PAUL ANKA BIOGRAPHY

Classic Songs, My Way

Life's been good to Paul Anka - very good, in fact. But even as he enters his 50th year in the music business, he's not satisfied when his own work is merely good. "For me," he says, "the good has always been the enemy of great. To be great, you've got to forget about that select few who are going to talk about you if you don't quite make the mark -- you've got to challenge yourself."

Armed with a sense of tenacity as formidable as his talent, Anka has conquered many challenges over the course of the last five decades, forging a career that's unlike any other in the history of pop. As he made the transition from '50s teen idol to celebrated songwriter to a contemporary torchbearer for all that swings, he has maintained a commitment to quality, bringing his best to whatever he faces. That was as true for the Ottawa teen who called up every record company he could find asking for auditions as it is for the seasoned vocalist who's unafraid to turn songs by Nirvana, Soundgarden and Bon Jovi into swanky big-band extravaganzas. Indeed, Anka's two most recent albums - Rock Swings and now Classic Songs, My Way - have inspired millions of music listeners to not just hear some familiar songs in new ways but to marvel at the enduring ingenuity and integrity of Anka as an artist and performer.

Classic Songs, My Way is the latest testament to those qualities. The new album features lush treatments of songs by Joni Mitchell, Billy Joel, and Bryan Adams, a swinging take on the Killers' "Mr. Brightside" and surprising new renditions of two classics from Paul's own formidable canon. The recipient of valuable support from Anka earlier in his career, Michael Bublé returns the favour by joining his swing mentor on his 1958 Top 10 hit "You Are My Destiny" - the remarkable new version replaces the original's teenage ardour with a temperament that's older and wiser. For the album's grand finale, Jon Bon Jovi joins Anka on a soaring performance of "My Way," which Paul famously turned from a little-known French song into a perennial showstopper for his late friend Frank Sinatra.

Classic Songs, My Way encapsulates nearly every era of hit-making for Anka. Never one to rest on his laurels, he has had a song on Billboard's charts in every decade since 1957, when the Ottawa-born Anka was only 17. Since then, he's recorded over 120 albums in a wide variety of languages, selling close to 15 million albums worldwide and landing three No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 - "Diana," "Lonely Boy" and "(You're) Having My Baby." (The first of those hits reportedly sold 10 million copies worldwide - only "White Christmas" topped it.)

Plenty of other artists have him to thank for some big hits, too. His 900-song catalog includes such titles as "She's a Lady" (Tom Jones), "Puppy Love" (Donny Osmond), "It Doesn't Matter Any More" (Buddy Holly) and "Teddy" (Connie Francis). The theme he wrote for The Tonight Show was heard every night by millions of Johnny Carson fans. As for "My Way," it can be heard at any given moment in a karaoke bar somewhere on the planet.

Anka's most recent activities as a recording artist were sparked by his role in the career of a young artist who has fit into Sinatra's shoes quite comfortably. In 2003, he served as the executive producer on the self-titled debut album by Michael Bublé - the Vancouver singer performed Anka's "Put Your Head on My Shoulder" on his multi-platinum-selling disc. After Bublé's success created a new vogue for big-band jazz, the German record company Centaurus asked Anka to consider making an album of swinging standards. What happened next would change the course of Anka's career, re-establishing him with longtime fans and attracting many new ones.

"I wasn't interested in doing standards because I don't find that an event or a challenge," he says. "It wasn't a bag I wanted to get into. That's when I realized that there were songs out there that are great songs and have never been done like this. So that's what excited me enough to say, 'You know what? I want to go out there on that limb.' After not being in the studio for a few years, I was anxious to get back in to prove that point and to really see what I could make of this."

