My First Sinatra Concert: “I Don’t Need No Stooge”

In 1992, Frank Sinatra was 76 years old (he turned 77 in December), and I was a 23-year-old with a passion for alternative rock and an interest in Sinatra that had been gradually but steadily growing since I was in high school.  I had a few of his albums, a couple of box sets, and I’d seen a couple of his movies, but didn’t really consider myself a hardcore fan.

That’s why my reaction was so casual when I walked by Radio City Music Hall with a friend one warm June day and saw on the marquee, “Frank Sinatra & Shirley MacLaine Oct. 10-15.”  There was no line.  I had no idea how long tickets had been on sale.  “Want to go?” I said to my friend.  He thought about it for a second or two.  ”Sure, why not?”  Five minutes and, I believe, $80 later, we had two primo tickets, front and center in the lower mezzanine, for opening night, October 10th.

We bought the tickets so far in advance that it almost became a joke between us that we were going to see Sinatra … eventually.  If he didn’t die first.  If we didn’t die first.  Finally the big night came.  We got dressed up for the occasion, the same way you get dressed up to have an audience with the Pope, I guess.  If, for some reason, Ol’ Blue Eyes were to look up at the mezzanine and see two guys in T-shirts and jeans — well, that wasn’t gonna happen.

We sat through Shirley’s opening act, wondering how long the antiquated Sinatra would be able or willing to perform.  We even feared that his part of the act would consist of him coming onstage and saying, “And now, Shirley Maclaine!”

We needn’t have worried.

The first thing I remember thinking, as he materialized onstage and launched into “I’ve Got The World On A String,” was that there was no way the guy could be 76 years old.  He didn’t look it, he didn’t sound it, he didn’t act it.  56, maybe.  But 76?!  Nonsense.  “A dirty communist lie, direct from Hanoi,” as he once said.

Most of the rest of the concert is now a blur in my memory.  I can see the white hair in my mind’s eye, and his slim, tuxedo-clad form egging on the band during the swingers.  I remember him really nailing “For Once In My Life.”  There was a guy who kept screaming “‘Summah Wind’!” in between every song, until Sinatra finally addressed him:  “Listen, pal, I work solo.  I don’t need no stooge.”  The crowd went nuts.  And he never did wind up singing “Summer Wind” that night.  That’s Sinatra for you.

I acquired a lousy sounding cassette of the show, years later, when I could judge it against the hundreds of other live recordings I’d gotten hold of in the interim.  And it wasn’t my imagination or faulty memory; the Chairman really had been in top form that night.  I didn’t know then that such “on” nights were becoming rarer and rarer by 1992, or that the end of the road was so close at hand.  Back then, it seemed like Sinatra was going to keep going forever.  How else could I have walked up and bought tickets to see him on a whim, as if access to the greatest singer of the 20th century was no big deal?  All these years later, I realize just how lucky I was to have been there.

Tagged as: 1992, Frank Sinatra, Radio City Music Hall