On Thanksgiving night 1977 I was about to walk on stage at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco when I got the news that my mom had died. I was in shock. That night I hit the street and just started running, and I ran for miles in a daze. My mom had been my one guiding star through all my ups and downs. She’d kept me grounded and was always able to put everything in focus for me. When she passed away, I thought I’d never recover. I was so overcome with grief that I actually wondered if I might be losing my mind. And I found that I was using drugs to ease my pain.
Her death could not have happened at a worse time. Sandra and I couldn’t get along. I was again without a manager and that meant it was up to me to mind the store. My new record company had folded earlier that year and I was without a label for the first time in my career. All of Bill’s business expertise and all of my dedication weren’t enough to keep the label alive. To my dismay, I learned that the company was in debt, and now I was responsible for my share of it. On top of everything else, my accountants were telling Sandra and me that our Hollywood lifestyle was beginning to take It’s toll and we were spending way too much money As a result we had fallen behind on our taxes, and the IRS was banging on our front door.
I had a press agent from Toronto named Gino Empry for a while during this time, and he introduced me to my new agent Roger Vorce at Agency of the Performing Arts (APA) who was now booking my dates. John Giuffrida, my bass player, handled the logistics of touring, but there was nobody looking out for the big picture. The strain was getting to be too much for me, and I began to experience long bouts of depression.
As hard as I tried to stay current with my taxes, my financial situation only got worse. The accountants called to say that the IRS was starting proceedings to take away the house. That night, in frustration I overindulged and quickly realized I was in trouble. I tried to calm myself down by taking a hot bath, but I must have passed out. And I experienced what some call a near-death experience; a golden light enveloped me in a warm glow. It was quite peaceful; in fact, I had the sense that I was about to embark on a very compelling journey. But suddenly I was jolted out of the vision. The tub was overflowing and Sandra was standing above me. She’d heard the water running for too long, and when she came in, I wasn’t breathing. She pounded on my chest and literally brought me back to life. As I was rushed to the hospital, the only thought on my mind was something my ex-manager Jack Rollins had told me about Lenny Bruce right after Lenny’s death from an overdose. All Jack said was, “The man sinned against his talent.” That hit home. I realized I was throwing it all away, and I became determined to clean up my act.
It took me a couple of weeks to get my feet back on the ground I knew I had to make major changes in my life. It was 1979 and my sons Danny and Daegal were now twenty-five and twenty-four, respectively. I remembered the clearheaded suggestions Danny had given me during the Improv negotiations, and how he was always so defensive anytime there was a wise guy hanging around. I called my boys in New York and asked them to come out to talk things over and see if they could lend me a hand.
All of my kids have a natural affinity for music. Joanna and Antonia grew up hanging around with Sammy Cahn, Frank Sinatra, and Dean Martin. They sang with Basie’s band at the age of nine and ten. Danny and Dae were privy to some amazing jam sessions in their own home. Dae once sat with Duke Ellington at his piano. Count Basie’s great drummer, Sonny Payne, had been the first person to put a pair of drumsticks in his hands. The boys also got to see the business side of the music industry and watched promoters, agents, bookers, and road managers at work.
By their twenties, Danny and Dae were well versed in all aspects of music; performance, business, and even the everchanging technology. And by now, Danny had experience with contract negotiations. When I asked them to come out to California, they didn’t hesitate; they arrived the next day.
The three of us met in my art studio, my sanctuary. I told them the whole story I tried to explain what was going on, but the truth is, even I wasn’t totally aware of all the problems plaguing the business side of my career. When I finished talking, Danny said to me, “Well, the only thing I can do is look at the situation and try to find where things went wrong.”
Danny and Dae met with my accountants back in New York, whom I’d instructed to reveal all. I wanted the boys to understand exactly what was happening. Danny understood numbers. He called me up and said, “If you make a hundred dollars and you only spend ninety-nine, then you’re a buck ahead. But if you make a hundred dollars and spend a hundred and one, you’re in trouble.” My accountant told Danny that he could look at the books as much as he wanted, but things weren’t going to get any better. He told him I was going down. Danny said, “That’s your opinion.” He spent a week in New York sorting the whole thing out, and when Danny laid out my entire financial situation on a spreadsheet, I could finally see it clearly.
Danny told me that the road gigs weren’t profitable because we were spending too much on road expenses, and he also told me exactly how much Sandra and I were spending personally. No one had done this for me before. He explained that we had spent exactly the same amount that I’d earned that year, leaving nothing for the tax man. Danny stated the obvious when he said the only way things could get better was by cutting expenses and budgeting the rest. He worked out a three-year payment plan with the IRS and we put my new budget into action.
The hard part was getting Sandra to comply. I had to go back on the road that week, and I called her and said, “This is the way It’s going to have to be. It’s the only way we can save the house.” One week later she served me with divorce papers. That’s how quick it was. But the trial dragged on for many years.
Another chapter in my life had come to an end. I left the house in Beverly Hills and found a nice one-bedroom apartment on West Fifty-fifth Street back in Manhattan, right up the street from Columbia’s “Black Rock” headquarters. The minute I got back to a lifestyle I was comfortable with, I never wanted to get high again.
