Wednesday, May 2, 2007 | 7:16 a.m.
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS MORRIS
Who: Paul Anka
When: 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday
Where: Las Vegas Hilton
Tickets: $66 to $93.50; 732-5755
I'm so young and you're so old
This, my darling I've been told
I don't care just what they say
'Cause forever I will pray
You and I will be as free
As the birds up in the trees
Oh, please, stay by me, Diana
Thrills I get when you hold me close
Oh, my darling, you're the most
I love you but do you love me
Oh Diana, can't you see
I love you with all my heart
And I hope we will never part
Oh, please, stay with me, Diana
Oh my darlin', oh my lover
Tell me that there is no other
I love you with my heart
Oh-oh, oh-oh
Oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh
Only you can take my heart
Only you can tear it apart
When you hold me in your loving arms
I can feel you giving all your charms
Hold me darling, ho-ho-hold me tight
Squeeze me baby with a-all your might
Oh, please, stay by me Diana
Oh, please, Diana
Oh, please, Diana
Oh, please, Diana
Paul Anka has recorded a dozen songs that made it into Billboard's Top 10 pop singles chart:
"Diana" (1957, No. 1)
"You Are My Destiny" (1958, No. 7)
"It's Time to Cry" (1959, No. 4)
"Lonely Boy" (1959, No. 1)
"Put Your Head on My Shoulder" (1959, No. 2)
"My Home Town" (1960, No. 8)
"Puppy Love" (1960, No. 2)
"Dance on Little Girl" (1961, No. 10)
"(You're) Having My Baby" (1974, No. 1)
"I Don't Like to Sleep Alone" (1975, No. 8)
"One Man Woman/One Woman Man" (1975, No. 7)
"Times of Your Life" (1976, No. 7)
May 1957. A 15-year-old Canadian steps into a New York City recording studio and begs for the love of an older woman. What he gets instead are fame and fortune. The song, "Diana." The teenager who wrote and sang it, Paul Anka. "This is the 50th anniversary," Anka says. "I don't know where the time went."
Wherever it went, it wasn't wasted.
Anka, 65, has created more than 120 albums. His latest, "My Way, Swings and Strings," scheduled for release in September, is a double CD package commemorating "Diana."
"Diana" made it to No. 1, skyrocketing Anka into the company of Buddy Holly, Fats Domino and Elvis Presley.
Anka wrote thousands of songs for himself ("Put Your Head on My Shoulder," "Puppy Love") and for other artists, including Tom Jones ("She's a Lady"), Frank Sinatra ("My Way") and Holly ("It Doesn't Matter Anymore"). His most heard song? Probably the theme music for "The Tonight Show."
Anka will perform at the Las Vegas Hilton this weekend, his first engagement in Las Vegas in three years.
He talked to the Sun by phone from his home in Southern California:
Q: Did you actually begin performing in nightclubs at age 11?
I did amateur contests in nightclubs up in Quebec , where they had a liquor law where you could do that. I lived in Ontario. From age 11 on, I was singing in school and had a little group called the Bobby Soxers.
Who were you a fan of?
I was emulating people from Bill Haley and the Comets to Johnny Ray to Frankie Lane to Perry Como and then Elvis Presley and all of those acts. I did a lot of R&B stuff. Some country. I was doing imitations of all them. I won a lot of contests up there in Canada imitating people till I found my own chops.
Your success came so fast. How did it impact you? Did it affect your ego?
It affected everything. It was a real change of life. But it wasn't a media-driven society back then. We were still innocent and I had people around me, because of the uniqueness of my success, that kept me kind of straight. I came from a good home, but of course it turns you around. You have to apply yourself every day to try and keep some sense of normality.
Did your parents accompany you or were there other guardians?
A guy named Irvin Feld was my partner. He produced Siegfried & Roy and owned the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. He was watching over me and so was Don Costa, my A&R (artists and repertoire) director and a genius musician. So I had all these people around me.
You toured with some legends in your earliest years. Was Buddy Holly a friend or was it all business?
We all traveled together. We all worked the same venues. There weren't a lot of venues ...
