Paul Anka On a New Album, Sinatra, A.I. & How To Evolve In Hollywood’s Fast Changing Landscape

EXCLUSIVE: In time for Valentine’s Day, Paul Anka today released Inspirations Of Life And Love, a new album on the Green Hill Music/Sun Label Group. If you’ve seen the recent HBO docu Paul Anka: His Way, you’ll know that Anka has adapted to every possible shift since launching his star singing Diana at age 16 on American Bandstand and The Ed Sullivan Show in 1957. He became a star overnight, and has been like a locomotive ever since, ramping up for the next leg of his A Man and His Music tour in March. Anka looks far younger than his 84 years, follows a disciplined diet and routine that allows him to still hits the notes, and his war stories are so compelling. Especially the ones about how he embraced the seismic changes that stunted the careers of many others. As a teen idol, Anka believed he was too pudgy and shed the baby fat with a trainer; he learned enough Japanese, French, Spanish, German and Italian to record his songs in other languages to build his global popularity. When the British invasion knocked Anka and others off the radio, he wrote for others. That led to The Tonight Show theme, My Way for Frank Sinatra, She’s A Lady for Tom Jones and many others. Who better to counsel Hollywood creatives who are downright depressed and fearing the worst as this business undergoes the most seismic disruptive shifts in decades?

DEADLINE: I can still remember that Kodak commercial built around you and your family and the song Times of Your Life. Last Sunday’s Super Bowl featured a commercial that used the Phil Collins tune Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now). Only his voice projected from flapping toilet seats, urinals and a port-a-potty, before a voice advised viewers to take a look at the color of their pee, and hydrate with Liquid I.V. It seemed undignified for an Oscar nominated song. Is this the price of all those megabuck catalog deals artists make now, where we have Beatles classics used to sell coffee? How do you protect the integrity of great songs?      

PAUL ANKA: Times of Your Life was the only commercial I ever did. We carefully look at every request and we say no more than we say yes.  For my situation, I am making all of the approvals granted.  Nothing is approved without my expressed consent.  I am involved in every request and personally grant it or deny it.  Primary Wave and I are partners and work very closely and very well together.

DEADLINE: The Grammys just aired. I grew up in an era where we latched onto promising artists, bought all their albums and listened to them grow into greatness. I wouldn’t know most of the stars of the moment if I bumped into them. I know my kids might respond to this by saying, Okay Boomer. But if asked, what would you say to one of these kids who came up as fast as you did, and could be gone just as quickly?  

ANKA: My overall comment is – I am never impressed by how hot someone is now… tell me how long they’ve been around.  But to answer the question, walk in the shadows and be careful who you have around you.  Learn your business.  Be careful how you represent yourself as your reputation precedes you.  Stay very focused and don’t just listen to the last person that you talked to. Realize that we live in a world where everything is temporary and most things do not last forever.

DEADLINE: You see AI playing a big role in music, and in the areas of health and longevity. It’s viewed by Hollywood artists as a dirty word.  

ANKA: I don’t see it that way. I think we have to be optimistic and accept the fact that there’s always been evolution in technology. When I started, I never talked to Europe; it was done by Telex. Recording was done on wax when pop music was in its infancy stage. We were shifting culture then but didn’t know it. There’s something happening along with AI that’s part of this evolution. If you look historically at this country, and it’s really an amazing country, they always find a way to balance things out. Things will get balanced out. I love my country. I don’t always trust those who run it, that’s the problem. But I think that they’ll balance things out to where the consumer, the people that are working in jobs, will be replaced. They’ll find something for them between government and corporate, give them money, maybe more money than they’ve been earning. They’ll go out to spend it and they’ll live and they’ll have their lives. There will be an adjustment, but when I see where AI is going, what it’s doing in music and film, in all aspects medicine, I’m all for it. It’s going to have to be regulated and watched, but I’m not fearful.

DEADLINE: I’m not a fan of change, but I admire people who embrace disruption. In your HBO Max documentary Paul Anka: His Way, I found it remarkable how often you recognized what was coming, and adapt and thrive. Hollywood continues to contract, Warner Bros is being sold to either Netflix or Paramount Global, there’s AI, and we’ve gotten to the point after Covid and the rise of streaming where theatrical windows for movies are shrinking and it’s not whether it can be restored, it’s what will be left of it.  

