B009HOTHPE EBOK Read online

  They did a survey of kids in England about what they expected to do in life. They were asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up? Many just said, “I want to be famous.” Fame has become an end in itself, unattached to any achievement. It was different back when I was growing up. One kid wanted to play hockey, another wanted to be a football player; my friend from school wanted to be a ski champion. As soon as I figured it out, I knew what I wanted to be: a writer. That’s what I aspired to. I wanted to write—I had no idea what that might lead to, but somehow I knew I had an aptitude for it. Whatever being a writer entailed or how you became one were still a complete mystery but that didn’t faze me one bit.

  Throughout my childhood, I ran into the occasional racial taunt from my classmates. Because of my swarthy Middle-Eastern complexion, they called me “the black Syrian.” While this was painful and humiliating, in one way it did me a favor: at a young age I became aware of the stupidity of prejudice. I remember one night when my uncle was throwing a drunk out of my father’s restaurant, the guy said, “You lousy Jew. I hope the Arabs beat the hell out of all the Jews in Palestine!” When my uncle pointed out that he was an Arab not a Jew, the drunk bellowed, “You lousy Arab. I hope the Jews beat the hell out of all the Arabs in Palestine!”

  They tried to categorize us as part of the black race, as they did the Jews, which is why many of my friends were Jews. We were all lumped together in one package, when in fact we were Lebanese Christians.

  Despite problems out there, life in the neighborhood felt safe: we lived in modest homes, life was family-driven, there were always lots of friends around, lots of relatives. It was a friendly, sheltered, suburban neighborhood. My cousins and our families were very close. I’d go over to Aunt Jessie’s or Uncle Mike’s, and all the children that went with it: eleven on my father’s side and five on my mother’s, so there was a constant rotation every weekend. Merriment, food, partying—just very close-knit families.

  I was a wildly lively child. I was all over the place.

  My father was the first of the brothers to own his own home and so all the brothers and sisters from all the families would congregate there on the weekends. Altogether it was a huge family with his sisters, some fourteen kids—two of the babies tragically died falling into a tub of boiling water so then there were twelve, but still the house was absolutely teeming with relatives. With me on the dining room table singing away. My father’s youngest brothers loved me. One would stand at the top of the staircase and the other at the bottom and they’d throw me up and down the stairs with great hilarity and to my mother’s horror. And I’ve stayed close to people in my family. To this day I’ve stayed close to my cousins Donny Abraham and Bob Anka. They’ve all been in and out of my life throughout my career. In fact I took my first trip to Paris on December 3, 1958, with Bob Anka, and that was a pretty interesting experience to say the least. My cousin Bob Skaff was one of my dearest friends all the way from the 1960s to the ’90s, in my earlier years traveling with me and doing promotional work. He was so helpful to me through his support and loyalty and in promoting my records over many, many years, until his death in 2012.

  Ottawa was a small government town, somewhat conservative, but beautiful, even idyllic, from the fairy-tale tower of the House of Commons building to the dappled, leafy streets with the whir of kids on bikes and the ice-cream truck. It was a wonderful place to grow up. Life was pleasant, uneventful, and predictable, which is why I eventually left.

  Ottawa for me was pure innocence. We would run water onto the lawn and freeze the backyard, and I’d play hockey on it. I had my chickens and my dogs. There were strawberry bushes all around the yard, which I tended. I would get as many apples off the trees in the neighborhood as I could being chased by dogs down the laneway that separated the yards. To this day I love apples.

  I was born Paul Albert Anka in Ottawa on July 30, 1941. My parents were of Lebanese Christian descent and the name Anka itself had an almost folkloric history attached to it. It means “noose” in Arabic, and it came about in this way: In a small town in Syria called Bab Touma—where my ancestors came from—a man raped a young girl of thirteen. The parents of the girl were distraught to the point of madness, but the man had powerful friends and no one would bring him to justice. My grandfather and his brother took the matter into their own hands. They caught the rapist, made a noose from a length of rope, and hung him from a tree. Eventually my grandparents immigrated to Canada to escape revenge from the man’s clan. The immigration officer asked them what their name was. Not understanding the question they began to tell the story and during their explanation the story of the noose came up. The official heard the word “anka” and that became our surname.

