Wednesday, 16 October 2024

My love and admiration of Nancy Sinatra is unbounded and is growing!

 About six months ago, I decided to make a playlist that charted the development of my musical tastes. The selection process was quite simple. It is a chronological sequence of tracks that when I heard them, became my favourite track at the time I heard them. I listened to it yesterday, there are lots of memories in there. A few guilty pleasures that have generated a snigger or two (I'm past caring). I will expand on it later, when I've completely finished. But where does it start. When I was about four years old, in 1966. I can't remember the show. It must have been in my front room with the family, in front of our black and white telly. All of a sudden, this strange song started. It sounded like nothing I'd ever heard in my life. Then the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen appeared. Being four, I'd not describe it as lust, but I knew this lady singing the song was special. I remember very few things from back then, but I can remember my Dad telling me that she was Frank Sinatra's daughter. I didn't know who Frank was then, but Dad explained he was the most famous actor/singer in the world.


The song was "These boots are made for walking". I don't know if this is the video I saw, but I am sure you can see why it made such an impression. Although I didn't realise it at the time, it is probably the moment that I first wanted to get into music! I saw it a few times and it always had the same effect, but over the course of time, I sort of forgot it. Music moved on (not necessarily for the better) into hippydom. By the time I was properly a teenager and into music, I'd more or less forgotten Nancy and her amazing rendition of the song. Then I saw Johnny Thunders in around 1982, again can't recall the date or the venue, but he did the number. If it was cool enough for Johnny, it was cool enough for me!

The next day, I went out and bought a copy of Nancy Sinatra's greatest hits ( a Japanese import if I recall correctly). Being a punk, I felt it was a guilty pleasure, something to hide at the bottom of the record pile, and listen to only when no one was around. Then I bumped into a lovely girl at a gig. We were chatting and I thought "She'd make a great singer for The False Dots". We got chatting and I asked her over for a chat about it, I can't deny that there wasn't an ulterior motive, but she was keen. She came over and we got chatting. She asked "What sort of vocals do you want?". I'd not really thought about it. So I said "Have you ever listened to any Nancy Sinatra, I'd like that with a punk vibe". She said "I love Nancy, have you got any of her records?" I replied yes and stuck it on the turntable. We had a wonderful evening discussing music etc. Nothing naughty happened, as I was so excited about the possibility of a proper lead singer taking over the duties and getting us a deal. We agreed to meet a week later and I promised to write a couple of songs. She asked if she could borrow the album. I spent a week writing songs in the "Nancy Sinatra style". I gave her a bell the following week. She dropped a bombshell on me "My boyfriend isn't happy with this, I'm sorry I can't come over". She'd not mentioned the boyfriend at all. She then hung up. I was gutted, devastated. I put the songs in my lyrics folder and cursed my poor judgement. Not only that, I'd lost the album!

I mentioned the idea of a female singer to the band, they thought it was a good idea. Shortly after, I started going out with a girl. Her best friend had a sister who was looking to join a band. Apparently she was a decent singer. So Elanor Caine joined the band, initially with a brief to sound like Nancy Sinatra. I presented one of the songs I'd written to her to sing. 




My brief to the engineer was to make Eleanor sound like Nancy Sinatra. I soon realised that this was a bridge to far. It worked well. We recorded it and got a deal with 101 records on the strength of it. The song appeared on a complilation. That line up split up before we could persue it further. The song was inspired by Bang Bang, but nowhere near as intense in the version we recorded. I wrote it as a sort of follow up. The ideas is that the writer is sitting in her cell after arrest regretting and missing the man she shot down. I made up a dodgy cover story as I was still a bit embarrassed as to the true nature of the song!

Anyway, as I grew up, I realised that liking Nancy's music was not a guilty pleasure, it was a badge of honour. One of my best mates Boz Boorer played with Morrissey, who before he went bonkers and became a right wing looney was best mates with Nancy and wrote songs for her, which worked really well.  

A few years ago, when I was researching The Tweets of the Week for this blog, I came across a tweet by Nancy. I responded and followed her. To my amazement, she followed me back. I was rather chuffed, she even liked my tweet!

Not only was Nancy a massive influence on my music, she also shared my view of Donald Trump. I can honestly say that her tweets are one of the best things on Twitter. Her Dad Frank was a massive supporter of the civil rights movement and wouldn't play venues with segregation. He clearly brought Nancy up properly. Now you may say "Well all of these snowflake pop stars, who've done nothing but spend their life being mollidcoddled having a pop at a national hero like Donald Trump are out of order". Well as Nancy tweeted this week, she actually (unlike Donald Trump who dodged the draft) took personal risks during the Vietnam war, travelling to the far east and entertaining the troops. This week she posted these amazing pictures on Twitter

I could go on forever about Nancy, but I am sure you get the idea. I'll finish here and leave the last word to her. She's moved in circles where she knows these people. If you are an American, do yourself and the rest of the world a favour and heed her words!




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