Nancy Sinatra

[7/4]

September 26, 2004

Nancy Sinatra, Rock Goddess

By JODY ROSEN

NY Times

LOS ANGELES

"ROCK," Nancy Sinatra said, "is a business for young people. It's not for people who care about things like hair and makeup. And sleep." Ms. Sinatra was drinking iced tea in the garden bar of a West Hollywood hotel on a sultry September afternoon. On her right wrist, she wore a toy bracelet with imitation diamond-studded letters that spelled the word "rock." "It's one of those play bracelets — you put whatever letters you want on it," she said. "I should probably put a `C' in front of the `R.' That might be more accurate."

Ms. Sinatra doesn't exactly look the part of a tousled rock 'n' roller. She's a trim, elegant mother of two grown daughters who clearly cares about her hair and makeup, and she has little taste for sleep deprivation, shoebox-size dressing rooms and other indignities of the rock 'n' roll grind.

But at 64, Ms. Sinatra has become an indie rocker. This week, Sanctuary Records will release "Nancy Sinatra," a sleek, tuneful album that finds her surrounded by an all-star team of admirer-collaborators, most of them decades her junior: American alternative rockers (Calexico, Jon Spencer, Pete Yorn), leading Britpop songwriters (Morrissey, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp), arty experimentalists (Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth), rock legends (Steven Van Zandt of the E Street Band, U2). Thirty-six years after she last cracked the Top 40, Ms. Sinatra has made her finest album, and one of the more irresistible pop records of 2004.

Trend-watchers may be tempted to compare "Nancy Sinatra" to another meeting between an older star and young rock turks: "Van Lear Rose," the Loretta Lynn album produced by Jack White of the White Stripes, which appeared earlier this year. But while "Van Lear Rose" gave Ms. Lynn's music a makeover, adding an unmistakably White Stripes-like garage rock snarl, "Nancy Sinatra" is a different case. Rather than overhaul Ms. Sinatra's classic sound — a mix of go-go rhythms, country twang and orchestral pop — her collaborators have paid it homage. It's a tribute that invites audiences to look again at Ms. Sinatra, who has been misunderstood and underrated for much of her career.

That career was defined by a string of gusty mid-60's hits, most of them made in partnership with the songwriter and producer Lee Hazlewood. Mr. Hazlewood was a true pop eccentric, specializing in lavishly orchestrated, spaghetti Western-flavored songs that hovered just on the right side of the cornball divide. Ms. Sinatra's voice, mixing swagger and girl-child guilelessness, fit his songs to a T, and from 1966 to 1968, the hits (several of them Sinatra-Hazlewood duets) rolled out: "Lightning's Girl," "Sugar Town," "You Only Live Twice," "Summer Wine" and many others, including Ms. Sinatra's signature song, "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'."

Those songs made Ms. Sinatra a fixture of hit radio, her miniskirts and doe-eyes made her a sex symbol and "Boots" was eventually seen as a kind of goofy cultural watershed — an early blast of pop feminism. But critical respect eluded Ms. Sinatra, who withdrew from show business in 1972 to raise her daughters. Rock critics wrote her off as a curio. "A certain period charm may adhere to her fluff, but anything else is disastrous," snipped Paul Evans in the Rolling Stone Album Guide. Ms. Sinatra does not hide her hurt feelings about the slights.

"People of my generation never took me seriously," she said. "They dismissed me completely. I never understood it."

In part, Ms. Sinatra was a victim of the cultural politics of her time. Rock 'n' roll divided the nation along generational lines, but Ms. Sinatra remained agnostic, a stubbornly independent hip square who kept a foot in both camps. Her high hemlines, big boots and tough-girl vocal style were nothing if not modern. But she also recorded standards, and she remained closely associated with her father, the towering symbol of the previous musical era. (The pair sang several duets, including the fizzy No. 1 hit "Somethin' Stupid.") From today's perspective, her refusal to choose musical sides looks refreshingly cosmopolitan; but in the eyes of the first wave of rock critics, it placed her on the wrong side of the generational gulf.

