Sir Tom: I nearly recorded My Way before it went to Sinatra

SIR Tom Jones has said he was going to record My Way before it was offered to Frank Sinatra.

The pop superstar from Pontypridd, who recently released his 41st studio album titled Surrounded By Time, said songwriter Paul Anka had originally suggested he sing on the hit.

But Anka’s music publisher overruled him and the song went to Sinatra. It was released in 1969, with the US crooner’s version spending 75 weeks in the UK top 40 – the second most of all time.

Sir Tom, 80, right, said there had been no hard feelings between the pair and that the song’s reflective lyrics suited Sinatra better, given he was an older man.

He said: “I was going to do My Way. Paul Anka wrote it. He said, ‘Look, I have written this great song and you would sing the s*** out of it.’ And I said, ‘Well thanks.’

“He played a demo that he had made and I said, ‘That is fantastic.’ He said, ‘There is only one problem, my music publisher sent it to Frank Sinatra and if Frank likes it he will do it.’

“I said, ‘Oh, okay.’ And Frank did do it. I missed it because they sent it to Frank Sinatra, which is fine. He was an older man anyway. I was too young at the time to sing, ‘I did it my way.’

“You have got to be around for a while before you can do that. It was perfect for Frank Sinatra so I wasn’t all that fussed with it.

“And then Paul Anka wrote me She’s A Lady. He said, ‘I’ll write another one’ for me, when he was doing my TV show. We got a hit with that. It was number one in the States, even higher than here.”