ANKA: The music business has changed to the point that the infrastructure that once existed, it’s all gone. Record companies aren’t as important as they used to be. It’s very difficult for young talent to get record deals. They’re all looking for the next Taylor Swift. The streaming is a very big problem: even though it creates a strong sense of exposure, it limits what writers can earn. They’ve got a monopoly really after changing the relationship we had with record companies. You just can’t get a record deal, but you don’t need it. Guys like me, Bruce Springsteen, a lot of the vintage type of acts, we make our money on the road. I make mine on copyrights on My Way, Put Your Head On My Shoulder, and the royalty business.

DEADLINE: Not everyone is a prolific writer like you have been…

ANKA: Those who do, they do well. Billy Joel sure does well. Sting does great. Streaming has changed the business. I’ve always said that we come to a point where we have to remind everyone that without the song, without the notes and the words, that there are no artists, no managers, no agents, no record companies. I’m very pro writer, including what people like you do, because without it, there are no magazines. Who’s going to do the writing? I’m very pro writer, but I see that’s being threatened with the streaming with AI. Just recently, the number one record was a country song, and it was all AI. No human factor. This disruption is real and it’s replacing everything that we can do. They’re doing it with motion pictures. I got a call about four years ago from Warren Buffett, a dear friend. He said, I got this Chat GPT and I asked it to write My Way, four different versions. It did it in one minute. That was the first time I heard of that, and I couldn’t believe it. Now, you hear so many stories. All these young people, it’s all AI for them and that’s smart of them. There’s no college in the future for most of these kids anymore.

DEADLINE: Will this cripple the economy of your business, and the one I cover?

ANKA: Cripple the business? The motion picture business has been totally run out of the state of California. There’s no film business as we knew it, it doesn’t exist. It’s over. I was with [David] Zaslav at his house recently, he threw a party for me when HBO released the documentary. Very brilliantly, they created a bidding war. John Malone is brilliant. Now, it’s probably going to get help up in court two years because the Ellisons are not going to let it go easily. You’ve got Trump behind them, and the Arab money. Who knows? Ted Sarandos is very close with Zaslav. Sometimes these guys do each other a favor, it’s an old Vegas trick. You want to sell a hotel? You go to your buddy and say, give me an offer. Just pretend you’re in the game. And they float it out there and it starts this bidding war. I still think it’s going to be Paramount that winds up with it. Ted and Netflix have never stepped out and purchased anything, it has all been built in-house. They’ve never been buyers, and Ted has been thumbing his nose at the theatrical business for years. He hasn’t  made a lot of friends among the exhibition people. But things are going to change regardless of who gets it. You’ll have less places to go to with product. We’ll be down to three places, maybe. We know that the overseas sales are very important and they’re making films everywhere; in Atlanta, Canada. It concerns me because we don’t have the film base and the Hollywood we grew up in, it’s over.

The state of California ruined it. This was an amazing place to live and work on the lots. It’s totally changed. It’s different now. Change happens. It has, through history, in many lucrative fields. You just have to be ready for it. They’ve wiped out the middle classes, and too many people who live in California, they can’t even pay their bills. They’ve wiped out the entire middle class.

DEADLINE: So where’s this all going?

ANKA: I think it gets worse. The state of the world politically, and the upper wealth that controls everything…they’re not going to fare well because they’re a separate movement and don’t have the people’s interests at heart. They don’t care about Hollywood. We’re in what’s called a tribal situation. Democrats and Republicans used to be able to talk to each other. I’ve been to the White House a few times, but this tribal state that we’re in, I look at it, it’s disgusting. I’m a Canadian who came down here with the dream and became an American. I’m still living the dream. I love this country, but I’ve always said I just don’t trust those who run it, all the time.

DEADLINE: Many in Hollywood believe it’s never been more challenging for people in the business.

ANKA: No question, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t meant to happen. Evolution brings all kinds of collateral damage. The infrastructure that we knew where studios were in control, it isn’t that way anymore. You’ve got Netflix, you’ve got all these streamers, you’ve got people staying home. They don’t want to go out and spend. They can sit at home. You’ve got the greatest writers now, writing these great series [for streamers]. It’s changed, it’s shifted. And with that, there’s going to be all the scars, all of the damage that we see, and that’s just the way it is. It’s like a writer who writes a great book. They’ll do maybe one or two, then they don’t write anymore. There’s no rule that you’re going to write 50. Writing is tough. I’ve written one book and they want me to do another one. And I got a Broadway show to get going. But writing, it’s the core, the essence of all these things that are breathing around us. The scripts for the studios, the music for artists, the play is the thing. Without that, there is no business.