  When I came into my parents’ lives, they ran the Victoria Coffee Shop near the House of Commons building. That’s how I got my middle name, Albert, from Prince Albert who was Queen Victoria’s consort. We lived above the coffee shop until I was three or four. Then we moved to Bayswater Avenue, which was a much higher-end area.

  As a child I sang in the St. Elijah Syrian Antiochian Orthodox Church choir where I got to know the choirmaster Frederick Karam, with whom I would study music theory later on.

  I’ve always been an irrepressible ham. I remember going up to my grandmother’s and just acting stuff out. If I’d seen a Gene Kelly movie, I’d go and act out the whole thing for her, running around the living room, jumping on the chairs and singing. She was a sweet old gal, a very good-hearted woman, and later on somehow always knew when I needed money to buy records. She’d give me a couple of bucks after every living room performance. Maybe my businesslike approach to music started there because I was so comfortable with her, she was so indulgent of me—and I always got rewarded for my antics. She had to suffer through all my early amateur-hour performances—but she always made me feel as if I were giving her a great gift. Although sometimes I went too far, like banging out rhythms with a fork on her best china. She’d yell, “Paul, will you stop that! I don’t wanna hear that racket!”

  I was a big music fan from a very young age. I loved music—every type of music. As a kid, I remember listening to a lot of different kinds of stuff, but I guess the first song that really hit me big was the Five Satins’ 1956 doo-wop hit “In the Still of the Night.” I used to play it constantly and get all my friends to sing along with me.

  But my career as a shameless ham began long before that. At age ten I discovered I could make people laugh by singing and sobbing like Johnnie Ray. I was always performing: after we’d seen a show, after dinner, on vacation, in the backseat of the car. I’d serenade the neighbors from my back-porch stage, singing for housewives hanging out the wash in their backyards.

  It was probably around the age of twelve that I got seriously smitten with the idea that I myself might get involved in the music business. Music soon became an obsession with me; I was drawn to it like a bug to a bright light.

  When I found out that I had a voice, that I could carry I tune, I started out in the great American tradition of impersonating contemporary stars, crooning idols like Perry Como, Frankie Laine, Sinatra, and Elvis Presley in his ballad mode.

  I remember in 1956 the big kick was color television—Pat Boone was all over the place as well as Elvis Presley. “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Hound Dog,” and “Love Me Tender” were the songs I was singing. Guy Mitchell doing “Singing the Blues,” Frankie Lymon’s “Why Do Fools Fall in Love”—that is the stuff that I was listening to, along with Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and that crowd.

  Different people, singing different styles, from Presley to country to rhythm and blues to doo-wop groups—it all fed into my brain. After doing that for a couple of years, I absorbed these styles and either subliminally or consciously incorporated them into my own. Once I started finding my way around the piano, what came out was not so much a copy of any one of them as a blend of all of them—which eventually turned into my own style. I think I acquired my vocal chops first, and then once my w
riting developed I could say, “Okay, here’s my stamp. Here’s the best I can do with that.” It was a case of constantly evolving, week by week, picking up whatever was happening, listening to the radio and generally being the prototypical fan, studying songs and imitating performers whenever I could.

  When early rock ’n’ roll came along I could do that easy. I was very influenced and a big fan of all the music that was happening. Bill Haley and His Comets with “Rock Around the Clock”—at fourteen I could imitate them, no problem. I sang the songs of Fats Domino, Bo Diddley, Pat Boone, and Perry Como. When rhythm and blues groups were the rage I could do them, too. Then along came the white R&B emulators like The Crew-Cuts and The Four Aces and The Rover Boys. Pat Boone would copy Little Richard, and there were other groups copying Little Willie John, The Moonglows, and so on.

