B009HOTHPE EBOK (49 page)

People aren’t aware of the business I run. You have to be aware. You gotta be sharp. I keep my eyes wide open. I sign every check myself, every contract. My focus all my life has been a decision to keep my eye on the ball and to continue doing what I’m doing to feed that hunger, that desire, that ongoing gut sense that I’ve always had, never to resign myself, to get complacent. I haven’t put my flag on the mountaintop yet.

One of the secrets to having a long-running career is living a preventative lifestyle. I eat well. I drink a little wine, maybe a glass of brandy. I exercise regularly, mostly cardiovascular workouts, weights, and the occasional yoga routine. I consume huge amounts of an eclectic array of vegetables and fruit that have antioxidant value and serve me well in this preventative lifestyle. I drink a lot of tea (especially green tea), water, and certain juices. I saw my friend Sammy Davis Jr. slowly kill himself from abuse and I wasn’t going to follow him down that path.

You have to be fit to go onstage, because in a sense you’re like an athlete. You take the average player in a football game—it’s fourteen minutes of action out of a three-hour game. I’m up there for two hours with high intensity. I’ve been around guys that shot up heroin. I hung around with the Rat Pack and saw what too much drink does to you and too much coke. I saw Sammy Davis die. Even around Sinatra and those guys, I never went over the line in terms of that line we all walk in life. I never went too far left or too far right from the center line we all walk in life.

But no matter who you are and what you’ve done, I’ve seen it, I’ve done it. Curiosity has always been a driving force in my life. I’ve been on drug raids with New York cops and other crazy adventures just because I wanted to find out what it was. Like trying out my nerves on the flying trapeze. My manager Irv Feld became the owner of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus after we parted—he was always mad about the circus and so was I. I would say, “One day Irv, I want to go up on that high wire. I want to do that and fly around up there like those guys.” He always discouraged me, but then one day I talked him into it. He took me down there with one of those acrobat families, the Flying Wallendas. They dressed me up in the gear and I went up the ladder—up, up, up until I was way up there at the top of Madison Square Garden. Way below me is the net. They walked me through the whole thing. I was up there flying and catching and swinging and dropping. I don’t have a fear of heights—but still! Let me tell you, that was a pretty scary dive falling into a little net, forty feet below, but I was curious and wanted that first hand experience.

I have made 123 albums in English, Spanish, German, Italian. Every time I walk into the audience—when I am performing—is truly when I feel feedback of how I have affected people’s lives. It is there that I feel what they sincerely give back to me. I am one lucky guy. You become a different person when you are onstage, because you are in an altered state. All the stuff that swirls around you during the day that can get aggravating—the phones, contracts, the business—vanishes. The moment you get up on stage that’s what it’s all about. There are no more phones, no more intrusion. It’s all about that moment you’re in—this love fest with these people in front of you. You can’t flinch. You can’t miss a step because they will sense it. It’s like animals with meat. It’s all so intense you can only focus on that. You’re totally
there.
You’ve forgotten everything else; you can’t
think
of anything else. You’re only dealing in this incredible state of being.

The orchestra is motivating you into another dimension, you’re now into the mathematical structure of every beat per bar, and every word that needs to go into that beat, every thought process is tuned in to act out what you’re singing about. You’re locked in there. There is nothing like it. It’s almost like landing that aircraft. You’re getting down to 120 miles per hour as you hit the runway. Your whole focus is in that instant. You’ve turned into another person, really. You’re an actor—singers are actors and as such you have to control everything around you. That band is feeding off of you. You’re dressed differently. You’re thinking differently, you’re acting differently, you’re feeling differently. What you’re feeling is unlike anything you’ve done all day. You’re dealing with the
unknown
—every minute you have to be improvising in response to whatever might happen. You’re dealing with a look on the face of someone in the audience, a fan who rushes on stage and grabs you. There is nothing else that you do in your life that compares to that because of the nature of what it is. It’s art and drama fused—with the music, the swelling rhythms of the band and the intimate lyrics, it’s as if you have actually injected yourself into the audience’s head.