His goal on Rock Swings - and now Classic Songs, My Way - was to "take great songs and rework them so they're natural for me." With the help of his five daughters, Anka spent months studying charts and researching music from the '80s and '90s, trying to find the songs that would work in the radical new context he proposed. The songs that made the cut included Bon Jovi's "It's My Life," Lionel Richie's "Hello" and Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven." Even more dramatic were his transformations of "Wonderwall" by Oasis, "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden and Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." In contrast to nominally similar efforts to match past and present, this was no exercise in kitsch. Anka knew he'd be catching people by surprise, but as he says, "you've always gotta back it up with quality. We didn't pinch our pennies there. We got the best musicians, the best studios, everything was best, best, best. It's not a novelty record."
Critics were understandably caught off-guard, but many overcame the shock long enough to appreciate what they heard.

Rolling Stone's Christian Hoard commented that "Rock Swings is destined to be the one big - band album in many college kids' record collections" and that Anka's "Sinatra-isms turn "Smells Like Teen Spirit" into something surreal." Phil Roura of the New York Daily News noted that although "a swing version of "Black Hole Sun" may send some rock fans running for the hills. . . "Rock Swings" may be among Anka's best albums" and that "performed by Anka, REM's "Everybody Hurts" is a bluesy wonder." Amazingly, the metalheads posting on Soundgarden's fan sites tended to agree. Brad Wheeler in The Globe and Mail described the album's overall mood as "both stylish and playful" and said the cover of Michael Jackson "induces fingers to snap and the tongue-rolling feline growl at the tail end of Survivor's 'Eye of the Tiger' is outrageous." Reviewing the album for the All Music Guide, John Bush praised the disc as "a compelling selection of standards that reveals a close inspection and an inspired reimagining of the pop and alternative artists of the period." As Maclean's magazine noted in a July 2005 cover story, "Paul Anka is back, baby. And this time, he might even be cool." Matt Schudel's review for the Washington Post was one of glowing astonishment "the result is both a surprise hit and an album of terrific music making that far exceeds anything you might expect. It's so fresh and different - simultaneously old-fashioned and daringly new - that you can't help marveling at the talent and chutzpah that made it happen."

Rock Swings went Top 10 in the UK, and was certified gold in the UK, France, and Canada, hit No. 2 on Billboard's Top Jazz Albums chart and went on to sell half a million units worldwide. Audiences worldwide were struck by his renewed vigour both on disc and in concert. Yet for this follow-up, he says he had no intention of making Rock Swings II. Only Marc Cohn's "Walking in Memphis" carried over from the original batch of candidates for Rock Swings -- "everything else was a new discovery for me," says Anka. The big reason behind that change was his desire to emphasize another important element of his repertoire: the ballads. "It all opened up the moment I realized I was going into ballad mode," he says. "There was a whole new group of songs that I would have never thought of for Rock Swings."

In place of the brash, brassy arrangements on the earlier record come more lush settings for such songs as Foreigner's "Waiting for a Girl Like You," Bryan Adams' "Heaven" and Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now." Anka was particularly pleased with the orchestral arrangements by Jeremy Lubbock, a British-born veteran who previously brought his skills to hits by Chicago, Whitney Huston and Barbra Streisand. Anka's Rock Swings collaborators Pat Williams, John Clayton and Randy Kerber also contributed their expertise, as did David Foster and the legendary Johnny Mandel.

Anka describes My Way as "a variation on the theme" established by Rock Swings. "That was a difficult call for me, deciding whether to continue the franchise," he says. But he certainly appreciated the widened range of opportunities. "The Joni Mitchell song wouldn't have worked for that album at all," he notes. "There was a lot more flexibility here as to the content. Songs like 'Both Sides Now' and Duran Duran's 'Ordinary World' had lyrics and chord structures that made them very palatable and very believable. 'Ordinary World' is one of my favourite tracks here." Anka was out to "find stuff that stretched me." Says the singer, "'Mr. Brightside' is one. 'Time After Time' is another - it's probably one of the best arrangements on there and it's never been done in this fashion. "So this was new turf," he adds.

