As I write this the effects of global warming are baking the Garden State. This started out as a pretty light month. So light that I contemplated taking the month off. While I am sure that people were dying at relatively the same rate they always do, no one who interested me, save perhaps Dr. Frank Field, had slipped the surely bonds of earth. Then Tony Bennet died on the 21st. It was as if everyone else wanted to clear a path for Tony to get the accolades he deserves unencumbered by any other losses. Once he had his days, the pace once again picked up but for you all this will be a relatively quick read in comparison to some of my earlier death-laden dirges. Let’s get to it. If you’re reading this on the beach, this month was also shark month so watch where you swim.
Tony Bennet, who gave voice to the American songbook like no other, died at 96. There are those who love Sinatra but to me, he couldn’t hold a candle to Tony Bennet. The Chairman of the Board would agree with me. Sinatra, speaking of Bennet, told Look magazine (the People of its day): “For my money, he is the best singer in the business. He excites me when I watch him. He moves me. He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.” Sinatra had the benefit of the Nelson Riddle orchestrations but Tony had the voice and the phrasing. No one phrased better than him in my book and to me, phrasing is nearly everything. Bonn Scott (the dead-too-young singer for AC/DC) could also phrase a tune. That’s probably the first time the two of them have been mentioned in the same paragraph but I believe the analogy is apt. Bonn just never went near the American songbook. Bennet, meanwhile, loved Sinatra, naming a school he and his wife (an ex-schoolteacher) formed in Queens The Frank Sinatra School of the Arts.
A lifelong New Yorker whose most noteworthy song is about San Francisco, Bennet was born Anthony Benedetto in Astoria, Queens, my hometown. He cut his teeth as a waiter and singer at Riccardo’s, a wedding venue on 21st Street and 24th Avenue in Astoria. He went to junior high school where I worked as a janitor so it’s like he and I had a history together. Bob Hope counseled him to change his last name to Bennet and that is how the world knows him. He fought in WWII and helped liberate the Kaufering concentration camp, the largest subcamp of Dachau. The war had a huge effect on him, not just making him a pacifist (he said that the fighting had given him “a front-row seat in hell.”) but it also affected his view of race. The army was segregated during the war but Tony befriended a black drummer and during post-war occupation he invited his friend to dine with him. He was publicly chastised for it, demoted, and punished by the army. That made him a lifelong fighter of equality for all. He took part in the march from Selma to Montgomery and along with Sammy Davis, Jr., Harry Belafonte and others, performed at the Stars for Freedom concert the night Dr. Matin Luther King, Jr. gave his “How Long? Not Long” speech.
Like many singers of his era, he lost his way for a time when the sixties heralded in a new age of music. He put out perhaps his greatest record in 1962 which was recorded live at Carnagie Hall ( I am listening to it as I write this) but the British invasion was coming. He resisted the change but eventually (1970) caved to Clive Davis and put out a record “Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today” which was a disaster. He has said listening to the record made him vomit. He slumped to drinking and drugs and had a near-death episode which caused him to realize he needed to make changes. Not to the music, which he has always stayed true to (save for that one record). But with how he moved forward. He called his son Danny and asked him to take over his management. Together they put his career back on track, focusing, as he always had, on the music that stays constant – the American Songbook. With appearances on MTV in an “unplugged” and with duets albums with the likes of K.D. Lang, Elvis Costello and his partnership with Lady Gaga, he became not of an era, but timeless. “One Last Time: An evening with Tony Bennet and Lady Gaga,” which chronicled his last concert at Radio City Music Hall in 2021, when he turned 95 and was suffering from Alzheimer’s, is a must see.
Throughout his life (yes a fourth paragraph which bests the Queen) Tony Bennet has been known as a class act to everyone, save for his ex-wives (there were two) as his New York times obit noted. Simon Hattenstone, a reporter for the Guardian, who was one of the many reporters who tried to find bad things to publish about Bennet, wrote: “Bennet is outrageous. He mythologizes himself, name-drops every time he opens his mouth, directs you to his altruism, is self-congratulatory to the point of indecency. He should be intolerable but he is one of the sweetest, m0st humble men I’ve ever met.” In addition to being, in my mind, a singer without peer, he was an accomplished artist. He was a creative force for good in our world and had an impact that will last well beyond his 96 years while his golden sun will shine on us.
On the other end of the spectrum, not talent-wise, but as a tortured person to Tony’s Zen, Sinead O’Conner died at 56. She was an amazing talent with an equal amount of troubles that beset her. There are the Irish who are light and those who carry the weight of all that is Ireland. Unfortunately, Sinead was loaded with the latter. Abused as a child, bipolar and full of Irish cynicism, her life was public-torture mixed with startling-music. Unfortunately for her, her antics too often overshadowed her singing. From the shaved head (because she rebelled against her record company’s attempt to have her marketed for her looks), to refusing to play in venues that played their national anthems (once threatening not to sing at a New Jersey venue if they played the Star Spangled Banner that raised the ire of Frank Sinatra) to ripping up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live to protest the sexual abuse allegations against the church. But through all the controversy she created, there was the voice. Her rendition of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” is magnificent. Here she is before the cynicism kicked in:
She embraced the controversies refusing to back down or apologize for her actions, once stating that being a pop star was akin to a prison. She certainly lived life on her own terms even if most of us viewed those terms as having diminishing returns. In the end, nothing compared 2 her.