Torrie Zito decided to get off the road. That was a major loss musically. By then we’d been working together for ten years. He’d written over a hundred arrangements for me, many of which—unfortunately—were never recorded. The last thing Torrie and I did together was my second English TV series in 1979. It was called Tony Bennett Sings..., and it was also directed by Yvonne Littlewood. The shows were built around different themes, like “Tony Bennett Sings Saloon Songs,” “Tony Bennett Sings Songs from Broadway,” and “Tony Bennett Sings Song Stories.”
When the rest of the trio broke up, I was worried that I’d never be able to put together a group as good again. I found it significant that I was returning to my roots—going from Hollywood back to New York—-and it made sense that I’d also go back to Ralph Sharon. Oddly enough, at the very same time, Ralph had been debating whether or not he should get in touch with me.
It had been Ralph’s wife, Susan, who had pressured him into quitting the road, but they were now divorced and he had married a woman named Linda. I decided to give him a call and ask if he’d consider coming back with me. He talked it over with Linda, and soon we were back on the road together. It was 1980, and he’d been gone for fifteen years. It was a comfort to have him back.
Our new trio featured John Burr, then later Gene Cherico on bass, and the fantastic drummer Butch Miles. Eventually Joe LaBarbera, who had been Bill Evans’s drummer, took over on drums, and Paul Langosch, who has been with me for almost fifteen years now, took over on bass. They’re all exquisite musicians, and put an end to the doubts I’d had about finding the best to work with again.
When Danny first began helping me out, there was never a deliberate plan for him to manage me. He just fell into the role. He turned out to be really good at putting it all together. Not since my sister, Mary, managed my affairs in the sixties had I felt so confident that everything was on the up-and-up. It was such a relief, and my head began to clear.
We became a team, artist and manager, as well as father and son. He and I had extensive talks and worked out a game plan. Danny asked me point blank, “What do you want to accomplish?” I answered, “I want to do what I do best, nothing more and nothing less. Above all else, I never want to compromise my musical integrity.” I told him that despite the modern notion of demographics, I was taught that it was important to perform for the whole family I told Danny that I wanted to be able to bring my music to as many people as possible, regardless of their age.
I meant that too. I wanted to reach all ages. I wanted to do it for myself, naturally but I don’t think I’m being disingenuous when I say that I also wanted to do it for Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, and all the wonderful composers, arrangers, and instrumentalists I’d ever worked with. I wanted to be one of the keepers of the flame when it came to great music. I knew that if I brought the best songs and the best orchestrations to people, they’d respond to it, because great music transcends generations.
I was singing at the Sahara in 1979, and I had a television special that year called Live at the Sahara, Even though I wasn’t recording and hadn’t had a major appearance in New York in a few years, I was still hot enough that the Suma Corporation, owner of the Sands, lured me away from the Sahara with a spectacular new contract. What made it unique was the amount of time they wanted me to work in their room—eighteen weeks a year, a big commitment.
But I thought I was spending too much time in Las Vegas. It was tough for me to say no at first—it was, after all, four months a year of guaranteed income. But there was good reason for me to work less in Vegas. Business was decreasing, fewer people were coming in, and no new hotels or casinos were being built. Even the Suma people eventually sold out to the Hilton chain. Remember, this was fifteen years before Vegas started booming again in the mid-nineties; the town was going downhill, and if it did hit bottom, I didn’t want to be one of the entertainers to get blamed for it.
And there was always the danger of becoming strictly a Vegas act, and that wasn’t the route I wanted to go. I was looking to broaden my audience, not narrow it, so I went to the Suma people and renegotiated the deal so that I worked fewer dates.
I knew that my core audience would support me. As long as I was presenting songs from the Great American Songbook, I’d fill up every seat wherever I played. There were a number of labels who could give me a deal, but I thought it would serve me best to go back to Columbia Records because that’s where my catalogue was, and it would give me a chance to exploit the masters to maximum benefit and regain control of my own destiny.
Danny assured me that if we gave the young public an opportunity to get to know me, I’d once again be accepted by that audience, so he urged me to focus my efforts on youth-oriented events. Danny proved to be the ace manager I was looking for.
In May 1981, I made my first major appearance in New York since Bill Evans and I had played Carnegie Hall in 1976. I always had the philosophy that it’s best to make it an event every time I hit New York. I came up with an idea I called “Tony Takes Manhattan.” I played three hip New York clubs in the same week—the Village Vanguard, the famous jazz basement The Bottom Line, and the supper club Marty’s. The week culminated in a grand concert at Carnegie Hall and I donated all the proceeds to the Police Athletic League of New York.
At the same time I gave an exhibition of my artwork at Tavern on the Green, which got write-ups in the Daily News, the New York Post, Newsday, The Village Voice, and The New York Times, New York magazine did a feature story on me. The whole week was a huge success.
Even with no new records being released during these years, I was as busy as ever on television. In 1982 Count Basie and I did a ninety-minute special for PBS called Bennett and Basie Together! It was taped in Boston and featured a set of piano and voice with keyboardist Dave McKenna. Between Basie and Dave there certainly was an abundance of great jazz piano that night.