DEADLINE: You took it good with good nature, but back when The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who and others hit, that must have felt like being hit by a sledgehammer. The radio played them, not you and your style of music. Watching the documentary felt similar to what people in Hollywood feel now. Wondering how they are going to make a living, where they’ll find the next job. Your writing ability saved you. Did you feel like a dinosaur?

ANKA: Not at all. The real question in the essence is, I’m a precocious kid at heart, I have somewhat of a brain and sense of myself and what I want. Be honest with yourself, believe in yourself. I was a teenager, from a town of 200,000 in Ottawa where I was a freak and nobody knew what to do with me. Wherever it came from, for those of us that are gifted in what we do — and we’re all gifted in some way – I was this kid who went from ground zero to orbit. It became, how do I not become an asshole, when everybody is treating me so well, and how do I keep this going? I’m 16, touring the United States with all these artists I admired, and I’m sitting in a bus with Frankie Lymon. He was a heroin addict, shooting up right in front of me, and offering it to me. You make decisions in moments like those. No. What I’m trying to achieve, I just know I can’t create and I can’t be my best by embracing any of that…stuff. It just wasn’t me.  There was Chuck Berry, getting in trouble with the young girls, and he was put in jail during one of our tours. These are guys that I idolized. I’m a teenager, still in my jeans and t-shirt. I’m buying their records.

DEADLINE: You avoided the pitfalls. You got your first record deal when you were too young to legally sign a contract Why were you in such a hurry?

ANKA: I studied music, writing poems and I started taking piano and putting music to the piano. I’m in this groove, finding my purpose and my passion and I’m so wrapped up in it. I just know that I can do it.  

DEADLINE: But you only 13 when you borrowed the family car and drove all over Canada to sing in contests…

ANKA: My mother, God bless her, was diabetic. And I would watch my poor mom taking those shots every day. She died when I was just 18, and she’d have to go to bed early. She had an Austin Healey and I would practice driving it because I needed to get to the Quebec side, the next province. They didn’t serve liquor in Ontario, but they served it in Quebec and that’s where the action was, the clubs where you could sing, where you could drink. I had to get over this bridge and I wasn’t going to walk because it was a good 15, 20 miles. I would practice with her Austin Healey, going up and down the street, getting ready for the big contests.  One night at the Glenlee Club, you could make as much as 20 bucks. I wanted to sing, realizing that nobody’s ever made it without mileage. You don’t roll out bed and just get there; you need 2000 hours before you start to find yourself. So I borrow the car, drive it over the bridge because I know the action is in Quebec. That’s where I can get my chops. I drive over the Champlain Bridge, and am having trouble with the gearshift, getting from first to second. But I get there and I was doing my Johnny Ray impression, a little Elvis Presley with the guitar. I was this cute little kid, like 14. And to this day I look back and I go, how in the fuck did you keep it together up there? What were you? That determination, that focus that every day it’s something for a human to have to withhold and be cognizant that it’s a part of you. I get there and I win. I made about 20 bucks.

I’m coming home and a snowstorm kicks up because Ottawa is in Quebec. It’s winter. I’m trying to get this car home and I’m trying to get it into second and into third. I didn’t put enough time in between the clutch and I’m making a mess of this car. I drive the piston rod through the hood. I can hear metal, all over the highway. I pull off and I go down there, two exit ramps. I go down to a Chinese restaurant in Lover’s Lane, and you see all these couples parked in their car. I pull in and the car’s smoking. Two mounted police come to the car. Can I see your license, young man? They drive me home, wake my mother up. It was not good. So that was my, then we started hitchhiking to do concerts around Ottawa. But it was always the music, the music, new songs, listening, writing, singing, singing.  

DEADLINE: Sounds like a repair that cost more than the $20 you won…

ANKA: I was always very dogmatic to my parents, this is what I want to do now. They were smart enough to sense that I had something and they would have a local promoter or record store guy come and listen. They didn’t know what else to do with a 15-year-old kid.

