Who plays the guitar on Frank Sinatra’s ‘Strangers in the Night’?
When the 1960s rolled around, and a generation of young bands with guitars in their hands began storming the charts, musicians like Frank Sinatra began to realise that the times were changing.
The tuxedo-clad crooner was the sort of star who typified the 1950s, he embodied the post-war conservatism of America at that time, while similarly guiding into a place of artistic expansion. His tightly buckled disposition still had the ability to delve into the risque, and so his stardom set the pace for oncoming greats like Elvis Presley and The Beatles.
Come the 1960s, however, that charm was beginning to dwindle. Counterculture had grabbed society by the scruff of the neck, and that latter-mentioned band was at the forefront of it. Rather than a willing guardian of art, passing the baton onto the next generation, Sinatra took something of an exception to this change.
When the Fab Four began to adopt a word that he deemed his own – bird – he unleashed fury on the young band. In a 1966 press release, Sinatra said, “If you happen to be tired of kid singers wearing mops of hair thick enough to hide a crate of melons… ‘Tell me that you’ve heard every sound there is,’ crooned the world’s greatest kid singer in his enigmatic reply, ‘and your bird can swing. But you can’t hear me. You can’t hear me.’”
To the somewhat nonsensical press release, The Beatles responded with their track ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’, further cementing their stardom and place at the forefront of the cultural verve. But Sinatra kept plugging away, trying to regain his seat at the throne by releasing his 1966 effort Strangers In The Night.
The title track became the most successful song on the record, showcasing his signature croon, backed by a bulletproof string section. But it also saw Sinatra take on a new twist, whereby modern instrumentation became more of a feature as a means of making his songwriting more contemporary.
But who did Sinatra enlist to work on ‘Strangers In The Night’?
To try and propel his sound into the contemporary, Sinatra scanned the landscape of the music industry and recruited a guitarist with a proven ability to pen a guitar-led hit. But not veering too far into the experimental, Sinatra asked country star Glen Campbell to come into the studio and lay down rhythm guitar.
Campbell recalled, “We did the whole song in two takes. We were all in the studio together, Frank and the band. They spliced together the best bits of both versions for the final record.”
His contribution certainly worked for Sinatra, thrusting him back to the top of the charts for a whole 18 weeks. It became his biggest hit in 11 years and should have sparked the resurgence that he had hoped for in the 1960s, but instead, Sinatra sneered at the new sound and regarded the song as “a piece of shit”.
Unfortunately for Sinatra, it was The Beatles who knocked him off the spot eventually, with ‘Paperback Writer’.
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