  I began to think, “Wow, what if I could perform covers of these songs; that would be cool! Next thought: “I should start a group!” I ran into a couple of kids from Fisher Park High School who sang—Gerry Barbeau and Ray Carriere—and we’d sit in my basement, learn the latest songs, and harmonize together. At that point we formed a vocal group called the Bobby Soxers. We’d hitchhike back and forth to colleges in twenty-below weather for twenty or thirty bucks. Then we got a gig in a traveling fair in the summer. Every city in Canada had one, with Ferris wheels and hot-dog stands. There was a big fair that summer of 1956, George Hamid’s World of Mirth Fair, with rides, shoot-the-balloons, corn on the cob, and cotton candy.

  The fair traveled with a woman named Dixie Allen, who was partners with Hamid, the guy who owned the outfit, and she ran a cabaret as part of the fair called Club 18. It was in the midway, right next to the sideshow with all the freaks. Perfect! Club 18 was an attraction where they had “exotic dancers”—in other words, scantily dressed girls with pasties on their nipples wiggling suggestively, but in between, while the girls changed, they’d either have a musical act or a comedian. I talked Dixie Allen into hiring us. I told her we had this group the Bobby Soxers. “Why don’t you let us do all the current hits between the dancers? We’ll be great!” They gave us the job ’cause we were local kids. We did songs like “Happy Baby” by Bill Haley and His Comets, which was on the B-side of “Dim, Dim the Lights (I Want Some Atmosphere),” “Down by the Riverside” by The Four Lads, and “Young Love” by Sonny James. I used to do some Hank Williams stuff, too, like “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “Jambalaya.” I’ve always liked country music. I think it’s the purest form of American music: great stories, very honest and basic. And when we weren’t performing I’d go sit on a crate and peel potatoes and onions to make a little extra pocket money.

  That’s where I got my first chops: going on between exotic dancers. We were all too young to go into the main part of the club itself so I couldn’t flirt with the dancers. I used to hang out in the dressing room and dig holes in the walls with the pocket knife I carried around with me so I could ogle the girls getting undressed in their changing room. That was my cheap thrills at the amusement park.

  We were pulling down $35 for the week’s work—which seemed like a fortune to us in those days. Then George Hamid forgot about me until I was proposed as the headline attraction at Hamid’s Steel Pier in Atlantic City a few years later in 1960. The price my manager Irvin Feld quoted to him was $3,500. Hamid exploded. “What do you mean $3,500? I had this guy for $35 with two other kids thrown in.”

  Other than my wild dreams of fame, I was a fairly average Ottawa kid. As a teenager I was smaller than my classmates and overweight. I went to Fisher Park High School, and even though I played on the local hockey team, I knew by age fourteen that I wasn’t going to go any further. Unlike my uncles, Louie and Johnny, who continued to play hockey, I became a cheerleader. I was an avid hockey fan—still am. Later on, after I’d had a few hits I’d get to go out on the ice with all the hockey players in Detroit to do the warm-ups—Gordie Howe, Sid Abel, and those guys. Gordie Howe was with the Detroit Red Wings; he was Wayne Gretzky’s idol. Up in Montreal I hung out with Wayne and his girlfriend before it all hit for him. I’ve got the pictures! I saw him go through his whole transition from local hero to international idol. I still see him from time to time. I love hockey, it’s a far more interesting game than football. With football, there’s basically only twelve minutes of action when you clock it, out of the whole game. With hockey, these guys are on the move every minute—they have to be, they’re on skates! Hockey became such a passion for me that ultimately I got involved in buying the Ottawa Senators. But I obviously wasn’t cut out to be a hockey player.

  Hockey players from the East Coast used to go to Lake Tahoe to practice, and one time in the ’70s while I was working at Harrah’s—Bill Harrah’s place, big gaming mogul, up in Lake Tahoe—I got a call from the bellman saying, “I have members of a hockey team in the lobby, and they want to talk to you.”

  “How many?”