I was coming out of that era with music in its infancy stage, when you could acquire that dedication to yourself that you’re going to be so on top of it. I always try and look at your life in five-year increments. What’s coming? What can destroy you? What shouldn’t you do? Where do you make the next move?

I met The Beatles when I was living there in England because I toured there as a kid and I met these guys backstage. They were a cover band. They weren’t even doing originals. I’d hang out with them in England and they’d always go, we want to do what you’re doing. Writing. And I said, you guys should be writing, doing your own thing. A lot of those acts weren’t doing it. Songs were written by guys at the Brill Building Chuck Berry was writing his, but a lot of the other teenage idols weren’t writing their music. I saw it coming, that The Beatles were coming.

The American groups were always very aristocratically, wonderful names. The Royals, The Diamonds; the English bands were The Beatles, or named after animals. When I first brought these records home, I said, they’re going to be something, because I was a musician first. I liked it. They looked at me like I was crazy. I convinced them enough, they went over and looked and they brought them over in ‘64. But to answer your question, I loved that it happened. We weren’t accepted in totality with everyone. The parents weren’t sure about us. There was high criticism on us. But the black experience was really driving the culture. Always was, going as far back as jazz.

So the point is, as it evolved and as I went to these countries, I realized that I can do this. I can record in their language. I can live there in their countries, give back that way. I was still the writer. I’m still doing well. Even when groups like The Beatles were we all on the radio all the time? A lot of us had to step aside for a while and let it air out. So I established myself in Vegas, doing what no one else did who was as young as I was. I worked on my chops. So I didn’t take the Beatles thing as that big a hit like some did.

I was this kid that wrote songs. Now, if I wasn’t, we wouldn’t be talking. There’s nobody who was going to write for me back then. And you think of how it all came together to get what I wanted. I had to write for myself. Nobody was interested in listening to me. When they started seeing me write, they saw the passion that I had for it, and how detailed I always was. I’m a perfectionist. I’ve always been like that. They couldn’t hold me down.

I went to New York because I won a soup contest. I saw on the records that everything happened in New York. That was the big city. I’d never seen a high rise. I got to get to New York. IGA Food stores, they put a promotion in the paper. Whoever could collect the most soup wrappers in a district in Canada would go to New York City for three days. I found out where the local IGA store was and took a job packing groceries. I must have made four bucks a week. I’m a kid, about 13. I’m clocking the women that are buying the soup cans. I’m going to win this. And I go to their homes when I get out of work, I knock on the door. Can I have your soup wrapper? Just let me tear ’em off. And I would write my name on the back, go and put ’em in a box. I win the contest in my district and they put us on a train, 40 boys with box lunches and soggy sandwiches, training it down to New York. They put us up at the YMCA Sloan house. I’m up on the 30th floor and I’ll never forget looking at that city and the buzz and the lights.

DEADLINE: Now what?

ANKA: I did my recon record companies where everything was. So I come home, I got the bite, and I’m writing. I got my Bobby socks and I’m locked into my dream. I’m believing. I come home and focus on learning that piano, writing a few songs. One was Diana, the first time I’d been attracted to a young girl.

I convinced my dad who let me come out to Los Angeles, to visit my uncle. So my dad puts me on a plane. He knew where I was going. I find my way to Wallichs Music City, the biggest record store in the country. Huge building, on Sunset and Vine. There were booths and you’d take the records you wanted to hear in there. I wanted to get this record I heard on the radio called Stranded in the Jungle by the Cadets. If you look it up, it was the number one record in the country in 1954. I look at the label. They’re in Culver City, just down the road from my uncle. I thought, jeez, I wonder if I could go see these guys, sing them my song. I hitchhiked over and I walk in. These two guys, brothers sitting at the desk with their sister, the Bahari Brothers. And in the back there was the record studio. They’ve got nothing to do, they’re still collecting on Stranded in the Jungle and thinking, what next? They say, well, yeah, we’re can we do for you, young man? I’m there in my jeans, torn t-shirt, paper in my pocket. I said, well, I’m here to sing you my song. Huh? How old are you? I just want to sing the song. I start singing to these three people. Well, they were in that business for a reason. They have ears and they were gamblers, but they knew music. They heard the emotion, the honesty. I wrote what I saw, what I felt. And they said, okay, we’re going to record you. They said, come back in a month. We want you to meet a guy named Ernie Freeman, who became a very successful arranger. He would do Sinatra, many others, but he was just starting out. He did Stranded in the Jungle. And I sat with him. He takes it, does the arrangement. I show up, we go in the garage and The Cadets walk in. They have the number one record in the country. They sang background. So if you ever looked up that song and listened to it, I’m sure it’s somewhere you hear me. That was my first record.

