by Tony Bennett
We spoke about the fact that if you come out every night and sing a song exactly as it’s written, the audience knows that you don’t really care; but if you sing it a different way each time, it means something special to you, because you’re feeling differently that particular evening from the way you did when you recorded it. That’s what all the great jazz improvisers in the world know how to do. Improvisation was created by the likes of Louis Armstrong, and it was passed on to performers like Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, and Ella Fitzgerald. It’s about making a one-of-a-kind performance, not quite like anyone else’s, and being daring enough to take that chance and hope it works. It’s exciting as a performer to exist that way, because then you perpetually grow.
When I taped “This Is All I Ask” with Josh Groban, we discussed how you have to expect the unexpected. Josh said, “You work on it and pace and slide around in your socks at home, just singing the words and thinking, Maybe I could sing this note, or that. Then when you record it, every time is a different experience. A lot of what you prepared, you have to throw out the window and use the energy occurring with each new take.” Josh noticed that I like it when my band surprises me, and how it makes it that much more exciting to capture the moment. He also mentioned the importance of not being jaded, or on autopilot. All of those things are components of the free form that Louis Bellson was talking about.
When k.d. lang and I sing together, she compares it to a dance or a mulling of souls. She talks about the synergy between us, and likens the way we improvise and react to each other to a balloon bouncing on air. I took it as a great compliment when she said she felt she was being schooled by me, but in actuality she’s a true pro who needs no further schooling from anyone.
It’s all about the knowledge you accumulate over the years. Once you have all that stored in your mind, when you complement it with your emotional instincts, you are better able to knock it out of the ballpark. You have to be willing to make some mistakes if you’re going to go out on a limb. I’m eighty-six; the amount of mistakes I’ve made in my lifetime seems insurmountable. But from failure you learn to correct yourself and in the process make sure that you become a better human being.
Everyone criticized me for not following whatever new trend was happening at the time. But I found out that the more you go back, the more you move ahead, because you’re learning from the best of what has proved to last over time. Then you can take what you know and the skills you’ve developed to make any song your own, with the confidence to push the envelope.
The Zen of Bennett
You have to first learn form before you can be free to experiment.
Every piece has a certain beat, and if you find it intuitively, it can’t be improved upon.
You can’t successfully break the rules until you learn the rules you’re breaking.
The goal is to create a one-of-a-kind performance; it should be unlike anyone else’s.
The more you go back, the more you move ahead.
k.d. lang (rehearsing)
Charlie Chaplin
13
Everything Should Be Done with Love
I consider “love” to be the most important word in any language. It embodies my whole philosophy. Duke Ellington used to say, “God is love,” and I abide by this notion. Everything you do should be done with love. It’s the greatest thing we can teach our children—to love people and be able to forgive them if they make a mistake. If you fill yourself with hate, you just shrink. But when you can give up yourself to love, you’re ahead of the game. That becomes the premise; not anger, not shrewdness. Pour your heart into your work, your friendships, and your family, and you’ll be rewarded a hundredfold.
When I recorded my second duets record, we used the Jim Henson Studios in Los Angeles. It was originally owned by Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin never made a movie without love, and as a result, each of his films is a masterpiece. Based on his success, he could have just dialed it in, but he respected his audience too much to do that; he did things honestly. Most of his old soundstages are still there at the studios, as are the vaults where he stored his films. It was very inspiring to record there. Right outside one of the stages leading up to the entrance, Chaplin had left imprints in wet cement of his famous “Little Tramp” footprints. I couldn’t resist taking a stroll across them and imitating that famous swagger. Now I can honestly say that I followed in the footsteps of one of my heroes.
I admired Chaplin’s work and the love he showed for it, which is why I was so touched by a gift I received from him in the early seventies. One day a package arrived in the mail for me. I opened it to find a canister that held an original copy of the last ten minutes of Modern Times, the film in which the song “Smile” (composed by Chaplin) first appeared. Chaplin had heard my recorded version, and out of appreciation sent me this treasured gift. Imagine that.
Bob Hope told me to make sure to show everybody in the audience that you love them, and that you love to perform for them. Not for the money, not for the fame, but for the love of the work and for the love of the audience. I still think about this today, right before I hit the stage. If you don’t love what you’re doing, there is something big missing. Loving what you do is about humanity; it’s thinking about how your work affects your fellow man, rather than just yourself.
Sidney Poitier is a great example of someone who loved what he did, and who also knew how to love and forgive. He had a very tough life growing up poor in the Bahamas; when he came to the States as a teenager, he could hardly read. He was washing dishes in a little restaurant in Harlem when he saw an ad for an audition. He went, and was crushed when he failed because he couldn’t read well.
That experience left him determined to transform himself. He not only taught himself how to read; he memorized all of Shakespeare and became a real intellectual. Instead of staying angry, he became one of the most magnificent actors Hollywood has ever seen. He never made a movie that he didn’t believe in. For that reason, all of his films are classics. His work is a great testament to doing everything with honesty and love.
