TONY BENNETT’S LIVING TRIUMPH
I wasn’t even going to go out and , as it happens I end up sat next to a legend, in full flow.
This was when Tony Bennett came onstage St Luke’s Church May 2007, LONDON at 82 a stocky enough but sure-ified easy walking man.
This Godlike venue has recentlyish been the setting for many BBC-staged legends – Springsteen, Brown James RIP, Elton John, Paul Simon, Bryan “Pre Nazi Gaffe” Ferry – but none inhabited the space with as easy unaffected grace, as simply acoutremented and aug – a mented, as Bennett.
I kept thinking of American Archetypes he represents. Something Speilbergian in the gentle awe and wonder. And the laughing languor recalled the open charm of Merle Haggard a close call on the most natural other performer I have ever seen.
Being that close to Tony there was something casual but extraordinary about him.
Like aa unassuming giant from another world.
In a pussycat purr, lion roar, tiger scream snake coil way .
Calling his way through the jazz of American song.
Bennett’s reach, you must understand, goes deep – from the early century jazzatronic talking soul sections of Mezz Mezzrow’s Really The Blues through all the way up and round and through Ellington, Astaire, Sinatra, Bel canto/Latino swing.
Tony’s jazzsong …
Breath control breath control…the whole thing on one level an exercise in breath control.
There was rawness, humanness realness there too.
This was the set up - a guy playing stand up bass , a guy playing guitar, masterful chill yer spine pianistics and lovely kick n brush drummer Art Jones.
And how Tony enjoys that too, you can just tell.
Real music by real people in the living now.
It aint such a big PRIORITY these days.
Tony loves to take you inside the heart of his blissfully democratising, easy flowing worldview.
What he says, between songs, is immense too.
The story of meeting Ron Miller Motown songwriter unlucky enough to come after the first main wave of writers.
But Tony made the song For Once In My Life a hit and THEN it got brought back to Motown and got played (“with a disco beat,” he says) and it became a hit for Stevie Wonder.
He told the old Sinatra story as well. And he harrumphs and loses the line sometime almostcompletely.
But what he understands through thousands and, well, MILLIONS, of moments, just opening his mouth and trying to make the sound of a song at any given moment ring true, is this.
At the end it comes down the overall feeling that you put across.
Staying true to that beauty in the music’s soul….
The rest follows, naturally…