DEADLINE: Instant success?

ANKA: It did nothing. So I was a failure at 14. So, I learned from a failure. I’d felt the buzz, I was going to keep going. The following year I go to New York, and you know the rest of the story.

DEADLINE: I want to ask what was the rationale behind some disruptive things you did during you career. You were a handsome young man, and a big enough name where you could have become a movie star. Elvis became the best paid star in Hollywood, and Bruce Springsteen said he didn’t go the movie route because he’d watched Elvis stop growing as an artist. You were part of the cast of the D-Day WWII film The Longest Day, and sang the title song. You did a few others but didn’t lean in. Why?

ANKA: I was more interested of becoming the entertainer and to continue to diversify with my music. To write for others, because I felt that I could never keep writing hits for myself all the time. I looked at the whole history of the music business. It ends, it’s impossible. You peak. So I was working toward the gravitas as the writer. I did songs for Buddy Holly, Connie Francis and Leslie Gore, and then The Longest Day. But I was only curious because they’ve always depended on curiosity and I wanted to test it to see if I liked that environment. The longest day was a great experience. I did a couple of movies at MGM, Girls Town, Adam and Eve. It just was a long process. I liked that I was communicating to my audience in a different form than records. But when I looked at it from a time consumption standpoint, it was taking away from what I needed to get a stronghold in. Your time is your greatest asset, especially when you get to my age. So you want to use it properly. And even back then down, Bobby Darin, me and Frankie Avalon, we were young kids being told what to do. And I’m writing these songs about how I feel. I don’t put them down, but they’re teenage songs with melodies, and I was writing what I saw. But we wanted to be like those cool guys, the Rat Pack guys. What’s that place, Vegas? Look at how they’re dressing. Look at the tilt on that hat. And they’re smoking while they’re singing and they’re drinking and how the hell are they doing that? And look at the action. That’s where we got to go. Now to go there, you have to get an act together, have to rewrite stuff, you have to break it in funny places around the country, all run by the mob, to get ready to break yourself at the Copacabana, make it or break it. So you’ve got all of that. You’re still recording. You’re still writing. And I don’t have time to make a movie for three months and sit around all day to get one minute of film. So I looked at it and said, I’ll do it when I want. Because it hurt Elvis. When Elvis did those shitty movies, that did not help him. The colonel was grabbing so much money from him. I knew everyone in Vegas. We were all friends, the owners. I worked there, I lived there. It was nothing for The Colonel to lose a million dollars of Elvis’ money at roulette. I mean, nobody lost a million dollars at roulette, that comes from that ilk of life. And he was taking 50% of his money. That was failing.

So back to the point, I didn’t want to do full-time movies. I do episodic tv. I wanted to focus on becoming an entertainer. I wanted to learn how to sing better and be that, realizing that all I had was myself and who I’d listened to. Today with technology, you can sing, you’re aware of what’s going on. I dunno who the hell can sing anymore. Do you know what’s available to us as singers? You want to drum, you want to make somebody who can’t sing sound good, you can. There was no technology back then, to make it easy. You had to really know your shit and how to do it. You’d go in the studio and it was a piece of tape, on a reel. If there was a mistake, you took a razor blade, but the tape, take out the mistake. You’d take a piece of scotch tape and tape it. That was it. Then they shipped it over and they made a piece of plastic and within a week you had a hit.

So in all of that time consumption and knowing how easy the music was, I wasn’t going to sit around making movies for three months, doing 10 takes. I didn’t feel I was good looking enough. I didn’t know what my niche would be. I did it enough that I acted for many years. I did. I did Kojak, Vegas, a bunch of TV shows because my friends were doing them. But to switch from what I was doing to where I wasn’t really doing what I wanted to do…I wanted to be those guys in Vegas. That was it. That’s all we could see. And I’m in England and I’m traveling and I’m saying, wow, these countries, there’s a world out here. There’s other cultures. We’re great at home, but there’s a world out here. So I got used to Italy. I lived there back and forth, and I recorded in Italian. The first million seller in the history of the Italian business was my song Ogni Volta. I did song in German, French, Spanish. I became this international guy because I believed in the international market. And at the same time I wanted the respect of being an entertainer because Vegas became the place and then I became the youngest who ever worked there.

