Word: sinatras
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...That was Sinatra, then, now and ever: how he took and what he gave...
...week at 82, it was lingering, pernicious, sad. He last performed live in the winter of 1995, but he was unsteady on his feet, and lyrics he'd known for years eluded him. His last original recorded tunes were the studio stunts of the two Duets albums, in which Sinatra revisited some of his classic songs in the company of spryer admirers, from Streisand to Bono...
...80th-birthday celebration was televised. His wife Barbara stayed close. Friends and luminaries from across the generations paid their respects. Bruce Springsteen showed up, singing Angel Eyes as one Jersey boy to another. Bob Dylan performed his own song, Restless Farewell, and said, looking down from the stage at Sinatra, "Happy birthday, Mr. Frank." It was homage of a high order. The room was heavy with talent that night, but Sinatra contented himself with showing his appreciation by applauding them all. Not so many years before, he would have led them. Showed them all how the Chairman does...
That was a bit of a disappointment. A last triumph, a standoff against encroaching fate, would have crowned the evening and rounded memory with a perfect dramatic closure. Too much to expect perhaps, but in a sense that was Sinatra's own fault. Too much, he had always shown us, was the least we could expect from him. Not as excess, mind, but as abundance. So much heart, so much sorrow, such delicacy and such braggadocio, all for the music he made indelible, with enough to spare so that it spilled over into his life and into all the public...
...Sinatra lived the music at every tempo, the sad soul of it as well as the brash, brassy swing. Or maybe his need to graft his life onto every song he sang was an unintended effect of his artistry, a scramble to find personal corollaries for every melody he molded, every lyric he bent to his own will and purpose...