Life Is a Gift: The Zen of Bennett Read online

  Life

  IS A

  Gift

  THE ZEN OF BENNETT

  Tony Bennett

  Foreword by Mitch Albom

  Dedication

  I would like to dedicate this book to my wonderful family, my lovely wife, Susan Benedetto, and to Robert Henri’s The Art Spirit.

  The Duke Ellington Orchestra

  Contents

  Dedication

  Foreword by Mitch Albom

  Introduction: How Do You Keep the Music Playing?

  1. Only Sing Good Songs

  2. I’ve Always Been Unplugged

  3. Proper Involvement

  4. Learn What to Leave Out

  5. The Art of Excellence

  6. Fame on the Brain

  7. Never Underestimate the Public

  8. Butterflies Are Good

  9. Bel Canto

  10. The Family Circle

  11. War Is Insanity

  12. Free Form

  13. Everything Should Be Done with Love

  14. When They Zig, I Zag

  15. Mentor a Young Person

  16. Black Crows and Golden Birds

  17. Life Is a Gift

  18. Citizen of the World

  19. Sometimes Turn Off All the Mics

  20. Go with Truth and Beauty

  21. Giving Back

  22. This Too Shall Pass

  23. I Sing to the Whole Family

  24. I Never Worked a Day in My Life

  Artwork

  Acknowledgments

  Photographic Insert

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Musician, The Pearl Bailey Show

  Foreword

  BY MITCH ALBOM

  We were standing on an empty concert stage. Tony Bennett opened his mouth.

  “BUHP!”

  The sweet, single note seemed to bounce off the rear wall and boomerang back to us, perfectly intact.

  “Hear those acoustics?” he said.

  “Do it again,” I said.

  “BUHP!”

  He listened as the note resonated. Then he smiled, and I realized I was witnessing something rare: a man hearing the sound of his own voice and having every reason to delight in what he heard.

  If there is, as the subtitle of this book suggests, a Zen of Tony Bennett, it is surely that: a philosophy of life so pure and honest that it can smile when it hears itself sung back. How many of us can say that? How many of us cringe at a recording of our own voices, or when we see ourselves on video, or when we think about how we acted yesterday or last year?

  Tony Bennett, at eighty-six, can smile when his world is reflected—and with good reason. You are tempted to say talent, but many a talented artist has despised his own gifts. You are tempted to say success, but how many successful people are privately miserable?

  No, the reason for Bennett’s serene look—on that day in the concert hall, or any night he’s onstage, or holding a brush in front of a canvas, or gazing out his window overlooking Central Park—is that he’s doing what he wants to do, the way he wants to do it. He makes art. He makes friends. He gives away. He owns very little.

  The word Zen is tied into enlightenment. First you seek it, then you share it.

  The Zen of Tony Bennett is that he’s still doing both.

  Ask Tony about music, and he will quickly cite an influence—Art Tatum, his teachers after the war, his father, who once sang from a hilltop in an Italian village. Ask Tony about art, and he will defer to his instructors, or da Vinci, or any of the masters. Humble? This is a man who started his own arts high school, but named it after Frank Sinatra.

  He shares credit. He deflects praise. The only thing he grips hard is his artistic standards. He became famous in a suit and never took it off, wore it through a hundred other fashions until it once again became the height of cool. He chooses tunes that are timeless, melodic, never consumed by the beat of the moment.

  And because he sings the Great American Songbook, some might categorize Tony as conventional, but he has never been conventional, because conventional means you do anything to stay in vogue, you go from pop to rap, from writing to posting, from privacy to filming yourself on YouTube.

  “Change or die,” they say.

  Or don’t, Tony replies.

  Now, that’s Zen.

  There is a reason Tony Bennett has won seventeen Grammys—the first in 1963, the latest forty-nine years later. It’s because true art will stroke through fads and rise above the surface. It’s the same reason both Bing Crosby and Judy Garland declared that Bennett was their favorite singer, but Amy Winehouse was thrilled to sing with him, too. The same reason he has won Emmy awards in two centuries. The same reason he’s been welcome on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Simpsons.

  Duke Ellington once said, “People do not retire. They are retired by others.” Tony Bennett would not let that happen, and his perseverance has been rewarded and embraced. People sensed, correctly, that from decade to decade, he has remained true, a man who cares deeply about his art, and an artist who cares deeply about his humanity. His work on behalf of children, fellow musicians, and his hometown of Astoria, Queens, is inspiring. He does so many fund-raisers, he is jokingly nicknamed “Tony Benefit.”

  Yet as you will see in these pages, his life has been full of its own poignant moments, holding his dying father’s hand in a hospital, fighting in a war, lapsing briefly into drugs, hitting depression over a failing marriage, and having his spirits lifted by a choir in a hotel hallway, sent to him by Ellington himself.

  Tony persevered and thrived, thanks mostly to his devotion to music. It has been his cape and his swaddling cloth, a gift to him and his gift to us.

