Chapter 6 - Ethical Culture Fieldston School

“Mr. Sinatra Gets Rejected”
capitulation made all the more awful by the self‐knowledge that accompanies it:
“Pity me: I need you.” Never before and never again would Sinatra sing with the
tremulous intensity that he sings these words – especially “need” – and the song
ends with an assertion that his man simply can’t carry on without his lost love.
“Frank was worked up,” Ben Barton, the head of his music company, later
said. “So worked up he couldn’t do more than one take. But that take was so
tremendous it didn’t need more than one.” 39 Indeed, an emotionally
overwrought Sinatra reputedly fled the studio that night.
It has been customary in (mostly brief) discussions of “I’m a Fool to Want
You” to emphasize the obvious autobiographical dimensions of the song – as
indeed I’ve done here. But such an approach, however valid and useful, also has
the effect of obscuring the nature of Sinatra’s achievement. The really striking
thing about “Fool” is not that Sinatra was able to spontaneously express his pain
in song (this underestimates the decades of applied passion and discipline that
Sinatra brought to the studio that night). Nor is it that “Fool” is an especially
intelligent or insightful piece of music (considered solely on the basis of lyrics or
music in isolation, it would undoubtedly seem both melodramatic and trite).
Here’s what’s really great about the song – and, by extension, much of
Sinatra’s best music: a kind of emotional honesty that closes a gap between
people. The protagonist of “Fool” has no lesson or advice to offer; indeed, the
unresolved ending is part of what makes it so harrowing. And yet for reasons
that aren’t entirely clear, a powerfully rendered rendition of an inner life, even an
anguished one, can bring comfort to those with whom it is shared: You are not
alone. You are not alone in your feeling of deprivation, and perhaps more
The 101 Best Recordings and the Stories Behind Them (New York: Boulevard Books, 1996), p. 33
39
Arnold Shaw, Sinatra: Twentieth Century Romantic (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968), p.
145.
American History for Cynical Beginners
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