![]() ![]() I said, “ Hey, I’m young enough to write it but I’m not old enough to sing it! It belongs to Sinatra. RCA was upset at the time that I gave it away. When you’re the singer performing the song, there is. So it shows you about songwriting: when you know your craft, when you’re a writer, there is no age barrier. ![]() Even though I’d been nominated for an Academy Award when I was a kid for The Longest Day, even though the “Tonight Show” theme was cooking every night, for me to get a Sinatra record, and on a song like that, which I knew was the most different song I’ve ever written, was a monumental day in my life. I wrote it just for him and put the demo together, brought it to him. I started metaphorically: “And now, the end is near, and so I face the final curtain.” I wrote it as if Sinatra were writing it. He’s quitting.”Īnd I started at one in the morning at the typewriter-piano. So I called Don Costa, and said, “The guy’s done. So when I went back to New York, sitting there at one in the morning, thinking this is for real. I go to dinner with him, and he said, “I’m quitting.” Kennedy was all over. The long and the short of it is that I was down in Miami. So I decided that one day I was going to do it. Because I loved him and adored him, like all of us did. You’re old, you’re vintage.īut it bugged me that I couldn’t write him a song. But Sinatra was always talking about aging. It comes from learning your craft and maturing as a person I never would have written the song when I was younger. There is a certain kind of song that you write for your age and your intellect. You have to remember as you are growing and maturing and working at your craft, that’s not overnight. All through those early years I did not feel ready. Why? because I felt I didn’t have the capability. So Sinatra is teasing the hell out of me, saying, “When are you going to write me a song?” Which I knew wasn’t going to happen. He would sit there and say, “What is this shit?” He wanted to be with it, but he couldn’t. He was from the real pure world, old standard American classic. I didn’t refer to the French record at all lyrically. I had a vision they were so-so about it in France, which wasn’t a big market. It was done in 30 minutes “Yeah, here, take it.” I mean, we weren’t buying the pyramids here. You got to remember, this was ’66 – and I called them up to see if I could get this song. So I heard it but I knew there was more in it, because it wasn’t a huge hit I knew the publishers up in Paris. I heard this song on the radio, a mediocre hit by a French singer which was called “Comme d’habitude.” *The title means “As Usual.” It’s about a couple in a very boring marriage, a relationship which is, “as usual.” They get up every day and “the smell of your breath, I love it…” Very graphic French song. I like the diversity and the balance of it. I was really into that scene, and I know everybody. Took my family over there, married my wife there. PAUL ANKA: I vacationed a lot in France and spent a lot of time over there. It led him, ultimately, to create this iconic song, as related in his own words: He told Anka that rock & roll made him feel irrelevant, and felt it was time to call it quits.Īnka loved Sinatra, and had deep reverence for all the great songwriters who wrote the songs Frank sang. It was the start of a new era, and Sinatra belonged very much to the previous one. Written in the incendiary year of 1968, the song reflected the paradigm shift the world was undergoing, as signalled by the evolution in pop music from the songs of Sinatra to rock & roll. Paul Anka also wrote the “Tonight Show” theme, used during the Johnny Carson reign, not to mention countless hits he recorded himself, from early rock & roll hits “Diana” and “Lonely Boy” in 1958 through “You’re Having My Baby” in 1974. But no song meant more to him than “My Way,” nor any singer as much as Sinatra. ![]()
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