Friday, January 27, 2012
Tony about Amy
Watching some of the Tony Bennett Duets II special on PBS. During the fundraising break, Tony, in TV studio, said Amy Winehouse was the best singer of her generation, comparing her to Billie Holiday & Ella Fitzgerald. Now think on that, & who said it. Tony's a nice guy, but not so nice he'd lie & say that about Carrie Underwood or Lady Gaga or Beyoncé. Tony fell silent & the host quickly realized Amy's death troubled him very much & changed the subject. Winehouse wasn't the first tormented great female singer Tony had known, & in getting to know Amy he likely sensed she wasn't headed toward a good end, that she was more Billie than Anita O'Day - who overcame years of addiction with voice largely intact. Tony is a fundamentally positive person.
& then there's Amy herself, with demons we can't understand. Except that here & there, throughout her brief career, she dropped hints that she believed she couldn't satisfy her father, a frustrated singer. A telling remark by Amy in the duets special, recounted that when she told her father she was recording "Body & Soul" with Tony Bennett, a dream gig for Amy, her father said it was his favorite song & snidely suggested Amy had never heard it, although she had been a natural musical sponge her entire life - soaking up jazz, American songbook, girl groups, northern soul, & had even taken her father to see Bennett at Royal Albert Hall.
There's no greater authority than Tony Bennett alive today on the subject of great singers. In a rational world his endorsement & respect would have eclipsed in Amy's mind Mitch Winehouse's opinion on anything. Now Daddy Winehouse is preoccupied with protecting his late daughter's "image," even criticizing Jean Paul Gaultier's recent fashion tribute to Amy, as if "fashion" matters one way or another. The art of great singing isn't about fashion. In fact it never mattered to Amy's real fans if she looked like she had spent the night sleeping under a bridge. & her appearance wasn't always an indicator of her emotional state. Some nights she may have wanted to look like Ronnie Spector in a rain shower. What counted what was came out of her when she sang.
Tony Bennett understands what the world lost.
& then there's Amy herself, with demons we can't understand. Except that here & there, throughout her brief career, she dropped hints that she believed she couldn't satisfy her father, a frustrated singer. A telling remark by Amy in the duets special, recounted that when she told her father she was recording "Body & Soul" with Tony Bennett, a dream gig for Amy, her father said it was his favorite song & snidely suggested Amy had never heard it, although she had been a natural musical sponge her entire life - soaking up jazz, American songbook, girl groups, northern soul, & had even taken her father to see Bennett at Royal Albert Hall.
There's no greater authority than Tony Bennett alive today on the subject of great singers. In a rational world his endorsement & respect would have eclipsed in Amy's mind Mitch Winehouse's opinion on anything. Now Daddy Winehouse is preoccupied with protecting his late daughter's "image," even criticizing Jean Paul Gaultier's recent fashion tribute to Amy, as if "fashion" matters one way or another. The art of great singing isn't about fashion. In fact it never mattered to Amy's real fans if she looked like she had spent the night sleeping under a bridge. & her appearance wasn't always an indicator of her emotional state. Some nights she may have wanted to look like Ronnie Spector in a rain shower. What counted what was came out of her when she sang.
Tony Bennett understands what the world lost.
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"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Some have bashed Tony for supposedly not "intervening" in amy's situation. Honestly, I don't think anyone could have really told Amy what to do. She was her own person, and sadly, with her own demons.
When she first came onto the scene, I was in awe of not only her singing style and choices of songs, but of her absolutely stunningly awkward appearances. I watched on You Tube many concerts that were eventually taken down after she won all those Grammys, and you could see her progress through the concert from being only mildly intoxicated to being full on drunk. Somehow, as sad as it is to say it, it was a train wreck I enjoyed watching because the music was so appealing to me.
For a brief period of time (a couple of months) after she hit it big with Back to Black, I listened to her music every single day for close to an hour. I've done three tributes to her with music on my blog, here, here and here.
When she first came onto the scene, I was in awe of not only her singing style and choices of songs, but of her absolutely stunningly awkward appearances. I watched on You Tube many concerts that were eventually taken down after she won all those Grammys, and you could see her progress through the concert from being only mildly intoxicated to being full on drunk. Somehow, as sad as it is to say it, it was a train wreck I enjoyed watching because the music was so appealing to me.
For a brief period of time (a couple of months) after she hit it big with Back to Black, I listened to her music every single day for close to an hour. I've done three tributes to her with music on my blog, here, here and here.
The heartache for Tony Bennett is that he's wise enough to know he wouldn't have made any difference or changed the outcome, tough to take for someone whose occupation is spinning romantic fantasy of songs like "Body & Soul." He's not like Dino, who by 1960 couldn't sing those songs without mocking them at the same time. There ought to be a few years early in one's career when one can sing those songs & believe them, too.
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