DEADLINE: How did you get in good with Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr?

ANKA: My focus was Frank, Dean and Sammy. Everyone that worked in Vegas or worked in New York, it was a small group of people. The ‘boys’ controlled the three or four key spots in the country. They had their hand in the music business in Vegas for sure. They were all Jews and Italian bookies. They’re bookies that ran those casinos and booked those casinos. I wanted to do that. I said, that’s in my vision. I’m going to do that because I’m not going to survive what I’m doing. I got a teacher, a choreographer, and I said, what do I have to do to be them? And I rehearsed, practiced, and put an act together.

Once I break in this act to try and prove to everybody I could do it. It was me, Bobby Darin, and maybe Frankie Avalon a little. We worked the Copa and I was a big hit there. Now, the novelty of this kid, still a teenager, singing these kinds of songs in big bands and being very focused and learning what I had to do, I start making money for them. Three shows a night and the word gets out and we would get taken to Vegas. I’ve still got the balls to do something, and they put me with Sophie Tucker to break me in, and see what I got. By the end of the first show, she wanted me to close the show because all her parents brought their kids, because I was a teenage idol. There were families in Vegas with young kids who all listened to the radio. They all show up and they’re screaming and yelling. It was something new. Vegas. Elvis tried it then, and he hated it and didn’t make it. So they said, okay, come work at The Sands. Yeah. That’s where the boys are, Frank, Dean, Sammy. Being around these guys, being accepted, but as you say, they’re still giving off the aura of, you’re a kid. They’re twice my age. I’m getting respect and cordial kind of attitude, which was cool. Everyone life has a mask even in our business, until you get that mask off. So they’re all wearing their masks, Sammy’s got his, so does Frank.

But I’m getting it. I’m learning quick. I’m a fast learner and I’m still always told, keep your nose clean. Just be a gentleman because I’m a kid. So I behaved myself and ask questions only when respectful. It was all about respect, and I can feel that they’ve embraced me, because I’m making money. Because ultimately everything ended up with the ‘boys.’ When the boys spoke, the guys I knew and that Frank knew would say, the kid’s good. He stays. We were collectively making money. They had a piece of that. The fallacy was that it was limited to the United States. In traveling the world as I did, in Japan it wasn’t the Mafia, it was the Yakusa. I go to France, I’d work for the Corsican mob. I go to Italy…there’s mafia everywhere. They came over here because of the opportunity.

The point I’m making is, once they realized I made money and then I was here to stay and I had a talent, and I was the writer because I started, all of a sudden things happened. I’m doing the Tonight Show theme. I’m doing The Longest Day. This kid, big movie. Some of these mob guys that were in the war would sit with me after the show, they’d say, make sure you sing it for me tomorrow night. They show me their medals, their hats. That’s what Vegas was. It was small and everybody knew each other. I’m making money. Frank and them were partners. They know I’m making money, and I learned early in life, it’s all about the money. To this day, it’s all about the money, in everything. They embraced me because I was making them money.

DEADLINE: How long did it take for you to be accepted by the Rat Pack?

ANKA: Two years in. Hanging out with them, going with them on shows to Chicago, New York, meeting up Jilly’s and hanging at the bar. Not pretending to be like them in the sense that they were the Rat Pack and I was just around it. The big change came with My Way.

DEADLINE: Take us through how that came about?

ANKA: The moment I wrote that, at 24, and it had its success, Frank became a different guy to me. He was quitting, he was retiring.

DEADLINE: He must have felt pretty good about you in confiding his plans to you.

ANKA: This was in Florida. If he was in town, he was, we’d hang almost every night or every other night, depending on what he had to do. It happened to be on this dinner with Mia Farrow, whom he was married to at the time, that he chose to tell me. He was tired, the Rat Pack was over. He was going to do one more album, with Don Costa. Don was the guy who found me in 1956. It took me a few years to get Costa introduced to Frank because he was working with Nelson Riddle and Gordon Jenkins. I was pushing Costa to Frank, to do an album with him because in Frank’s mind, Costa was doing pop records, rock and roll. Frank didn’t like that stuff. But Jilly and I masterminded it and I finally got Frank and Costa together. They became very comfortable because Sinatra had his way of doing things.