I had been doing the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson ever since it went on the air. I knew I could count on that. Johnny was always wonderful to me, and his shows kept me popular in America over the years. But now the hip talk show for college kids came on after Carson, and was hosted by the newcomer David Letterman. Naturally, I still did Carson every year. But Danny thought I should do the Letterman show as well.
Danny and I began looking for situations in which I could appear before a younger audience because I was positive they would embrace the music I’d sung all my life. Danny also booked me on the Canadian sketch comedy show SCTV, a precursor to Saturday Night Live, where I worked with up-and-coming comedians like Rick Moranis, John Candy and Catherine O’Hara. Next he turned me on to an animated show that was just starting up on Fox called the Simpsons, They approached me to do a song called “Capitol City” for the show. I’d never had a chance to see it, but Danny assured me the show would be a huge success. He went back to them and said I’d do it if they’d make me an animated character on the show. They agreed, and I became the first in a long line of animated special guests.
I was working all over the country doing more than two hundred shows a year all through the 1980s. I was no longer hampered by crises in my personal life or by struggles with the record company, and this left me with the time to carefully plan each step of my career. And things were beginning to pay off.
Bob Guccione, Jr., was the owner and editor of Spin, a new magazine that catered to the “alternative” college crowd. Danny told me he had read an interview with Guccione in which he was asked, “What do you think is the essence of rock and roll?” Guccione answered, “James Brown and Tony Bennett, because they’re the essence of cool and that’s what It’s about.” That really knocked me out. I had Danny call and thank him for what he’d said, and Bob decided he would do a feature on me.
I wanted to get back to recording as soon as I could. I was encouraged by the fact that a number of young singers like Natalie Cole and Linda Ronstadt had recorded albums of great American standards and the public was buying them.
I was talking to Columbia, although I have to confess that I was wary. But I had friends there now. Bruce Lundvall, whom I’d known since the sixties, was president of the label. A producer named Ettore Stratta told Danny that Mickey Eischner, head of A&R, was interested in doing a new album with me. He wanted me back on the label, but he couldn’t convince his bosses that they should invest money in me. Ettore had an investor who was willing to back the album, so in 1985 he and Danny worked out an agreement that Ettore would produce one of my records. Fourteen years after leaving the label, I was reunited with Columbia Records.
Both my old and new records were affected by the introduction of the compact disc. CDs were officially unveiled in Japan by CBS/Sony in 1982, and by 1985 they had really started to take off. It was obvious that every new record would have to be on CD, and that turned out to be a boon for someone like me with a large catalogue. Consumers were replacing their entire vinyl collections with CDs. I decided to make a record featuring state-of-the-art technology the best in digital equipment that was then available. In addition to making a great recording, it also brought the project to the attention of the high-tech enthusiasts.
My new record would be called The Art of Excellence, referring not only to the songs, but also to my demand for quality. From that day forward people would expect nothing less from Tony Bennett. I dedicated the album to the beloved Mabel Mercer.
Annie Leibovitz shot the album cover. She was a hot photographer for Rolling Stone, and it turned out she was also a fan, and she was thrilled to do the shoot. She took a great outdoor picture of me with the World Trade Center looming in the distance.
I included a song on that album called “How Do You Keep the Music Playing” by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, which I had first heard Sinatra sing. One night I went to see Frank perform at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles, I had no idea he knew I was there, but right after he finished singing the song, he said to me, in full view of thousands of people, “Tony! You should sing this song!” How could I refuse? Ettore brought in orchestrator Jorge Calandrelli to do all the charts.
Another special song on The Art of Excellence was “Everybody Has the Blues,” by James Taylor, on which I sang a duet with the genius Ray Charles. It was the first time we’d ever performed together.
I proved my worth to Columbia when The Art of Excellence was released in 1986. There was a genuine media blitz surrounding the release of the album that prompted my first concert at Radio City Music Hall, which launched the “Art of Excellence Tour.” A special bonus that year was when WBCN radio in Boston became the first rock station to spin my new record, all because of the enthusiasm of their promotions director, Chachi Loprete. I sold 150,000 records, showing Columbia that it could indeed be done if you did it right. It really made them prick up their ears.
Along with my career straightening out, my personal life took a major change for the better. I guess because I’ve been a perpetual optimist all my life, forging ahead and willing myself to gravitate to the good things, the negativity started to evaporate. It was a lucky day for me when I became acquainted with a beautiful lady Susan Crow. She’s happy, thoughtful, truthful, intelligent, and she comes from a terrific family She’s helped me balance my life, think straight, and become a healthy person. She has a special way about her that I’ve never found in anyone else. For ten years I’ve spent all my time with her and every day feels like the day I first met her. Last year she graduated from Columbia University, and she now teaches Social Studies at the La Guardia School of Music and the Performing Arts.
We continued to build on the excitement generated by The Art of Excellence. Each new album I made attracted more attention than the last; Bennett/Berlin in 1987, my tribute to the songs of the composer Irving Berlin, and in 1990 my salute to my hometown, Astoria: Portrait of the Artist, Danny had a, striking idea for that cover: the front showed an original photograph of me at the age of sixteen in front of the my house in Astoria, and on the hack I was standing in the exact same spot fifty years later.