Thirty years down the road, Ms. Sinatra would meet her revisionist historians. In 1995, she began a comeback, recording a new album, "One More Time," and undertaking a tour of rock clubs. (That same year, she had a minor succs de scandale when she posed nude in Playboy magazine.) It was on that tour that she first encountered younger musicians who regarded her as a star. Now, after nearly a decade of sporadic touring, a "small fortune" spent keeping her band together and fruitless attempts to win over listeners her own age, Ms. Sinatra has turned to that natural constituency.

"I'd been trying to appeal to the wrong people," Ms. Sinatra said. "My daughter told me, `You've got to connect with the people that love your work.' This generation — the generation of musicians that I've worked with on this album — they get my music. And I love their work, too. There's no one on this record who wasn't already in my CD collection."

In the spring of 2003, Ms. Sinatra's eldest daughter, AJ Azzarto, began to recruit musicians to play on her mother's new record. Ms. Azzarto, a musician and co-owner with her husband Matt of a recording studio in the ancestral Sinatra homeland of Hoboken, N.J, has a wide network of prominent indie rock friends, many of them professed Nancy Sinatra fans. She contacted Joey Burns of the Tucson-based band Calexico and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, who immediately agreed to take part.

Word spread, and soon more prominent admirers signed on, bringing original songs. U2 supplied "Two Shots of Happy, One Shot of Sad," a "One for My Baby"-style saloon ballad that Bono and the Edge had written for Frank Sinatra. Jarvis Cocker flew in from England with two chiming pop tunes. Morrissey donated "Let Me Kiss You," which also appears on his recent album "You Are the Quarry."

"Morrissey said, `I have a song for you,' " Ms. Sinatra recalled. " `Record this and you'll be on the charts in the U.K. for the first time since 1972.' "

Some collaborators "found musical personalities in me that I didn't know existed," Ms. Sinatra said. Sonic Youth fans will relish Mr. Moore's "Momma's Boy," a tense, dissonant piece of Lower East Side art rock, which Ms. Sinatra says she deliberately sang "à la Kim Gordon," a reference to Mr. Moore's wife and bandmate.

But Ms. Sinatra's collaborators are students of her back catalog; for the most part, "Nancy Sinatra" plays like a tribute album. The most sumptuous of these homages is Calexico's "Burnin' Down the Spark" — a ringing, wide-screen ballad, spiced with strings, pedal steel guitar and mariachi horns, that nods to the atmospheric Dust Bowl tunes Ms. Sinatra made with Mr. Hazlewood.

The fact that such songs sound utterly contemporary is a tribute in part to the album's crisp production — but it's also an indication of how, 35 years later, indie rock has caught up with Ms. Sinatra. In the 1990's, young musicians who had exhausted the classic rock canon began to explore 60's pop, discovering a trove of imaginative songwriting and arranging. For these listeners, Ms. Sinatra's records held surprises: who could resist the sheer weirdness of "Boots" and its signature riff, that drooping, sliding bass line, panned to the far left side of the stereo spectrum, while an acoustic guitar jangles cheerily in the right channel? (Ms. Sinatra's work with Mr. Hazlewood is filled with such moments of casual psychedelia.) Then there was Ms. Sinatra's singing: not always conventionally pretty, but bursting with personality and a sexual forthrightness that few white female vocalists of her time dared touch. Today, the music Ms. Sinatra's contemporaries dismissed as hokum is fashionable; you can detect traces of the Sinatra-Hazlewood style in modern rock and alt-country acts — Nick Cave, Tindersticks, Lambchop — and in the work of several of the artists who contributed to "Nancy Sinatra."

The most avid of Ms. Sinatra's famous fans is Morrissey, who brokered her new record deal and has emerged as her high-profile champion. The two met several years ago, when Morrissey turned up at Ms. Sinatra's London hotel room with an armful of LP's for her to autograph, and they became friends, e-mail correspondents and, eventually, neighbors in Los Angeles. "He's a brilliant poet, isn't he?" Ms. Sinatra said. "He reminds me of my father — his body language onstage, the way he never hits a wrong note."

