Right song, which is where he lives, where he lets go, where he reveals himself. His songs are his home and he lets you in.

"But you know, to sing like that you've got to have lost a couple of fights. To know tenderness and romance you've got to have had your heart broken. People say Frank Sinatra hasn't talked to the press. They want to know how he is, what's on his mind. But you know, Sinatra's out there more nights than most punk bands selling his story through the songs, telling and articulate in the choice of those songs. Private thoughts on a public address system. Generous.

"This is the conundrum of Frank Sinatra. Left and right brain hardly talkin', boxer and painter, actor and singer, lover and father, band man and loner, troubleshooter and troublemaker. The champ who would rather show you his scars than his medals. He may be putty in Barbara's hands, but I'm not gonna mess with him. Are you?

"Ladies and gentlemen, are you prepared to welcome a man heavier than the Empire State? More connected than the Twin Towers? As recognizable as the Statue of Liberty? And living proof that God is a Catholic!" Now the laughter and cheers begin building into huge ap­plause that continues as Bono shouts, "Will you welcome the king of New York City—Francis Albert Sinatra!"

Sinatra comes onstage to a chandelier-shaking standing ovation from the audience, and he is clearly, powerfully moved. Bono shakes his hand, backs off, and then is told to run back and give him his award. Finally the clapping dies down and Sinatra, teary-eyed, speaks. "That's the best welcome"—he chokes up—"I ever had." The applause begins again.

What happens next is almost unprecedented in the forty-five-year career of America's biggest and most guarded star; Frank Sinatra starts to really open up, to talk unguardedly: "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm delighted to see you all and I hope that we do this again—I'm not leaving you yet—but we do it again from time to time and I get to see you and get to know some of you. It's important to me. Very impor­tant."

They start clapping again and Sinatra cracks, "This is more applause than Dean heard in his whole career." The crowd laughs and Sinatra says, "He used to keep one guy in the audience to keep it going all the time."

Sure, he rambles a bit. Some people think he's tipsy from the whis­key, those closest to him might be scared that he's going to float out of

502

His head the way he did at the video shoot, last fall. But for people watching at home the effect of seeing a very human, loquacious Frank Sinatra speaking so openly is at least compelling, if not downright riveting.

Backstage, though, it's pandemonium. The panicking powers are try­ing to shove Bono out onstage to give Frank the hook and Bono is digging in his heels and whispering, "No way! Let him talk! No!" After four minutes of Sinatra, the TV director cues the band to start playing and the cameras to pull back to a long shot and the network to cut to a commercial.

The audience in the hall is shocked as Sinatra is abruptly drowned out by the fanfare and announcer's voice. Sinatra is confused. Bono walks out, puts his arm on Sinatra's shoulder and says, "Time to go, Frank." And the two singers walk off stage.

If the phones lit up with complaints about Bono's obscenity, they are igniting with outrage over the insult to Sinatra. When host Gary Shandling returns he announces, "Before I go on I think you'll join me in going on record that Mr. Sinatra should have finished his speech." The clapped-out crowd pound their palms until shards of skin fly onto the sleeves of French tuxedos and blood splashes onto their ermine and pearls. (Well, that's not true, but I'm running out of ways to describe "applauding with gusto.")

The best commentary comes from the next musical performer. Sina­tra fan Billy Joel stops his song cold in the middle, smirks at the TV camera, studies his wristwatch and says, "Valuable advertising time going by ... Valuable advertising time going by ... Dollars . . . Dollars . . . Dollars." Then he kicks back in. Somewhere in this building a TV director is sliding under the door like a Chinese menu.

The Grammy Awards ceremony is only a prelude to the elephantine parties that the record companies throw at New York's most expensive restaurants afterward. The labels spend the sort of money that could sign and record a hundred young bands, trying to top each other with ice sculptures, endless feasts, orchestras, tankers of booze, and the most lavish parties of the year at the ritziest joints. Grammy night is an excuse for schnorrers in tuxes to run from "21" to the Rockefeller Center skating rink to the Museum of Modern Art to the Four Seasons to the Met in a Manhattan high-life spree that would have wilted Fred Astaire's tails.

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My wife and I have ridden Bono and All's wake to the best table in the Rainbow Room (right next to Sting's! That cat is inevitable) and are contemplating cutting a rug to the big band when McGuinness looms up and points at his watch and says to Bono, "Frank is waiting for you at the restaurant. He wants to give you a gift."

So Bono follows Paul to a car to a restaurant where the Chairman of the Board gives his duet partner a fancy wristwatch with the inscription, "To Bono—Thanks—Frank A. Sinatra." Later Bono says that he wasn't sure if Frank might be offended by his speech, but he liked it. Bono, almost whispering, mentions what millions of TV viewers know, that Sinatra was moved to tears by Bono's tribute. "That's as good as it gets," Bono says, "for me."

I say, "Bono, that's as good as it gets for anybody."

The night after the Grammys I have dinner with Bono and Ali downtown, where the glitz is less ritzy but you can find meatloaf on the menu. He says that Regine has sent him the London newspapers, full of headlines such as "Bono Shocks States" because he swore on TV. The papers in Ireland, meanwhile, are berating him for public smoking, doom­ing impressionable young people to lung cancer. The American press generally sneers at his obscenity but praises the Sinatra induction speech. In the LA. Times, television critic Howard Rosenberg calls it "the first time that truly memorable prose was lavished on a winner." Robert Hilburn, pop music critic for the same paper, calls it "probably the best introduction Sinatra ever got."

The main topic in all the papers, though, is the astonishing decision to cut to a commercial in the middle of Sinatra's acceptance speech. Mike Greene, the president of the Recording Industry Association of America, is widely hooted at for saying that the request came from Sinatra's own people, but Bono says he suspects that's true. He reckons that Frank's handlers were so nervous that he might slip up or drift too far astray that they jumped the gun. That they knew Frank and Bono had been backstage probably didn't help them relax.

And speaking of booze, Bono says Adam still hasn't touched a drop since Sydney. "It's too bad for Adam he can't have a drink anymore," Bono says, "but the world won't miss it. Unlike some people, who get

straight and then get so boring that you feel like telling them, 'Just say yes!' "

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