The standout song on Astoria was the first cut, Charles DeForrest’s “When Do the Bells Ring for Me?” He was part of a wonderful clique of singers and pianists that dominated the piano bars of the Upper East Side. I’d met Charles about two and a half years before I recorded Astoria when I was in a restaurant and heard him sing this wonderful song. I knew then I had to do it. Charles was writing about the longing for love, but it was also about the yearning to make something of one’s life. It really nailed the way I felt.
Charles wrote two other songs on the album, “Where Do You Go From Love,” and “I’ve Come Home Again.” I was happy that, during the last few years of his life, Charles got a little notoriety from my recording his songs, and I always encourage other singers to listen to his work.
My popularity grew stronger and stronger with each new record. For the first time in my career, no one was telling me what records to make, what songs to sing, what producers or musicians to use. I was allowed to follow my own instincts. My head was free of drugs and I was living the healthy life: eating right, working out, and playing tennis whenever I had the chance. I didn’t have to worry about what was waiting around every corner. I had a new booking agency, William Morris, and enlisted Rob Heller as my agent, and I found a new tour manager, Vance Anderson, so my life on the road would be smoother. My financial problems were at last resolved, and I was gaining a whole new legion of fans. I felt like I was on top of the world. I was free to concentrate on my work, and that left me time to pursue my second great passion, painting.
Through the years I’ve been diligently studying painting with the help of my teachers John Barnicort, Everett Raymond Kinstler, and Basil Baylin, and have been encouraged by my friend David Hockney.
During the seventies, my reputation as a legitimate artist began to grow, especially with the help of Johnny Carson, who showed my work frequently when I was a guest on his show, I had my first gallery showing on Mount Street in London while I was living there in 1971, I began to exhibit my work in many of the cities where I performed, and my paintings started to sell. I’ve reached a point where I have a body of work of over eight hundred paintings, and I had my first museum show at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1994. (I’m proud to say that my painting “Homage to Hockney” has been included in their permanent collection.) I decided to sign my works with my given name. So I’m “Anthony Dominick Benedetto” the painter.
At this time CBS Records, owners of the Columbia label, was bought by Sony At first I had no idea how this would affect my dealing with the label, but I soon learned that Tommy Mottola had been brought in to run the entire record division of the company, Sony Music, and that he had appointed Don lenner as president of Columbia Records, and Michele Anthony as executive vice president of Sony Music Entertainment. Michele just happens to be my old associate Dee Anthony’s oldest daughter, and to this day she calls me Uncle Tony These three people were responsible for setting in motion a trend at the label that would turn my career around in a major way.
Since there was now a demand for the records from my early catalogue, Don lenner asked me to come up with what I thought were the definitive recordings of my career, so they could be released as a boxed set. This project was a real labor of love. We called the collection Forty Years: The Artistry of Tony Bennett I loved the idea because I thought it helped educate my new fans about where I had come from.
Between Astoria and the Forty Years boxed set, the buzz was steadily mounting. I was honored when Astoria was nominated for a 1991 Grammy as “Best Jazz Vocal,” and thrilled when they asked me to perform a number on the televised broadcast of the Grammy Awards ceremony. During the rehearsal, I sang “When Do the Bells Ring for Me?” in full voice. I was surprised when everyone hanging out watching the rehearsal spontaneously erupted in applause and gave me a standing ovation—including all the technical crew and heavy metal groups like Aerosmith and Motley Crüe. When I did the actual show, I put everything I had into “Bells” and I got the same reaction. The young audience gave me a standing ovation that evening too. It was a moment of triumph. The Grammy Award went to Harry Connick, Jr., but as Duke said, “It’s not whatcha do; It’s the way howcha do it.” Interestingly enough, from that point on, the Grammys created a whole new category called “Best Traditional Pop Album.”
I was getting all kinds of attention now, but Danny still felt that my albums weren’t getting the focus they deserved. We had done all we could do. We felt it was time for the record company to step up to the plate.
So Danny asked me to come with him to a meeting at Columbia. He never did that. In the old days, I hung out with people at the label all the time, both in the Columbia studios and in the offices. But since he took over, Danny’s kept me away from the negotiations and the corporate playing field so I could stick to making music. When we got to the meeting at Don Ienner’s office, we looked at the sales figures and then Danny said, “If this is the best you can do, then we want off the label.” He shocked the hell out of me, but then I thought, “Yeah he’s right. I’d rather retire than not do things right.”
He continued, “You don’t have an artist on this label who works as hard as Tony. Once again, Tony is not being supported by this company not in the way he should be. You should be selling at least two or three times as many records as you are now.” Don replied, “There’s no way Tony Bennett’s leaving this label. I’m not going to let that happen.” Then he asked me what I had in mind for my next project, and I said, “I have two words to say to you: ‘Perfectly Frank’” He looked at me and said, “That’s it! That’s all I have to hear. You got it. It’ll be huge.”
