Life Is a Gift: The Zen of Bennett

by Tony Bennett

  You’ll find any country that you’ve ever been to represented in New York City. It’s a fabulous cultural center. There’s no place like it anywhere else, because you have a cross section of the entire world right here.

  I believe it was my upbringing in such a culturally diverse place that has allowed me to connect to audiences all around the world. The classic songs of the Great American Songbook unite us all, regardless of class, color, or citizenship, and by performing them for people in other countries, I’m able to build relations with audiences everywhere—and I do mean everywhere.

  Recording the duets albums brought me to many locations around the world as well. It was a thrill to be back in London to record “Body and Soul” with Amy Winehouse. We recorded it at the famous Abbey Road Studios, where artists like the Beatles and the London Symphony Orchestra had done some of their best work. Amy had never been to the studio, and she loved the whole setup, as I did. When I went to record with Andrea Bocelli, I went to his home in Pisa. He was so gracious, and served a fantastic Italian meal for the whole crew. The entire process was an unforgettable journey.

  But when I initially started touring internationally, I had some groundwork to do. When I first went to Rio de Janeiro, I wasn’t well known at all. So when I performed in the original Copacabana in Rio, a beautiful hotel right on the beach, I played to maybe fifteen people a night. Even though the audience was sparse, I knocked myself out to communicate to them, and they all stayed until my show was over. Every evening, despite the small crowd, I gave it 200 percent; and every night, there would be only ten or so people in the seats.

  The funny thing is, over the years, I’ve run into hundreds of people who tell me that they saw me at the Copacabana doing those performances. I think word of mouth got out that something special happened at those shows, and others wanted to claim they were there, too. But they couldn’t have been, because those audiences were so tiny. Yet through the years it keeps building. Today I get rave reviews and packed crowds, and I love the Brazilian people—they’re warm and welcoming.

  In 2007, the United Nations gave me its Citizen of the World Award, and I received the Martin Luther King Salute to Greatness Award for my efforts against discrimination. It was a proud moment for me. But perhaps one of the best moments was when Stevie Wonder presented me with the Billboard Century Award. “My friend Tony Bennett had been there for my people early on, earlier than most, and has stayed the course ever since,” Stevie said in presenting me with the award. “He has helped demand the social, economic, and civil rights of every American. I grew up hearing his music and his name in my household.” As much as anything, that made me feel like a true citizen of the world.

  I strongly believe that we must dedicate our lives to world peace and to putting down hatred. All people want is to be let alone to live their lives, in a place where their children can grow up free of fear and tyranny. It’s the greatest gift that we can leave for future generations.

  The Zen of Bennett

  In reality, we are not Italian, Jewish, Christian, or Catholic; instead, we are all citizens of the world.

  In order to appreciate the gifts we’ve been given, we need to learn the beauty of being alive, and of being good to one another.

  Before we do something, we need to ask ourselves, Is this good for all of us on the planet?

  Citizens of all nations need to figure out how to get along; it’s the only way the human race is going to survive.

  If we can learn to embrace some of our differences and coexist, everyone on the planet will benefit.

  Self-Portrait

  19

  Sometimes Turn Off All the Mics

  I’m all for keeping things simple. I like to say that if you can’t explain yourself in sixteen minutes, you should go back to the drawing board. The preferred venues today seem to be arenas or stadiums. There are always a lot of lights, fireworks, and dancers crowding the stage. I don’t understand how you keep in touch with your audience that way; I prefer beautiful concert halls with excellent acoustics.

  America has some of the best halls in the world: Carnegie Hall and Radio City in New York, and Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh. Then there are the Fox theaters in Atlanta and St. Louis, which were gorgeous old vaudeville houses—just to name a few. I love to perform where I can see whom I’m singing to; it’s much more intimate. Technology is wonderful when it’s used correctly, but if you don’t have the talent to back it up and you have to rely on bells and whistles, then it all becomes smoke and mirrors.

