Tony Bennett
By Mitch Albom
Published: July 30, 2006
A woman steps up to
the table at an Italian restaurant. She is elderly, but as she smiles
at Tony Bennett, her eyes widen like a teenager's. "I heard you
perform once in a place near here after the war. Oh, you sang wonderfully.
I was with a fella that night." She blushes. "I don't remember
the fella anymore. But I remember you."
You want to know why Tony Bennett endures? You don't forget him once
you've heard him-whether it was in a local hall in the 1940s, on
a big stage with Count Basie in the 1960s or on MTV in the 1990s. It
is not just the velvet punch of his unique voice or the impeccable swing
that seems to be part of his breathing-it is the joy that Bennett
brings to every performance, the sense that you are witnessing someone
madly in love with his art and his audience.
There's a wonderful story that Bennett tells about his father, Giovanni
(John) Benedetto. As a child in the Calabria region of Italy, Giovanni
had such a lovely singing voice that he would climb the nearby mountain
and sing to the village below.
These days, as he nears his 80th birthday, Tony Bennett is continuing
his father's legacy. Only he's not singing to a village. He's
singing to the world. Bennett, after nearly 60 years of break-your-heart-
beautiful music, is as passionate about his craft as when he started.
To spend a day with him, as we did recently in New York, is to witness
an artist walking through his own mural, amazed and delighted at the
colors of his life.
What makes Tony Bennett so…satisfied?
Reason No. 1: He loves what he does.
"It's funny," he says, sitting by a window overlooking Central
Park in his spacious Manhattan apartment, a view he often paints. "When
I was 14, I would put on a pair of roller skates and skate all day,
you know? All over Queens. Sometimes over the bridge, up into Harlem
and back. I loved it. I was content.
"And, strangely enough, at my age right now, I feel like I'm on
those skates again. A certain contentment has settled over me."
One is tempted to say that contentment is easy when you've sold more
than 50 million albums worldwide, had your artwork hang in the Smithsonian,
performed for nine Presidents and the Queen of England, and been honored
by the Grammy Awards, the Kennedy Center and the United Nations.
But many a public hero has been privately miserable. Bennett's warm,
crinkling eyes, boyish smile and relaxed conversation suggest a man
who is truly, deeply at peace.
Reason No. 2: He is not a "things" person. "I don't own a car
or a boat," says Bennett. "I don't own a house. [His apartment
is rented.] I'm on a perpetual vacation. I stay in a perpetual creative
zone at all times. I'll go to Hawaii, and I'll meet some Americans
on the beach, and they'll say, ‘Isn't this beautiful? But what
do we do around here?' For me, I'm in Hawaii, but I'm singing.
I don't need a break. I'm already doing what I really want to do."
Reason No. 3: He has held firm to his ideals. Bennett, who began his
music career after serving in Europe during World War II, dreamed only
of honoring the great American songbook with tasteful performances.
This brought him great success in the 1950s but caused heartache by
the '60s, when rock 'n' roll was the rage. "It wasn't me.
It was a major, major change. The record company said, ‘Well, you
gotta do it.' They started threatening."
Bennett got pushed into recording an album called Tony Sings the
Great Hits of Today! with ill-fitting tunes such as "Eleanor Rigby."
It so bothered him that he got physically sick while making it. "To
this day, if I had my druthers, I would take it out of my catalog."
Refusing to go that route again eventually cost him a record label.
But he held to his artistic beliefs. After a dry spell in the 1970s
and '80s, Bennett was rediscovered by the MTV generation in the 1990s.
His new CDs are celebrated for the very elegance that was once seen
as "square."
"When you do something greedily," he says now, hands folded in his
lap, "you might make a lot of money, but that in no way makes you
happy. When you do something well and with care…when you hit the pillow
at night, you can say, ‘At least I did it right.'"
The car bumps through the streets of blue-collar Astoria, Queens-home
of the fictional Archie Bunker and the place where Tony Bennett truly
left his heart (sorry, San Francisco). "The workers that make this
great city," he says, looking out the window, "the teachers, the
secretaries, the firemen-they all live here."
This is reason No. 4 for Bennett's quiet satisfaction: He never forgets
where he came from. Although raised in the projects and able to remember
nights with no food on the table, Bennett still gets misty when recalling
the old neighborhood: Sunday afternoons with the extended family, relatives
playing guitars and ukuleles, young Tony singing to entertain them.
When Tony was 10, his father died suddenly, and he was sent away for
a spell to live with relatives in upstate New York. Tony missed home
desperately. Once he returned, he never wanted to let go again.
And whenever success gets too heady, Bennett is pulled back to his humble
roots. Once, in the mid-1960s, Bennett was buying into the "star"
treatment in Las Vegas, traveling with an embarrassing entourage that
consumed his attention and mooched off his success. But every morning,
through the window, he noticed a man walking alone in front of the hotel.
"Who is that guy?" he asked one day.
"Jack Benny," he was told.
"What's he doing out there?"
"He's thinking."
That hit Bennett hard. He remembered the thinking people in Queens who
taught him his crafts-his music teachers and the art instructor who
saw a teenaged Tony doing chalk drawings in the street and invited him
to sketch sessions at a nearby park.
"Those people changed my life," he says.
He dumped the entourage. He got back to who he was: the kid from Astoria
who dreamed only of singing and painting and trying to be good.
And now here he is, dapper as always, in a suit and tie, at the door
of his most unique contribution: a public high school near Astoria that
he helped found five years ago. Typical of his humility, Bennett did
not name it after himself. It's called the Frank Sinatra School of
the Arts, to honor his friend and mentor, who "was always so good
to me."
Still, the moment Bennett enters the hallways, he is the star, surrounded
by teenagers more than 60 years his junior, kids in jeans and sneakers,
some carrying violins or paintbrushes. "Please sign my yearbook, Mr.
Bennett." "Mine next, please!"
He has come full circle, the student turned teacher. But Tony Bennett-who
in September releases a new duets album featuring artists such as Paul
McCartney, Elton John and Barbra Streisand-is still very much the
same kid on roller skates, his father's son, singing from the mountain.
"Life is a gift, a magnificent gift,'' he says, smiling. As he
walks off amid a cluster of young fans, you realize he means it. And
that is the real secret of Tony Bennett's contentment.