I was planning on using just a trio, whereas Sinatra almost always used a big band. This was one way I could put my own stamp on these songs. I didn’t want to do Sinatra’s greatest hits. In fact, when I had first gotten the idea for the Sinatra tribute record, I called Bill Miller, who for over forty years was to Frank what Ralph Sharon is to me. Bill supported my decision to stick with the torch and saloon songs, These were the great standards that Frank used as the building blocks for his classic albums.
I took my time deciding which songs to do. I faxed lists over to my friend and longtime associate Frank Military, the best music man in the business and the head of Warner-Chappell Music. Sinatra started him out in the early sixties when he was a young man. He went on to become one of the major movers and shakers in the world of music publishing. He tracked down all the sheet music I needed, even songs from other publishers. We recorded a collection of twenty-four songs.
Andre Fischer, who’d just scored a big hit with Natalie Cole’s Unforgettable album, shared producing credits on Perfectly Frank. I brought back Frank Laico to do the engineering. The results were magic.
Don Ienner kept his word and put his head of marketing, Jay Krugman, together with Danny. For the first time, I got exactly what I needed in terms of promotion, and the effort, paid off. Perfectly Frank earned a gold record, and I won my first Grammy since “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”
After Perfectly Frank came out, all the deejays and talk show hosts invariably asked me, “Did you get Sinatra’s permission before you sang his songs?” I thought that was funny because Frank and I have always done each other’s material. He did “Don’t Wait Too Long,” “This Is All I Ask,” “Just In Time,” and lots of songs that I introduced. On his 1964 album, It Might As Well Be Swing, Frank, Count Basie, and Quincy Jones recorded many more of my songs, “The Best Is Yet to Come,” “I Wanna Be Around,” “The Good Life,” and “Fly Me to the Moon,” and he never called me to ask my permission! Still, when I did Perfectly Frank, everybody wanted to know if I had gotten his approval. He always had this hold on people that was incredible. As Dean Martin once said, “It’s Frank Sinatra’s world. We just live in it.”
In 1993 Phil Ramone invited me to participate in Frank Sinatra Duets, This album consisted of a series of electronically crafted duos by Sinatra and various contemporary pop stars, from Willie Nelson to Julio Iglesias to Bono of U2. The singers came into the studio and sang along with prerecorded Sinatra songs—Frank was never actually in the studio. I was honored when Frank decided he wanted me to sing “New York, New York” with him. It was one of the biggest songs of his entire career.
That same year, 1993, my drummer, Joe LaBarbera, decided to get off the road. I was unhappy about that, since Joe was such a subtle, tasteful drummer; I had learned a lot working with him. Then my bassist, Paul Langosch, left the group. Ralph and I found a new drummer, Clayton Cameron, and a new bassist named Doug Richeson.
Doug, Clayton, and of course Ralph were all on hand for my next project, Steppin’ Out—another tribute, this time to Fred Astaire. By the time we were ready to release it, it looked like it was also going to be a strong contender, and we started thinking about MTV, I told Danny that I thought I could do really well there. The video station was exclusively geared toward young audiences and traditionally broke acts like Madonna and Michael Jackson.
I had Danny pitch Columbia the idea of doing a video, and they understood the potential of it right away I wanted to come up with something sharp and snazzy enough to compete with the other videos on MTV, so we hired video director Marcus Nispel, who’d worked on videos for Janet Jackson that featured a lot of dancing. To continue the idea of a tribute to Fred Astaire, we decided to shoot it in black and white and featured all styles of dance—modern, ballroom, and tap. Like an Astaire number, everything was moving to a beat—even the visual editing was cut on the beat. We were very happy with the finished product, though we had no idea how it was going to go over.
Sometime before I made the video, MTV had enlisted me to film a commercial for the “I Want My MTV” campaign, so I already had some profile at the network. MTV would be holding their annual video music awards in September and they invited me to make an appearance on the awards show. Specifically, they wanted me to be a presenter and “cross dress,” so to speak, with Flea and Anthony of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, In other words, they would dress in tuxedos and I would wear “alternative” style clothing. The idea was pretty out there, but I always like it when people can laugh at themselves. So I agreed to give it a try.
It’s hard to attract attention at the MTV Video Music Awards, but our little bit turned out to be one of the highlights of the whole show. At the reception afterward when kids came up to me, I half expected them to ask, “What are you doing here, Grandpa?” Instead they said, “Hey, that was really cool. What’s your next album, man?” I happened to be walking by a room where the Red Hot Chili Peppers were giving their after-show interview to the Entertainment Tonight news crew, and I stuck my head in the door and said, “Hey! My mom has all your records!” That really cracked them up.
A week later two programmers from MTV called and said, “We have some news for you: We’re going to add ‘Steppin’ Out’ to our Buzz Bin.” Buzz Bin was considered the hippest show on MTV, usually reserved for “cutting edge” rock acts. It was by far the single best place to be in the MTV universe. So “Steppin’ Out” was a bona fide hit. Thanks to MTV, I finally fulfilled my dream of breaking the generation barrier.
But I hadn’t yet performed in front of a rock audience.