  I’m a big believer in standing on your own two feet without a lot of artifice, and I am inspired by others who believe the same. Once when Maurice Chevalier was performing at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York, there was a musicians’ strike. Instead of canceling the show, Chevalier walked onto the stage all alone and sang the entire thing a cappella. The audience loved it, and he wound up getting six standing ovations. If that’s not self-reliance, I don’t know what is.

  I always remembered that story, and I worked the idea into my own act. Near the end of my show, I ask my longtime soundman, Tom Young, to turn off all the microphones, and I sing with only the acoustics of the concert hall and without any amplification. People always tend to remember that portion of my show; it leaves quite an impression.

  In a way, singing without a mic is an example of taking responsibility for myself and having faith in myself as a performer. There’s nothing artificial affecting my voice; it’s just me belting it out to the audience and hitting the back of the hall. When we put ourselves out there—whether it’s auditioning for a record label or interviewing for a job—we have to know how to stand on our own two feet and believe in ourselves. There won’t always be a mic, or other musicians, or a crowd to fall back on. You have to be able to rely on yourself alone, at crucial times in your life.

  Such was the case at age eighteen, when I got drafted into the Army. I’d never been away from home except for a brief time with my relatives upstate when my father died, so heading into basic military training was quite a shock. I was sent to Fort Dix, New Jersey, and then on to Little Rock, Arkansas, for six weeks, to prepare before heading to Europe to join the fighting.

  Boot camp was much worse than I could have imagined. I was in the infantry rifleman division, and it was very rough. We had to go on seemingly endless marches through brambles and mud, and the officers tried to break our spirits. The whole military philosophy went against everything I was raised to believe in, and the institutionalized bigotry in the Army disgusted me.

  Ironically, given that I wound up being a singer, the sergeant was always on me about not being able to keep time when I was marching. Once when we were on a bivouac mission, he began yelling at me and hitting my helmet with his crop. I’d had all I could take; I turned on my heel and walked the six miles back to camp. As punishment, I was put on kitchen duty for a month. I also had to clean the whole unit’s Browning rifles, which got filthy from the gunpowder when they were fired. It took almost an hour to clean one hammer, and I had to do a dozen or so at a time. On top of that, I was stuck working every weekend, instead of being able to take a little R and R with the other guys.

  Finally I got to go on leave, and when I arrived home in Queens, I dropped onto the floor in a dead faint. The abusive environment in boot camp, combined with my emotional state, overcame me. A few days later I had to go back, and when the training was over, I went home for a short while, and then was called up with a group of troops bound for Germany.

  Instead of replacing an entire division of soldiers when it became exhausted, the way the German and British armies did, the American Army would substitute an individual soldier in a unit when someone became unable to fight. Many of these new guys had never even fired a gun. The idea was that the veteran soldiers would teach them, but it didn’t work that way, and the whole setup was a disaster.

  I was shipped out to Le Havre, France, and then to a holding area. None of us knew each other, since we’d all been pulled
from different divisions, so it was a time when I really had to go it alone. There was no chance to make friends, because in a few days, I would be shipped out with yet another group of strangers to the front lines. This system, which was called “repple depple” (the soldiers’ term for replacement depot), was impersonal and very lonely. We were a bunch of eighteen- to twenty-year-olds who had been plucked from our homes and families and suddenly put into this terrifying situation without even a friend to lean on.

  The American Army had suffered so many casualties that they just needed to keep a flow of young men through the troops to fill up the depleted divisions, no matter how little the new guys knew about combat. Over half of the new soldiers died within the first week on the front line. I was assigned to the Seventh Army, 63rd Infantry Division of the 255th Regiment, G Company. I was put into an Army truck and sent across France during January and February 1945. In March we entered Germany and went straight to the front line. Nothing could have prepared me for what was to come next.