I feel I have to capture the audience in the first ten minutes of each concert. The second I walk out onstage and all my vibes are open to getting a sense of what’s happening in this particular space with these particular people on this particular evening. I always go out and perform like it’s my first time. I’ve never thrown a show—I couldn’t if I tried. I’m hooked, working the only way I know. If you do enough bad shows, you’re out of business. Some nights you wonder how you’re to go on, but the magic of what that is and the music and all of that turns you right on. It’s the strangest thing. It’s the next best thing to sex, maybe because whatever all those buttons are that get pushed that make it good, are the same. When I get up there, I don’t want to just be good, I want to be
great
. It’s a very odd occupation if you even want to call it that, because it isn’t even work.

If you bomb, you have to learn from that. You have to make a decision and a choice to say, “I am still going to get them. I am going to do the best that I can here and get through this without blowing my cool or letting it get to me.” I got through it.

Performing has never been traumatic for me. I never ran away or tried to escape or do anything to cover up my fright. I didn’t need to be juiced out. I’ve tried marijuana, coke—I’ve tried everything, just tried, but I never went onstage in any kind of out-of-it condition. Performing was never a problem for me. I rather enjoyed it; even in the very beginning, I looked forward to it actually, from childhood on. I get a pulse the second I walk out on stage and all my vibes are open. I get so excited I can feel my nipples—and I didn’t even know I had nipples!

As casual as Dean Martin appeared, I guarantee you there were nights that he would go onstage and he was scared. Annette Funicello was afraid of going onstage. On the other extreme, some people get a little
too
relaxed. When I was at Caesars Palace, I gave the Pointer Sisters and Freddie Prinze both a chance to open for me. They were so whacked out on coke and everything else, they couldn’t finish the second night. The entertainment director Sid Gathrid at Caesars Palace, had to fire them and remove them from my show. They wanted them out of town and out of the building. A very sad commentary when you see such young talent with great potential.

I went whenever I could to watch Sinatra and the others. I saw that loose, carefree style of showmanship and that stuck with me. I realized it’s one thing to just go out and sing and another to really entertain people.

Men and women are different. If a relationship is going to work, you have to first be friends, and as long as you have a friendship and an understanding along with the love you’re going to be okay. When that goes you are just rolling the dice. In Austria back in the 1700s, somebody made disparaging remarks about the mistress of the king and there was an eighteen-year war over it! So you look at the power of that little piece of real estate—it’s amazing—whether it’s Eliott Spitzer to Tiger Woods or Jesse James, Sandra Bullock’s ex-husband. That was a sweet trick with the king of Austria. That was one has always
amazed
me. And you know what, it’s never gonna change. It ultimately becomes an ego thing: guys get to certain age and they want to keep up with the pack and make sure they’re still vital, and their ego comes into play and they want to make sure they can still do it, and then they find out after the first honeymoon this isn’t the ultimate sexual trip they thought it would be. Which leads us to the crude philosophy that’s out there. Successful guys in today’s world who’ve got all the money, all the position, they’ve got all the toys, they’ve got this and that—now what’s really left? Women. A lot of guys I knew in the business, right down to Bob Hope, used to have women stashed all over the place, got a massage every day, and visited a girlfriend whenever he could. Ahhhh, life! It’s amazing, isn’t it? Wonderful.
Wonderful.
Just hang on tight! It’s going to be a hell of a ride.

Sometimes a fan will get
too
excited and do crazy stuff. This happened to me once up at Grossinger’s in the Catskills when it was Ladies Night Only. I was walking through the tables, doing “Put Your Head on My Shoulder,” and looking for someone to act out the little scene with me. The tables were tightly packed together and as I squeezed past a woman at a crowded table she suddenly grabbed me by my cock—and wouldn’t let go. I swear my voice was getting higher, and I am eyeing her as fiercely as I can, and trying to keep it going—but for her this is not a catch-and-release situation apparently. Then I figure, what if I pretend to go with it? I open my arms as if to embrace her, she loosens her grip, and I move away.