Television was in a new stage. Recording was in a new stage. A bunch of kids came along appealing to other kids, but really the adults and media poo-pooed us. Madison Avenue had not embraced us. We were just little entities out there making this music they didn't understand. So we were all thrown together on a bus and we did these rock 'n' roll tours and Buddy was one of the guys who was a very dear friend of mine.
He came to me and Irvin and said, "I want to change. My manager took my money. I want to do my own thing. I want to do what you're doing, Paul, with the violins, etc." I went through all that with him. That's when I wrote "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" for him. In fact that was the last song he recorded, his last hit before the tour that he was on when the plane crashed.
He called us, me and Irvin, and said : "I need money. Please create a tour for me." And that's how he and the Bopper (J.P. Richardson) and Ritchie Valens came out on tour. We put that together for him just to put some money in his pocket.
What a lot of people don't realize is that he had been studying to be a pilot for nine months. I think he made the pilot go up in the plane.
Did Buddy Holly's death affect you greatly?
Yeah. For a good couple of years. To have something like that happen with a group of people that were all so very close. It was very traumatic. It had a huge effect in the world of music that was internationally stunned. Today there are so many artists and it is all very jaded in a sense, but back then we were all these little fighters. We were branding this new music and we loved each other and we were all very close to each other. We were pioneers, and then that happened. It moved a lot of us for a long time.
You're writing your autobiography?
I've hired some researchers and I'm sitting down, going through my files back to the '50s. I think now is the right time. I've had overtures from Broadway and film to look at the music and maybe a movie and all that stuff. I said let me get it down. It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I don't want to just rush off because of the success of "Jersey Boys" and all that and make the wrong deal. So I said let me do the book, because nobody's going to tell it better than myself. I was there.
Did you buy a hockey team?
Yeah. I was part owner of the Ottawa Senators. I was very much involved, and then I didn't like it. These sports teams are brutal. It's an ego stroke for players. So I got bought out of my share of it and let them go on with it. Although the hockey players are generally really good guys, I've seen a lot of the others, like in basketball. They're ungrateful people. They treat fans terribly. I don't want to be a part of it.
How much have you earned from "The Tonight Show" theme?
God. We didn't think it was going to last that long (30 years). I gave Johnny Carson a job way back in the early '60s. He was a comedian on a TV special I had. That's how I met him. He came to me six months later and said he was going to be doing this thing - "The Tonight Show" - for a couple of years and he was looking for a new song and a new desk. I said I would write something and I gave him the demo for 1,200 bucks. Skitch Henderson, the band leader at the time, was real pissed that this kid wrote the song, and he tried to get me thrown off. So I gave Johnny half and I stayed on. But I didn't know. I thought it was two years and it was going to be nothing. But the theme has just earned so much money over all those years. I'd just be guessing how much. It's all regulated by a collection agency - $900 per station, every night. Johnny did well with it and so did I.
Is it true you were one of the first pop artists to perform in Las Vegas?
Yes, I was. Presley tried it at the El Rancho, I believe, and failed. But then Don (Costa) and I started looking at our lives and our careers and said, "You know this thing can't last, so where do we go from here?" And we started sensing the insecurity from the record companies, and of course the Beatles were just around the corner. I knew them from my travels to Europe in the early '60s. But even prior to that we felt, "Where do we go from here?"
The cool thing was Sinatra and those guys. You looked at all of that and you wanted to grow. I said, "We've got to become performers. We've got to get into that nightclub thing." They came to me and said, "Will you open for Sophie Tucker at the Sahara?" I said, "Yeah, I don't have to carry the weight. She can do that."
From there I went to the Sands hotel and out of nowhere I'm sitting in steam rooms with Sammy Davis and Sinatra, Dean Martin. Kennedy arriving. Marilyn Monroe. I said, "Wow, this is unbelievable stuff." What a great training ground for me.
What do you remember about Vegas at that time?
I could have bought anything here for $10,000. "Nah. There's no future here." Five hotels. There was a great charm about it. I got hooked on it. I've been part of the Vegas thing for the last 50 years and it's always very amusing to me to see all these hypocrites who had never worked the town and now they have these long-term deals. It was a stigma to them. But it's always been cool to me. It's just a great place.
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