In my twenties I bought a Columbia era collection of young Sinatra. The first song was “Close to You” and it was so soft, so supple and romantic that I immediately sent it to the woman I loved — how could you not? In time, I was separated from her for a spell. Lonely on my own, I became a devotee of middle aged Sinatra. He made a series of ballad records with simple concepts that anyone whoever bungled love could relate to. “Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely”. Hey — that’s me! “In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning” helped you when you couldn’t sleep because you screwed up. “Where are You?” was there when your distractions ran out and you had to think about her. “September of My Years” consoled you as you were aging past the point where change was possible. Sinatra’s voice had dropped lower, lost that golden tone of youth, but gained something that made you think he really lived this heartbreak. He was in that way a model of a popular artist deepening with age.

1969 was not an easy time to be a crooner. It was a sea change in music not unlike what Prince faced in the 1990’s when he had to figure out if he was going to put down his guitar and rap (the answer was yes, sort of). Sinatra wasn’t going to pick up a guitar and change his beat. Thrashing about for the answer, he made a big band recording of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs Robinson” that sounds about as desperate to connect as you think. “Well how’s your bird, Miss-es Rob-in-son—dan-dy miss-es Rob-in-son you say!”

As part of that thrashing, Sinatra scanned the landscape for anyone else that resembled what he did that was still considered cool. It was then that Sinatra met Rod McKuen at a party. McKuen was a historical oddity, a briefly hip poet and songwriter who would read and sometimes sing his melancholy verse to music. He had a lot of poems about his cat. He was a hero to depressed shut-ins. McKuen’s sensitive confessions to orchestra were uniquely fit to the 60’s interest in lyric as poem, and left behind when the times changed. He had a 1971 number one hit in the Netherlands. The whole nation cried out “Ja, der Saad ist Guut!” That’s how globally sad this guy is.

In 1969 McKuen was the only point in pop culture that the great crooner could relate to. In retrospect the mix doesn’t seem right, like Prince dueting with MC Hammer, but Sinatra and McKuen do share some territory. They are both travelers of the lonely river. One became an immortal icon, one became a “why are there all these Rod McKuen records at the Salvation Army?” curiosity. Frank Sinatra took another look around, packed a weekend bag and hopped on the McKuen train to see if he could ride it back to relevancy.

The sung portions of the album are listenable, though there is a distinct difference between the lyrical grace of even the title of a song from peak Sinatra like “The Day We Called it Night” and what Sinatra was now up to in now:

Always alone, at home or in a crowd,
A single man off on his private cloud,
'Cause in a world that few men understand,
I am what I am, the single man.

It sounded like Popeye after a bender and a bad fight with Olive Oyl. Sinatra’s romantic isolation had curdled. How was this supposed to have worked? At their core, Mckuen and Sinatra were after the same thing, a musical connection to loneliness. Rod Mckuen was not a phony, he was a heart on sleeve, earnest and average poet. Sinatra likely tried to tap into that aching core and sell these songs, but he proves that the nuance of execution matters. Art matters. A bad lyric well sung, doesn’t save the song. And yet this is what people were buying. Maybe the country was demanding Frank Sinatra to lay down some spoken word poetry. How would he know if he didn’t try?

He Speaks:

Empty is the sky before the sun wakes up.
Empty is the eyes of animals in cages.
Empty, faces of women mourning
When everything's been taken from them.
Me, don't ask me about empty.

Hearing Sinatra’s familiar voice pulled down to a wobbly open mic poetry hour, gives you a kick in the side of the head. It would be a few years before the masses figured out McKuen’s poetry wasn’t that good, but hearing Sinatra read these overwrought lines felt instinctually wrong and the people stayed away. The voice of someone who had made such genuinely gorgeous music, speaking these words pulled back the veil. Maybe this was why Mckuen was able to have such success with his album “Listen to the Warm” and yet a better singer plummeted to a flop. Mckuen was insulated by his own averageness.

In “Some Traveling Music” the singer of “Only the Lonely” speaks and it almost fits:

How can you say something new about being alone,
Tell somebody you're a loner?
Right away they think you're lonely,
It's not the same thing, you know.
It's not wanting to put all your marbles in one pocket.
And it’s caring enough not to care too much.
Mostly, I guess it's letting yourself come first for a while.

One day, I'm gonna find me an island, a think place,
Go there with a mess of records and a ukulele,
Just sit strumming, I might even do some thinking,
About the women and the towns that I left behind.

I looked the other way when you confessed to carrying around marbles, and tried not to double-take when you talked about letting yourself come first (that’s what he said), but 54 year old island Frank with a ukulele — no. Please get Frank out of this poem. Were Rod Mckuen to speak these lines, it would be in his hushed rasp, like he barely got out of bed, and to his credit, you would believe him, like the sad ramblings of your unwed neighbor. McKuen’s albums were like the tragic Facebook overshares of a high school acquaintance, bleeding for love. When Sinatra reads these words, he plays it like he’s the romantic lead inside a film noir. These sad-sack lyrics are not that kind of romantic doom. These words are from a tale of someone who truly would be left behind.

by Steve Collins