Why Sinatra Matters

Copyright © 1998 by Deidre Enterprises, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including
information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may
quote brief passages in a review.

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10017

Visit our Web site at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
.

Little Brown and Company and the logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group

First eBook Edition: February 2009

Photo Credits: Archive Photos: endpapers, page 90; Dennis Stock/Magnum Photos Inc.: page ii; Penguin/Corbis Bettmann, page
34; Personality Photos, page 66; UPI/Corbis Bettmann, page 124; Sid Avery/Motion Picture and Television Photo Archive, page
154

ISBN: 978-0-316-06954-0

Contents

Copyright Page

OVERTURE

1: IN THE WEE SMALL HOURS

2: WRAP YOUR TROUBLES IN DREAMS

3: LONELY TOWN

4: THE SONG IS YOU

5: I’M A FOOL TO WANT YOU

6: ALL OF ME

THE BACK OF THIS BOOK

“A snazzy ode to ‘Ole Blue Eyes.’”

—
People

“Compelling reading for anyone with a feeling for the late singer.”

—Adam Woog,
Seattle Times

“An engrossing book … sharply evocative.”

—Don Freeman,
San Diego Union-Tribune

“Hamill conveys moments with memories so vivid that you can smell the smoke and taste the bourbon.”

—Vicki L. Friedman,
Virginian-Pilot

“This is a beautiful thing, an admiring rumination on Sinatra the man, the persona, and the towering talent. … An absolutely
terrific work.”

—Liz Smith,
Newsday

“Hamill’s illuminations are considerable. … Any Sinatra fan hungry for a fresh take will eat up
Why Sinatra Matters
.”

—Dan DeLuca,
Philadelphia Inquirer

“Even if you think you know why Sinatra matters, this slim biographical essay proves the most intimate and thoughtful eulogy
for ‘the Voice’ yet. … Hamill’s concise, eloquent musings leave you wanting not to read a full-blown biography but to listen
again to Sinatra’s best songs.”

—Megan Harlan,
Entertainment Weekly

“What a perfect match: the world’s greatest ‘saloon singer’ eulogized superbly by the author of
A Drinking Life . … Why Sinatra Matters
belongs in any collection of important books on American popular music of the 20th century.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“The only thing wrong with this brief but penetrating essay is that it is far too short.”

—Terry Teachout,
New York Times Book Review

T
HIS BOOK IS FOR
E
STHER
N
EWBERG

She can make the rain go

ALSO BY PETE HAMILL

Novels

A K
ILLING FOR
C
HRIST

T
HE
G
IFT

D
IRTY
L
AUNDRY

F
LESH AND
B
LOOD

T
HE
D
EADLY
P
IECE

T
HE
G
UNS OF
H
EAVEN

L
OVING
W
OMEN

S
NOW IN
A
UGUST

Short Story Collections

T
HE
I
NVISIBLE
C
ITY

T
OKYO
S
KETCHES

Journalism

I
RRATIONAL
R
AVINGS

P
IECEWORK

N
EWS
I
S A
V
ERB

Memoir

A D
RINKING
L
IFE

W
HEN
F
RANK
S
INATRA
died on the evening of May 14, 1998, the news made the front pages of newspapers all over the world. Many ran extra editions
and followed with special supplements. There was little sense of shock; he had been a long time dying. He had also been a
long time living, and so the obituaries were full of his life and times.

It was mandatory to chronicle his wins and losses, his four marriages, his battles, verbal and physical, with reporters and
photographers. His romances required many inches of type. There were accounts of his fierce temper, his brutalities, his drunken
cruelties. Some described him as a thug or a monster, whose behavior was redeemed only by his talent. We read brief charts
of his political odyssey from left to right. The shadow cast upon him by the Mob was also an inevitable part of the stories.
And there were tales of his personal generosity to friends and strangers and the millions of dollars he had raised for charities.
He was clearly a complicated man.

“Being an eighteen-karat manic depressive,” he was quoted in many of the obituaries, “and having lived a life of violent emotional
contradictions, I have perhaps an overacute capacity for sadness and elation.”

But much of the language of farewell had a stale, even hollow quality, probably because most of the obituaries had been ready
for too many months. Sinatra had been a virtual recluse since 1995, making only rare public appearances. Over the previous
year he had been in and out of hospitals. There were reports from California that he had suffered several heart attacks and,
with the possible onset of Alzheimer’s, had difficulty recognizing even old friends. Across those final months there was little
hard news about his condition; his children insisted he was fine, although cranky and cantankerous, and so the vacuum was
filled with rumor and supposition. The truth was probably a simple one. Frank Sinatra, after a life in which too many cigarettes
and too much whiskey were part of the deal, was old; and as happens to all of us when we grow old, the parts just broke down.
He had abused his body in a way that was special to his generation of American men; that he had survived until eighty-two
was itself a kind of triumph over the odds.

