Frank Sinatra sings for Only The Lonely

This is possibly the oddest in the pack, what was I doing listening to Frank Sinatra at the age of 15? Well I guess it was mainly down to my best mate at the time, Lawrence Loumanski. He'd got into Sinatra - well, perhaps "got into" is the wrong phrase... he liked Sinatra partly because his father did and, in amongst the CSN, Hendrix and Cream that we'd listen together, every so often there'd be some Sinatra. And so when he released "Sinatra and Company" I went out and bought it on impulse. Not a bad move, at least 80% of that album is great.

So anyway, what happens next is that I go to stay with my father, Alan (who by now, incidentally, was living with - or maybe married to - Pat Phoenix) and mention that I like Sinatra. My dad's face lights up (probably) and he goes and gets this album and puts it on. I don't know how much of it was the fact that it was one of my dad's favourites, and how much it was genuinely liked it, but Only The Lonely subsequently became one of my top 10 albums of all time. I doubt whether it's still there today, I hardly ever play it, although a lot of the depth and subtlety would have been lost on me at the time and perhaps it warrants a rebirth of interest. Maybe I'll go to Audiogalaxy.com later (see here for my take on Napster, etc.)

It's a gorgeous album, regularly rated as one of Sinatra's best. It is, however, a little... bleak at times - although I quite like bleakness (cf. Swans "In My Garden").