Paul Anka doesn't live here anymore: Part 1

The saxophone intro to Diana wails through the casino's showroom, and the predominantly middle-aged audience looks toward the stage for the headliner, the star of the show, Paul Anka.

But he's not there. A spotlight picks out the singer - all of his five-foot, five-inch frame - in the midst of the audience, serenading a woman with the monster 1950s hit that propelled him from the streets of west-end Ottawa to international acclaim.

The audience, most of whom grew up with Diana, sing along. They don't need coaching.

The entertainer slides over to another fan who snaps his picture. Flashing his million-dollar Kodachrome smile, he jokes: ``Is that a Kodak camera?'' He did, after all, write the Kodak theme Times Of Your Life which the company used in a successful '70s ad campaign.

The woman takes his picture and rises to kiss his cheek. The kiss planted, Anka moves on, never missing a lyric, never missing a beat.

``What's your name?'' he asks.

``Vera.''

``Let's give her a hand,'' Anka coaxes the audience, which responds by filling the theatre with applause. In barely five minutes, Anka, posing, greeting and kissing, has the crowd of 1,400 at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut exactly where he wants them. Frank is gone. So are Dean and Sammy. It is left to Anka, now 58, to deliver the memories, schmaltz, some laughs and a few thrills to this greying crowd raised on American Bandstand.

His repertoire is the soundtrack of their lives and tonight they swoon to this perpetual teenager, cuddle up to the warm glow of his love songs and drift, one more time, down memory lane.

Anka never disappoints throughout the 90-minute show. He returns for an encore, and the crowd are on their feet, shaking their behinds to Johnny B. Goode. They remain pumped as the house lights go up after Anka's fourth encore. They file out of the theatre, buzzing and swarming the souvenir tables, picking over Anka T-shirts ($12), Anka key chains ($5) and Anka CDs ($20). The $10 and $20 bills are thrust over the table as Susan, a longtime member of the Paul Anka Fan Club, tries to keep up with the purchases and answer questions: ``Is this Paul's latest CD?''

Paul Anka has written more than 900 songs, My Way, for Frank Sinatra, She's A Lady, for Tom Jones, and Jubilation, for Barbra Streisand. He has sold more than 40 million albums and singles. He composed the Tonight Show theme and earned an Academy Award nomination for his musical score for The Longest Day. He has performed in the concert halls and casinos of Las Vegas, Atlantic City and New York.

The French government has awarded him the Order of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. And his reputation as a shrewd businessman, a survivor of almost 45 years in showbiz, earned him a place on Billboard magazine's list of the world's most successful artists. But unlike many on that list, unlike the Beatles and Elvis, Paul Anka has endured; surviving musical trends, from teen idol through the British Invasion, from the psychedelic '60s through disco, he can still pack them in.

He's still big everywhere, except, perhaps, in his hometown where a strained relationship has kept him from performing for 19 years. He was booed in a 1956 concert, was blasted by critics for a 1981 show at Lansdowne Park, and was caught up in a messy business partnership with the former owners of the Ottawa Senators in the early 1990s. The snubs, critical attacks and legal battles have contributed to Anka's ambivalent feelings toward Ottawa. So don't bet on his returning anytime soon.

Paul Anka was born July 30, 1941, in an apartment on Slater Street in downtown Ottawa. Andy and Camelia Anka, though, would move their young family - Paul and younger siblings Mariam and Andy, Jr. - many times, first to 152 Bayswater Ave. and then to homes on Clearview Avenue and Patricia Street. The family was close, much like Ottawa's nascent but tight-knit Lebanese community to which they belonged.

One of the community's meeting spots was Andy Anka's restaurant, the Locanda, which stood at the corner of Laurier and Bank streets. Opened in 1951, it was a two-storey restaurant and lounge and a gathering place for politicians, athletes, journalists and businessmen. It was the place to meet people, enjoy a good steak or some Lebanese food and catch up on the local gossip. It was here that Paul felt the lure of celebrity status. He spent a lot of time at the restaurant, kidding around with patrons, earning a reputation as a hustler and a boy with a big brain and an ego to match.

``I was pretty precocious, a pretty aggressive kid. I think my parents knew they had an unusual child,'' he says.

By the early 1950s, Paul was becoming well-known. He expressed an interest in journalism and at school wrote a few short stories that won awards. A neighbour, Joe Finn, a police reporter at the Ottawa Citizen, took a liking to Paul, and took him to the old Citizen plant on Sparks Street and also on a few reporting assignments. But Paul lost interest once he realized there was little glamour in journalism, compared to the music business where he saw his future. He learned to play the trumpet, drums and the piano.

``I was like a junkie. From a very young age, to be a singer and songwriter is all I wanted. And everyone thought I was crazy,'' he says. Not exactly; they thought him pushy and a braggart.

``Paul had a huge ego and therefore had his own agenda,'' says Harold Levin, a classmate who become an entertainment promoter with Bass Clef. ``He knew where he was going and he certainly thought he knew how to get there.''

