Doing It His Way
Since His Teen-Idol Days in the 1950s, Paul Anka Has Been
Setting--And Defying--The Musical Trends
by Joe Rhodes
He always knew. Even when he was 13 years
old, an ugly ducking adolescent, too short and too chubby for the girls to pay
him any mind, Paul Anka knew that some day things would 
be different, that some day they'd hear
his voice, listen to his songs and everything would change. It didn't matter
that his parents tried to dissuade him, that his friends didn't really
understand. He knew.
"It's one of those things that's in
your blood," he says, sitting in the dark-paneled study of his hilltop
Beverly Hills home, firing up a Cohiba--"my fat little babies" he
calls them--reflecting on a remarkable four-decade musical odyssey in which he
has transformed himself from a puffy-cheeked teen idol to a respected
songwriter and, ultimately, into one of the most bankable night-club performers
in the world able to sell out showrooms from Manila to Mexico City, Las Vegas
to Berlin. There is hardly a place on the planet where he is not a household
name, where the songs he has written--everything from "Puppy Love" to
"My Way" to Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" theme--are not
instantly recognized.
"I always had the desire," he
says, leaning back in his easy chair, surrounded by the trappings of
success--the Swiss humidor filled with Cuban cigars, the world-class wine and
art collections, the giant-screen television built into the wall with three
smaller screens above it (so he can watch movies, news and sporting events
simultaneously). And on the sofa, an embroidered throw pillow that says: Be
Reasonable. Do It My Way.
"I was like a junkie," he
continues. "From a very young age, this--to be a singer and songwriter--is
all I want-ed. And everyone thought I was crazy."
Who could have blamed them? Who could have
imagined that a kid from Ottawa, Ontario, a Lebanese restaurant owner's son,
would end up like this, with more than 800 songs to his credit, still going
strong at 55, on the road more than 30 weeks a year and about to release his
112th album, due out this summer, a collection of Spanish-English duets with
old friends ranging from Julio Iglesias, Tom Jones, Celine Dion and The Bee
Gees to a host of Latin American artists. If you want proof of Anka's
undiminished box-office appeal, consider this: He recently signed an
unprecedented $6 million deal to do a total of 18 shows a year for the next
four years at Bally's Grand Casino in
"Jimmy Durante always used to say to
me, 'I don't need the money, I need the work,'" Anka says, a smile
creasing his perfectly tanned face as he tries to explain why he is still so
driven, why he can't let himself relax. "It's so true. I've seen so many
guys in my profession who quit and then don't know what to do with themselves.
I'd be scared to death if that happened to me.
"I perform because I still need it.
Because, in the beginning, people didn't come to see me because I was a
performer, they came to see me because I had a hit song. Everybody was jumping
in their cars to get a look at me, because it was the thing to do. But now when
they come, it's not because I have a song on the charts. It's because they know
I'll give them a performance like no one else."
Even before he was old enough to shave,
Anka was consumed with proving himself to the world. He used to borrow his
mother's car--without her permission and years before he had a license--to
drive from
"I was pretty precocious, pretty
aggressive," he says, recalling the unbelievable chutzpah it took for a
14-year-old kid to steal his mother's car just so he could perform. "I
think my parents knew they had an unusual child."
They did what they could to slow him down.
When the car, an Austin Healy, broke down on one of his
But not too much. Anka put together a
vocal group called The Bobbysoxers and booked them into topless nightclubs.
"I was too young to actually be in the club," he says, "so they
made me stay in the dressing room when I wasn't singing. I'd punch holes in the
walls so I could get a look at the girls."
Whenever a rock and roll show came through
dressing room and talked the rotund piano
player into autographing a white-sleeved jacket for him. Domino's manager,
Irving Feld, tossed the brash kid out before he could get the autograph, but
not before he could shout to Feld, "Remember my name. I'll be working for
you one day." Two years later, Anka's prediction came true.
Anka was obsessed with becoming a pop star
and would do anything to make it happen. When he heard that a soup company was
giving away a trip to
"I think the song got played a little
in
But he kept writing songs and, at his
parents' insistence, considered more practical careers. He took journalism courses
and worked for a while at The Ottawa Citizen. He studied shorthand. But the
musical dreams simply wouldn't disappear and at 16 he returned to
It was the song that made his teenage
dreams come true. Released in 1957, it would hold the record for years as the
second best-selling single of all time (behind "White Christmas").
"Diana" instantly made Anka an international sensation. The girls
who'd ignored him all those years were lining up to see him, to touch him, to
scream out his name. He rode in limousines and stayed in the finest hotels,
pampered and catered to in ways beyond any 16-year-old's imagination. Even the
real Diana suddenly wanted to spend time with him. But she'd missed her chance.
