This was old crap to us. We rejected it out of hand. We wouldn’t drink gas –whisky — because that’s what the old farts drank. We drank gin and beer. We didn’t want to hear any unelectrified instruments. No after shave. No Brylcream. A suit was for being buried in, and you were never going to die anyway, and the old farts entertainment couldn’t die fast enough. A variety show was a variety of ways to annoy you. You only liked Don Rickles, and solely because he got up on the same stage and called his co-performers names, just like you wanted to.
How hard could it be, you thought, to smoke a cigarette and drink a Cutty and Ginger and wear a ruffled shirt tux and have a camera six inches from your face and sing a little song? It wasn’t our mistake, exactly; Dean led us on. I blame him. If he’d have acted like a rock band, grimacing like he’s having a kidney out while simply making a barre chord and yelling, we’d have known it was hard to make it seem easy.
4 Responses
I heard somewhere that Dean was very unconventional when it came to rehearsals and it was mostly to cover up a learning disability. He would go to rehearsals, hear it once, go home and practice all night and have it memorized the next day.
He made it all look easy.
Dean and Frank and Joey never wore ruffles. Their dress shirts had pleats, but never ruffles. Sammy wore ruffles.
I stand…sit corrected.
You’re right, Dean had the touch. Baldasar Castiglione called it ‘sprezzatura’.