Michael Jackson<\/a> hits,\u201d he said. \u201cI take great pride in that.\u201d<\/p>\nThe film\u2019s structure \u2013 half of which takes place in the present \u2013 stresses another angle that\u2019s crucial to him. \u201cI want people to understand that I\u2019m still functioning, that I can walk,\u201d he said with a laugh. \u201cLast week I played to 10,000 people at a stadium in Mexico!\u201d<\/p>\n
The audiences he\u2019s finding in such places aren\u2019t entirely old. Six decades after its presumed sell-by date, Put Your Head on My Shoulder became a TikTok phenomenon by generating more than 145m collective views from over 21,000 videos made by young people miming to the song. In 2021, a version that mashes his original song with Doja Cat\u2019s single \u201cStreets\u201d became a top 10 hit. \u201cWhat a life was put on me that I can just sit home and get a check for something I did years ago,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s stupid money.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the result has bought him a far more opulent lifestyle than he started with, his family were hardly starving when he was growing up. His parents, of Lebanese descent, ran a successful restaurant in Ottawa and, when prominent stars would stop by, Anka would make them listen to him sing. \u201cI was always a ballsy kid,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
While his father wanted him to go into the family business he said, \u201cI believed in being creative,\u201d and he wasn\u2019t shy about it. At 14, while visiting an uncle in California he sought out a local label that scored a hit with Stranded in the Jungle by the Cadets. He convinced them to let him cut a song he wrote, using the Cadets as his backup. While the song bombed, the next year he lobbied his parents to send him to New York where he successfully got the producer Don Costa to sign him to his new label, ABC-Paramount. Today, he refers to his first single for them, Diana, as \u201ca stupid little song about a girl who wouldn\u2019t even look at me\u201d. Regardless, fans swooned.<\/p>\n
Before that, Anka says, he had \u201cabsolutely no success\u201d with girls. \u201cI went from knowing nothing to winding up with French women, Italian women, Japanese women who were all teaching me everything I was dying to know.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the same time, he felt a cog in the teen machine. \u201cOlder people were telling me what to do and what to wear,\u201d he said. \u201cI was in a cage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Worse, he was bullied by some older stars on tour, especially Jerry Lee Lewis. \u201cHe hated that I was so successful,\u201d he said. \u201cHe picked on me and I would fight back. We would be throwing things at each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul Anka in 1962. Photograph: ullstein bild Dtl.\/ullstein bild\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
By contrast, he formed so tight a bond with Buddy Holly, that even though Holly was another rare teen idol who wrote his own songs, he still asked Anka to pen one for him. The result, It Doesn\u2019t Matter Anymore, later covered by stars from Linda Ronstadt to Eva Cassidy, was the last piece Holly recorded before his death in a plane crash in 1959. He recorded it in a very different style than his other hits, eschewing the Crickets\u2019 rhythm section to cut it with strings. Immediately after his demise, it became the first posthumously released song to top the UK charts. Still, Anka was so crushed by Holly\u2019s death, he gave all of his publishing royalties for the song to his widow, a fact which, oddly, isn\u2019t in the documentary.<\/p>\n
Despite his success as a teen dream, Anka was already feeling itchy. \u201cI had this squeaky little voice, and I really wanted to mature,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
His role models were the kings of Vegas \u2013 Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr \u2013 all guys in suits who swaggered with a louche sophistication. Rather than snubbing the kid, \u201cthey totally embraced me,\u201d Anka said, making him the youngest person to play Vegas to that point. In return, he brought a new audience to town, delighting the mafia guys who ran the place. Today, he has nothing but glowing things to say about the Mob. \u201cI knew what they were capable of doing but I can honestly say they were gentlemen with me,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019d shake their hands, and you had a deal they stood by.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1962, he made another important connection with an older entertainer. While brainstorming a TV special for Granada he felt it needed a comedian to break up the music. He settled on Johnny Carson, who wasn\u2019t widely known at the time. When the comic got the chance to take over the Tonight Show shortly after, he asked Anka to write him a theme song and, while Carson loved the result, he ultimately told Anka he had to go with a piece penned by the show\u2019s musical director, Skitch Henderson. That\u2019s when Anka business savvy kicked in: he offered Carson half his publishing for the song if he would use his piece instead. The bribe worked! Years later, Carson\u2019s lawyer told the New York Times that the royalties for it generated between $800,000 and $900,000 a year for three decades.<\/p>\n
