Jimmy Van Heusen was a top security test pilot in World War II as well as being a great songwriter. He was absolutely incredible. Van Heusen inspired me to write music.
Paul Simon once said that a songwriter's supreme challenge was being complex and simple at the same time-writing songs with lasting depth that are also simple enough to be memorable. Jimmy Van Heusen was a master at this kind of song. His music was complex, with deeply rich chord changes any jazzman can embrace, but also possessed catchy, crystalline melodies of exceeding sing-ability. His songs were meant to be sung, not just listened to, and they were sung by the best, with Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby at the top of that list.
For some years now, I've been doing a program called "Sinatra Sings Sinatra." It's been going on virtually since the end of '98. Nineteen ninety-eight was the year Frank Sinatra died. ... Now having reached what would have been his 100th year - I decided back in 2013 when we started to put all of this together, I decided what we should do was the first "Sinatra Sings Sinatra" in which we go audio visual.
Frank Sinatra changed people's approach to singing. Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, van Gogh, they were all part of movements that allowed people to think about their craft differently. They changed the game. These people changed the game.
The Hillary team is driving around in a van. Sometimes people get those gag bumper stickers put on their van. Hillary has one on her van, and it says, 'If this van's rockin', I'm deleting emails.'
The [Frank] Sinatra interpretation of the music, as opposed to some other music that you were listening to - where you felt like they were singing at you - you felt Sinatra was singing to you. It's a very intimate art form, and that's what I responded to - the intimacy of his performance.
Back in the Sinatra era, you called women "broads," and the broads didn't mind. If Sinatra called you a broad, you were flattered. When Sinatra walked in, and you know what you did? You ran up and you tried to kiss him. Who hasn't seen women throwing their underwear at the Beatles and this kind of thing?
There is a man up in Philadelphia, I've known him for 50 years now, his name is Sid Mark. He does a radio program featuring Frank Sinatra music exclusively - one show for decades, "Friday with Frank," "Saturday with Sinatra," "Sunday with Sinatra," for decades. This is something that is really quite important.
Remember those black-and-white films with Frank Sinatra? Those guys looked like men and they were only 27! Listen to Otis Redding singing 'Try A Little Tenderness'. That was a man who understood what a man has to know in the world. Show me a real man now! Where are they?
Pablo Picasso, Frank Sinatra, Ernest Hemingway, Mel Gibson, Lou Reed, Norman Mailer, Vanessa Redgrave, Van Morrison - each is distinguished by controversies unrelated to his or her art; by many accounts, some of them are not nice people at all.
If Sinatra had packed in his style because there were a load of counterfeit Sinatras about, he would have stopped singing in 1956 or whatever.
Vans are the vehicles of murderers. Serial Killers. Rapists. Thieves. Nothing good ever happens in a van. Police should be allowed to arrest van drivers without cause. The van is the cause, asshole.
I've never really understood the term 'Post-Impressionism' as more than a label for Cezanne, Gauguin and van Gogh.
I had a Vincent van Gogh, a small Provençal landscape. We sold it. If you're going to have a van Gogh it should be a really good van Gogh.
What makes Gucci Mane Gucci Mane is like what made Frank Sinatra Frank Sinatra - it's just him. He's trap's Frank Sinatra.
I knew Sinatra for 38 years. He was like my father. Frank Sinatra was my 'dad.' He treated me like his son. He gave me the best advice about singing, about this and that... He was a very sensitive man, very astute, one of the sharpest men that I ever met in my life.