The Good Life (29 page)

In the late sixties, a new pop star’s career lasted about a year and a half; as soon as he started slipping, the label would drop him and move on to the next guy. It got to be like a supermarket. I called those kind of artists “overdogs” because they were so heavily promoted they couldn’t lose. It didn’t matter whether or not they had talent or how long they lasted; they were forced down the public’s throats.

After much disagreement, Clive Davis convinced me to do the kind of record he wanted. The album was called Tony
Sings the Great Hits of Today
, a collection of contemporary cover tunes. I started planning the record by listening to as many current hits as I could stand. I mean, some of these songs made me physically ill. Even Clive Davis says in his book that I became so nauseous before the first recording session that I literally threw up.

Wally Gold was the producer, and the poor guy was in the difficult position of having to serve as a buffer between me and the company. These songs just weren’t my style. The only good thing to come out of that project was that we hired the great orchestrator Peter Matz. He was perfect for the job.

Clive made sure to promote
Great Hits
so well that it sold more than my other recent albums had. I thought it was pretty corny because first he got me to do it his way, and then he printed up more copies of that album to make it look like the public was demanding it. Give me a break!

It wasn’t long before he wanted a follow-up, But there was no way I would go through another
Great Hits of Today
session—I just couldn’t do it. Instead I took the George Harrison song “Something” and made it the title song on my next album.

Peter once again did the orchestrations for
Something
, and this time everything turned out right. All twelve songs were my kind of contemporary songs, the best the times had to offer.

I ended the
Something
album with Louis Armstrong’s last hit, “What a Wonderful World.” Instead of just covering the song, I made it into a tribute to him, ending the song by imitating him: “Yeah, Louis Armstrong was right. It’s a wonderful world.” The album was released in October 1970. For the cover, I chose a shot of me cradling infant Joanna in my arms. It’s the best album cover I ever saw.

At the end of 1971 my divorce with Patricia became final. For all practical purposes my relationship with Patricia had been over for years, since that lonely Christmas in 1965. Patricia and the boys stayed in the house in Englewood, and as hard as it was to accept, I was determined to stay involved with my boys, and though at times it was tough to work everything out, I didn’t disappear from their lives.

While the pressure at the label continued to mount, I hired Derek Boulton, an Englishman, as my manager. Derek was also Bob Farnon’s manager; we’d met when I was working with Bob and we hit it off right away. We both agreed that it was time for me to put the “two shows a night” phase of my career behind me. I’d been doing nightclubs for twenty years. It was
time to graduate to venues like Carnegie Hall, the Palladium, Royal Festival Hall, and Royal Albert Hall. When I worked in Vegas, the rooms were the size of concert halls, and I’d been gradually expanding my stage show so by this time I was using a thirty-two piece orchestra. I was also showing back-projection film clips during my performances, like scenes from the city of San Francisco, or scenes from Chaplin’s film
City Lights
when I performed “Smile.” Mr. Chaplin was so impressed with my version of “Smile” that he mailed me the last ten minutes of his film
Modern Times
, in which Chaplin gives a flower to Paulette Goddard and walks down the road into the sunset.

The old-time clubs like the Copa and Chez Paree were on their way out anyhow, since by the late sixties all the action had moved to Vegas. I was happy with my decision to stop playing the small nightclubs, and on Saturday, October 9, 1971, I gave a concert at Carnegie Hall. I was working with Bob Farnon, who conducted the fifty-piece orchestra and included some of his original compositions as well as his imaginative orchestrations of other works, like his wonderful suite based on Gershwin’s
Porgy and Bess
.

The first half of the show went great, but by my second or third number of the second half, I could see that the audience was getting up and leaving. Then I noticed a funny smell in the air. At first we thought it must be a fire, but eventually we figured out that somebody had sabotaged the concert by putting a stink bomb into the ventilation system.

Once we knew there was no fire, everybody calmed down. It was a warm autumn night, so the audience went outside while the Carnegie management cleared the air. After ten minutes everybody came back for the rest of the show—not one person gave up and went home. The great opera singer Richard Tucker was in the audience that night and came back
stage and encouraged me to relax. His talk inspired me to come back out and sing my heart out! To this day I don’t know who it was that tried to break up my concert with a stink bomb, although I figured it was one of “the boys” trying to put a scare into me: it didn’t work.