Anka found himself running in pretty fast
company on endless "Caravan of Stars" bus tours, crossing the country
with Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Bobby Darin, Fabian and the girl who would soon
fall in love with him, Annette Funicello. Those were the days when they'd pile
everyone with a Top-40 hit onto a single tour. Everyone would come out, sing
their one or two hit songs and leave. There was plenty of time for ego trips
and trouble, plenty of time for young minds to be led astray. But Anka, in spite
of his meteoric success, never gave in to temptation. He was too obsessed with
the music. He still had too much to prove.
"My commitment, my dedication was a
lot different," he says. "There were guys shooting heroin, being so
whacked out we could barely get them onstage. But I had my life together. Part
of that was my upbringing, that I had great parents, and there were a lot of
people looking out for me.
"But the other part was that I wasn't
in that pretty-boy category. I wasn't a product. I wasn't selling looks. My
whole thing was that I was the writer and the producer. I was constantly
developing my craft, and that to me was always the selling point. I was so
dedicated to this that I didn't fall into any of the traps. I really had a
sense of the business, of where to go and what to do."
If he'd been the best-looking kid in
school, the tallest or the most popular, Anka acknowledges that he might not
have been as driven to succeed, that he might not have been capable of writing
the lost-soul love songs like "Lonely Boy" and "Diana" that
touched so many teenage hearts, songs that spoke to all those other kids who
would never look good in tight pants, who would never get the girl of their
dreams.
"Listen, when you don't have all
those other things, you have no choice but to be sure of yourself. I mean, I
wasn't selling glamour,'' Anka says. " So I took the weaknesses and made
them work for me. Some people take their shortcomings and they make them their
strengths. And when it all happened for me at 16, it just gave me more
confidence. It let me know that I was right, that I'd been right all along. So
everything else didn't matter.
"I believe in luck and I believe in
timing. When a kid gets up there and sings, 'I'm Just A Lonely Boy,' do you
know how many lonely boys are out there, sitting in their bedrooms at night,
thinking about the girl who would not go to the prom with them? So I was the
guy they identified with. And the honesty of those records just breaks
through."
He had five Top-20 hits before he turned
18. One of them--"Puppy Love"--was written for Funicello. They were,
for a while,
But in the early '60s, the pop culture
tidal wave caused by The Beatles changed the face of pop music forever.
Suddenly, everyone wanted British accents, long hair, groups. The pompadoured
crooners of the '50s were no longer fashionable. Some of them panicked and
tried to jump on a bandwagon they didn't understand. Most them disappeared. But
not Anka.
"You always have to have the
hunger," he says, explaining why he survived when so many others did not.
"When the Beatles invasion came, I went on to something else. I wrote the
theme for The Longest Day [the 1962 war epic, for which he received an
Academy Award nomination]. And I started working the nightclub circuit, because
that was all there was. I had faith in myself, and if you stay true to
yourself, you'll always do all right. But if you panic, you've lost it."
He was one of the first pop singers to
play
He lived in Italy for a few years and
spent extensive time in France and England, a citizen of the world. In 1963, he
married Parisian model Anne de Zogheb in a lavish ceremony at Paris' Orly
Airport. They have five daughters--Amelia, Anthea, Alicia, Amanda and
Alexandra, ranging in age from 19 to 29--and a relationship that has lasted
almost as long as Anka's career, something he does not take for granted.
"You know, my grandmother used to
say, 'While I'm down here planning, God's up there laughing,' " Anka says,
unsure if he can explain why his career and marriage have enjoyed such
longevity. "I guess the thing with most things that are worthwhile is that
you can't give up easily. You've got to hang in."
It was during his time in Europe that Anka
developed an appreciation for wine, cigars and long, luxurious meals. Bruno
Coquatrix, who owned the Olympia theatre in Paris, introduced him to all three.
"I was 18, 19 years old and Bruno was one of those great Damon Runyon-like
figures of France. He knew the best of everything and he always had a cigar in
his mouth.
"Bruno really introduced me to that
joie de vivre. He took me under his wing and I remember every fine restaurant
he would take me to, every vineyard, every wine bottle that he sent back
because he didn't like the taste. He was the one who introduced me to cigars, a
Montecristo after every meal. He was my idol, this cat. He just loved life. And
we all loved him."
Because he was so focused on his career,
afraid to do anything that might damage his throat, Anka neither smoked nor
drank before he met Coquatrix. "But he taught me that cigars are pure, not
like cigarettes at all. Once you realize the process of what goes into a cigar,
you realize it's not going to hurt you. And with the best wine, you'll never
get a headache."
Consequently, Anka will not compromise
when it comes to wines or cigars. "I'll do a Jamaican or a Dominican now
and then," he says, "but I've been into the Cuban thing for years and
I pretty much stay with that. I'm used to the taste and there's no reason to
jump all over the place, unless you're experimenting.
"After lunch, with coffee, I may
smoke a Partagas. And at night a Cohiba. I used to smoke Montecristos a lot,
and I still like them. But I jumped over to Cohibas. I love smoking when I'm in
the studio," he says. "When I'm in the studio this week [working on
the Spanish-language duet album], I'll pass cigars out to everybody. Most of
these guys have never had a Cuban cigar in their life and there's a calmness
that comes over everything when everyone lights up. The cigar really becomes
like a friend, especially when I'm creating.
