There’s no way I’m bowing out to Frank Sinatra’s My Way

I’m damned sure I won’t be having Sinatra sing My Way at my exit, writes Phillip Adams. Picture: iStock

It was not the fault of the Frenchman who wrote the original song Comme d’habitude. Blame it on Canadian Paul Anka. In 1967 he wrote new American lyrics for a French song that had nothing to do with death – and it became a huge hit for Frank Sinatra. My Way.

Soon it was as familiar at funerals as the Wedding March at nuptials. I’m not sure if they played it at Frank’s but it seems to have been inflicted on mourners at everyone else’s.

Anka’s lyrics were, to put in kindly, abysmal. “I did what I had to do / I saw it through without exemption”. The unmusical sounds you hear are Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, Noel Coward, Irving Berlin and Oscar Hammerstein moaning in their graves. They did it their way so much better than Anka did his.

But I liked the opening gambit of the song, at least. “And now the end is near / And so I face the final curtain.” Verily I say unto you, beloved readers, that we’re all heading to that fatal fabric at the same inexorable pace, but some of us, particularly us octogenarians, will arrive somewhat sooner. And I’m damned sure I won’t be having Sinatra sing My Way at my exit. I’d prefer something less self-aggrandising and more cheerful. Suggestions welcome.

The Sinatra/Anka dirge is not the only glum song to be sung at rites of passage. Take Happy Birthday: dishwater-dull words to a tuneless tune. The birthday cake with its effing candles only adds to the gloom. And the victim of this cruel and callous ceremony is expected to happily blow the damn things out. Huffing and puffing to extinguish your years. And at my age all those candles threaten to set off the smoke alarms – or break the regulations during bushfire season.

Even the aforementioned Wedding March has an ominous sound to it. Bride and groom to their marital doom. Apparently young Felix Mendelssohn wrote it for a production of Shakespeare’s AMidsummer Night’s Dream. Given the accelerating failure rate of marriages, there’s clearly an opportunity for a latter-day Felix to belt out a Divorce March. There goes the bride.

But back to Mr Anka. Some of his lyrics in My Way pass muster. “I’ve lived a life that’s full / I travelled each and every highway” isn’t too dusty – but then he loses it entirely with “There were times I’m sure you knew / When I bit off more than I can chew”, which gets even more disgusting with “I ate it up and spit it out”. Regurgitate rhyming to give you reflux.

Anka’s attempts at philosophising are more chunderous and sink like an anchor. “For what is a man, what has he got? / If not himself then he has naught.” More deep moanings from Cole, Ira, Irving, Oscar and Noel.

Regrets? Frank had a few – “but then again, too few to mention”. This suggests repressed memories or moral dementia. Dunno about you, but I’ve got countless regrets – a myriad examples of commission and omission. I could spend weeks made up of personal sorry days.

What brought all this on? This column was written while awaiting what’s euphemistically known as a “surgical procedure”. As Samuel Johnson observed when musing on mortality: “Be sure of it, Sir. When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight it concentrates the mind wonderfully”.