WHSF, a rock radio station in Washington, D.C., invited me to perform at their Christmas festival, so I went down to D.C. with the trio. While we were backstage, we could hear the audience cheering, waiting for the show to begin. Danny stood in the wings along with a Columbia rep and everybody crossed their fingers and wished me luck.
I walked out in front of five thousand screaming kids and hit them with “Old Devil Moon,” a favorite opening number. By the time I got to the section where I hold the word “love” for something like thirty-two bars, I had them in my pocket. They were cheering, “Tony! Tony! Tony!” It was pandemonium, one of the most amazing things I’d ever experienced. A couple of days later I did a show on Long Island for the popular rock radio station WDRE. I was on the bill with the groups the Cowboy Junkies, the Teenage Fan Club, and Squeeze, and as I was walking through the backstage area to my dressing room, they were all sitting down to dinner. When they saw me come through, they all stood up and started clapping. I couldn’t believe it! These weren’t just kids in the audience, these were rock musicians, and they were showing me their respect. That really got to me. A lot of the musicians asked me for my autograph, and I ended up sitting down and talking with them for a while before I went on stage. That night was really something else. My acceptance by the young people of today is such a change from what was happening to me in the 1960s. Back then, I was told that I had to change my music in order for the kids to accept me; today I’m encouraged to be myself and the kids will come to me. You can’t imagine how rewarding this is, and how much it affirms what I fought so long and hard for. People sometimes criticize the kids of today, calling them “slackers,” or “Generation-Xers,” but I don’t understand that way of thinking. Kids today are just like kids from any generation: intelligent, open-minded, and excited about life. They don’t want to be pigeon-holed when they listen to music, or anything else—they want to be free to experience everything, and choose for themselves, it was never the kids who asked me to change; it was those people who were interested in telling the kids what they were supposed to like. Well, young people have accepted me all over again, and I couldn’t be happier. I did a series of those Christmas shows all across the country and I got the same response wherever I played.
All this attention encouraged MTV to offer me another opportunity to appear on the network, this time to do MTV Unplugged. Unplugged was a series where rock superstars like Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney appeared in front of live audiences without electric instruments. We taped the show on April 12, 1994. The trio and I really felt the energy in the room, that night. It galvanized us.
As a special surprise I invited a couple of my favorite contemporary performers to sing with me: k. d. lang on “Moon-glow” and Elvis Costello on “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” I consider Elvis to be a very talented songwriter and a dynamic performer. I first worked with him back in 1983 when he and I were both guests on one of Count Basie’s final TV appearances, k. d. lang has a magnificent voice. She thrills me every time I hear her sing, and I really mean it when I describe her as being in the same class with Edith Piaf, Hank Williams, and Billie Holiday.
It was a triumphant evening for me in every respect. We released an album of the evening’s performance, and Tony Bennett: MTV Unplugged became the biggest-selling album of my entire career. It was also the second-most-watched episode in the entire history of MTV Unplugged, In fact, the president of MTV, Judy McGrath, told me recently that the Whitney Museum selected my show out of all of them to be included in their contemporary television and media collection. What a great honor.
In early January 1995, Danny and I were out having breakfast when Sylvia Weiner, my press agent extraordinaire for the last thirteen years, and Fran DeFeo, my publicist at Columbia, called me on my cell phone. They were so excited that I couldn’t understand what they were saying. The Grammy nominations had been announced and Tony Bennett: MTV Unplugged had been nominated for three Grammys, including the coveted “Album of the Year.”
So in February Danny and I were in our seats in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles at the Grammy Awards ceremony, waiting for the winner of the “Album of the Year” to be announced. We told each other before the ceremony that if we didn’t win, wed still consider the night a success. I can’t describe how elated I felt when they opened the envelope and said, “and the winner is... Tony Bennett.” The audience jumped to their feet, and Danny and I gave each other a knowing look that made it clear that we were the only ones who truly knew how much this night meant. I was so proud that I invited Danny to join me on stage. To say it was a personal triumph would be an understatement: it was the culmination of everything I had been working toward for the last fifteen years, and it exemplified everything I had dreamed of accomplishing thirty years before that. It was Incredible. I was at the top of my game at the age of sixty-eight, and it was an honor to be recognized by my peers. What meant the most to me was that I had accomplished all of this without compromising my music. I felt like I had been to the moon and back. As a result, I have finally reached a point where I have total freedom, both economic and artistic, to do whatever I want to do.
But without getting on a soapbox, I want to say that I think that the Grammy victory stands as a positive example of what can be achieved by someone who sticks to his guns, who doesn’t give in to the naysayers. It’s a lesson that all acts should learn: they shouldn’t make the music fit the marketing but the other way around.
I wanted to follow up my salutes to Frank Sinatra and Fred Astaire with a tribute to the great female vocalists who have influenced me so much over the years. Instead of honoring just one great woman singer, I decided to pay tribute to all of them, and the result was Here’s to the Ladies, recorded and released in 1995, and again I won the Grammy for “Best Traditional Pop Album.”
