Kurt
Hernon:
February,
2004

Frank Sinatra, Neil Tennant and Two Songs

"Neil Tennant should have done this one," a friend says as Sinatra speak/sings from the stage at the old Sands Hotel and Casino. It's quarter to three / there's no one in the place / 'cept you and me / set 'em up Joe / I gotta little story / I think you should know. Bill Miller's piano nods in agreement with Mr. Sinatra. A bartender rinses glasses and chews on a toothpick, never noticing the single warm spotlight shining down on the dapper man in shirtsleeves and a loosened bow tie, his overcoat at hat sitting neatly upon a stool beside him. Just another guy done wrong by a girl, the bartender thinks to himself. He's heard it all before.

I agree with my usually less than astute cohort. Neil Tennant should have done his version of the song. Anybody who's ever gotten into the Pet Shop Boys glorious treasure-trove catalog knows that Neil Tennant has been to the place Sinatra is singing about many times himself. It's the sort of love-done-a-guy-wrong song that, by now, he knows all too well.

Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer wrote themselves a terrific song when they penned "One For My Baby (and Another for the Road)" and I am sure they damn well knew it. It has all of the elements of a classic: great poetry, great pathos, warmth, a convincing and identifiable central character, and a universal sense of longing and love lost. But I am also convinced that, no matter how goddamn good they thought their song was, they never in their wildest dreams had even an inkling about what Bill Miller and Ol' Blue Eyes would turn the song into that night in 1965 on the stage at the Sands. The performance is impeccable; the highlight of a defining moment and recording in Sinatra's career; a simply arranged slice-of-life yearning that quickly became the eternal after hours down and out classic in American pop music. Sinatra, a complicated character who, despite his legend, power, and money, was always able to illicit a listeners deepest sympathies, sings the song with more real-life conviction on Sinatra at the Sands than anything else in his entire oeuvre. He is that song; that song is he. Conjoined forever. Arlen and Mercer merely wrote the tune; Sinatra is the song.

What a performance tonight / should I react or turn off the lights? / Looks like you're picking a fight / in a blurring of wrong and right / But how your mood changes / you're a devil, now an angel / Suddenly subtle and solemn and silent as a monk / you only tell me you love me when you're drunk

Tennant might wince listening to that nowadays, but it'd be disingenuous I am sure. Any attempt at humility, while greatly appreciated, would be foolish, because "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk" is - and I have been waiting a long, long time to say this - quite simply the most honest, beautiful, exquisitely crafted and impeccably delivered in-and-out-of-love/love-is-conflict song in my lifetime; one that Tennant and fellow Pet Shop Boy Chris Lowe wrote, and in the end, is as every bit as good a song as the one Alden and Mercer wrote. Hell, after all is said and done, it is every bit as good as the one that Miller and Sinatra created.

It's below zero this morning and I am about four minutes from work. The car has finally warmed up inside and I've been trying to wear out the 'repeat' feature on the factory installed car stereo. Four minutes from work - just enough time to spin the track one more time. I smile at the thought and then wonder what it is about this song that has made me such an obsessive compulsive. The synthesizers run up a now very familiar three-note scale as the song closes and I hit 'repeat'…again. The low rumble of a music computer is kissed by a gorgeous, soft pedal steel guitar that sounds more lyrical than instrumental. Tennant's vocal seeps into the song with amazing grace and ease; the rays of an early morning's sun creeping around drawn shades.

"What a performance tonight"

He exhales his poetry and I lose my breath; the whole moment awash in beauty and doubt.

Should I react or turn off the lights?

I feel a chill shoot through me. The car is warm. I sing along even though I can't sing at all.

Looks like you're picking a fight / in a blurring of wrong and right.

I give up my voice and just sit back and smile; admiring this perfect little monument to the power that music has when it at the height of it's potential. This, I think to myself, is absolute perfection. This is exactly why, long ago, I sold my soul for music.

It's better than nothing I suppose / some doors have opened, others closed / but I couldn't see you / exposed to the horrors behind some of those

They said the synthesizer would destroy the soul of pop music. They said it was merely a machine; a program; a cold and soulless piece of equipment that would be a vampire at the neck of popular music. They said there would not be any Bill Miller's anymore. There would be no Count Basie Orchestra sitting behind Frankie Baby and Mr. Miller. They said all of that and much worse. They said it all and I completely agreed. Then came the Pet Shop Boys…and everything changed.

It was probably only a matter of time before the synthesizer as music making machine gained a respectful place in the eyes of music snobs. But none of us (snobs) thought it would get there as quickly as it did. All it took was two enterprising lads from Mother England with a keen ear for fine and refined pop music and the will to pick up the Synthesizer torch and run like hell. It also helps that these two post-post punks had a throbbing heart for 70's disco and a serious case of the dance hall hots. Toss in a glorious blend of self-deprecation, sensitivity, bitterness, vocal elasticity, and a hardcore suspicion of "love" and viola! - you have yourself some of the most heady and brilliant dance-floor pop this world has ever known. Make it timeless and you have "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk".

Smoke settles into the dingy ceiling tiles. The room is so warm that the table linens starched and stiff, are sweating. Knives ding against plates; ice cubes beat at the sides of glasses trying to escape their unquestionable demise. The tables are cleared, the lights dimmed as music begins to cut its way through the smoke and dry heat. There is no orchestra, just a pair of keyboards. There is no Bill Miller, just wires everywhere. As the sound crescendo's a pair of solitary figures appear under two single spotlights on stage looking every bit as dapper in their sharp tuxedo's as Ol' Blue Eyes and Mr. Miller did that night so many years ago. So much time has passed…it seems so different now…yet nothing has really changed, the great songs are still great songs. Bill and Frankie had "One For My Baby", Chris and Neil have that songs sentimental doppelganger, yet polar opposite "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk": Two songs from disparate eras that reveal the same depth of emotion, the same spiritual center, the same flawless pop perfection.

Two songs that make my obsession feel like an orgasm.

Two songs worth living a very long life for.

That's all I ever need.

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