That was hardly Anka\u2019s only shrewd business move. In 1963, when his record company started losing faith in him, he bought back his entire catalogue, presaging Taylor Swift\u2019s move decades later. Then, to exploit his growing international audience, he started recording his songs in a variety of languages, including Italian, which ended up making him one of the biggest-selling stars in that country. Still, by the British Invasion of the mid-60s Anka fell far behind the trends. In reaction, he began to act, if not particularly well, though he did land a role in the respected film The Longest Day, for which he also wrote the musical theme.<\/p>\n
His true comeback didn\u2019t begin until 1969 when he wrote My Way as a final song for Sinatra who told him he was planning to retire at 58. Anka matched his self-valorizing lyric to a melody from a French song whose rights he acquired two years earlier. Today, he says he has no idea how, at 24, he had the wisdom to write one of the most celebrated anthems of ageing ever. \u201cWhere the Jesus did this come from?\u201d he remembered thinking. \u201cIt changed my life.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Floored as he was by Sinatra\u2019s version, he was initially appalled by Sid Vicious\u2019s anarchic take, which added to the lyric words like \u201cfuck\u201d, \u201ccunt\u201d and \u201cqueer\u201d. \u201cWould I have recorded it that way? No!\u201d Anka said. \u201cWould I have the imagination to do that? No! But I think everybody is entitled to express themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
A song he wrote for Tom Jones in 1971, She\u2019s a Lady, not only gave the Welsh singer one of his biggest hits, it became a touchstone of swank. Three years later, Anka revived his own performing career with You\u2019re Having My Baby, and while the song became his first No 1 hit in 15 years, it made critics blanch. The lyrics \u2013 which described the woman as having his baby \u2013 inspired Ms. Magazine to name him \u201cMale Chauvinist Pig of the Year\u201d. \u201cHow could it be negative towards women?\u201d Anka asked. \u201cI have five women living in the house.\u201d (He has five daughters.) \u201cIt was PMS all over the goddamn place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though his own hits dried up after the 80s, he kept reinventing himself, most obviously on his Rock Swings album in 2005 on which he performed swinging versions of guitar-driven songs like Soundgarden\u2019s Black Hole Sun and Nirvana\u2019s Smells Like Teen Spirit. \u201cDave Grohl told me he didn\u2019t know what the lyrics [to Teen Spirit] meant until my version,\u201d Anka said.<\/p>\n
The Michael Jackson hits he co-wrote, all released posthumously, came from sessions Anka did with the late star in the 80s. After Jackson\u2019s death, his estate used key parts of one song to fashion the single This Is It, without knowing its true provenance. When Anka got wind of it, he threatened to sue if they didn\u2019t give him 50% of the publishing, which they promptly did. The same pattern repeated for two more Jackson singles, one of which was sampled for Drake\u2019s Don\u2019t Matter to Me.<\/p>\n
In the years since, Anka has continued to tour. He still performs Puppy Love at 84. \u201cAm I embarrassed to sing it now?\u201d He admits: \u201cKinda.\u201d<\/p>\n
To get over that, he puts himself in the place of fans who still clamor for it. He plans to continue singing it on his tour next year. He also has a new album he\u2019s working on that\u2019s meant to follow the one coming in February. Oh, and then there\u2019s a play about his life he\u2019s overseeing which he hopes to bring to Broadway. Asked what his own final curtain will be, Anka surmises the play might be a fitting culmination, though he isn\u2019t sure. \u201cI plan to keep doing this until I can\u2019t stand,\u201d he said. \u201cThen it will be the big wave and out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1956, when Paul Anka was 15 years old, he idolized Chuck Berry. So, when the star came…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-325349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}