In 1996 I got to make another long-time dream come true. I’d always thought it would be a great idea to do a show in which the audience could call in and request their favorite songs and I’d sing them, live, right there on the spot. I’d been playing around with this idea for years and Danny hooked up with Paul Rappoport at Sony to test it out on radio. On Valentine’s Day 1993, I did a live-request radio broadcast to stations across the U.S. It was a huge success, and I did another live one on Mother’s Day the following year. It was so popular that we decided to bring the show to television. Danny and Paul pitched the show to the Arts & Entertainment Network (A & E) and they loved the concept. Live By Request debuted on A &E on Valentine’s Day 1996. To my delight, that show was nominated for and won an Emmy® Award. It worked so well that A&E decided to continue the format featuring other artists, and I’m proud to say we’re now entering our third year.
I decided to dedicate my next album to the greatest lady of them all, Billie Holiday. It was called Bennett on Holiday, and it was a kind of tribute album that had never been done before. People often focus on the negative aspects of Billie’s short and tragic life, on her sad songs. But I wanted to concentrate on the optimistic side of her legacy. Naturally I didn’t overlook her classic ballads like “Willow Weep for Me,” “Crazy She Calls Me,” and “Good Morning Heartache,” on which Jorge Calandrelli again supplied wonderful string arrangements. But I wanted to put the emphasis on her upbeat songs like “All of Me,” “Laughing at Life,” and “What a Little Moonlight Can Do.” I’ve traveled the world over, and I’ve found that musicians know Billie Holiday’s songs—from Australia to Malaysia, from Singapore to South America. She was truly the Goddess of Style, and she changed music forever.
Bobby Tucker, Billie’s pianist for a few years, was a great help in putting the album together. While we were picking the songs, he mentioned that Billie had once told him that Irene Kitchings’s “Some Other Spring” was her all-time favorite song. When I heard that, I knew I had to include it on the record. The cover shows me standing in front of a large mural of Billie Holiday that I painted on a brick wall. She looks young and beautiful and full of hope, and that’s the way I’ll always remember her. I’m very proud of that album, which also won a Grammy and I hope that Billie is too.
I got to see Billie when she was playing with Duke Ellington at Basin Street East years earlier in New York. She approached me after the show and said, “Come on, lets go uptown and sing together.” I wanted to go, but the people I was with weren’t too keen on the idea and talked me out of it. If I knew then what I know now, what a night of singing that would have been.
One night after I’d made an appearance on the Tonight Show shortly after Bennett on Holiday was released, I got a call from the great silent movie star Gloria Swanson. She lived in Englewood too, although I’d never met her, and she had called out of the blue to tell me how much she enjoyed seeing me on the Carson show. She said, “Whatever you’re doing, just keep doing it like that, because you’ve never looked better.” And then she added, “By the way I was a very good friend of Billie Holiday, and once when we were talking she said, ‘Look out for this boy Tony Bennett, he’s really going somewhere.’ I’d never imagined that Gloria Swanson and Billie Holiday actually talked about me. What a lift that phone call gave me.
Another unexpected compliment came when Danny got a call from Madonna’s press agent in early December 1996, explaining that Billboard wanted to present Madonna with a Lifetime Achievement Award, but that the only way she would appear on the show was if her favorite singer, Tony Bennett, presented the award to her. I was really knocked out. I’ve always admired Madonna. I think she’s a great artist. The way she continuously reinvents herself is amazing, and I was honored that she wanted me there with her when she got such a prestigious award.
I met Madonna in Los Angeles and we flew to Vegas together on her private plane. She was very sweet, but since it was the first time she’d been away from her newborn baby, Lourdes, she was really anxious, so we ended up talking about the baby for most of the flight.
In December 1996 President and Mrs. Clinton invited Danny and me to the White House for a Christmas holiday dinner. Earlier that year I’d had a hernia operation, and as we were pulling up to the White House gate, my hernia ruptured! I told the guard at the gate that I had an emergency, and he rushed me to the president’s private infirmary right there on the White House grounds. I was in the doctor’s office while the festivities were going on upstairs. While the doctor was examining me, the president suddenly appeared and asked me how I was doing. It was an awkward moment to say the least, but he was extremely gracious and quite concerned about my condition. I ended up being rushed from the White House to a nearby hospital, where the president’s surgeon performed emergency surgery I couldn’t have had a better doctor, and everything turned out fine.
Donald Trump heard about my condition and sent his plane to take me from the hospital to his mansion Mar-A Lago, in Palm Beach, where I recovered in luxury. I don’t think anything like that will ever happen to me again.
I recently signed a new contract with Columbia, one that gives me total control over my career. Proving that what goes around comes around, Dee Anthony’s daughter Michele, Danny, and I work closely together. How could I have ever imagined that things would turn out this way? You just never know what’s going to happen. Michele grew up with Danny and Dae, and just like them she learned about the music business from the inside out. She’s had an amazing career. What a pleasure it is to work with someone you love. It’s strange to think that she and Danny used to play together; it always brings a smile to my face.
In my new partnership with Sony I essentially own all my masters from 1950 on, and Columbia can’t reissue anything without first getting my approval, I have total control over all my new albums—the recording as well as all the publicity None of this would mean anything to me if I weren’t singing the music I love. You could offer me all the money in the world and I still wouldn’t sing a crummy song I didn’t care about.
