The 1978 song that unites John Lennon and Frank Sinatra: “The life I wished I had”
Pretty much the only thing connecting Frank Sinatra and John Lennon is their status as two of the most important and iconic figures of 21st-century music. Even Ol’ Blue Eyes’ favourite “Lennon-McCartney song” was written by bloody George Harrison.
Other than that, Sinatra’s epitome of carefree, old-school cool stands in direct contrast to Lennon’s intense, artistic activism. In fact, by the Fabs Four’s mid-1960s pomp, Sinatra himself had some quickly dating opinions about these newfangled rock ’n’ rollers, but there was one thing that later in life, the two figureheads of their generation could find some common ground on.
One could argue that The Beatles, and thus 1960s rock in general, stood in direct contrast to what the Rat Pack stood for two decades earlier. especially by the time the mid-’60s rolled around, when it became the norm for pop artists to start writing their own songs and calling the shots on how they were presented. Sinatra, Dean Martin, and the like were all about entertaining.
Sharp suits, Hollywood movies, a little on the skeezy side, but always charming with it. Even then, the music harkened back to a generation past, recalling the big band jazz of the 20s more than anything else. It was also never written by them, that was for the geeks at Tin Pan Alley, can you imagine?
For all their differences, though, both Sinatra and Lennon understood the value of a song that could transport the listener somewhere else entirely. Whether it was the romantic escapism of Sinatra’s golden-era standards or the more introspective, boundary-pushing work of Lennon and The Beatles, the end goal wasn’t all that different. They were both chasing something timeless, even if they arrived there through completely different routes.
That’s what makes their shared admiration for a song like ‘Reminiscing’ so interesting. It sits somewhere between their worlds, borrowing from the lush nostalgia of Sinatra’s heyday while still feeling like a product of the post-Beatles landscape. In that sense, it becomes a rare meeting point, proof that no matter how much the musical landscape evolves, a great song can cut across generations and ideologies without losing any of its magic.
In 1965, Sinatra, then 49, stood on the precipice of a major comeback. For his trouble, he had one of the greatest pieces of magazine journalism ever written about him, Gay Talese’s still riveting “Frank Sinatra Has A Cold”. One of the men reading this article was John Lennon himself, who was somewhat taken aback when the article took a potshot at “kid singers wearing mops of hair thick enough to hide a crate of melons”. It’s speculated that Lennon wrote the song ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ as a direct response to this, which is possible. The article does depict Sinatra as a King Midas figure, surrounded by luxury but despondent by it. A man whose “prized possessions start to weigh (him) down” maybe?
However, for all of Lennon’s influence on music (and so I’ve been told, it’s pretty big), that classic Hollywood era Sinatra was throwing back to still has a hold on people. One of those people was Adelaide native and Little River Band guitarist Graeham Goble, who poured his love of that era into his signature song ‘Reminiscing’. “It was inspired by my love of the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s musicals… all of that American romantic era. A lot of my songwriting, but particularly ‘Reminiscing,’ was about the life I wished I had, putting myself into those situations I saw in the movies.”
By the time of the song’s release in 1978, The Beatles were long done and Sinatra himself was the wrong side of 60, but both developed a profound relationship with the song. Lennon in particular spent his entire ‘Lost Weekend’ (all 18 months of it) with May Pang listening to the song over and over again. Pang herself referring to it as “our song”.
Goble himself would remark upon Sinatra’s love of the track too, telling Guitar Player magazine that he’d referred to it as “the best song of the ’70s.” Which is what counts, right? If anything is going to bridge the gap between two generations of icon, it’s the power of an incredible song, which is exactly what ‘Reminiscing’ is.
