Reflections on a good life, as lived by Tony Bennett
Whenever anyone asked Tony Bennett how he kept alive his passion for performing, the legendary singer always gave the same answer.
“I tell people when they ask why haven’t I retired, that I don’t feel like I have worked a day in my life,” Bennett said in 2018 before taking the stage at age 92. “As I have been doing what I love the most — performing for people and entertaining them and making them happy.”
That truly was the bottom line for Bennett, who died last week, two weeks shy of his 97th birthday. In a remarkable career that spanned 70 years, he loved to sing — for anyone, anywhere, anytime.
Growing up in blue-collar Queens, he sang for his family on Sunday afternoons, and worked as a teenage singing waiter in Italian restaurants. After serving in World War II, the young Anthony Benedetto started singing professionally, catching the attention of Pearl Bailey, who asked him to open for her in a Greenwich Village nightclub.
Bob Hope caught one of those shows, took him on tour and suggested he change his name to Tony Bennett. In 1951, “Because of You” became his first No. 1 hit. “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” became his signature song and his first platinum album in 1962.
Changing with the times
For most singers of his generation, success would have faded into distant memories years ago. But Bennett kept trying new things.
In the ’90s, his son urged him to start singing for younger audiences. There were no cringy rock crossovers or embarrassing dance remixes. Bennett reached new generations of fans, most of them unfamiliar with the Great American Songbook, without changing a thing in the jazz and pop stylings that made him the Great American Singer.
“I think this music is timeless and it is intelligently written and communicates with everyone — it isn’t based on a demographic,” Bennett said.
Years later, Bennett and Lady Gaga met after performing separately at a benefit concert and a deep friendship and musical collaboration formed despite the six decades that separated their ages.
“I said, ‘Well I never saw her, let me take a look,’” Bennett said in a 2015 conversation before he and Lady Gaga played a pair of shows at the Hollywood Bowl on tour for “Cheek to Cheek,” their Grammy-winning album of standards. “And I couldn’t believe how much the audience loved her. I said, ‘I’ve got to go backstage and meet her.’”
‘As real as it gets’
“On my birthday last year, I was at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco,” Bennett said in 2015. “And I looked out the window and there was a beautiful small red airplane (pulling a banner) and it said, ‘Happy birthday, Tony – Lady Gaga.’ She flew it around San Francisco for about two hours.”
Bennett, Lady Gaga said, felt like a lifelong friend almost from the moment they met.
“He doesn’t feel like my father or grandfather. He feels much more like a friend, a guy friend. His age is nothing to me,” she said. “What I love most about him is that he just goes straight to the deep stuff … Tony’s as real as it gets.”
In concert, the passion Bennett felt for this timeless music was ever present, as was his love for his collaborators, be they Lady Gaga or longtime members of his quartet.
The clear purity of his voice aged, as he did, but only slightly, and like any great musician Bennett knew how to adapt his instrument so the beauty of a melody or lyric always shone brightly.
Bennett turned 90 a few months before a 2016 concert at Segerstrom Hall in California, a milestone he made light of when the band played the opening notes of “This Is All I Ask,” and Bennett paused and grinned after singing its “As I approach the prime of my life … .”
The audience got the joke, but the lines that followed spoke from the man and the performer on why he still loved to hit the road singing love songs and ballads, jazz standards and classic pop tunes.
“I find I have the time of my life,” Bennett sang as the song continued. “Learning to enjoy at my leisure / All the simple pleasures, and so I happily concede. “That this is all I ask / This is all I need.” For Tony Bennett, all he had ever needed was his voice, his full heart and a melody, and magic and beauty could be made.