Paul Anka (whom Sinatra nicknamed “Kid”) on how Sinatra’s most famous song came to be:
In 1967, Frank Sinatra confided over dinner that he’d decided to retire. The Rat Pack was starting to splinter, which made him feel vulnerable, and he was being harassed by the FBI because of his Mob connections.
‘Kid, I’m fed up,’ he said. ‘I’m going to do one more album and I’m out of here.’
Then he lightened up and said: ‘Hey, kid, you never wrote me that song you always promised me. Don’t take too long!’
He’d often joshed with me about writing a song for him, but I’d never got round to it.
A few months later, at home in New York, I couldn’t sleep one night. So I sat at my piano and started playing a French song, Comme d’habitude, to which I’d bought the rights.
There was a storm brewing and as I played I suddenly sensed myself becoming Frank, tuning into his sense of foreboding.
That’s how I got the first line: ‘And now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain.’
I thought of him leaving the stage, the lights going out, and started typing like a madman, writing it just the way he talked: ‘Ate it up . . . spit it out.’
I’d never before written something so chauvinistic, narcissistic, in-your-face and grandiose. Everything in that song was Sinatra.
When I finished, it was 5am. I knew Frank was in Las Vegas, but by then he’d be offstage and at the bar. I called: ‘Frank, I’ve got something interesting — I’m gonna bring it out.’
When I played the song for him, he said: ‘That’s kooky, kid. We’re going in.’ Coming from Mr Cool, that meant he was ecstatic.
There was never any question of singing it myself; My Way was done Sinatra’s way — and that was unquestionably the right way.