He's also supplied the album's single, "Let Me Kiss You," and this quintessential Morrissey song, with its wavering minor-key melody and aura of doomed romance, makes a remarkably good fit for Ms. Sinatra. Indeed, most of the songs on "Nancy Sinatra" seem tailor-written to update her classic persona; the "boots girl" has moved into her seventh decade, speaking in a wised-up woman's voice of experience. In Mr. Cocker's "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time," Ms. Sinatra offers gruff motherly advice to a younger woman: "He can have his space, he can take his time/ Now he can kiss you where the sun don't shine/ No, baby, don't let him waste your time."

Ms. Sinatra delivers those lines with sass, but she is also capable of delicacy and expressiveness that may surprise listeners familiar only with "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'." There was a brooding undercurrent in much of her music with Mr. Hazlewood, and she's always done her best work as a torch singer, a fact that filmgoers were reminded of last year when Quentin Tarantino used her spooky 1966 recording of "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" as the theme song of "Kill Bill Vol. I." You hear it in the raspy blue notes she hits in "Two Shots of Happy, One Shot of Sad." A knack for cutting to the heart of a lyric — and a streak of bruised romanticism — was handed down from father to daughter.

Back in the hotel garden, Ms. Sinatra confessed to some doubts about her album's commercial prospects. "I can't imagine it will sell," she said. "I'm beyond hoping for that. But I want to hear it on the radio so bad."

In the meantime, Ms. Sinatra is not resting. She has plans for more collaborations: there's a possible duet with Debbie Harry, a half-finished song with the English band Doves, some tracks with the electronica group Reno. Her latest idea involves another blonde who has taken critical knocks: "I met Billy Idol at the rehearsal studio last week. I've loved him for years. I asked him if he'd like to record something and he said sure."

Ms. Sinatra smiled. "I'd love to do one of his songs. Maybe `Sweet Sixteen'? I hope we'll record something and get it out there — even if I just throw it up on iTunes."

Jody Rosen is the author of "White Christmas: The Story of an American Song" (Scribner).

[JSngry]

You can't take Nancy Sinatra seriously w/o taking Lee Hazelwood seriously, and Lee Hazelwood SHOULD be taken seriously.

[BERIGAN]

You can't take Nancy Sinatra seriously w/o taking Lee Hazelwood seriously, and Lee Hazelwood SHOULD be taken seriously.

No, he shouldn't....he wouldn't let Megadeth release their original cover of these boots.....they had to bleep out all the cool words!

[JSngry]

There is more to Lee Hazelwood than a censored Megadeath cover.

[Brandon Burke]

You can't take Nancy Sinatra seriously w/o taking Lee Hazelwood seriously, and Lee Hazelwood SHOULD be taken seriously.

I am in complete agreement with Jim. Especially Cowboy in Sweden, Requiem for an Almost Lady, and the stuff he did with Sanford Clark.

As for Megadeth: When will people finally realize that ironic covers aren't funny? They're just dumb.

[BERIGAN]

You can't take Nancy Sinatra seriously w/o taking Lee Hazelwood seriously, and Lee Hazelwood SHOULD be taken seriously.

I am in complete agreement with Jim. Especially Cowboy in Sweden, Requiem for an Almost Lady, and the stuff he did with Sanford Clark.

As for Megadeth: When will people finally realize that ironic covers aren't funny? They're just dumb.

Well, Megadeth covered the song back in the 80's (1985) on a tiny label, irony was most likely not the formost thought in their minds....they just wanted to do a raw cover...it was off the Killing is my business cd for years and years.....ever here the song????

here is the first 30 seconds, and the word sex is beeped out for God's sake!

>bleepity bleep<

a little later on in the song...why bother putting it on cd with all the "bad" words bleeped???