When performing in public, I always make sure to follow the advice given to me by Maurice Chevalier when I was first starting out. “Show that there are other artists onstage besides you, and present them to the audience,” he told me. Chevalier never liked it when the headline performer acted as if it were only him or her up there, and the musicians behind him were just in the background. So I developed this attitude of always introducing the songwriters and musicians.
Each is a talent in his own right—true jazz musicians who improvise every time. Night after night, they breathe new life into the songs. To perform with such amazing artists is a privilege. They inspire me, and I feel lucky to be working with them. During the show, I feature the individual artists through solos. This gives the audience a rest, too—they’re not just watching a singer the whole time. Proper credit is important; it’s one of the few things we can honestly say we deserve, and it acknowledges the people onstage and behind the scenes who help bring the performance to life. I also want to educate my audience wherever I go, so that the names of those great writers and performers will live on forever. It’s just one of the ways I’m able to express my appreciation and love.
When Lady Gaga recorded “The Lady Is a Tramp” with me, I was very impressed when she went to everyone on the crew afterward and thanked them all for believing in her and supporting her. I was so pleased to see her do this, and I wish more artists were that conscientious of the other people supporting their efforts.
It’s all about being properly involved. Remember, as Dean Martin sang, you’re nobody until someone loves you.
The Zen of Bennett
Everything you do should be done with love.
Pour your heart into your work, your friendships, and your family, and you’ll be rewarded a hundredfold.
Give credit to those who work so hard to make your performance or project happen.
When you can give yourself up
to love, you’re ahead of the game.
Lady Gaga
14
When They Zig, I Zag
Our country has always celebrated the individual; it is the very essence of what it is to be an American. That’s what I grew up believing. Whether it’s in the arts, science, or industrial innovations, the United States has paved the way for countries around the world, and has acted as a beacon for individual thought and freedom. As I said, my grandfather moved us to Astoria, Queens, for the uniqueness and diversity of the community, so I was always encouraged to be myself. In fact, we were discouraged from copying people around us.
When I was a young boy, I used to go to the movies and watch Fred Astaire on a Saturday afternoon. I’d walk home dazzled by the way he performed. He was a jazz dancer; he never repeated himself. In every movie, he made it a point to do something unique. On top of that, everything he did was different from anything anybody else had done before him.
Early on, I learned the importance of not copying other people’s style. I had a great voice teacher, Mimi Spear, whose office was on Fifty-Second Street. That block looked like some little alley in New Orleans, right in the middle of this huge cosmopolitan area. The awnings lining the street advertised the likes of Art Tatum, Billie Holiday, Stan Getz, Lester Young, George Shearing—all there in those wonderful clubs. “Don’t imitate another singer, because then you’ll just be one of the chorus,” Mimi told me. “Instead, listen to jazz musicians that you like, and find out how they do their phrasing.”
So I listened intently to the musicians, and I absorbed as much as I could from them. Fifty-Second Street was a haven for all the greats. You could just roll into those little clubs on any day and witness magic. This was the age of jam sessions; when the acts were done performing at 3 a.m., they’d close the doors and keep playing until noon the next day. As a young man, after listening to hours of Miles Davis and all these other incredible players, I’d walk out with my friends from a pitch-black room into the glaring sunshine. I can’t figure out how we functioned on so little sleep, but it was all worth it. I remember listening to Lester Young, “the Prez.” His sound was so sweet and so new that I got physically sick from excitement. I absorbed the unique phrasing and breath control of masters like Young and Stan Getz in order to hone my style.
When I started playing with bands, I would try to be individualistic and improvise. They’d be in a dance tempo, and suddenly I’d do something entirely new with the beat. Musicians used to ask me, “What are you doing?” They’d criticize me for not keeping the beat, since it was all about getting people up to dance. “I’m being different. That’s the way Art Tatum phrases,” I would tell them. So I took Art Tatum, and Stan Getz, who had a beautiful honey sound on his saxophone, and I applied their music to my singing. It was the beginning of my finding my way musically and developing my own style.
Jazz is in the moment; it’s Zen-like. It never feels tired, because it’s full of vitality. Jazz is the most exciting and creative music there is. It reminds me of a sketch, rather than a premeditated painting. There’s nothing greater than a Rembrandt sketch; with just a few lines, he could draw the leaves on a tree, where you can almost feel the wind blowing through them. That’s what jazz is all about; it’s a spontaneous moment that you’re capturing.
Today, though, a lot of this has been sucked out of the music that’s made. It seems as if everybody has to sound the same and be the same. The record labels find out what sells, and they force all of their artists to conform to whatever that sound is. Instead of celebrating someone’s unique character, we applaud the ability to conform. People feel they have to wear certain labels on their clothes and all look identical. This tendency has been a result of marketing companies’ promotions, and unfortunately, it has brought us to a new low.