Paul would hang out with the crowd at the Locanda (where he could be found peeling potatoes in the kitchen) and then take off to one of his gigs at the Jewish Community Centre in Sandy Hill or the old YMCA auditorium at Argyle and O'Connor streets. He sang anywhere he had an audience - the ``little guy with the big voice'' they called him in his Grade 9 entry in the Fisher Park High School 1954-55 yearbook. He and his buddies, Gerry Barbeau and Ray Carriere, formed the Bobbysoxers and performed on Gord Atkinson's Campus Corner talent show on CFRA.

``Paul was just a ball of fire,'' says Mr. Atkinson. ``You knew this young man was going to go somewhere. Paul had a lot of chutzpah. He wanted to get somewhere. Some people in town, as is the case in any hometown, thought he was pushy. As a young kid he did have that ability to make his presence known.''

Paul worked this town. He would borrow his mother's car, without her permission and without a licence, and drive to Hull and Aylmer to enter amateur nights at the big nightclubs. The winner would get $20. Anka always won. Once, Paul sneaked into a Fats Domino show at the Auditorium. Domino's manager, Irving Feld, spotted him and threw him out, but not before Paul yelled, ``Remember my name, I'll be working for you one day.''

Paul knew it would be impossible to make it in music if he remained in Ottawa. He was determined to link up with someone who could help him. Desperate to visit some of the record companies in New York City, he even entered a contest sponsored by a major soup company that offered a free trip to the Big Apple for anyone collecting the most labels from its brands of canned soup. He won the trip.

In 1955, Paul played one of his first professional gigs at the Ottawa Exhibition.

``I think he was 15 years old at the time and his show was well received,'' says Garry Guzzo, who remembers Paul's teenage reputation. ``It was big news in the papers and on the radio ... He was focused. He was not star-struck, just very self-confident.''

But the hometown gigs were only baby steps. Paul knew there were three things he had to do to become the teen idol that was his destiny: believe, look the part and show up. In early 1956, just as he turned 15, Paul saved $150 and went to Los Angeles by himself to visit his Uncle Maurice, an opera singer. There, he would take the giant steps needed to crack the big time. He began working on his looks.

``I was a heavy kid and I didn't look like I was meant for showbusiness,'' Anka says in a 1962 NFB documentary shown on CBC. ``But I had this bubbling inside of me and I wanted to sing. You've got to have an appeal and look like you're in showbusiness.''

At 170 pounds and five-foot-five, he was overweight. He began working with a personal trainer in Los Angeles to shed 35 pounds, running, lifting, sweating and steaming for four hours a day. Within four years, he would have sculpted his dark, wavy hair into a teen-idol ducktail - ``It took me a year-and-a-half to get it like that'' - and have his nose reshaped.

But most important, his first trip to Los Angeles taught him how to get the attention of the big record companies. Every day he would leaf through the Yellow Pages, calling record companies, asking them to listen to a song he had written with his uncle. He was turned down by all of them.

One day at Wallack's Music City, in downtown L.A., Paul was listening in the store's soundproof booths to Stranded in the Jungle, by The Cadets. He noticed on the record label that Modern Records had offices in nearby Culver City. He hitchhiked to the company's office and auditioned for its owners, the Behari Brothers.

``I walked into this garage and the brothers were there. I said I was from Canada and they looked at me strangely and said, `Sing your song.' I did it, and then they said they were going to record it and told me to come back in two weeks.

``When I went back, the back-up singers on the record were The Cadets. I could not believe what was happening to me.''

The recording, Blau Wilde De Veest Fontain (inspired by John Buchan's novel Prester John, which he had studied in high school), was a noble first effort, but it bombed. It was up-tempo with a slight Middle Eastern feel and arrangement but it was an oddity, especially among the simple and conservative true-love songs of the mid-'50s.

``The song did so-so in Canada and sold a few copies in Buffalo and then it went right into the toilet. My life had ended, I thought. I was a failure at 15 and I was going to kill myself,'' he says.

When he returned home, he was more determined than ever - both on making it in the record business and in pursuing his crush on a high school friend, Diana Ayoub. Diana was one of the girls from his circle of friends and among the Lebanese kids whose social life centred around St. Elijah's Church at Lyon and McLaren streets. Paul and Diana started off as good friends, but although she was a year older than he was, Paul quickly became infatuated with her.

``Paul was 16 going on 17, I was 18 going on 25. We were worlds apart,'' says Diana Ayoub, now 59, and a manager of Devine Liquidation, a women's clothing store on Sparks Street.

``Paul used to entertain at church functions and he became friends with my friend and I. We started hanging around together and he would call me. My girlfriend said he was in love with me and I told her, `Don't be so ridiculous, he's our friend.' ''

But Paul's crush was becoming an issue in the Ayoub household (although nothing near what it would become months later). Diana's father would get mad because Paul, persistent as he was with everything, would call at all hours of the day and night.

One day, in early 1956, Diana and her friend were at Paul's house on Clearview Avenue when she told Diana that Paul had written a song for her.

``She asked Paul to play it for her. Paul said `I'll play the music, but I won't sing the words,' '' says Ms. Ayoub. ``It was the only time I saw Paul blush.''

Back to listings