TONY BENNETT
Chart- topping crooner keeps his appeal timeless by staying immune to fads.
For a moment, Anthony Dominick Benedetto, a. k. a. Tony Bennett, had his audience of journalists lost in thrall, tripping down memory lane to a time before Snooki and Britney, a time when standards like The Way You Look Tonight and The Good Life, which Bennett dedicated to Lady Gaga, filled concert halls with the rich, mellow sound of big band swing and good vibes.
Bennett’s mini- concert won’t hold a candle to Bennett’s fullblown concert for PBS’S Great Performances showcase, Bennett: Duets II, on Jan. 27. ( He also appears at casinos in the Vancouver area this weekend.)
The flame was alive, though, for anyone lucky enough to be there.
Afterward, when Bennett gently set down his microphone and his backing musicians kicked back and relaxed, the crooner held his audience spellbound again, this time by answering questions that — surprisingly or not surprisingly — were light on the usual bitchiness and cynicism and heavy on respect and genuine reflection.
Bennett warned he was unprepared, and was “just going to wing it,” but he needn’t have bothered with the early protestations.
Asked how he’s lasted nearly seven decades when many music artists barely last seven years, he said with a laugh: “I had a great Italian- American family that was in the grocery business.”
Bennett attributes some of his longevity, too, with knowing what he does best and sticking to it, despite whatever music trends were driving the business at the time.
“It all came about so wonderfully. In The New York Times, someone reviewed all my albums — some 74 albums — everything I’ve done since 1950 until now, and that writer said they don’t think it will happen again, that there isn’t one single record that isn’t just wonderful to listen to. So it worked.
“But for many years I was told I wasn’t doing disco or whatever. I just kept singing good songs. I was turned down an awful lot by a lot of fellows in the record business, who would tell me, ‘ You’re not what’s happening.’ I’d say, ‘ Well, it’s going to last somehow, I know it,’ and it did. I feel very gratified for it.”
Bennett has just one regret — an artist he wanted to work with for Duets II, but “the schedules didn’t happen.” That artist? Eric Clapton. “It just didn’t work out. But, you know, you always have a wish list. I love what I’m doing, and I know something is going to come up. I don’t know what it is yet, but it will. For years, for example, Stevie Wonder and I have been talking about doing an album.”
Artists set to join Bennett on stage for the Duets II TV special include John Mayer, Michael Bublé, Willie Nelson, k. d. Lang and Faith Hill. Duets II, is nominated a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album.
Bennett made one startling admission: He is still nervous before a performance.
“You’re only as good as your next show,” he said. “You never know quite what’s coming. You need butterflies.
“Everybody thinks if a performer is nervous, that’s a negative thing. That’s not true. It’s just that they have the butterflies going, hoping the lights work and hoping the sound works and hoping the audience is going to enjoy it.
“I’ve seen it with the great masters. I saw it with Duke Ellington and Frank Sinatra and Lena Horne. Before the show, they’re going, ‘ I hope it all works.’ Then, after the show, they know it’s that adrenalin that makes the thing happen. If you don’t care whether the audience is going to respond right back at you, you’re a fool. The ones who fail are the ones who don’t care whether you like it or not.”
Bennett saved his longest, most heartfelt soliloquy for the late Amy Winehouse, with whom who he collaborated with on Duets II.
“She just had the gift of knowing how to sing as good. She was influenced by Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald. Her dream was to become very, very famous doing that.
“I was doing my 85th birthday at the Palladium. BBC was televising it. I wanted her on the show. But then my son called two months after we did the record and told me that she died, and the whole world just stopped. They couldn’t believe it, especially in Britain.
“Her mother and father, months later, came to America, and her mother said: ‘ You know, everybody feels so tragic about her dying, but as a mother, I’m very different. All I know is her whole life she did what she really wanted to do, and she became worldfamous. To me, even though she had a short life, she had a very successful life because what she really wanted, what she dreamed about her whole life happened.’
“That was so different from anything I ever heard a mother say about this tragedy that so many felt so badly about. It was quite different.”