Frank Sinatra, Paul Anka, and My Way D

Sinatra had a nickname for Paul Anka Kid. And for years, whenever they’d run into each other, Frank would give him the same playful jab. Kid, when are you going to write me a song? Paul would laugh it off. He’d already made his name as a teenage sensation with hits like Diana and Lonely Boy, and he’d written plenty of songs for other people, but something for Frank that was different, maybe a little intimidating.

Then one night, many years later, Paul met Frank for dinner. This was the late60s. Frank was there with his new wife, Mia Pharaoh. She was only 21. And over dinner, Frank told him something that Paul was not expecting. I’m going to retire, kid. The Rat Pack, that’s over. I’ve got one more album I’m going to do.

And that’s it. And then Frank said it to him again, but this time it landed differently. You never wrote me a song. A few nights later, Paul sat down and started writing. Not as Paul Anka the songwriter, but imagining Frank Sinatra, his voice, his life, everything Frank might possibly want to say as he looked back over his career and his life.

The words came fast. He was almost hearing Sinatra speak them. As he wrote, as if Frank was standing right there next to him. The next day, Paul called Frank. I think I’ve got something you might like. Frank told him to come out to the west coast. So Paul flew out, sat down at the piano and played my way for Frank Sinatra.

Frank listened and then he said, “I’m going to do it.” A couple of months later, Paul was in his apartment in New York when the phone rang. It was Frank calling from the recording studio. Listen to this kid. And Frank held the phone up to the speaker. That’s how Paul Anka heard for the first time Frank Sinatra singing My Way coming through a telephone line 3,000 miles away.

The song that was supposed to be Sinatra’s farewell, however, became something else entirely. Far from a farewell, My Way crystallized the Sinatra legend so perfectly that it gave him a second wind. For 10 more years, it was the anthem that let Frank Sinatra be more than ever himself.