Quote: (11-07-2018 08:50 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:
Quote: (09-27-2018 01:01 PM)puckerman Wrote:
It seems like every Superman eventually finds his kryptonite.
Funny enough, that's the sentiment of intro to "I Can't Get Started," an older song Frank commissioned to be re-written when he record it for one of his downer albums inspired by Ava, No One Cares.
The updated intro has the line "Superman turns out to be flash in the pan."
Sinatra discarded women left and right and bullied men just as easily (check the award-winning writer Gay Talese article "Frank Sinatra Has A Cold"). But he was not Alpha with Ava.
According to Kitty Kelly's bio and several other accounts, he not only threatened suicide if she left him, but pretended to kill himself by firing off a gun once when they were on the phone. This is not exactly setting the frame, or anything near Alpha.
She, for her part, was an early version of the "Sex In The City" type of woman and ended up destitute and alone by the late '80s. When she was dying of cancer, he paid her medical bills, even though he'd long since moved on and had remarried Barbara Marx.
A pretty good argument can also be made that Frank's last great album, She Shot Me Down, from 1981, is an ode to Ava. It's unrelentingly sad and wistful as it looks back on broken love affairs. It's an album that doesn't sound out of place next to Nick Drake's Bryter Layter or (believe it or not) Nico's most morose work, The End...
That is the puzzling thing isn't it, even with all the women chasing him, all his money, his fame, being the leader of the Rat Pack, at one time a senior chief at Warner Bros Records, and with all his documented boss demeanour in the recording studio, he could not maintain frame with Ava. He pursued her all his life. When they tried again as she hit 40 he tried to over-boss the situation with her and she decided to leave, but still pursued him all her life. Once when she was in hospital and Sinatra did not call, after marrying Barbara Marx, she expressed her disappointment and a press release by her sister about Sinatra not getting in touch was done. She was over 60 then and close to death.
After she died Sinatra sat on his bed crying for two days and his daughter Tina said his strong voice was only a whisper.
This cautionary tale of two human beings in love, but unable to live together, is one of the most fascinating stories I have ever come across. Why could Sinatra not make it happen with a woman who clearly loved him, it's a perplexing mystery.
Thanks for posting the great music.