THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 17, 1995 TAG: 9512150024
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: KEITH MONROE
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
Frank Sinatra is 80. It would be impossible not to notice thanks to the great American hype machine. Sinatra has been celebrated in print and on the TV news. A TV special was created to commemorate the occasion and his daughter, Nancy, is selling a coffee table book to Christmas shoppers. Immense boxed sets of his Columbia, Capitol and Reprise recordings are available. Sinatra even timed an auction of the contents of a house to coincide with his birthday.
The guy may be as inspired a marketer as he was a singer. If it were anyone else, this would be shameless overkill. But this is Sinatra. For over 50 years, he's been one of the cultural icons of the 20th century. A world star. A single name - like Einstein or Elvis, Picasso or Garbo.
This is no mere celebrity. Sinatra is the most influential singer in the history of recorded music. He has transcended his era with timeless renditions of the great standards of American music. His musicianship was flawless, his phrasing supernatural, his arrangements indelible. He invented the LP as more than a string of songs, as a mood, an idea, a single experience. He deserves every superlative that's been heaped on him. His artistry will live for ever.
I come from the Beatles, Stones, Who, Kinks generation, but much of that music now seems dated. Yet the great Sinatra sides remain fresh. These days I'm a lot more likely to slap ``Come Dance with Me'' into the car stereo than ``Sergeant Pepper.''
Part of Sinatra's greatness was his actor's ability to not just sing a song but to live it. On his records are depths of anguish and heights of pure joy. Are they genuine? Or are they art? No one can say, but the temptation to read the man into the music has been irresistible.
When Sinatra sings of yearning and heartbreak, listeners look for autobiography. Isn't it Ava he's singing about in ``I'm A Fool To Want You''? When he adopts the swinging ``Come Fly With Me'' facade, people can't help but connect it to the Vegas lifestyle, the paparazzi-punching.
Paradoxes have intrigued his fans, too. The arrogant winner who is secretly tortured. The contrast of a glittering life in the limelight with glimpses of a late- night loneliness. Randy Newman once wrote a song with Sinatra in mind. ``I've been around the world,'' it says. ``Had my pick of any girl. You'd think I'd be happy - but I'm not.'' There's psychological shrewdness in that, but may have cut too close to the bone. Sinatra never sang it, preferring the boast of ``My Way.''
Still, all the talent and autobiography don't account for the way Sinatra has dominated the landscape. His megafame is not about him alone, but about his audience. During the war, when he sang ``I'll Be Seeing You,'' he spoke for far-flung GIs in a way they never could for themselves. And in a way that their sweethearts could only dream about.
In the '50s and '60s, as the country enjoyed an era of unprecedented material prosperity, Sinatra was a brash ideal of perfect hipness and cool. He was the way to woo the girl. His jet-propelled life was the good life. It was the era of ``High Hopes,'' of being ``Young at Heart.'' Women wanted someone like him. Men wanted to be him.
And that's why his 80th matters so much to so many people who are themselves getting up in years. He was their youth. And now, he's no longer young. His musicianship remained long after the voice was gone, but in his last few concerts he needed a teleprompter to remember the words. His singing days are over. But the song lingers on.
The future will appreciate Sinatra, but he will never be to it what he was to his own generation. He was the soundtrack of their lives. When they realize the skinny kid is 80, they think about it in song lyrics that echo in their heads in his voice. ``The days dwindle down to a precious few. September. November. . . .'' MEMO: Mr. Monroe is editor of the Editorial Page. by CNB