I believe that as I write about the death of Randy Meisner who left us at 77, he is the third member of Poco to make the Wall. He later went on to form the Eagles with Glenn Frey, Don Henley and Don Felder. But remember, Meisner was the bass player, so it never ends well for them. He was there when the band opened for Linda Ronstadt and made it through Hotel California. Perhaps his greatest hit with the band was “Take it To the Limit” which he wrote with Frey and Henley. He sang it, hitting the high notes. He was also a writer on “One of these Nights.” Life in the Eagles was always tumultuous as it wasn’t all full of peaceful easy feelings back stage. In 1977 after Meisner, who claimed to be sick, didn’t want to go out for a third encore, he and Frey had a bit of a physical scuffle. That was it for Meisner because as a bass player, we all know he was highly dispensable. He could check out any time Frey and Henley wanted and he could always leave. Timothy B. Schmit, who also replaced Meisner when he left Poco, took his place in the Eagles. When the Eagles went back out on the road in 1994 with their “Resumption” “Hell Freezes Over Tour,” Meisner wanted back in but that was not to be. He then asked if he could at least play with them at their Millennial Concert at the Staples Center in LA on New Year’s eve 1999 and was told no again. Look, he was just the bass player. He did perform at the Rock n’ Roll Hall of fame induction ceremony but given how I feel about that sham of a place, who cares. All that said, and given he played bass, his was an incredible career. One other note of tragedy with him; his wife of 20 years was killed in an accident when she was moving a gun in a closet which accidentally fired. Rock stars with millions shouldn’t have loaded rifles in a closet that they themselves move. They should have people for that. Anyway, wherever he is he can take it easy.
Paul Reubens, popularly known as Pee-wee Herman, having died at 70, has embarked on his next big adventure. Truth be told, I was never a fan but I know if I didn’t include him people would think I didn’t know he died and this proves I did. He was a force back in the 80’s. What with “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” on the big screen, spawning “Pee-wee’s Clubhouse” which ran for five years on the small one, he was hard to get away from for a while. Perhaps that made it easier to spot him when he decided to expose himself in a movie theatre in Sarasota, Florida that showed porn. Nothing kills a TV show geared towards kids than its main character being arrested for indecent exposure. So-long Pee-wee’s Clubhouse. It was the wee, with perhaps another wee, that did him in. Later, in 2002, he was again arrested and charged with possession of child pornography for images that were included in his collection of erotica, which is probably what they all say. There was truth to it however and the authorities lowered the charges to a misdemeanor possessing obscene materials. He had to register as a sex offender for the period of probation, however. While the charges put Pee-wee on the shelf, Reubens, who had started acting as a child in Sarasota, found work again and was nominated for an Emmy for his work on Murphy Brown. He also did other television work and eventually revived the Pee-wee character on Broadway and in the Netflix movie “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday.” There is no doubt he was talented even though he got turned down for a gig on Saturday Night Live. I just hope he wore his bow-tie when he gets to the Pearly Gates.
Okay, now to Dr. Frank Field, who, if you grew up in New York, was the weatherman of record. He called (or, as weathermen are wont to do, miscalled) his last rainstorm at 100. Dr. Field was not actually a meteorologist but rather a doctor of optometry. He had, however, been a weather forecaster in the army which, I guess qualified him to be on TV. Other than baseball, where if you get a hit one out of three times you can get into the Hall of Fame, only in weather forecasting can you get it wrong so often and still keep your job. Imagine telling your bosses you will be wrong regularly and having them not fire you? Of course not; unless you’re a weather forecaster where the expectation is failure. Perhaps I should have done that. Anyway, he was fairly good at delivering the weather right or wrong. He had a style and delivery that reeked of credibility even as he told you the sun was shining when you were getting soaked by the rain. He also reported on science-type matters for the stations he worked at. He was instrumental in publicizing the Heimlich maneuver that has undoubtedly saved many lives that would have been lost to large pieces of steak and other food being lodged in one’s windpipe. The maneuver once saved his own life when he was dining with Warner Wolfe, a sportscaster, and a piece of roast beef (you see) became lodged in his throat. Wolfe expertly administered the Heimlich because he had seen Dr. Field demonstrate it during his segments. Weather forecasting became somewhat of a cottage industry for the Field family as his son Storm, and daughter Allison, also entered the business. I would say that for now there should be nothing but blue skies ahead for Dr. Field but given the weather, I might be wrong.
I leave you to your Augusts which arrived much too fast and which, I fear, will pass just as swiftly. Stay safe.