  The Battle of the Bulge had just ended in France, and the German army was retreating. Even so, Hitler sent his troops to the Ardennes to try to keep the Americans from occupying his country. When the Allies broke through and went into Germany, I was one of the replacements for the exhausted American soldiers.

  The veterans returning from the front acted as if they would rather have died instead of losing their friends, and as I said earlier, I really felt their sadness. The winter was freezing, and being at the front was unbearable. Bombers flew overhead, and shells burst all around us. Fellow soldiers died right before my eyes. I wondered when it would be my turn.

  The real horror was the German cannons. We had to dig foxholes before we went to sleep, and sometimes it took forever to break through the frozen ground. You’d eat ice-cold cheese and crackers, pass out for a couple of hours, and then you had to get up again. Talk about being thrown back on your own resources. On my very first night on the line, I was so tired after digging my hole that I fell asleep on the ground next to it. I woke up covered in snow, and right behind me there was a tree trunk with a big piece of shrapnel stuck into it. A few inches lower, and it would have hit me.

  The nights were the worst. It was bitter cold, but we couldn’t light a fire to stay warm because the Germans would see it. We’d spend up to sixteen hours lying alone in a foxhole, listening for the enemy. Sometimes we could even hear them talking to each other, they were so close.

  Eventually I made it off of the front line and wound up working for the Special Services Band, which was a great experience after the battlefield. But being on the front was definitely a lesson in self-reliance.

  It isn’t only traumatic events that help one practice keeping things centered. Painting does that for me in a big way, since I’m all by myself when I’m in my studio. It’s definitely not a board meeting; it’s not six guys making a group decision. When you’re at the canvas, you’re all alone, and you’re thinking about your own story. Just you—not your friends, your wife and family. I find that painting brings me back to myself in a way that makes me aware that in the end, all we really can rely on is ourselves.

  It’s similar to performing. The thing about putting on a show is that, although it takes all the people around you to make sure it comes off the way you want it to—the soundmen, the lighting people, the guy who raises the curtain—I’m also aware that it’s really all on my shoulders. It’s me out there again on the front line. When the audience reacts and the reviews hit the street the next morning, it all reflects on me. It’s wonderful and important to be surrounded by people who care about and support you, but when it really comes down to it, we come into and exit this world alone. I’ve worked very hard to be self-reliant, to learn to believe in myself, and to embrace each waking day with confidence that I will be able to accomplish the things I set out to do.

  The Zen of Bennett

  There won’t always be a mic, or other musicians, or a crowd to fall back on.

  The art of painting teaches you who you are. When you’re at the canvas, you’re all alone; you’re thinking about your own story.

  In the end, all we really can rely on is ourselves.

  Be determined to stay the course and stand on your own two feet.

  Bill Evans

  20

  Go with Truth and Beauty

  There are so many wonderful things to say about my profession. The people I meet; the events I’ve experienced; the museums; the concerts, all have afforded me the opportunity to keep learning, and to keep growing into the person I strive to be. But there is a very tragic side to the entertainment business, and it can’t be ignored. I’ve known some of the best in the business who have been swallowed up by the pressure to perform at their peak all the time, while being under harsh constant public scrutiny. There are many pitfalls and hazards along the way; if you aren’t careful, they can sneak up on you, grab hold, and never let go.

  The life of an entertainer might seem glamorous, and it has its moments—but it isn’t always that way. Although many aspects of life as an entertainer are very exciting, there is also a lot of downtime traveling and waiting to hit the stage. “Hurry up and wait” is a phrase that I like to throw around. The pressure is always on to hurry up and get to where you are going, but by the time you get there, you end up waiting for what seems like intolerable amounts of time. Cary Grant cited boredom as a major reason why I should avoid the movie business and stick to singing when I asked him for his advice on my future in film. It was also the reason why he retired from his screen career. As I mentioned earlier, he told me that he spent half of his life in trailers on a studio lot and on location. “Tony, that’s no life at all,” he added. At a certain point, he just left it all behind and put his energies into enjoying himself.

