What Bono said

Bono is the op-ed guest columnist in today's New York Times. He's writing about Frank Sinatra, with whom he recorded a duet of I've Got You Under My Skin in 1993. Below are his concluding 301 words. All of them are interesting, but 183 of them distract us (see Jan. 7 post) or stray from the spine (see Jan. 2 post) of his narrative. The line-throughs are mine.     

Singers, more than other musicians, depend on what they know — as opposed to what they don’t want to know about the world. While there is a danger in this — the loss of naïveté, for instance, which holds its own certain power — interpretive skills generally gain in the course of a life well abused.

Want an example? Here’s an example. Take two of the versions of Sinatra singing “My Way.”

The first was recorded in 1969 when the Chairman of the Board said to Paul Anka, who wrote the song for him: “I’m quitting the business. I’m sick of it. I’m getting the hell out.” In this reading, the song is a boast — more kiss-off than send-off — embodying all the machismo a man can muster about the mistakes he’s made on the way from here to everywhere.

In the later recording, Frank is 78. The Nelson Riddle arrangement is the same, the words and melody are exactly the same, but this time the song has become a heart-stopping, heartbreaking song of defeat. The singer’s hubris is out the door. (This singer, i.e. me, is in a puddle.) The song has become an apology.

To what end? Duality, complexity. I was lucky to duet with a man who understood duality, who had the talent to hear two opposing ideas in a single song, and the wisdom to know which side to reveal at which moment.

This is our moment. What do we hear?

In the pub, on the occasion of this new year, as the room rises in a deafening chorus — “I did it my way” — I and this full house of Irish rabble-rousers hear in this staple of the American songbook both sides of the singer and the song, hubris and humility, blue eyes and red.

If you take out the line-throughs, you get this:

Singers, more than other musicians, depend on what they know about the world. Take two of the versions of Sinatra singing "My Way." The first was recorded in 1969. In this reading the song is a boast embodying all the machismo a man can muster about the mistakes he's made.   

In the later recording, Frank is 78. This time the song has become a heart-stopping, heartbreaking song of defeat. The singer's hubris is out the door. The song has become an apology.  

I was lucky to duet with a man who understood duality, who had the talent to hear two opposing ideas in a single song, and the wisdom to know which side to reveal at which moment. 

We haven't changed a single word that Bono wrote; we've only taken some of them away.