WASHINGTON — He hit the airwaves at the birth of rock ‘n roll, hung out with the likes of Buddy Holly and The Rat Pack, battled Bobby Darin in a friendly rivalry to see who could top the music charts, and penned a number of legendary hits for other artists from Tom Jones to Frank Sinatra.
Now, singer-songwriter Paul Anka brings hits talents to Strathmore in Bethesda on Saturday.
“I look forward to coming back. We have a good time every time we come down there,” Anka tells WTOP. “You’re gonna get an eclectic array of stuff. There’s over 50 years of stuff. We never retire songs, but we always try to keep in mind the audience. … It’s going to be some of the old, but not a lot, it’s going to be new stuff, it’s going to be ‘My Way,’ it’s going to be some video presentation, we’ve got a hot band, a lot of new arrangements, and it’ll be a few surprises here and there.”
While the Four Seasons sang about “Sherry,” Frankie Avalon sang about “Venus” and Neil Sedaka sang “Oh Carol,” Anka found his breakthrough hit with “Diana,” which peaked at No. 2 in 1957.
“I just couldn’t believe it. I was a kid. Pop music really was in its infancy stage. It was overwhelming,” Anka says. “These kids today are jaded and they’re on these shows and before they burp they’ve made $50 million and they can’t really handle it. Back then, you’ve got a great family around you. … But when you hear it on the radio driving around or whatever, hey, it’s a jolt! It’s wow, I can’t believe this, and you’re very appreciative of it, because it was new to everybody, a kid so young making it.”
Anka quickly became a teen heartthrob at drive-ins and sock hops thanks to the No. 7 hit “You Are My Destiny” (George McFly anyone?), the No. 1 hit “Lonely Boy” and the No. 4 hit “It’s Time to Cry.”
“I got lucky as a kid. I was writing kids songs. I was hopefully writing the way every teenager thought, indigenous to that world, ” Anka says.
Anka then delivered his personal favorite hit — and arguably his most recognizable song — “Put Your Head on My Shoulder,” which soared to No. 2 on the charts in 1959.
“That was the turning point for me as a writer,” Anka says. “You’re standing on a stage at some sock hop or high school, and back then it was a whole big thing just to hold a girl. … The whole thing was to get a head on a shoulder, whether it was in the movie house or on the gymnasium floor. … And it just hit me as I watched it, I went home to the hotel one night and I just nailed it. I think I called Annette, who I was dating at the time, may she rest in peace, and I said, ‘Gee, I’ve just written this great song.’ … I called her and I sang it to her over the phone, so it was a real turning point.”
While the song fueled his love life, it also sparked a battle for bragging rights among his peers.
“My friend Bobby Darin, he and I were really close and we were always vying, as friendly as we were, for the charts. He beat me out of No. 1 with ‘Mack the Knife,’ so that was another compounded effect of that song,” Anka says. “He and I felt the change coming … You knew it wasn’t going to really last.”
The following year, Anka got the best of the friendly rivalry, as Darin’s “Beyond the Sea” peaked at No. 6, while Anka’s “Puppy Love” went all the way to No. 2. Once again, his actress girlfriend Annette Funicello (“Mickey Mouse Club”) served as inspiration for the romantic lyrics.
“Part of the experience was Annette, who was a Disney property and very popular. She and I were very close and they didn’t want us close. I kept hearing ‘Mr. Disney doesn’t want you near him’ and ‘it’s puppy love’ and ‘blah blah blah.’ So I said, OK, let’s take the lemons and make lemonade, so I wrote ‘Puppy Love.’ … You look at the whole sociological situation … in this country with sexuality, it was a pretty shut-down window. … Everybody was educated on the fact that you don’t do this and you don’t do that, you’re too young and it’s just puppy love. Bells go off! I just sat down and wrote about it.”
Anka kept on cranking them out through the ’60s and ’70s, returning to No. 1 with “(You’re) Having My Baby” in 1974. But beyond his own hits, he penned countless songs for other artists: “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” for Buddy Holly, “She’s a Lady” for Tom Jones, “Teddy” for Connie Francis, “This is It (I Never Heard)” for Michael Jackson and “The Tonight Show” theme for Johnny Carson.
“I realized after a year in the business that to separate yourself … you needed the gravitas of being the producer, being the writer, so you had something to fall back on. … I started to establish myself as a writer, which I felt was very very important,” Anka says. “After I met The Beatles in Europe and my agent brought them over here, everything changed. We were thrown off the radio in a sense, but because I was the writer, I survived it. … That evolved into, at a young age, being the only guy that was asked to come to Vegas by the boys and work The Rat Pack, where I got a lot of my training.”
This relationship evolved into Anka writing the immortal “My Way” for an aging Frank Sinatra (also covered by Elvis Presley). At age 28, Anka felt he was too young to sing such a nostalgic song with hindsight lyrics detailing the wisdom of life’s blessings and regrets. So, he gave it to Old Blue Eyes.
“Knowing Sinatra as I did all those years, when I met up with him in Florida … he told me he was quitting show business — which was a huge shock to me and many others — and he was doing just one more album, and he was doing it with my producer Don Costa,” Anka says. “I had never written for him. He had asked me, but I was scared to death. … So I came back to New York and I wrote it in six hours and flew out to Vegas and gave it to him. I was old enough at 28 to write it, but I was too young to sing it. … You needed somebody of some vintage as he was that was kind of wrapping it up.”
This Saturday at Strathmore, the 74-year-old Anka will sing “My Way” during the centennial of Sinatra’s birthday. As he sings it, he’ll also reflect on his own storied life and career, including six children, namely Amanda who’s married to actor Jason Bateman (“Arrested Development”).
“I live a regular life away from it, and that’s what’s kept me kind of sane, frankly. I didn’t really absorb a lot of the bad habits of my Vegas crowd. Balance is everything,” Anka says. “When I’m on stage now, the comfort zone and the emotional triggers are different. I am older and I’m on a certain journey of life where I’m very much in touch with my body and I think everything brain-driven, you sit there and go, ‘Damn, I’m still doing this and look at this audience … Look at how they’re reacting.'”
It’s not every day that audiences can witness music legends, those talents who were born to do it.
“I certainly felt at an early age that I was destined to do it or gifted to do it. I didn’t know how long it would last,” Anka says. “None of us are born sophisticated. You’re given this gift or this talent, but when success comes, you’re sitting there most of the time saying, ‘geez, how do I deal with this?’ You’ve gotta find your own vibe, find your own place, find your own rhythm and your own comfort. You’re crawling along this journey of success, and then one day you hope to be wise enough to make the right decisions and get the miles under you to feel comfortable in what you do with a passion.”
Listen below to hear the full interview with Paul Anka. Click here for Strathmore ticket information.
