Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [131]
Who’s this guy that every city in America wants to claim as their own? This painter who lives in the desert; this first-rate, first-take actor; this singer who makes other men poets; boxing clever with every word, talking like America—fast, straight up, in headlines, coming through with the big shtick, the aside, the quiet compliment. Good cop, bad cop, all in the same breath. You know his story because it’s your story … His voice [is] as tight as a fist, opening at the end of a bar, not on the beat, over it, playing with it … where he reveals himself. His songs are his home, and he lets you in. To sing like that you’ve gotta have lost a couple of fights. To know tenderness and romance, you’ve gotta have had your heart broken. People say Frank hardly talks to the press. They wanna know how he is and what’s on his mind—but he is telling his story through his songs … private thoughts on a public address system. Generous.
This is the conundrum of Frank Sinatra—left and right brain hardly talking, boxer and painter, actor and singer, lover and father, bandman and loner, troubleshooter and troublemaker. The champ who would rather show you his scars than his medals. He may be putty in Barbara’s hands, but I’m not going to mess with him. Are you?
With a final flourish, Bono announced, “Welcome the king of New York City and the living proof that God is a Catholic.”
As Frank took rather shakily to the stage that night, I could tell he was deeply moved by what had been said and by the roar of the crowd. He was overwhelmed by the award itself and the kindness of a young man who also found solace in working a canvas. He spoke of his love for me and for New York and told the audience of his sadness at not being asked to perform. Pulling himself together and soaking up the adulation, Frank returned to form, quipping, “This is more applause than Dean had his whole life.”
FIFTEEN
Out celebrating with Frank.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
That’s Life
By the time Frank cracked that joke, dear Dean Martin was in the last year of his life and Sammy Davis, Jr., had already left us. Ava Gardner had died along with many of our closest friends. As Frank once said rather bitterly, “You like people and then they die on you.” The eighties and nineties were especially hard on the man who felt like the only one left standing at the bar.
It was while he was standing at Sydney Chaplin’s bar on Frank Sinatra Drive in the late 1980s that something bittersweet happened to Frank in the early hours of one particular morning. He was with Tom Dreesen, the young comedian who’d been opening for him for many years. The bar was closing, the bartender was washing glasses, and Frank had his back to the door. Tom looked over his shoulder and saw a station wagon with two women pull up outside. One ran in and asked the barman, “Excuse me, do you have a jukebox in here?” The barman shook his head.
Frank turned around and looked the young woman right in the face. He told her, “I’ll sing for you.”
“No thanks,” she said.
As Frank watched her go, Tom saw his expression and said, “She obviously didn’t recognize you.”
Frank turned back to the bar and took a swig from his drink. “Maybe she did,” he replied.
The final years in the lives of Dean and Sammy weren’t easy to witness. Ever since Frank had seen the legendary Billie Holiday throw her talent and ultimately her life away, he was totally antidrugs and bawled out anyone stupid enough to take them. If his memories of Billie’s decline weren’t enough, the research he did to play an addict in The Man with the Golden Arm turned him off drugs for life. He said kids going cold turkey was one of the most frightening things he’d ever seen. “Jack Daniel’s does it for me,” he claimed. “That’s all I need.”
He and Dean had always enjoyed a drink together, although neither of them drank onstage in those days—that was just an act. Even the drinks trolley they wheeled on during their Rat Pack shows