Things were pretty much still at an impasse with Columbia, even after the release of
Great Hits of Today
and
Something
. We were soon embroiled in another disagreement, this one because of my longtime friendship with composer Alec Wilder.

Alec wrote “serious” concert pieces, mainly for chamber groups. I especially loved his song “While We Were Young.” He was a great wit, and a fixture on both the jazz and cabaret scenes and I’d met him in the early fifties. I had been doing his songs ever since.

In the late sixties, I introduced Alec to friends of mine in England, Ken and Renee Gordan, whose young son liked to write poetry. Alec was so taken with the boy’s poems that he decided to set them to music. The Vietnam War was on everybody’s mind back then, and the boy’s poems addressed the war from a child’s point of view: why he didn’t want his father to go into battle, why war was bad for children. Alec’s idea was to compose an octet around this boy’s recitation of his poems. He eventually included other children’s poems, and by the time he finished
The Children’s Plea for Peace
it had music for a full orchestra, a children’s chorus, and a narrator.

I was determined to record it. I wanted the part of the narrator, and Alec planned to compose some pieces for me to sing as well. He was thrilled that I wanted to do it. But when I brought the idea to Columbia, they immediately decided the piece was too controversial and too uncommercial—without ever hearing it. So I had to explain to Alec that Columbia just wouldn’t go for it, and he never quite forgave me for not getting
that composition recorded. He later wrote about his life and criticized his closest friends: Whitney Balliet, Marian McPartland, and yours truly, and he let me have it in print for not coming through on
The Children’s Plea for Peace
.

But I had fought like crazy to record
Plea for Peace
. I fought, and I kept on fighting. I stormed out of the studio one day after an argument with Clive and his cronies, and on my way out I heard one of them say, “We gotta get rid of that wop!” The proverbial straw broke the camel’s back: I went to Columbia brass and said, “I want out. I don’t want to play this game anymore. I don’t want to make the records that sell the most, I want to sell the most records that are the best I can make. The public deserves it.”

After some long and loud negotiations we finally worked out a deal we both could live with. I was to give them two more albums, which I’d produce myself, and that would fulfill my contractual obligation to them. I decided to do both of these projects with Bob Farnon, and the first album would be live.

The Royal Albert Hall was celebrating its one hundredth anniversary in 1971, and Derek arranged for Bob and me to perform at one of the special concerts being given to commemorate the centenary. The London Philharmonic Orchestra was featured, and I supplemented them with fifteen of the best jazz musicians we could find in London, like the fabulous drummer Kenny Clare. The program included a lot of my big numbers, as well as some standards.

It was a sold-out concert, and one of the most exciting nights I’ve ever enjoyed in show business. The audience went wild; it sounded like all of Britain was there. We made arrangements for the BBC to videotape the concert, directed by Yvonne Littlewood, and Derek worked out a deal for NBC to broadcast it in the United States. It got top ratings. When it came time to design the album cover, I chose my boyhood
friend Rudy DeHarak. His design was based on a black-and-white image of me taken off the TV screen. It was great.

On November 15, 1971, I had my final recording session for Columbia Records. It consisted of a single song, “The Summer Knows,” the theme from
Summer of ‘42
by Michel Legrand and Alan and Marilyn Bergman. It was a fine song, and after twenty-two years it was an appropriate way to conclude a long relationship. Sandra and I were finally married in December of 1971. I was relieved because I really wanted the three of us to become a family. I had to believe that everything in both my personal and professional lives was going to work out for the best.

I left Columbia Records voluntarily because I wanted to create a catalogue that would be a legacy for my fans. I wanted to make records that would stand the test of time. I’m not concerned about the criticisms of the pencil pushers at the record company; the public is my only critic. I go by their reaction, and if their reaction to my live performances was any indication of how they felt, then I was doing something right. My goal was to become the consummate concert performer.

I looked around for another record company. My manager Derek Boulton worked out a deal for me with Mike Curb, head of A&R in the American division of Polygram Records. They offered me more than Columbia had, and promised that the rights to the masters of my albums would eventually revert back to me. According to the terms of the new contract, my albums would be released on the Philips label in England, and on MGM/Verve in America.