  “Forty people.”

  “Who?”

  Turned out to be the Montreal Canadiens. They did all their practicing up in Lake Tahoe, while on the West Coast run of games. I got them all tickets and brought them to the show.

  Initially I thought I’d pursue a career in journalism and from ages thirteen thru fifteen, took typing and studied English literature. I ran around and did odd errands at the Ottawa Citizen, wrote some short stories, and won some awards for my poems and stories in school. My next plan was to lift lines from Shakespeare and make them into song lyrics. All this sounds industrious and precocious but I wasn’t exactly a model citizen, not at all. I had my share of run-ins; you know, tearing down lilac trees, running away from home. My dad was the disciplinarian of the family—not that it did him that much good. I was headstrong and hell-bent on following my own crazy schemes. But I could always count on Mom—she was always there to make excuses for me when I’d do something wild.

  Dad worked long hours at his restaurant, the Locanda, until midnight or one o’clock in the morning—that’s life in the restaurant business—so Mom was the core of the family. She spent endless hours with me and encouraged even my wildest daydreams. If my dad was the practical, sensible one—“Paul, you’re going to need to get a real job, you need to start thinking about creating a foundation for your career”—my mom was the one who believed in my fantasies, however far-fetched they seemed. She understood that the more unlikely your dreams are the more fiercely you have to pursue them. The idea of becoming a pop singer back in the mid-fifties was a truly fantastic thing to aspire to—it was literally like building a castle on air. A singer was a voice on the radio, on a record. Who knew how it even got there—and singers in clubs, where did they come from? What did they tell their parents?

  My mom was the one who knew how much I loved music and understood that my dreams were my most valuable asset. My dad was far more cautious. He mostly heard my stories secondhand, and naturally was skeptical about my outlandish ambitions. You have to remember the era we’re talking about. In the mid-fifties, even the thought of making a career in pop music was a very long shot. Today every other kid wants to be a rock star; back then it was pure fantasy. There was no precedent for it. Today with hugely popular shows like American Idol and The Voice, parents start grooming their kids at three to be performers. There are courses in producing, engineering records—you can even take a course in how to be a road manager. Who even knew these things existed? Now parents see the money, the celebrity involved, and even if becoming a pop star is as remote a possibility as winning the lottery, parents take the possibility seriously. The thought that their kid might get the chance to become famous, get a record contract, be a star, and be rich and famous is worth all the risk. As it was, pop music barely existed back then and as a career it was a pure cloud cuckooland. My dad’s attitude was pretty typical, more like “You’ve gotta be kidding!”

  My dad came around eventually. What else could he do? He saw nothing could stop me—not reason, not common sense, not fear of the poorhouse. He started l
etting me go to see shows, even letting me bring performers back from the clubs or he’d cook a meal for them at his restaurant. Even then I’m sure he was still very dubious; he probably thought it was a phase I was going through and that I’d grow out of it. But whatever they thought, both my parents could see I had the personality of a performer. And then they saw me starting to write songs, although they didn’t quite know what all that meant, either. As time went on, they felt, “We gotta get him to somebody who knows about this stuff. We have to find out what to do with him ’cause he’s driving us nuts.”

  Out in the world, Dad was a very even-keeled kind of guy. He would always take the high road, always very diplomatic, to the point where people in Ottawa wanted him to run for mayor. Everybody loved Andy, everyone went to him for advice about business, social issues. He was just very methodical and stable; maybe I got a little of that from him. Just a little—but enough to save me from going crazy when fame and money could easily have gone to my head in my early days. His level-headedness was just the right ballast to offset my wild impetuous side.

  My mother worked at Sears Roebuck, so she had her own money and out of that paid for my piano lessons and gave me money to buy my records. My father, of course, was taking care of the restaurant ’til all hours. We were a modest family, but as we prospered we moved from downtown above a coffee shop that my dad owned when I was a baby to a house on Bayswater Avenue, then ultimately out to Clearview Avenue, where I had a piano in the basement.