Paul Anka: A Very Bad Man

[hamilton]

Okay, so this is pretty long... but I swiped it from the Toronto Star, and you have to subscribe to read the story, so I just cut 'n' pasted instead.

Anyway... is there something in the water in Ottawa that makes people completely insane? I mean, first Booche, and now this:

Anka hits crooner's Nirvana

Why follow in Michael Bublé's footsteps when you're a Hall of Famer? So Ottawa's pride cribs from Van Halen instead

VIT WAGNER

POP MUSIC CRITIC

Paul Anka, at age 63 and after nearly five decades in the music business, still insists on doing it his way — even if it's a song by Nirvana.

On his new album, Rock Swings, the Ottawa-bred crooner takes hits by Oasis, Soundgarden, Van Halen and others and arranges them for big band. The disc arrives in stores June 7, two days after his induction into the Canadian Walk of Fame — an honour he also freely interprets from his own perspective.

"Like many artists, I've gone through some bumps up there (in Canada) because of lack or acceptance or whatever it was," says Anka, on the line from his home in Los Angeles.

Anka, who was awarded the Order of Canada earlier this year and who has been a member of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame since 1980, can't quite put his finger on why he has felt unwelcome in his home and native land. Inevitably, it seems to have something to do with perceived resentment over his having found fame and fortune south of the border.

"There was a time when it was kind of touchy," he says.

"Something wasn't connecting. It could be a sense that `you've left us and become successful. You're not here anymore.' I don't know exactly what that syndrome is.

"But in the past few years I've felt more at home. It is my home. I am a Canadian. That's how I present myself around the world."

Anka, who already has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is a recipient of France's Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters, rocketed to public attention at the age of 16 with his first hit, "Diana," followed in relatively short order by "Put Your Head on My Shoulder" and "Lonely Boy."

"My Way," Anka's arrangement of the French song "Comme d'habitude," became a calling card for Frank Sinatra. But it's the infamous Sid Vicious version that Rock Swings perversely resembles — except that instead of stripping a big band tune to its purgative core, he has charted the opposite course by bringing finger-snapping, ballroom glitz to selections from the rock canon.

"You can take a great song and interpret it any way you want," he says. "I started to see there were some good songs that would fly in a very legitimate way with a big band."

Initially, Anka was approached with a more conventional proposal. With neo-traditionalists such as Michael Bublé riding high, the circumstances seemed ripe for Anka to re-enter the fray by dipping back into the time-honoured Gershwin, Cole Porter repertoire. The idea didn't appeal to him.

"I thought, `that's boring. Who cares? It's been done too much. Let's take it a step further.'"

Anka also had no interest in going down the same road as Pat Boone, who released an album of metal covers in 1997.

"This isn't a novelty record like Pat Boone trying to cop the whole rock thing," he says.

"I've had a Top 50 record every decade for five decades. And looking at each decade and myself professionally, I thought, `What can you do now. What can you do that's stimulating to you, that has the integrity and will fit with a music business that is kind of teeter-tottering right now.'"

Ultimately, Anka fastened on the idea of interpreting the music that his five daughters, now aged 25 to 36, grew up with.

Eventually, he put together a list of tracks ranging over a variety of styles. Some, like Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel" and even R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts," weren't such a stretch. Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," he concedes, is a little more out there — although maybe not so for Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun," which has already appeared on an album by Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme.

"When you look at the song as a musician, the chords are great," he says of the Soundgarden classic. "That's probably one of the best chord progressions on the CD. On that one we were really torn because we could have done it four different ways."

Not everything made the cut.

"I had to represent Michael Jackson," he says.

"Set aside everything else, the kid is talented. He had his run. One of the best arrangements we had was `Billie Jean,' but I just couldn't get the words `Billie Jean' out of my mouth.

"So I threw it out and put in `The Way You Make Me Feel,' which came together. It was the same with the others. Once I got into my gait and understood what I had to do with each of them, they all just fell right in. A hit is a hit is a hit. And a good song is a good song. It's not all Cole Porter anymore."

Anka, whose summer schedule includes dates at the Montreal Jazz Festival and the Niagara Fallsview Casino, still performs about 150 shows a year.

"I don't think you can retire just because of finances or because you think it's the thing to do," he says.

"You can't take yourself out of that arena. I saw Sinatra try it eight times. If it's something that you are still getting a big bang out of, you've got to do it. Art has no time."

"A good song is a good song. It's not all Cole Porter anymore."

Paul Anka is a bad man. Sometimes, I get "Calendar Girl" stuck in my head for hours at a time. That's not such a good thing.

[skelter]

Calendar Girl was Neil Sedaka

[Kaidy Mae]

Anyone seen the bio pic "Lonely Boy" about Anka when he was still wet behind the ears in this business that he now sounds like the self-proclaimed ruler of? Pretty interesting how full of himself he was...even back then. His not-so-subtle mob ties are pretty hilarious!

However, psychotic past behaviour aside, I am glad to see an "artist" trying to make some old songs into something different. It may not necessarily be good, but I think it's better than just copying something we are so used to hearing one way. If you can't make an original sound better, completely rearrange it. Tear it apart, pick through the bones and make a new beast. Sometimes great things are born. In this case? Doubtful, but at least on the upside it'll give me something to giggle my ass off to after getting into the spores.

[SaggyBalls]

good for him for having an ego.

how many of you have played as many shows, put out as namy albums, and gotten as far into the music industry?

so what if he's open about it? doesn't make me like his music any more than i already don't but good on the guy. i bet he's having the time of his life!