  “Go with truth and beauty, and forget everything else.” It is one of the tips Bennett offers in this book, and part of why the New York Times recently said of Bennett’s work, “We aren’t likely to see a recording career like this again.”

  We aren’t likely to see a man like this, either. I’ve been around so many people who meet Tony, and when they walk away say, “Gosh, I just want to hug him!’’

  I understand. He is the note that bounces off the wall and returns to you in gentle perfection. Who would ever want to let that go?

  —Mitch Albom,

  author of Tuesdays with Morrie

  and The Time Keeper

  Untitled

  Musician (Bass)

  INTRODUCTION:

  How Do You Keep the Music Playing?

  I’ve been performing professionally as an entertainer now for over sixty years. Somehow I can’t believe the time has gone by so quickly. It’s been an amazing journey, and I feel privileged that I’ve been successful doing what I love for my whole life. Of course there have been ups and downs, but I can honestly say that I have always tried to learn from my mistakes.

  I rarely look back; instead, I always look forward. There is so much of life that we miss when we wallow in regret. My energy is better spent concentrating on all the things I have yet to learn and experience. I think this has made me into a much better person. I’m at peace with myself now, and I look forward to each new day.

  From a young age, I was taught never to compromise. My parents and teachers showed me that you should make every move with care, and put the accent on quality. If you apply this philosophy, you will never go wrong. And I have found that, in particular for a performer, the public will pick up on that attitude and will reward you by giving back what you give to them. I never sing a cheap song. I never look down at the audience and think that they are ignorant, or think that I’m more intelligent than they are. To think otherwise
is totally incorrect, and runs contrary to everything I was raised to believe.

  I love entertaining people; I strive to make them feel good, and they make me feel wonderful. To explain it simply, I love what I do, and my ambition is to get better as I get older. That’s really what I’m all about.

  To my mind, being in the entertainment business is the best job that anyone could have. I get to travel the world over, meet interesting people, and experience many cultures. I’ve become close to artists of all ages in music, art, and the theater. I’ve sung for eleven presidents, and have performed for royalty. But, best of all, I get to meet my fans—the people on the street—face-to-face. They are the ones who help me stay grounded. I learn more from them than from anyone else.

  I’m also lucky because I get to work with my family. I’m blessed with creative children: my eldest son, Danny, has been my manager for over thirty years, and my son Daegal produces and engineers my records. My daughter Johanna has dedicated her life to philanthropic endeavors; my youngest, Antonia, is a talented singer in her own right and often joins me on tour. My wife, Susan, has worked with me in realizing my dream of establishing a New York City public high school for the arts, and she travels with me wherever I go. Being surrounded by family is very important to me. It’s such a privilege to be able to do what I do.

  From an early age, I’ve been blessed by knowing that I wanted to be involved in artistic endeavors. Even though we were very poor, my parents placed a high value on the arts. I always wanted to sing and paint; I never had to ask, “What am I going to do with my life?” I just knew.

  I meet so many intelligent people who seem to know so much, but I often find that what they lack is an understanding of their innermost desires. They really have no idea what they want to do with their lives; they have no vision or sense of the bigger picture, and often they lack the passion that is essential to a truly fulfilled life. I guess I’m just lucky that way. I’ve always had this passion—this feeling that I have no choice but to do what I do. And fortunately I’m still in that state right now. I’m grateful that to this day, my passion and thirst for knowledge have continued.

  My goal is to improve all the time. Here I am today, at eighty-six, and I’m even more passionate now than ever before. I’m at the top of my game, and things just keep getting better and better. I’m proud to say that I feel I’ve never worked a day in my life—and I know that’s because I love what I do.

  The Zen of Bennett

  Work doesn’t feel like work if you’re passionate about what you do.

  Do something to improve yourself, every single day.

  Choose a career that encompasses what you gravitate to naturally, and you’ll have a satisfying lifelong vocation.

  San Francisco

  My Mom

  1

  Only Sing Good Songs

  I grew up in an era when there was no such thing as planned obsolescence; instead, everything was made with quality. Like so many people my age who came out of the Great Depression, I grew up with a strong sense of appreciation for what little we had. My grandfather owned a grocery store, and my mom was a seamstress working under sweatshop conditions. But despite the harsh circumstances, they always took time to make the children in the family feel special. I never took for granted the importance of the love of my family and friends to pull me through hard times. They taught me humility, and instilled in me a work ethic that remains to this day.

  I was drilled not to be the best, but to always strive to do my best—and that if I did, the rewards would follow. I was told that everything I do should be done with care. Even now, I feel strongly that if you buy a suit or a dress, it should be well made, and it should last for years—instead of a con job where you buy something only to have to replace it after it falls apart six months later. You can go broke that way. It makes better sense to save up your money to buy one well-made suit than ten cheap suits.

  There should be a law against planned obsolescence, and everyone should follow this lead. In other words, an artist or a company, or an individual, should not put out a work of art, or a song, or any product that he knows won’t endure.

