Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 17, 1994 TAG: 9405180002
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MICHAEL ORICCHIO KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The 2,600 or so fans at his opening-night performance with the San Jose (Calif.) Symphony - retirees, yuppies and MTV kids alike - who greeted it like a long-lost friend now cheer it with rousing applause.
It opens his second set and still stops the show.
But next, the 67-year-old Bennett does something that a guy who has cut 95 albums, won four Grammys and is enjoying one of the highest critical and popular peaks of a 45-year career simply does not have to do.
He turns off his microphone and has Ralph Sharon, his accompanist and musical director of 28 years, do the same. The rest of Sharon's trio, along with 35 musicians from the symphony backing them, fall silent.
Then Bennett launches into an heart-felt version of Bart Howard's ``Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words).'' It's just his finely aged, melodic voice and the sparest tinkling of ivory.
As the number goes on, the lyrics `` ... Fill my heart with song/And let me sing forever more/You are all I long for/All I worship and adore ... '' suffuse the cavernous auditorium with what must be the world's most powerful whisper.
And Bennett stops the show, again.
``When you see a good show or a good singer without a microphone, there's something wonderful that happens. I think it's peaceful. Very, very peaceful,'' Bennett says softly the next afternoon, punctuating his points with shy smiles, as he relaxes in his hotel suite.
``Somehow the audience retains it. They walk away never forgetting it. It's something that no matter what happens - if we have a cold audience or something - I do that and I'm home free,'' he adds with a chuckle. ``It saves my whole performance. I earn my money for the night.''
But there may be a little more to it than that, hints the 70-year-old Sharon. ``It's really a feat,'' the British emigre says. ``It's to show that he's still got his chops.''
Still has his chops?
Tony Bennett has reached a point in his career where he has absolutely nothing to prove. And, still, he goes out and proves himself again and again at about 200 concert dates a year and with recording after recording.
At an age when most singers think about retiring, the famous tenor from Queens is riding a phenomenal crest in multi-generational popularity. All of a sudden, Generation X'ers are buying his CDs, showing up at his shows and finding in Bennett the genuine article: a great singer who sings great songs.
``I really like my life right now,'' says an amused Bennett. ``I happen to love what I do. It's a blessed situation.''
You could say Bennett's career has always seemed blessed. His pal Frank Sinatra has called him ``the best singer in the business, the best exponent of a song,'' and his idol and major influence, the late Bing Crosby, simply said he was ``the best singer I ever heard.''
But after Bennett's last two recordings - 1992's ``Perfectly Frank,'' a collection of songs associated with Sinatra, and last year's ``Steppin' Out,'' an 18-song tribute to Fred Astaire - not only topped the charts but also won back-to-back Grammys, the singer began to be regarded as the premier keeper of the Great American Songbook.
``I can't think of a better premise to live by,'' says Bennett. ``These are not old songs; these are great songs. ... Richard Rodgers isn't schmaltzy. This is real music. This is very important.''
Though Bennett discusses the pop classics reverentially - noting with an endearing awe the intricate lyrics, the inner rhymes, the complex melodies - he treats them as anything but museum pieces in performance. In eclectic arrangements worked out with Sharon, these tunes sound as vital, alive and fresh as if they were written yesterday.
Bennett needs no more proof that the formula works than his current role in bringing Rodgers, Gershwin, Porter and Berlin to the Beavis and Butt-head set. To this unexpected audience of fans in their late teens and 20s, he's the ultimate in hip.
``Tony Bennett is cool,'' says Richard Sands, program director for modern-rock station KITS-FM in San Francisco.
Sand's station not only added Bennett's hit song ``Steppin' Out With My Baby'' to its morning and afternoon rotations in December but booked him for its Green Christmas Acoustic Concert. The crooner shared the stage with rock acts Cracker, General Public, Evan Dando of the Lemonheads and Porno for Pyros.
``We had 11 modern rock bands, and he was the most popular,'' says Sands. ``They gave him a standing ovation. It was definitely young people - people about 18 to 35 years old. I can't explain it. It's just one of these things. They think Tony Bennett is cool. He's genuine. He's not a phony. He's sincere in his music, and I think our audience can appreciate that in an artist.''
``Personally, I am not surprised, because he's doing the same thing he's always done,'' says Sharon, who is working with Bennett on the singer's autobiography. ``And I think they get that message: Well, here's a guy who really knows what he's doing. And he's really into it. And he's not BS. I don't think it's a flash-in-the-pan thing.''
His appeal to an audience young enough to be the grandchildren of his original fans is a sweet irony for Bennett, a vindication of sorts for those lean years when record executives thought his repertoire was dated.
``I just can't be more satisfied. It's so thrilling to know that no matter how [the marketing people] try and intimidate the young person by saying, `This is your music, and your parents like the other kind,' it's falling short,'' he says. ``All of a sudden now, the audience is making up its own mind as to what it likes.''
Much of the ground work for Bennett's success with the MTV crowd was laid by his 39-year-old son, Danny Bennett, his executive producer, manager for 15 years and eldest of his four children from his two marriages, which ended in divorce.
``He's the one that got me with all the young people. When I didn't understand what was going on, he said: `Just trust me. I know something that you don't know.' And he knew the young people would like what I did,'' Bennett explains with a laugh. ``I finally said, `What are you doing?' I felt real funny. He said, `Just trust me on this.' ''
The discussion may focus on music, but, as he chats, Bennett's gray eyes are fixed on the paints and sketch pads laid out across the living room table of his hotel suite in San Jose. Repeatedly during the conversation, he lightly dips a paintbrush into a glass of water, mixes watercolors and records his view of the east foothills. It's a reminder of his second career as an artist, painting under his real name, Anthony Dominick Benedetto (``blessed one'' in Italian).
Bennett's art work has been praised by David Hockney; a Bennett painting sells for $4,000 to $55,000. Coming shows of his work are planned at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, which, he says, is planning a retrospective on his life and career.
He's hardly dressed for the part of a painter, though, in his pale-green glen plaid sports jacket, open-necked deep blue shirt, green pleated slacks, wild violet paisley socks and black loafers. Everything looks perfect; not even a single gray hair on his head is out of place. Still, he keeps a tiny sketchbook in his back pocket. If you're lucky, he'll pull it out to show you the pencil drawing he made of one of the diners in the hotel restaurant.
``I love two things: I love to paint, and I love to sing,'' he says. ``What happens is I get what the sportsmen call `in the zone.' I'm in the creative zone all the time. It allows me to have sanity. You get these adulations; it's so easy to get helium in the brain when you're a celebrity.''
by CNB