Life is a gift : the zen of Bennett

240 Pages·2012·5.47 MB·English

by  Bennett

Life
IS A
Gift
T Z B
HE EN OF ENNETT
Tony Bennett
Foreword by Mitch Albom
Dedication
I would like to dedicate this book to my wonderful family, my lovely wife,
Susan Benedetto, and to Robert Henri’s The Art Spirit.
The Duke Ellington Orchestra
Contents

Dedication

Foreword by Mitch Albom
Introduction: How Do You Keep the Music Playing?
1. Only Sing Good Songs
2. I’ve Always Been Unplugged
3. Proper Involvement
4. Learn What to Leave Out
5. The Art of Excellence
6. Fame on the Brain
7. Never Underestimate the Public
8. Butterflies Are Good
9. Bel Canto
10. The Family Circle
11. War Is Insanity
12. Free Form
13. Everything Should Be Done with Love
14. When They Zig, I Zag
15. Mentor a Young Person
16. Black Crows and Golden Birds
17. Life Is a Gift
18. Citizen of the World
19. Sometimes Turn Off All the Mics
20. Go with Truth and Beauty
21. Giving Back
22. This Too Shall Pass
23. I Sing to the Whole Family
24. I Never Worked a Day in My Life
Artwork
Acknowledgments

Photographic Insert
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Musician, The Pearl Bailey Show
Foreword
BY MITCH ALBOM
W
e were standing on an empty concert stage. Tony Bennett opened his mouth.
“BUHP!”
The sweet, single note seemed to bounce off the rear wall and boomerang back
to us, perfectly intact.
“Hear those acoustics?” he said.
“Do it again,” I said.
“BUHP!”
He listened as the note resonated. Then he smiled, and I realized I was
witnessing something rare: a man hearing the sound of his own voice and having
every reason to delight in what he heard.
If there is, as the subtitle of this book suggests, a Zen of Tony Bennett, it is
surely that: a philosophy of life so pure and honest that it can smile when it hears
itself sung back. How many of us can say that? How many of us cringe at a
recording of our own voices, or when we see ourselves on video, or when we
think about how we acted yesterday or last year?
Tony Bennett, at eighty-six, can smile when his world is reflected—and with
good reason. You are tempted to say talent, but many a talented artist has
despised his own gifts. You are tempted to say success, but how many successful
people are privately miserable?
No, the reason for Bennett’s serene look—on that day in the concert hall, or
any night he’s onstage, or holding a brush in front of a canvas, or gazing out his
window overlooking Central Park—is that he’s doing what he wants to do, the
way he wants to do it. He makes art. He makes friends. He gives away. He owns
very little.
The word Zen is tied into enlightenment. First you seek it, then you share it.
The Zen of Tony Bennett is that he’s still doing both.

Ask Tony about music, and he will quickly cite an influence—Art Tatum, his
teachers after the war, his father, who once sang from a hilltop in an Italian
village. Ask Tony about art, and he will defer to his instructors, or da Vinci, or
any of the masters. Humble? This is a man who started his own arts high school,
but named it after Frank Sinatra.
He shares credit. He deflects praise. The only thing he grips hard is his artistic
standards. He became famous in a suit and never took it off, wore it through a
hundred other fashions until it once again became the height of cool. He chooses
tunes that are timeless, melodic, never consumed by the beat of the moment.
And because he sings the Great American Songbook, some might categorize
Tony as conventional, but he has never been conventional, because conventional
means you do anything to stay in vogue, you go from pop to rap, from writing to
posting, from privacy to filming yourself on YouTube.
“Change or die,” they say.
Or don’t, Tony replies.
Now, that’s Zen.

There is a reason Tony Bennett has won seventeen Grammys—the first in 1963,
the latest forty-nine years later. It’s because true art will stroke through fads and
rise above the surface. It’s the same reason both Bing Crosby and Judy Garland
declared that Bennett was their favorite singer, but Amy Winehouse was thrilled
to sing with him, too. The same reason he has won Emmy awards in two
centuries. The same reason he’s been welcome on The Ed Sullivan Show and The
Simpsons.
Duke Ellington once said, “People do not retire. They are retired by others.”
Tony Bennett would not let that happen, and his perseverance has been rewarded
and embraced. People sensed, correctly, that from decade to decade, he has
remained true, a man who cares deeply about his art, and an artist who cares
deeply about his humanity. His work on behalf of children, fellow musicians,
and his hometown of Astoria, Queens, is inspiring. He does so many fund-
raisers, he is jokingly nicknamed “Tony Benefit.”
Yet as you will see in these pages, his life has been full of its own poignant
moments, holding his dying father’s hand in a hospital, fighting in a war, lapsing
briefly into drugs, hitting depression over a failing marriage, and having his
spirits lifted by a choir in a hotel hallway, sent to him by Ellington himself.
Tony persevered and thrived, thanks mostly to his devotion to music. It has
been his cape and his swaddling cloth, a gift to him and his gift to us.
“Go with truth and beauty, and forget everything else.” It is one of the tips
Bennett offers in this book, and part of why the New York Times recently said of
Bennett’s work, “We aren’t likely to see a recording career like this again.”
We aren’t likely to see a man like this, either. I’ve been around so many people
who meet Tony, and when they walk away say, “Gosh, I just want to hug him!’’
I understand. He is the note that bounces off the wall and returns to you in
gentle perfection. Who would ever want to let that go?
—Mitch Albom,
author of Tuesdays with Morrie
and The Time Keeper