They’d done one of Frank’s best albums, Sinatra and Strings. If you’re a Sinatra guy, you should get that CD, it’s amazing. The thing about Sinatra is within five seconds, you know who it is and he’ll put you in that mood. That’s his magic. There’s nobody that can do what he can do. There’s nobody like it. So I hear Frank is retiring. I’m still a songwriter, still that aggressive guy, always looking, where can I put my music? I’m still writing and going to Germany. I’m a music guy, but this is my guy and he’s quitting. I can’t fucking believe it. So when he said that to me, I was crushed.

DEADLINE: Why?

ANKA: My dream was to make a song for him. I thought I had run out of time. I had one shot left. I’d bought this melody I heard and liked, and I thought about Frank looking back at his career, and it just poured out of me.

DEADLINE: The irony is My Way was so successful that it changed his mind about retiring.

ANKA: Yes. So the Sinatra thing started to unfold with My Way. It opened me up to all of them. Dean and Sammy, although I was very close to Sammy through all those years. I loved Sammy. I think he was the most talented of all of us, frankly. He did everything. He was the best for me. And I wrote a song called I’m Not Anyone, which did very well for him. So that changed across the board in terms of my gravitas and how I was embraced by them. I was the kid who wrote for Frank. That was the 12th chapter of my career, and then my business got better. Next, I write She’s A Lady for Tom Jones, and I’m growing into it. No matter what the trends are, I’m functioning in it. I’m having hits in every decade, like ‘74, and Having My Baby. I did this and stayed true to myself. I didn’t really change to try and be hip or cooler.

DEADLINE: You mentioned the theme to The Tonight Show. Dolly Parton told a story that she wrote I Will Always Love You and was dirt poor but traumatized when she had Elvis Presley ready to sing it, until she refused a demand by Colonel Tom Parker that she give over half the song rights. You went the opposite way, giving Johnny Carson half of everything on that Tonight Show theme. Why was that a smart move for you?

ANKA: There were real differences there. I was successful. I knew the business. Dolly was starting out and struggling. She shouldn’t have done that, because she was in a different place than I was, and she’s a woman. Not easy for women. I’d already seen a lot of revenue, experienced a lot of business, and I knew that I’d have to be flexible in business to get a fair deal if I wanted to be part of it. I had hired Johnny to work for me. I was doing a TV special in England for Granada TV. In putting the show together, I had a bunch of teenage hits, and I felt there’s too much music. I want a comedian. And they shipped me telescopes from New York to London for me to look at these comics.

And I started looking at this one comic, a guy named Johnny Carson, who’s a big drinker, drank till four or five in the morning. This was the character he played. In real life, yes, he drank. But his character had a kiddie show and he’d be blasted all night and have to show up at nine and be nice to these screaming kids that were killing him. I thought it was a funny bit, right? So I said, get him. So Johnny comes over and he’s in my show and pleasantries. I never professed to know him that well back then.

He leaves and I finish the show and I come home and I run into him coming out of a building. Hey, Johnny, how are you, what you up to? Well, I’m thinking of doing this show for a couple of years, and we’re doing this and we’re changing this, and we might need a new song. I’m thinking, I’m the wrong guy. He says, maybe you come and help me. I said, well, yeah, okay, I’ll make a demo for you. That’s what we did. We got a studio for 200 bucks. So I went in and put my vision down and I had this melody idea what I was going to do. It had to be catchy, and I’d get a brass band. I send it. He says, great. Love it.

I get a call and he says, can’t use the song. Skitch Henderson was his bandleader, and when you’re a kid and in that business and you’re dealing with guys twice your age, you’re a kid in their mind. They’re going to take advantage. You get tougher and tougher, but you’re still a kid and you got to fight every day. You got to learn what drives you. It’s believing, and revenge. Revenge. Revenge is a key motivation, and I wish more artists would be honest about it. Revenge is an amazing tool. It’s right up there with learning from failure. For actors and singer, revenge is the thing that drives them for the most part.

DEADLINE: Why is it so powerful?

ANKA: Because they get rejected. They get turned down. People push them around. What does that instill in you as an artist? There’s a revenge factor. If you’re strong and you’re believing in yourself, you’re going to get even for some asshole that said nasty things about you that you’re never going to make it. It’s revenge that’s drives you on.