>wait, more hi-larious beeping<

Lee Hazelwood my be a great songwriter, but man....seems like a prude to me....

Edited September 28, 2004 by BERIGAN

[JSngry]

Songwriter, yeah, but he was one helluva producer first and foremost.

[mikeweil]

I have to admit these boots never walked very close to me ...

[jazzbo]

I don't think I ever heard anything besides "These Boots. . . ." Can't say I was ever inspired to!

And no, it's not just because of her Dad.

[Brandon Burke]

Lee Hazelwood my be a great songwriter, but man....seems like a prude to me....

Wow...

Not sure "prude" is the term I'd use. In fact, most of his solo matarial reveals him to be either a swaggering, Serge Gainsbourg-like ball of sex or a terribly bitter and scorned lover. Dig...

*********************************************

Some Velvet Morning (w/Nancy Sinatra):

"Some velvet morning when I'm straight.

I'm gonna open up your gate.

And maybe tell you 'bout Phaedra

and how she gave me life

and how she made it in.

Some velvet morning when I'm straight."

*********************************************

In the Beginning/Glad I Never..:

"You could have been

Yeah, you could have been good.

So how come you're so god damn mean.

But before you I never had any fun.

Good thing I never

Yeah, good thing I never

Good thing I never owned a gun."

*********************************************

I wish I had some of those records on me. I'd do a quick listen for better examples. These I had to draw from memory. As for the censorship of the Megadeth cover, I could be wrong but my guess is that the record label had everything to do with that. Not Lee.

And, not to beat a dead horse or anything but, you've got to be kidding me when you say that Megadeth covering "These Boots are Made for Walking" is anything other than ironic. C'mon...

[BERIGAN]

I know, I know it is Lee Hazelwood's song, so I understand to a point how he might not want the song messed with, but geez.....like Dave says, he cashed the royalty checks!

Well, at least Dave doesn't seem the least bit bitter about this!

The only disappointing aspect of the disc is the blatantly censored version of "These Boots." Dave Mustaine explains:

"Some of you may be asking (don't feel alone, there were many others who did too), 'is 'Boots' going to be on the re-release?'

"Well, unfortunately, there is a 'two-part' answer to your 1-part question. 1) Yes, and 2) No. Yes, the song is going to be including 'our version.' No, we had to change the "changes" I made to the original 'original' version. You see, initially the remake of 'These Boots Are Made For Walking' was a joke. I thought it was alright to have some fun with it, because the original version sucked. Lee Hazelwood, the song's original writer, didn't quite see the humor in this. But he or his handlers are bereft of more than a sense of humor. Upon hearing our version, we were notified that Lee Hazelwood had taken umbrage to our version and deemed it 'vile and offensive' or some shit like that. What is really vile and offensive is that the checks from the records we sold that were sent to him were cashed for ten years before he said anything about his being knighted and now morally superior to having the dosh.

"I guess that was the same time he was suddenly struck with selective amnesia. Didn't he let Frank Sinatra's daughter record this song too? Wasn't Frank alleged to have had ties with the mafia? Since when is a red-headed guitarist more intimidating than the fucking mob?

"It's great to see you have ascended to the moral mountaintop. I guess with your 'Seraph' status, you won't need the money we sent you from down here amongst the peasants. Hell, I think I see a mail carrier. It might just be a check from HRH as we speak. I'll get back to you later."

Megadeth has wisely censored the song to like an episode of The Jerry Springer Show gone wrong (or right, depending on your views.) While the beeps can be annoying, they serve as a stern reminder of censorship and how much it truly sucks. In 1988, on So Far, So Good...So What!, Mustaine wrote:

"A slouch with fallen arches, purging truths into great lies,

A little man with a big eraser, changing history."—"Hook In Mouth"

Many fans have already dubbed the remix "These Beeps Are Made For Walking." Here's to hoping that metal-sludge.com extends an "F.U. Award" to ol' Lee.

http://culturedose.bravepages.com/review_10002481.html

Edited September 30, 2004 by BERIGAN