  Unfortunately it’s when that boredom sets in that many entertainers turn to drugs or alcohol to fill up the time. They take pills to stay up, and then pills to go to sleep. It can be very easy to slip into this pattern and extremely difficult to get out of it. There have been times throughout my life that I fell victim to drugs, but fortunately I had the wherewithal to come to my senses. I am forever grateful that I did. I stay healthy, work out, try to learn something new every day, and never get bored. But many of my dear friends weren’t as lucky.

  Noted film producer and manager Jack Rollins, who worked as Woody Allen’s manager and was my manager for a brief time in the seventies, told me that the comedian Lenny Bruce “sinned against his talent.” (That sentence changed my life. From that moment on, I stopped taking all drugs and got myself back in top shape.) What Jack was talking about was the fact that Bruce ruined his life and career by taking drugs. Rollins’s statement about sinning against one’s talent really resonated with me because I’ve had several good friends who were addicted. One was the legendary Bill Evans, who is considered by many to be the most influential postwar jazz pianist. Bill and I put out two records in the seventies, and as I described earlier, it was some of the best work I’d ever done.

  I first met Bill in 1962, when I sang with Dave Brubeck at a White House concert. Bill had played with the Miles Davis Sextet and later had his own trio. He was the best-known jazz pianist in the world, so I was excited about the idea of working with him.

  Bill and I really hit it off. We didn’t want anyone to distract us when we were recording, so we had just one engineer and Bill’s manager with us in the studio. I would suggest a tune, Bill would find a key, and we’d work it out together. The experience was so intense; we did nine songs in the first three days. I told the engineer not to wait for us to do a take; just to keep the tape running all the time, so we didn’t miss anything—but he said he would run out of tape if he did that. To this day, I wished we had recorded all the run-throughs. Later on, Bill said that working with me was one of the prime experiences of his life, which meant quite a lot to me.

  The sad thing was, Bill was addicted to heroin. He said to me, “It’s the worst thing that ever happe
ned to me. I need to shoot up just to feel okay.” He was a genius, and yet it was so hard for him to beat that stuff. He always told me, “I wish I would have knocked out the first person who stuck a needle in my arm.” He needed to have a shot just to feel normal. It was such a pity that he never could get over the habit. Yet even in the throes of his addiction, no one else has ever played piano like that. He was so good that when he played with a symphony, he sounded better than the entire orchestra.

  Right before Bill died, he called me from a little town near Akron, Ohio, where he was working. “Tony, I want to tell you one thing: just go with truth and beauty, and forget everything else,” he told me. “Just do that.” Ever since then, truth and beauty have been the essence of what it’s all about for me.

  Judy Garland was another close friend who never had a chance. She was incredibly talented, and such a beautiful person. Judy grew up in the film studio, signing with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a young teenager. They had her cranking out a movie every six weeks; the pressure was intense, and they started pumping her with pills at a very early age. She was also exposed to the underbelly of the business, which meant that she had to grow up pretty quickly. On top of that, she was very insecure about her looks. Everything was managed for her, and most of her money was ripped off in the typical Hollywood style, leaving her with massive debts that became impossible for her to handle. Unfortunately, she died at only forty-seven years of age. To me, she was the most intelligent person in Hollywood.

  More recently, one person I wish I’d been able to help was Amy Winehouse. Amy had thanked me for my influence in the liner notes of her first album, long before we’d even met. I also gave Amy her first Grammy Award when she won for Best New Artist in 2008. She came to three of my shows when I was in London—two at Royal Albert Hall, and one in Camden—and I had a chance to meet her and her family face-to-face. Later, she told me that seeing me at Albert Hall those evenings were two of the best nights of her and her father’s life. Later that year I invited her to sing with me on my second duets record. I was thrilled when she agreed, and we decided that she would perform “Body and Soul” with me. Sadly, it wound up being the last song she ever recorded.