  When I was ten, my father passed away. After he died, my mother had to support the three of us kids all by herself. She did what they called “piecework,” earning a penny per dress, sewing all day long in the factory. She’d bring work home with her every night. Once or twice in an evening, she’d come across a bad dress—one of such poor quality that she’d refuse to work on it. We were desperate for money, but she couldn’t bring herself to do something she felt was beneath her. “I only do quality dresses,” she would say. “I’m not going to work on a bad one.” Many years later, I realized that this was the attitude I held toward my job, too. She became my inspiration for insisting on singing only quality songs.

  Years later, another experience that reinforced this idea was my training at the American Theatre Wing on Forty-Fourth Street, which I attended after returning home from Germany after my service in World War II. The government had set up the GI Bill so that soldiers could receive an education. The bill paid tuition for either trade school or college and gave a lot of fellows like myself the chance to keep going with the education that the war had interrupted, and to attend a school we couldn’t have afforded without it. People like Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte, Paul Newman, Shelley Winters, and Sidney Poitier took classes there.

  The Theatre Wing was a fantastic school, and my teacher had trained with Stanislavsky, who founded Method acting. I’ve applied the techniques I learned in that school to my singing ever since. I think of the lyrics in an autobiographical way, as if they were written about something I’ve lived through. Not every song allows for this; only the well-crafted ones do. So I make it a point to seek out quality songs that provide that kind of powerful emotion, and as a result, the public can experience them the way that I do. As they listen to me sing, they get an honest sense of how I’m feeling while I perform. This connection between singer and audience would be impossible if I added a cheap song to my repertoire, which is why I never have.

  The Theatre Wing not only taught me the importance of doing quality work; my teachers there also told me not to listen to anyone who tried to tell us otherwise. I never really appreciated how valuable that attitude was until the producer Mitch Miller signed me to my first recording contract in 1950.

  Mitch was the head of A&R—Artist & Repertoire—at Columbia, and his job was to sign new talent for the label. He was a great classical oboist who saw how much money novelty music was making, and he became the first producer to make a fortune doing commercial songs for the masses. From the moment they signed me, everyone at the company tried to change the way I sang. They couldn’t get over the fact that I loved jazz. Jazz wouldn’t sell as well as pop, and they wanted to try to stop me from singing what I wanted to. All they thought about was how many albums they could sell to the public. When the record companies saw how much money they could make doing pop tunes, they started telling their artists what to do. They always thought they knew best, and they refused to trust the artists’ own instincts. In the early years of the music business, things were different. Producers would just say, “Record a song for us,” and the singer did what came naturally. But the times were changing.

  I constantly went up against Mitch. Personally I liked him, but he preferred gimmicky music and very accessible songs, as opposed to tunes from the American Songbook. He came up with this concept for Sing Along with Mitch—a weekly TV show featuring a chorus of singers. The home audience sang along to the words shown on the screen, complete with a bouncing ball. It was a huge hit and made a lot of money for the company. In addition, he didn’t have to deal with “temperamental artists” when he was doing that show.

  Mitch really didn’t like jazz. He didn’t care for Duke or Count Basie—and when I came to the label, I was a jazz singer. He tried to have me sing sweet music that would be immediately forgotten, and novelty stuff that was silly, stup
id, and ignorant. I would buck him and say, “No, I just want to sing quality songs.”

  I never did (and never will) do anything just to pick up the money and run, but sticking to my guns became quite a battle for me during the early years.

  So I fought with Mitch over these ridiculous tunes that he wanted me to sing. To his credit, I did get a lot of hit records—“Because of You,” “Cold, Cold Heart,” “Blue Velvet”—although I was really careful about which of those songs I chose to do. But without fail, he would then insist that I record something trite while I was hot, instead of doing a classic song or a jazz number. I had to fight for every single one.

  After a few years, when we both realized this back-and-forth would never end, Mitch and I finally worked out a compromise: for every two pop pieces I’d do for him, I would get to do two jazz songs. That worked for a while. Then, in what would become a big turning point in my creative career, for the first time in the history of the music industry, a lawyer named Clive Davis became the president of Columbia Records. This came as a shock to many of us, as we were used to artists such as songwriter Johnny Mercer, who founded Capitol Records, and Frank Sinatra, who started Reprise Records, running the business.

  Clive’s becoming president was the first step on the road to a corporate mentality in music making. In the sixties, when rock music became so prevalent, Clive tortured me to do an album covering contemporary songs. After a while, when I felt I had no choice, I actually got physically sick while recording that album; it never made any sense at all to me.

  It seemed like the world was turning upside down. Everyone was turning on and tuning out; it reached a point of absolute insanity. My favorite story of all time was the one about Duke Ellington, when he got let go from Columbia. Clive Davis asked Duke into his office one day. “Mr. Ellington, I have some bad news for you,” he said. “We are going to have to drop you from the label.”