"It's definitely a bond, especially
with people who are not used to smoking them. You're giving them a special kind
of treat and it's a confirmation that, in a sense, we're all on the same level.
I don't do it all the time, but when I do it's a special moment.
"Last week we were working in Miami,
and I took everybody to a place called Diego's. I ordered a $300 bottle of
Lafite Rothschild and gave out cigars at the end of the meal. And it was
amazing when we went back to work that night, the reinstillment of
energy."
Anka takes a long draw on his Cohiba,
taking a moment to appreciate his success. He is proud of his home, his
paintings, his terrace with the white grand piano. He is especially proud of
his wine collection, hundreds of rare and exotic vintages--everything from a
1918 Château Haut-Brion Bordeaux to a 1934 Lafite Rothschild to large caches of
Pétrus and Château Montrose.
"We're a young country," he
says, pleased that the pleasures he's enjoyed for so many years in Europe are
finally taking hold in North America. "When we discover certain aspects of
other places, we run with it. And it's great. It's time. We're becoming more
sophisticated and more discerning.
"If somebody gives me a cigar that I
don't like, that's been bruised up or isn't soft enough, I turn it down. Same
with the wine. I've always said, if you're going to drink, drink the best; and
if you're going to smoke, smoke the best. People should enjoy good
things."
During one of his visits to France, in
1968, Anka heard a French rock song on the radio called "Come d'
Habitude." "The lyrics were very French in nature," he says,
"you know, 'I get up in the morning, I drink the coffee, your armpit
smells, but I love you,' something like that. But there was something in the
tune that I liked. I had a pretty successful music publishing operation in France
and I asked my partner about this song, told him I wanted to buy it. He said,
'You want it, take it.' As simple as that. I mean, we weren't buying the
pyramids here."
A few months later, Frank Sinatra came to
see Anka perform at Miami's Fountainebleau Hotel. "He kept teasing me
about writing him something," Anka remembers, still sounding slightly in
awe of the moment. "Well, I wasn't going to give him 'Puppy Love' or
'Lonely Boy'--he'd have tossed me out the window.
"Anyway, I was back in New York a few
weeks later, it was after midnight, and it was raining. And I started thinking
about this French song and playing it on the piano, making it less rock and
roll and the whole time I'm thinking about Sinatra, about how great it would be
to write a song for Sinatra. That was one of the 18 times he was going to
retire, so I'm thinking about this and I walk over to the typewriter and I
type: 'And now, the end is near.'"
Magically, the fluffy French rock song and
Sinatra merged in Anka's mind. He wrote the song as if he were writing a play,
with Sinatra as the star. "When I started getting to, 'Eat it up and spit
it out,' I had it. It wrote itself. I finished at five in the morning and
called Don Costa (Sinatra's musical director and the talent scout who had discovered
Anka in the '50s) and said, 'Don, I think I've got something.' "
Anka flew to Las Vegas, where Sinatra was
playing Caesars Palace, to deliver a demo of the song to the Chairman himself.
"In those days," Anka remembers, "if Frank said 'kooky,' that
meant he was really excited. Well, he was crazy for it. They took the song and
about a month later they called me in New York and played the recording over
the speakers. I started crying. It was the turning point of my career."
It has become his signature piece, a song
powerful enough to be embraced not just by Sinatra but by Elvis Presley and
even the Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious. The song, Anka says, was always more about
pain than bravado, something that rang through when Presley started performing
it toward the end of his life. "He used to say to me, 'Man, that song
means so much to me,' " Anka says of Elvis. "When he sang it, the
song changed. It was as if he had a premonition, maybe a death wish."
It is the song, more than any other, that
Anka's audiences want to hear. When he plays corporate engagements--special
(and extremely lucrative) performances for corporate executives and their
clients or sales staffs--he often changes the lyrics to fit the occasion.
"I'll change it to 'Your Way' for the CEO at AT&T or whatever and sing
something like, 'And here, the phones are clear,' and they go nuts. It kills
them."
He is amazed at how audiences still react
to his music, screaming for songs he wrote when he was 16 as if they were
hearing them for the first time. "It's a little peculiar to be singing
'Puppy Love' at my age," he admits. "And I've thought about retiring
some of the old ones. But people won't let me. They start screaming out, 'Why
didn't you do "Having My Baby"?' And you feel guilty."
So he continues to sing the old songs, the
new songs, all the ones in between. On his new album, he has Latin artists
singing some of his hits with Latin arrangements, reinventing his music as he
goes. "A song is like a great play," Anka says, "and Shakespeare
said, 'The play is the thing.' Well to me, the song is the thing. And a song
can have many lives."
He finishes the Cohiba, the last trail of
smoke floating gently toward the ceiling. Paul Anka smiles, contented, the
smile of a man who always knew.
Joe Rhodes is a Los Angeles-based editor
for US magazine.