collection to CD's and hope I live long enough listening to Sinatra to transfer my CD's to a newer technology!
I literally hated the Mickey Mouse music of the 50's which went on to something worse to me, rock & roll. I still blame Elvis Presley for the downgrade in music and have never forgiven him.
stmichrick| 1.1.09 @ 11:24AM
Gerard;
FYI; the CDs that Sid Mark sent to his affiliated radio stations are great finds on eBay.
Rose | 1.1.09 @ 1:00PM
Frank Sinatra was a musician trained in belle cantro, few "singers" of today outside of the opera have any of that sort of training. His phrasing of the poetic set to music didn't 'just happen' he worked at it his whole life as did others of his generation. Gifted, trained and prepared they gave us all their all.
Gary| 1.1.09 @ 11:01PM
I was born in 1946 & loved any music as a child. I sing & play guitar as a hobby & as a child I sang Como, Martin, etc. but when rock & roll came around my genetic code locked in on Elvis, Buddy Holly, Fats, Jerry lee lewis, Sam Cook, & in the sixties rock left me with the advent of the Beatles. I listen to classical, new age, celtic, country, movies themes & some world music. I always respected Sinatra's talent but never could really get into his music. He was a great singer but his music never appealed to me. Elvis has always been the "man" for me because of his great voice & style. He could grind out rock & sing a ballad as no rocker can. I always felt his image & personna as covered in the press & media overshadowed his great musical talent. Without that immense talent he would not have endured. Having just a meager amount of musical talent I truly admire & respect the immense talents of Elvis & Sinatra. I think few appreciate the precious gift such talent is. I have just a smidgeon of it & I consider it a blessing just for my own enjoyment & therapy. The talent of Elvis & Sinatra is a joy to all who listen to their music.
Michael L. Hauschild| 1.2.09 @ 7:05AM
Mr. Beston, you sir contribute to the knowledge of music as Mr. Sinatra sang.
Howard| 1.2.09 @ 8:42AM
I was thirteen back in 1965 when The September of My Years album came out. My father who was 51 at the time loved it. I at the time like the Stones, Beatles, etc. thought Sinatra was cool and tough, but the music was not my favorite. Fast forward forty four years, and I am the old man. My father is deceased. And the words from that album resonate for me. My eighteen year old son is not quite in line with Sinatra, yet.
Bob Miller| 1.2.09 @ 1:53PM
The music of Dion DiMucci, from the 50's 'til now, wears very well, too. Every style (well, maybe not rap) has some exemplars who take it to a high level.
Brian| 1.2.09 @ 2:45PM
I just turned 44 and I bought a "best of" Sinatra album on iTunes.
What grabbed me is Sinatra's ability to paint a picture of a classy guy meeting a classy woman for a great time in a beautiful setting. You can almost smell the cologne, the perfume and the martinis.
Roy| 1.2.09 @ 4:38PM
"But it’s altogether different from the exuberance of youth, when it was you who knew better, and your poor old man who didn’t know diddley. "
I know what Mr. Beston means - but how is rock supposed to retain this feeling when not only people's parents, but increasingly, their grandparents grew up listening to it?
Kathleen| 1.3.09 @ 8:50PM
My kids are in their late teens and early 20's, and they will listen to Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bobby Darrin and others of that era before they'd listen to Nickelback or REM. I didn't appreciate these men until I was in my 40's. My mother, who is in her 70's, was amazed when she got into my daughter's car with her and a Dean Martin CD came on. My kids would also rather listen to swing music and Gershwin rather than the claptrap that is considered music today. I still like my Beatles and my rock and roll, but Sinatra, Martin, et al, will live on in music history. Twenty years from now, I doubt many people will know who P Diddy, the Jonas Brothers or Amy Winehouse are. There isn't anyone on today's music scene that has lasting talent.
Robert| 1.4.09 @ 1:28AM
Nice Sinatra tribute, Paul, but I wouldn't worry about the silly, non-musical nonsense that you quoted from Michael Gray. In fact, I encourage you to listen to "Like A Rolling Stone" again and check out the wonderful wonderful guitar fills played by Michael Bloomfield. He knew a thing or two about "interplay" as well as the body of 20th century American music.
Sam| 1.4.09 @ 10:55AM
I was born in 1n N.J. in 1932 and grew up as Sinatra was first making a mark in music. I was 7 or so when I first remember hearing some singer (Sinatra) from a juke box transmitted over the P.A. at a pool in New Brunswick singing "All or Nothing at All" with Tommy Dorsey. As a 7 year old I was impressed with the theme of the song and in a way it became symbolic of Sinatra's career.
Bing Crosby was the top crooner back then and the media promoted competition between them as in programs "Battle of the Baritones" helped Sinatra achieve stardom tremendously. I preferred Crosby then and for some songs he is still untouchable. One of the images Sinatra had then was as a skinny kid with a drooping bow tie.
As time went on I greatly appreciated Buddy Clark, a voice that had the best of Crosby and a little Sinatra. His duets with female singers such as Doris Day were the best . I consider Sinatra's duet with Croby "Did You Ever" in High Society the best male duet ever made. Clark He died at the peak of his career in a private plane crash. If he lived on, he would've been a singing icon as Crosby and Sinatra are. I play cd's of that era and I listen to Buddy Clark five times as often as I listen to Sinatra. I concede that Sinatra was more multi-talented. From a tv drama of Sinatra's life produced by his younger daughter I have to conclude that Sinatra hated or was jealous of Buddy Clarke as a singer.
Whenever I go to "The Olive Garden " restaraunt , 80% of the songs played are Sinatra's and Dean Martin.
I had a chance to meet Sinatra once but turned it dow. A friend of mine who was a Vegas headliner at the time were in an Italian Restaurant outside of L.A. when the waiter came over and said,"Frank's in the backroom". My friend who was good friends with Sinatra stood up to go back and invited me to go along, but I said, "No". Sinatra was unpredictable, I was unknown to him and I did not know what his reaction would be to a stranger from Jersey. He could be insulting.
Sinatra was extremely multi-talented, but I preferred two or three others as singers and as a person, it was a mixed bag. He may have been the most talented entertainer of the 20th century, but he always said that he was a bar room singer.
I remember what George Burns said,(paraphrasing now)) " Sinatra, Crosby, Hope they were great but none could compare to Al Jolsen for holding a live audience"
There was another great singer of that era, Alan Dale, who would not cooperate with the mob and after aperformance was thrown through a plate glass window. His career went down because of a supposed affair that would be laughed off today.
Charlie| 1.4.09 @ 5:32PM
YES, there were other excellent singers, but NONE had the timing and phrasing of Sinatra.
CB
Katie| 1.5.09 @ 4:44PM
My 17 year old daughter and her boyfriend love Frank Sinatra. They discovered him on their own, parents and grandparents had nothing to do with it.
jack lindahl| 1.5.09 @ 7:53PM
Who are today's Sinatras (Nats, Ellas....for that matter)?
Treasures all, not to be replicated.
Great column.