When I grew up, even though it was the Depression, people were respected by their fellow Americans for their individual spirit; for just being themselves. Of course the big corporations felt differently, and felt threatened by independent thinking, as they do today. If you made it, you made it because you were different from the next guy. Nowadays, it’s all been flattened out.
Back in my day, you knew the difference between Art Tatum or Erroll Garner or Teddy Wilson just by listening to them. If you heard all the instruments together on a song, you could tell who the great trumpet player was. You’d say, “That’s not Roy Eldridge; that’s Ziggy Elman.” But today, even jazz has been cursed by elevator music. So you hear a sax with a trio, and they all sound alike; you can’t tell if it’s a Ben Webster piece, a Coleman Hawkins, or a Charlie Parker, because the producers have congealed music into something shapeless.
Greed has corrupted the process as well. The music has stopped being art, and for many it’s become just a way to make a lot of money. But time has proved this to be the wrong path. Not a day goes by when you don’t read in the papers that the music business is in decline. The funny thing is that I’m selling more records now than I ever have, when everyone else is complaining that he can’t get a break. So I figure I must be doing something right.
Ever since the fifties, I have sung a certain way; I’ve strived to be myself, and that has always worked for me. I never went where everybody else went. When we started working together, I told my son Danny, “No matter what we do together, when everybody zigs, I want to zag.” That’s always been my philosophy, and Dan has done an excellent job of making sure that we stick to it. If everyone is going one way, we go the other way.
Toward the end of the sixties, I learned the importance of knowing when it’s critical to take bold steps to leave the comfort zone, move on, and take chances. I was going through hard times on the domestic side of my life, and had recently been divorced from my first wife. I was remarried and had moved to Los Angeles, living far away from New York City for the first time, which was a big deal for me.
Eventually, after my battles with Clive Davis at Columbia Records, I decided it was in my best interests to leave and start my own label. After moving to London for a complete change of scene, I created my own label, which I called Improv Records. For the first time in my career, I had complete artistic freedom to record whatever and with whomever I wanted. It was a very ambitious venture for that time; going independent was not in fashion then as it is today. The actual business logistics were quite challenging. In fact, this was the first time I asked my son Danny to help me out on a professional level, which as most people know, led to our working together for over thirty years, with untold success.
Dan was working in bands and following his own talents as a musician, but he always showed an interest in the business side of music as well. He reviewed the label contracts for me and pointed out how distributing records without a major label behind you could be problematic. I asked him to advise my partners of his concerns, but they unfortunately didn’t take him seriously. I decided to move forward, as I was excited about the prospects of creating albums that I had long hoped to produce.
One of those dreams was to record with the great jazz pianist Bill Evans, an idea suggested by Annie Ross. With all the albums I’ve made, the two that I recorded with Bill are considered my most prestigious. In the jazz world, Bill was known as a genius. Nobody in the world has ever played piano like Bill; it was unbelievable. We reached out to his manager and longtime producer, Helen Keane, and struck a deal in which we would record two albums’ worth of material. The first, The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album, would come out on his small jazz label, Fantasy Records. The follow-up album, Together Again, would be released on my Improv label.
Unfortunately, his company was quite uncreative in marketing the album; they put it out without doing any promotion, and the sales weren’t very strong. But realistically, it’s the best thing I ever did. I produced the best music with the best piano player, Bill Evans, and the greatest orchestrator in the world, Robert Farnon—and now those albums live on in The Complete Collection box set of all my albums.
I’ve learned
that it often takes five years for something to catch on, and that’s what has happened with those records. Sometimes you just have to believe in yourself and exercise a lot of patience. Unfortunately, Improv folded as a result of my business partners’ inability to meet the challenges I mentioned, but I remain proud of the music I made during that time, and it continues to endure. Through the experience, Danny had given me some sound advice, which I would later tap into. From the day we started working together, we never looked back, and we’ve achieved some groundbreaking accomplishments that I’m very proud of. So it just goes to show you that sometimes you have to know what to leave behind in order to move forward.
I try to be inventive when I’m performing or recording. The producers can never figure out what I’m going to end up doing. It’s frustrating for them because it’s not easy to categorize me; all of a sudden I’ll sound different from the last recording, or what they expected or wanted from me. Strangely enough, I’ve never had trouble with the public on that front; they just enjoy what I do. But I’ve been misunderstood by a lot of producers and record label people. I never intend to be difficult, but I always have a clear sense of what I’m trying to accomplish. I always strive to be an individual.
Ever since I started performing, I’ve always wanted to put my best foot forward, and that carries over to the way I dress onstage. I think it shows respect for the people who’ve gone to the trouble to come out and see me perform.
I was watching television at 2 a.m. one night when a documentary about Andy Warhol came on. It caught my interest because I had known Andy pretty well. They were asking him about changes in society and the fact that no one wears a suit any longer. The speaker asked him, “Is there any glamour left?” and Andy said, “Yeah.” All of a sudden there’s a picture of me with Andy at a Hollywood party. “Tony Bennett’s the only one keeping it with the glamour,” Andy said.