Now that wasn’t it solely with the Tonight Show. I say to Johnny, he said, look, it’s catchy, Johnny, and in my mind, where’s it going? It’s catchy. I don’t know that it’s going to run for 39 years. I’m in the moment. I’ll give you half of everything. I had nothing. I said, I’ll put your name on it. I’ll put you down as the writer. You have 50% of everything! 24 hours later, you got it. Skitch went ballistic. I get on.

What we don’t realize is Johnny becomes the best at what he does. And he’s on what, 39 years? It earns so much money every year that the regulatory agencies, ASCAP, BMI had to change the rulings as how much it can earn so that we would earn less because it was on so many stations. They redid the earning process. Anyway, it did very well for us. I have no regrets whatsoever of giving all that away.

DEADLINE: Did you make more from that song than anything else in your career?

ANKA: It was on every night for what seemed like forever. But because of the stoppage of the Tonight Show, I think Put Your Head On My Shoulder and My Way may have earned me more.

DEADLINE: I probably don’t have to ask which meant the most to you.  

ANKA: My Way, I don’t know how I wrote it. I believe there’s a spiritual something up there in this universe. I don’t know who they are that are enabling you to do what you do. There’s some gift we’ve all been given. And sitting there that one night, being motivated by this man that I don’t want to even say idolize. It just came out. I was typing on a Selectric, just typing like a mad fool. It was like he was sitting there writing it. There was nothing that I was prepared to write. I was still a little better at my craft than I was if you had asked me to do that, earlier. But leap into something as unique as I feel My Way was. And with him? I don’t know where it came from, in five hours. And it’s the one time, I don’t know if you’ve ever felt this in something that you’ve written, where you went, Jesus, that’s something. I don’t know where that came from.

And I just I got on the phone right away, called him. I mean, I was in the fucking tears and he said, come out and the rest is history. I was just so metaphorically in the moment, as if he were writing it, knowing how I would never even entertain using, ‘ate It up and spit it out’ but that was so indigenous to him. Because that’s the way he talks. I played it in front of him. There’s part of him that’s always Sinatra, the guy who owns the room, a great artist, tough, strong. When he first listened to Strangers in the Night, he hated it. That’s a piece of shit. They made him do it. Here it was simply, I like it kid. I’m going to do it. And two months later, the phone call. I heard it over the phone speaker, phone speaker him in the studio. I’m in New York. That’s how I heard it. And as you said, it became such a hit for him that he stayed 10 more years.

DEADLINE: Last one. Given your association with the “boys,” how are you not in Goodfellas, the ultimate modern mob movie?

.ANKA: I was supposed to be. They wanted me to sing at the Copa. Where you see Bobby Vinton. Martin Scorsese came to me, and he looked at archival footage I had from when I sang at the Copacabana, which are part of the HBO Max documentary. Nobody knew the way Copa was or looked like when Scorsese started the film and needed the interiors. Nobody had ever filmed the inside but me. As for the scene, I didn’t want to just stand up there. He said okay, but he let me have the last word.

DEADLINE: It always surprised me that you allowed the Sex Pistols’ punk rocker Sid Vicious to record My Way, which runs through the Goodfellas credits.

ANKA: Scorsese is one of the great filmmakers and he uses music so brilliantly, including the Derek and the Dominoes song Layla in Goodfellas. He hears Sid Vicious, and just took it upon himself for whatever reason to include My Way. At some point, everybody was starting to do My Way. I’ve never been judgmental of the variance of styles. When they sent me the Sid Vicious record to approve for a license, I was reluctant because it’s so different. I do my homework, I call, I get as much information. I’m only going to be as good as the information. I find out he went to Paris. He didn’t use his own band. He used a jazz band. He used this French band and he took some tubes out of the amp and he worked with these jazz musicians. He totally cared. The guy could only sing one way, you can beat him up for that if your want, and he felt it enough to, honestly, to give it his vibe. I said, who the fuck, am I to sit here and go, no, you can’t do it. When he was honest about it, and that’s the way he felt it, I knew the song’s going to survive. There’ll be people that say, oh, look what he did. They’ll get over it. He’s entitled to express himself. And if he was sincere and it wasn’t a parody or a tear down, and I came to the assumption it wasn’t, I said, give him the license and Marty, you can use it.