There have been some other changes in my professional life lately. In 1997 Paul Langosch rejoined the trio, replacing Doug Richeson, who recently joined Phil Collins’s big band. That year the trio became a quartet when I added Gray Sargent on guitar. He’s phenomenal. One night I heard him play, and I called Ralph and said, “Wait till you hear this guy! I know you’ll agree with me that he could fit right in with what we’re doing.” He did. Gray is a swinging, graceful player, and he knows when to get funky and when to be delicate. He’s quite an old-movie buff, and he can quote the credits and the dialogue of almost any classic film—quite an entertaining diversion during those long hours on the road.
In the spring of 1998 it occurred to me that it had been four years since I’d had the MTV “breakthrough,” and some of the kids who had been in their twenties in 1994 would now be starting families of their own. I thought It would be cool if I could do a record for their kids. As a parent and a grandparent, I’m always thinking about how important it is to expose young people to the best music and culture that the world has to offer—the earlier the better. That’s when I decided to do an album of children’s songs called The Playground, a title suggested to me by my great friend Professor Freddy Katz. The swinging beat I used on Steppin’ Out helped that album find favor with the MTV generation, who now tell me that their own children are dancing to “Steppin Out with My Baby” This was to be an album that children of all ages could dance to.
Many of the great “rhythm tunes” of the past work great as children’s songs. I didn’t want any jive nursery rhymes on this record, only first-rate songs of the same caliber that I’ve always prided myself on delivering in my “grown-up” albums, like Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s “Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive” and “Swinging on a Star” from Going My Way, and “Just Because We’re Kids.” As a special and personal tribute to my mom and my dad, I recorded “My Mom,” by Walter Donaldson, the song my dad sang to me on our stoop in Astoria.
CODA
My sister, Mary and I were having brunch one Sunday morning at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City and we reminisced about the people in my life who are no longer with us. A lot of great artists have passed on, but I have to say that Frank Sinatra’s death hit me hard. It’s difficult to accurately describe the effect he had on my life. At his funeral in May 1998 it hadn’t really hit me yet that he was gone. It wasn’t until I was flying to Washington, D.C., a few days later that I realized that Frank had really left us and he wasn’t coming back, I accepted an award in Sinatra’s name from the Sons of Italy that had been scheduled months before his death, an honor that I was proud to accept on his behalf. A few nights later I stopped in at Rainbow and Stars in Rockefeller Center to pay my respects to Rosemary Clooney. She was celebrating her seventieth birthday that night, and she introduced me to the crowd by saying that with Frank gone, “the torch has now been passed on” to me. I was flattered, but no one will ever replace the Chairman of the Board. He was my best friend and I was his.
Lately I’ve been enjoying my life more than I have in years. I turned seventy-two last August, but I still love going on the road—I’m booked straight through the year 2000! I’ve never wanted to live extravagantly never wanted to own yachts or fancy cars, and most of my life I’ve lived simply. The one luxury I’ve afforded myself is a lovely apartment on Central Park South. The view is spectacular, a painters dream, and I spend a lot of time in front of my window. I’m looking forward to doing more painting in the future. It brings me an enormous amount of pleasure, and I’m thrilled to say that my paintings have been accepted as serious art by critics and fans alike. Rizzoli published a collection of my paintings called Tony Bennett: What My Heart Has Seen, in 1996. The publication of What My Heart Has Seen, is one of the proudest accomplishments of my entire career.
These days, I spend as much time with Susan and my dog, Boo, as I can, as well as with my family—something I rarely had the luxury to do earlier in my career when I was struggling to make things work. Mary is doing fine, and she has remained the wonderful lady she has always been throughout my entire life. Sadly her husband, Tom Chiappa, passed away a few years ago, and he is sorely missed by the entire family John continues to be my good friend and champion, and my children and grandchildren bring me great joy.
Daegal is a musical engineer and producer. He’s doing a great job running Hillside Sound Studio in Englewood, producing platinum records for great artists. His two boys, Austin and Jared, are wonderful kids. Danny’s daughter Kelsey is studying guitar and voice, and coincidentally wound up taking lessons from Maurice Finnell, one of the same teachers I had more than fifty years ago. She, like her father, started her first musical group before she reached the age of thirteen. Her sister, Rémy is studying acting at the Actors’ Studio in New York City, I can’t wait to watch my grandkids grow up.
My daughter Joanna is acting and working as a decorative art designer in New York City and doing beautiful work. Antonia recently graduated from the Berklee School of Music and is getting started as a jazz singer. She’s really got it.
My mother once told me that my children would bring me the greatest pleasure I would ever know in my life, and, as usual, she was right. They are all magnificent people.
After writing this book and taking it all in, I realized two things: I can’t ask for more out of life, and the more I learn the less I know. But believe me, I have plans. Life’s been good to me. I’ve been blessed to be able to do the two things I love best—sing and paint. The love and appreciation I receive from, the public has kept me going for the last fifty years, and if I’m lucky I’ll keep going for another fifty.