I’m very fond of older women, meaning women of a certain age—mine. I’ll tell you how I once did a bunch of old girls a really good deed. It is always a great feeling when you can help someone. Make a difference and give something back and put your celebrity to use.

When I moved to Vegas in the early ’70s, It was way off the strip and at the end of town. So here was this huge golf course and one hotel across the street, the Tropicana. Steve Wynn was my neighbor three doors down when I first moved there. There were only eight homes on this private driveway that paralleled Tropicana Avenue. There wasn’t really that much action up at our end of town, which was fine with me. I had my recording studio, I was enjoying being there; it was quiet and peaceful. A few years go by, then one day I get a call from a Chinese real estate developer. “Hi, Mr. Anka, are you interested in selling your house?” I said, “What? No, I’m not interested, my house and property are not for sale.” He kept persisting. Every two or three weeks he’d call and I’d say, “It’s still not for sale, go somewhere else.”

One day I am speaking to my friend and then-agent Mort Viner, Dean Martin’s agent at ICM, and for some reason we started talking about Kirk Kerkorian. We marveled at the fact that he played tennis at least four days a week at his age and how he kept Mort running around the tennis court. He went on to say what a smart guy Kirk was. I said, “Yeah, I love Kirk, I go way back to the fifties with him.” Then he says, “Ya know, he’s quietly buying up the properties surrounding the Tropicana Golf Course. He’s got this Chinese guy buying all that real estate over there for him and they’re going to put up this huge MGM Hotel right on the strip there.” A little bell goes off in my head. Kirk buys the golf course for about thirty-some million but they also need these homes, specifically mine because there’s no access unless they have my property and the rest of the houses. Steve had moved by then but the rest of the houses were owned by elderly widowers.

They start coming at us to buy our properties and they go after the women but, of course, they lowball them, trying to get everybody out for like $120,000 a shot. I got all these women together and I said, “Now look, you all be careful, because they are trying to lowball this away from you, ’cause if you sell and after taxes and everything else, where are you going to move to? Just contact me every time you get a call, because we got to fight this out.”

In the early ’90s, I get into a tug-of-war battle with the MGM Corporation about this land, and all of the sudden I start hearing from Kirk. He comes to my shows at the Desert Inn—which coincidently, he owned. He came backstage—“How have you been?”

After we get past the small talk, I said, “Kirk, where are these women going to go? Why are you trying to lowball these homes—our properties—from us? We are not trying to hold you up; we just want what is fair.” He replies, “Oh, well, you know…”

Anyway, it starts to get real wild. It is all over television, newspapers, etc. Nothing is getting resolved. It gets down to where we are going to court and let a judge decide. What they did was get the properties classified as eminent domain. Our properties are now classified as commercial properties but the eminent domain card is suspect because there was no substance for the property’s usage—other than maybe a bus stop. I informed them that since our properties are now put in a commercial category, that I could have In-N-Out Burger putting up a sign on my property, and Steve Wynn, who I called, was prepared to put up a Siegfried and Roy sign. The MGM executives were not pleased.

The irony of the story is that when my children were growing up in Vegas and going to school, Anne and I would take them, when they needed shoes, to the Becker family shoe store. Our children knew the Becker children, as they went to school with them. We had a very warm and ongoing relationship with the Becker family. In the ensuing years, the father passed away and we, of course, embraced them in their loss and continued to frequent their establishment. Time goes by, as it does, and as we reach a stalemate with the MGM Corporation, we have no choice but to go to court. Lo and behold we go before the judge. Guess what? Mr. Becker’s little daughter, whom we knew well, has now grown up to become one of the most prominent judges in the Las Vegas County.

She looks at the case and says to the MGM lawyers, “I know what you guys are up to and you are not going to do this. I know Mr. Anka, his reputation, and the type of man that he is. More importantly, I want resolution to this case.” She shuts them down. We all received a fair amount of money, especially what I asked for the women, who after taxes, were now able to move and live in the style they were accustomed to—for what little life they all had left. Everything turned out fair, as opposed to the big corporation screwing everyone. Subsequently, Kirk and I have remained friends and live to chuckle about it.