And even the old turf feels new when it comes to the versions of "You Are My Destiny" and "My Way." Anka calls the former "a preview of an idea I've had for years, which is to take my oldies and give them re-treatments. If you look at the Sinatra songbook, you'll see that over the years he re-recorded all of that stuff six different ways." Over the years, he notes, the fans who had a connection to his first hits have been able to come to shows and hear those songs re-arranged "with a different emotional fibre." He's excited to do something like that on Classic Songs, My Way, as "You Are My Destiny, "one of the biggest songs I wrote as a kid," is transformed into a soaring duet with his friend Bublé in what Anka calls an "incredible arrangement" by John Clayton. Asked whether fans can look forward to new approaches to other early hits, Anka replies, "There may be more of that."

Jon Bon Jovi on "My Way" also sees Anka push a much-loved song in a new direction. The presence of these songs - landmarks in both his history and the wider history of pop music - suggests the notion that Anka's five-decade career has come full circle. Yet the singer has never been one for dwelling too much on the past. "I speak of it privately and with my friends or family, but I'm not one of those guys who lives there," he says. "It's part of what I am and what I did, but I'm always focused on today and what I want to be doing tomorrow. The constant reminder is the public you perform in front of. I travel all around the world and once I see those faces, I realize what those songs mean to them, the songs from the '50s. As a performer and just as a human being, I won't pooh-pooh them to those people."

It's been 50 years since Anka became one of the world's biggest pop idols. Inevitably, he must acknowledge the huge history he shares with his audience. "I'm one of the only few who started at that age who survived and stayed in the business," he notes. "And I've been allowed to change. Because I was the writer of songs like 'My Way,' 'She's A Lady' and '(You're) Having My Baby,' I was able to reinvent myself. But it's always been very curious to me as to who they're looking at. Are they embracing that kid I was and those early songs they know? Or are they accepting the grown man up there? If so, what's made it different for them?"

Anka says he has a constant awareness of the ways his audience has seen and heard him over the years. Even when still a teenager, he displayed a strong sense of integrity. In the 1962 film Lonely Boy - a classic cinema-verite documentary by the National Film Board of Canada that revealed Anka's hectic and sometimes isolating life as a pop idol - he displays an astonishing degree of confidence and savvy. Explaining what it takes to be a successful singer, the young Anka says, "You gotta have appeal. You gotta look like you're in show business, because if you don't, you're not gonna make it." He then describes working out for four hours a day to lose weight and spending a year-and-a-half getting his hairstyle right. He also says that being greeted by hundreds of screaming girls every night is "something I wouldn't knock."

The NFB film captures Anka near the end of the first phase of his career, one that was marked by the tenacity that would become one of his trademarks. Born July 30, 1941, in Ottawa into a tight-knit Lebanese-Canadian family, he didn't waste much time getting his life in music started. He sang in the choir at St. Elijah Syrian Orthodox Church and briefly studied piano. He honed his writing skills with journalism courses, even working for a spell at the Ottawa Citizen. By 13, he had his own vocal group, the Bobbysoxers. He performed at every amateur night he could get to in his mother's car, unbeknownst to his mother. He won a trip to New York by winning a Campbell's soup contest that required him to spend three months collecting soup can labels.

In 1956, he convinced his parents to let him travel to Los Angeles, where he called every record company in the phone book looking for an audition. A meeting with Modern Records led to the release of Anka's first single, "Blau-Wile Deverest Fontaine." It was not a hit, but Anka kept plugging away, going so far to sneak into Fats Domino's dressing room to meet the man in Ottawa. When Anka returned New York in 1957, he scored a meeting with Don Costa, the A&R man for ABC-Paramount Records. He played him a batch of songs that included "Diana" - Costa was duly enthusiastic about the potential of the young singer and songwriter. The rapid and enormous success of "Diana" made him a star.