There were some peculiar components to the television coverage. Most of it was narrated by people from a much younger generation;
as they mouthed words about loss and farewell, the tone had an odd insincerity – they could have been discussing someone from
the nineteenth century. They were also prisoners of existing visual images. We saw Sinatra at different ages: a very young
Sinatra in bow tie and padded shoulders when he was The Voice; a drawn, emaciated Sinatra, flaring at photographers or wearing
a thin, pimplike mustache, during his time with Ava Gardner; Sinatra as Maggio in
From Here to Eternity
and a grinning Sinatra receiving his Academy Award afterward; clips from his television shows, including a bizarre image
of Sinatra standing on two chairs, one foot on each, while singing “I’ve Got the World on a String”; Sinatra with the Rat
Pack, horsing around on the stages of Las Vegas; Sinatra with various presidents, from Roosevelt to Reagan; and, of course,
endless versions of “My Way.”

It was difficult, reading and watching all of this, to remember why Sinatra mattered to so many people, and why he will continue
to matter in the years ahead. The radio did a much better job than print or television, because on radio we heard the music.
Not abrupt fragments of songs, not clipped, impatient digests. Late at night, driving through a great city, moving on the
dark streets of New York or Paris, Tokyo or London, you could connect more directly to what truly mattered: the music.

The music was the engine of the life. If there had been no music, there would have been no immense obituaries and no televised
farewells. To be sure, Sinatra was one of those figures whose art is often overshadowed by the life. In the end, it is of
minor interest that Lord Byron swam the Hellespont, that André Malraux flew in combat during the Spanish Civil War, or that
Ernest Hemingway shot lions in Africa. In the end, only the work matters. Sinatra’s finest work was making music.

Sinatra, however, did matter in other ways. He wasn’t simply an entertainer from a specific time and place in American life
who lived on as a kind of musty artifact. Through a combination of artistic originality, great passion, and immense will,
he transcended several eras and indirectly helped change the way all of us lived. He was formed by an America that is long
gone: the country of the European immigrants and the virulent America-for-Americans nativism that was directed at them; the
country in which a mindless Puritanism, allied with that scapegoating nativism, imposed Prohibition upon the land and helped
create the Mob; a country undergoing a vast transformation from a fundamentally rural society to one dominated by cities;
a country that passed through Depression and war into the uncertain realities of peace. They were extraordinary times, and
in his own way, driven by his own confusions, neuroses, angers, and ambitions, Frank Sinatra helped push the country forward.

This book is about the accomplishments of Frank Sinatra and why he matters. Some of it is personal, because for a while, I
was friendly with Sinatra, talked with him in saloons, in Las Vegas, even for a few days one year in Monte Carlo. At one point
he wanted me to write his autobiography; it never happened, for reasons that are no longer important. But in the course of
discussing his life, he talked about himself in ways that still had an element of wonder to them; part of him still could
not believe that he had become the legend he was. To be sure, we were not friends in any conventional way; I did not visit
his home and he did not visit mine. Only a very few intimate friends ever had such access, and I was certainly not one of
them. But I liked him enormously.

He was wonderful with children, including my two daughters. He was funny. He was vulnerable. I never saw the snarling bully
of the legend. That Frank Sinatra certainly existed; on the day that his death made all those front pages, there were too
many people who remembered only his cruelties. But he never showed that side of himself when I was around. On those nights,
I was in the company of an intelligent man, a reader of books, a lover of painting and classical music and sports, gallant
with women, graceful with men. Perhaps he was just donning a mask in my company, presenting images to a writer so that they
would be remembered by the writer in a certain way: a kind of performance. Or perhaps the snarling bully was the true masked
character, a clumsy personal invention, and behind the mask there was simply a young man afraid of the world. Or perhaps,
by the time I knew him, he had just grown out of his angers, exhausted them, and settled for what he was and the way he was
regarded. I don’t know. Like all great artists, Frank Sinatra contained secret places, abiding personal mysteries, endless
contradictions. On occasion, a curtain would part, there would be a moment of epiphany, and I could see the uncertain older
man who wanted to understand what it all meant, the man who said that dying was a pain in the ass. I liked that man very much.

This book does not pretend to be the final word on Frank Sinatra. Several full-scale biographies have already been written,
each with its attendant excellencies; more are sure to follow. But there were aspects of this man that should be remembered
and honored. In Sinatra’s time, his fame as a singer spread from his own country to the world. His turbulent personality,
often shadowed by notoriety, seemed inseparable from the style and originality of his art and gave him an essential place
on the public stage of the American century. Now Sinatra is gone, taking with him all his anger, cruelty, generosity, and
personal style. The music remains. In times to come, that music will continue to matter, whatever happens to our evolving
popular culture. The world of my grandchildren will not listen to Sinatra in the way four generations of Americans have listened
to him. But high art always survives. Long after his death, Charlie Parker still plays his version of the urban blues. Billie
Holiday still whispers her anguish. Mozart still erupts in joy. Every day, in cities and towns all over the planet, someone
discovers them for the first time and finds in their art that mysterious quality that makes the listener more human. In their
work all great artists help transcend the solitude of individuals; they relieve the ache of loneliness; they supply a partial
response to the urging of writer E. M. Forster: “Only connect.” In their ultimate triumph over the banality of death, such
artists continue to matter. So will Frank Sinatra.