Pete Hamill - Why Sinatra Matters

Frank Sinatra and Pete Hamill, as products of the same urban landscape, have both been credited with giving the American city a voice. In this widely acclaimed and bestselling appreciation, Hamill draws on his intimate experience of the man and the music to evoke the essence of Sinatra, illuminating the singer’s art and his legend from the point of view of a confidant and a fan.

“As succinct and laconically classy as its title.”

— Adam Woog, Seattle Times

“Hamill’s illuminations are considerable without ever stooping to facile psychologizing. … He does a better job of placing Sinatra’s saga in a social and political context than any of his biographers have. … Why Sinatra Matters is most valuable in its explication of how Sinatra came to formulate a musical style that was a sound track to urban American life.”

— Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer

“A graceful reminiscence of Sinatra after hours serves as the frame for shrewd reflections on the singer’s art, his personality, his audience, and — most interesting — his ethnicity, a subject about which Hamill, against all odds, contrives to say fresh and persuasive things.”

— Terry Teachout, New York Times Book Review

“A brief but eloquent homage. … Hamill succeeds — convincingly, with natty aplomb — in explaining why Sinatra, even now, matters.”

— Tom Chaffin, LA Weekly

“A snazzy ode to ‘Ole Blue Eyes.’”

— People

“Compelling reading for anyone with a feeling for the late singer.”

— Adam Woog, Seattle Times

“An engrossing book … sharply evocative.”

— Don Freeman, San Diego Union-Tribune

“Hamill conveys moments with memories so vivid that you can smell the smoke and taste the bourbon.”

— Vicki L. Friedman, Virginian-Pilot

“This is a beautiful thing, an admiring rumination on Sinatra the man, the persona, and the towering talent. … An absolutely terrific work.”

— Liz Smith, Newsday

“Hamill’s illuminations are considerable. … Any Sinatra fan hungry for a fresh take will eat up Why Sinatra Matters .”

— Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer

“Even if you think you know why Sinatra matters, this slim biographical essay proves the most intimate and thoughtful eulogy for ‘the Voice’ yet. … Hamill’s concise, eloquent musings leave you wanting not to read a full-blown biography but to listen again to Sinatra’s best songs.”

— Megan Harlan, Entertainment Weekly

“What a perfect match: the world’s greatest ‘saloon singer’ eulogized superbly by the author of A Drinking Life. … Why Sinatra Matters belongs in any collection of important books on American popular music of the 20th century.”

— Kirkus Reviews

“The only thing wrong with this brief but penetrating essay is that it is far too short.”

— Terry Teachout, New York Times Book Review

Novels

A KILLING FOR CHRIST

THE GIFT

DIRTY LAUNDRY

FLESH AND BLOOD

THE DEADLY PIECE

THE GUNS OF HEAVEN

LOVING WOMEN

SNOW IN AUGUST

Short Story Collections

THE INVISIBLE CITY

TOKYO SKETCHES

Journalism

IRRATIONAL RAVINGS

PIECEWORK

NEWS IS A VERB

Memoir

A DRINKING LIFE

WHEN FRANK SINATRA died on the evening of May 14, 1998, the news made the front pages of newspapers all over the world. Many ran extra editions and followed with special supplements. There was little sense of shock; he had been a long time dying. He had also been a long time living, and so the obituaries were full of his life and times.

It was mandatory to chronicle his wins and losses, his four marriages, his battles, verbal and physical, with reporters and photographers. His romances required many inches of type. There were accounts of his fierce temper, his brutalities, his drunken cruelties. Some described him as a thug or a monster, whose behavior was redeemed only by his talent. We read brief charts of his political odyssey from left to right. The shadow cast upon him by the Mob was also an inevitable part of the stories. And there were tales of his personal generosity to friends and strangers and the millions of dollars he had raised for charities. He was clearly a complicated man.

“Being an eighteen-karat manic depressive,” he was quoted in many of the obituaries, “and having lived a life of violent emotional contradictions, I have perhaps an overacute capacity for sadness and elation.”

But much of the language of farewell had a stale, even hollow quality, probably because most of the obituaries had been ready for too many months. Sinatra had been a virtual recluse since 1995, making only rare public appearances. Over the previous year he had been in and out of hospitals. There were reports from California that he had suffered several heart attacks and, with the possible onset of Alzheimer’s, had difficulty recognizing even old friends. Across those final months there was little hard news about his condition; his children insisted he was fine, although cranky and cantankerous, and so the vacuum was filled with rumor and supposition. The truth was probably a simple one. Frank Sinatra, after a life in which too many cigarettes and too much whiskey were part of the deal, was old; and as happens to all of us when we grow old, the parts just broke down. He had abused his body in a way that was special to his generation of American men; that he had survived until eighty-two was itself a kind of triumph over the odds.

There were some peculiar components to the television coverage. Most of it was narrated by people from a much younger generation; as they mouthed words about loss and farewell, the tone had an odd insincerity — they could have been discussing someone from the nineteenth century. They were also prisoners of existing visual images. We saw Sinatra at different ages: a very young Sinatra in bow tie and padded shoulders when he was The Voice; a drawn, emaciated Sinatra, flaring at photographers or wearing a thin, pimplike mustache, during his time with Ava Gardner; Sinatra as Maggio in From Here to Eternity and a grinning Sinatra receiving his Academy Award afterward; clips from his television shows, including a bizarre image of Sinatra standing on two chairs, one foot on each, while singing “I’ve Got the World on a String”; Sinatra with the Rat Pack, horsing around on the stages of Las Vegas; Sinatra with various presidents, from Roosevelt to Reagan; and, of course, endless versions of “My Way.”

It was difficult, reading and watching all of this, to remember why Sinatra mattered to so many people, and why he will continue to matter in the years ahead. The radio did a much better job than print or television, because on radio we heard the music. Not abrupt fragments of songs, not clipped, impatient digests. Late at night, driving through a great city, moving on the dark streets of New York or Paris, Tokyo or London, you could connect more directly to what truly mattered: the music.

The music was the engine of the life. If there had been no music, there would have been no immense obituaries and no televised farewells. To be sure, Sinatra was one of those figures whose art is often overshadowed by the life. In the end, it is of minor interest that Lord Byron swam the Hellespont, that André Malraux flew in combat during the Spanish Civil War, or that Ernest Hemingway shot lions in Africa. In the end, only the work matters. Sinatra’s finest work was making music.