When the Paul Anka of 2007 is asked to assess the Paul Anka of 1957, he thinks the kid had his head screwed on right. "My Canadian upbringing kept me pretty level and cool about things," says Anka now. "I was just in a time when kids weren't making their way into the music business. There was no American Idol then. I navigated my own way through this dream that I had. I borrowed a hundred bucks here and there, and I went and did it as solidly as I could in a time of great innocence. I'm not patting myself on the back -- it's the fact of wanting something, and being aggressive but also polite about it."
Gaining an acumen for business was an early key to his success -- it's incredible that the young Anka had the prescience to buy his masters back from ABC-Paramount when he left the label in 1962. Another factor was his forte as a songwriter - then and now, his best original material managed to boast a universal appeal while remaining rooted in personal experience. Nowhere is this truer than in the ache-filled "Lonely Boy," a No. 1 hit in 1959.

"They are all very autobiographical," says Anka of his early hits. "I was alone, traveling, girls screaming, and I never got near them. I'm a teenager and feeling isolated and all that. That becomes 'Lonely Boy.' At record hops, I'm up on stage and all these kids are holding each other with heads on each other's shoulders. Then I have to go have dinner in my room because there are thousands of kids outside the hotel -- 'Put Your Head on My Shoulder' was totally that experience. But if you look at thousands of kids around the world, you don't have to be a pop star to feel lonely. Think of all the poor little guys who have their eye on little Susie Q and she won't even look at him."

His canniness as a writer for himself and other artists was a major reason he was able to weather the sea change in the music business that came with the British Invasion in the mid-'60s. Says Anka, "I wasn't jaded enough to say, 'I'm a young kid, I can always do this,' because I knew these guys from England were gonna kill us."

By the time the Beatles arrived, Anka had another tool in his survival kit. "After a few hits," he says, "I knew I was a writer, and with writers, the power was always in the pen. When I started writing for Buddy Holly and Connie Francis, I felt that it made me different for people -- they'd say, 'Hey, you can write, you can fall back on something."
Among his proudest accomplishments was writing the Academy Award-nominated theme for The Longest Day, the 1962 film in which he also starred. And even though his chart fortunes waned in the mid-'60s, he discovered a place where he could maintain his chops as a performer. "I worked Las Vegas because none of us - and Bobby Darin and I talked about this a lot - knew where our careers were gonna go. All we knew was these were these guys in Vegas who were cool and wore tuxedos. We thought, 'We can at least do that if we're not selling records."

Songwriting and performing "are what gave me the confidence to keep going," he says. Becoming a junior associate of Sinatra and the Rat Pack also had its privileges. By the '70s, the success of "My Way" and a string of hits like "(You're) Having My Baby" confirmed his status as an icon of popular music. His later achievements as a recording artist included "Hold Me 'Til the Morning Comes," a hit duet with Peter Cetera in 1983, the Spanish-language album Amigos in 1996, and Body of Work, a 1998 duets album that featured Frank Sinatra, Celine Dion, Patti LaBelle, Tom Jones and daughter Anthea Anka.

With Rock Swings and Classic Songs, My Way, he has made a triumphant return to the recording studio, proving that his abilities as an artist and performer have hardly waned with the passage of time. Yet audiences at his shows all over the world already know that he remains an indefatigable entertainer. For Anka, getting the chance to wow a crowd is still the greatest thing of all.

"It's the most unique, gratifying part of my life," he says. "As years go by, I get different material and things happen that only embellishes what it is. The last ten years have been just the best for me and I'm not even there yet -- the flag's not come down.
I get a lot out of it and there's a lot of substance to it," he adds. "I would never do it if I were mediocre or afraid or just went out there to take the money. We've all been to concerts where you sit there and the audience doesn't get it and the guy up there doesn't feel like it and he walks off. I don't know what that is because I go out every night like my balls are on the line. I will not do less than what I did the night before. Even when I'm sick, I work my way around it. There's nothing like that part of my life."

Paul Anka Fan-site http://www.paulanka.org

Fifty years into his storied career, Anka still believes that being good isn't good enough - you've got to be great!

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