“My Way”: the stories of a great song

There is a seventeen -year -old boy, name David Jones, who writes the text on four French songs to turn the week, sings them on audition and collects 200 francs. Years later, the boy became David Bowie and you go down one of those songs on the radio: now he is titled “My Way” and sings him Frank Sinatra. However, the text is no longer his, it is by Paul Anka. Much better, they tell him. At that point, Bowie gets up and composes something similar, same agreements, changes the melody. Thus was born “Life on Mars?”, In fact on the cover of the album that contains it, we read “inspired by Frankie”.

Here the complete story of David Bowie’s text

It is just one of the many stories that concern “My Way”, in the document that brings the same title, In Italian preview at the Seeyusound International Music Film Festival in Turin, at the Massimo Cinema, Monday 24 February At 8.45 pm, with a special Live of the Bluebeaters who will propose an unprecedented tribute to the song. It is a biopic Directed by Thierry Teston, with Lisa Azuelos, presented in Cannes in 2024, where the song speaks firsthand, through Jane Fonda’s voice, and travels for ugles, countries, epochs, meaning each time a different thing, accompanying funeral and weddings , revolutions and coronations.

It was born in France, on the guitar of Jaques Revaux, in a few hours. But since only songs in English go to the ranking, Revaux sends her to London, where precisely it runs out in the future Bowie. The finished audition is sent to Dalida, Caterina Valente, Petula Clark: rejected by any interpreter. Fortunately, Revaux meets Claude François on the French Riviera and listens to him. François (of Italian mother, however) is already overflowing, a national idol in sentimental crisis. He puts us on a heartbreaking text, on the boredom of couple, and complete “comme d’habitude”, immediately a success in 1967 but in a small market. Case wants the Canadian Paul Anka to be in France for the summer. From the pool by the pool hears the song, buys the rights of adaptation, and from here there is a whole other adventure.

Anka in New York attends Frank Sinatra. He is a friend, he knows his tribulations well. For The Voice are hard times. After the wedding with Ava Gardner, the one with Mia Farrow also ends, in addition she is tired, kept an eye on by the FBI and suspected of having relations with the mafia. Above all, pop has arrived. The Beatles spread, making it look only an old Crooner. He wants to do the last album and retire. He confesses it to Paul Anka, who climbs to the room, puts himself on the floor, plays the “comme di habitude” agreements, heat the story of a man who is about to close the curtain, and in four hours he creates “My way “: Born from French, adapted by a Canadian, brought to global success by an American of Italian origins.

Here the trailer of the documentary:

Thanks to the vintage movies we receive the anecdotes from Sinatra himself. The engineer who recorded the session for the album explains that the arches as soon as they tried their part, and Frank sang only once. Good first. That’s what we feel.

The document then follows the song in its other lives. With Elvis, who sang it in Hawaii in 1973, via satellite, for a billion and a half of spectators.

With Nina Simone, who elected her hymn of African American women in the 70s. With Sid Vicious, who moved it on British soil and gave it the most brutal version (here the video intervention is from Malcolm McLaren, situationist manager of the sex pistols; if you have never seen it, do not miss it below);

With Nina Hagen, who transformed her into the cry of German youth to break down the Berlin wall. Then, of course, the standard also escaped control, becoming the favorite of the dictators. “I do my own way” is a precise political program, and Trump used it to the inaugural dance of his second presidency. It is obviously loved by Putin and Kim Jong Una. In the early 2000s, in the Philippines, murderer relating to “My Way” were even recorded, all that occurred in the Karaoke Bar, where it is easy to make fights and it is easy to stone. If you are on “My Way” – very likely – the dead run away. For some time, therefore, the song was prohibited.

To accompany the trip there is also Ben Harper. We see him approaching the song slowly, intimidated. What version do you? Thousands of them, from Gipsy Kings to Jay Z, from the three tenors to Robbie Williams. Harper builds her slowly, ends up making it on the lap steel guitar, in its own way.

Everyone wonders what is the secret of a song that does not even have a real refrain. What to make that text powerful. The answer, perhaps, can be found in the statement of Paul Anka: “Exists and react to the failures, not to the successes”.

“My way” also had two covers in Italian. The first from Fred Bongusto, “My way”, with the text by Andrea Lovecchio, in 1971

The second from Patty Pravo, in 1972, entitled “In my own way”, always with the Italian text of Andrea Lovecchio.