| We get letters the true story of My Way
Posted by Craig M. Smith  on October 15, 2009, 12:59 pm, in reply to "Paul Anka, Michael Jackson and Elvis"
67.70.66.208
A viewer sent me this
"Themes
The lyrics of "My Way" tell the story of a man who is nearing death. As he reflects on his life, he has few regrets for how he lived it, saying that, as he reviews the challenges he’s faced, he is comfortable with and takes responsibility for how he dealt with all the ups and downs of his life while maintaining some respectable degree of integrity.
Origin
Paul Anka heard the original 1967 French pop song, Comme d'habitude performed by Claude Francois with music by Jacques Revaux and lyrics by Gilles Thibault, while on holiday in the south of France. He flew to Paris to negotiate the rights to the song. In a 2007 interview, he said: "I thought it was a bad record, but there was something in it." He acquired publishing rights at no cost and, two years later, had a dinner in Florida with Frank Sinatra and "a couple of Mob guys" at which Sinatra said he was "quitting the business. I'm sick of it, I'm getting the hell out".
Back in New York, Anka re-wrote the original French song for Sinatra, subtly altering the melodic structure and changing the lyrics: "At one o'clock in the morning, I sat down at an old IBM electric typewriter and said, 'If Frank were writing this, what would he say?' And I started, metaphorically, 'And now the end is near.' I read a lot of periodicals, and I noticed everything was 'my this' and 'my that'. We were in the 'me generation' and Frank became the guy for me to use to say that. I used words I would never use: 'I ate it up and spit it out.' But that's the way he talked. I used to be around steam rooms with the Rat Pack guys - they liked to talk like Mob guys, even though they would have been scared of their own shadows." Anka finished the song at 5am. "I called Frank up in Nevada - he was at Caesar's Palace - and said, 'I've got something really special for you.'" Anka claimed: "When my record company caught wind of it, they were very pissed that I didn't keep it for myself. I said, 'Hey, I can write it, but I'm not the guy to sing it.' It was for Frank, no one else."
Frank Sinatra recorded his version of the song on December 30, 1968 and it was rush-released in early 1969. It reached #27 in the U.S. In the UK the single achieved a still unmatched record, becoming the recording with most weeks inside the Top 40. It spent 75 weeks between April 1969 and Sep 1971. It has spent a further 49 weeks in the Top 75 but never bettered the #5 slot achieved upon its first chart run.
Elvis Presley version
Elvis Presley began performing the song in concert during the mid-1970s, in spite of suggestions by Paul Anka, who told him it was not a song that would suit him. Nevertheless, on January 12 and 14 of 1973 Presley sang the song during his satellite show "Aloha from Hawaii", beamed live and on deferred basis (for European audiences, who also saw it in prime time), to 43 countries via Intelsat, the only time that a single entertainer faced such a worldwide audience. In the continental US, the show was carried by NBC, and shown in primetime on 14 April, thus achieving very high ratings and eventually helping the show reach a worldwide viewership of over 1 billion.
On October 3, 1977, several weeks after his death, his live recording of "My Way" (recorded for the "Elvis In Concert" CBS-TV special on June 21, 1977) was released as a single. In the U.S., it reached number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart, number 6 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, and the following year reached number 2 on the Billboard Country singles chart but went all the way to number 1 on the rival Cash Box Country Singles chart. In the UK, it reached number 9 on the UK Singles Chart."
Thanks to RR
|
Post a response(you need a username and password E-mail moderator )
|