THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,455) Frank Sinatra — “The Train”
Frank Sinatra gave us a haunting song, but with “a ‘Mrs. Robinson’ jaunt” to it (Sam Sodomsky, https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/frank-sinatra-watertown/), written by the guys responsible for the Four Seasons’ psychedelic LP The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette (see yesterday’s song!), band member and songwriter Bob Gaudio and Jake Holmes, who wrote “Dazed and Confused” (yes, that “Dazed and Confused”!). “The Train” comes from Watertown, “a stunning, incredible piece of work” (The CoolVault, https://www.discogs.com/master/157249-Frank-Sinatra-Watertown?srsltid=AfmBOooK6kBTYhJrIoUMXNbdIA8eQlkHlA3XnOOtAJWaEJkC-quzma9R), “one of Sinatra’s least commercially successful LPs in the USA, [that] proved to be one of [his] greatest artistic triumphs” (Charles Waring, https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/frank-sinatras-greatest-unknown-album/), “garnering a cult who will tell you that this, the Sinatra record least like a Sinatra record, ranks among his masterpieces”. (Damien Love, https://www.uncut.co.uk/reviews/album/frank-sinatra-watertown-138909/) Yes, 1970 was a strange year.
The CoolVault tells us that:
[Watertown is] a concept album . . . . Don’t listen to folks who say it’s dour, it’s about a housewife leaving, not just her husband, but her young children also. So, it’s sad, how can it not be, a family breaking up is always sad. It’s full of realism, joy, hope, and most of all humble, not spiteful humanity. . . . Watertown is an incredible piece of work . . . heartbreaking, and [has songs] as good as anything on Frank’s critically acclaimed cry in your beer . . . masterpiece concept records like All Alone, She Shot Me Down, Close To You, and In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning etc. The rest of the record is just so reflective and contemplat[ive], with painful regret as the main emotion, but it’s offset with Dad’s absolute love of seeing his children grow up. If you can listen to this, and not reach for the tissues, you are made of sterner stuff, than me, my friend.
The official website says:
The legacy of Frank Sinatra . . . includes a studio album no one anticipated: Watertown. Recorded in 1969 and released in 1970, the concept of Watertown unfolds as a personal tragedy about a working man with children whose wife suddenly leaves him. Sinatra’s performance elicits sadness, defeat and forlornness. Ultimately, as Sinatra so wonderfully expresses, it’s also a story about one man’s resilience. . . . Now appreciated as a masterpiece of drama and heartbreak. . . . Upon Watertown’s release, fans and critics alike simply weren’t prepared for such a radical stylistic departure from Sinatra. But . . . . in the decades since the album has had a re-evaluation and, in 2007, The Guardian declared Watertown “one of [Sinatra’s] greatest masterpieces” and in 2015, The Observer noted that “it made some sense that Sinatra would attempt a story-driven concept album, considering he had helped pioneer the thematic concept LP in the 1950s. But on Watertown, Sinatra did something truly risky: he told an entire album-length story from the point of view of [a] character that is most definitely not Frank Sinatra.” Gaudio’s essay explains that Sinatra, with a level of empathy only he could achieve, was “reaching down into a man’s soul and feeling his pain and still finding hope.”
Damien Love goes deep:
Watertown, a suite of 10 tracks all exploring [a] sense of overwhelming, mundane, private grief, which Frank Sinatra . . . almost never recovered from. The worst-selling album of his career, its disastrous commercial failure played a part in his (short-lived) decision to retire the following year. When he went back to work, Watertown was barely mentioned again. . . . It began when Sinatra became friends with Four Seasons singer Frankie Valli in the late ’60s. Sinatra was in a restless, uncertain place, casting around for material he could connect with. 1969 produced one of his biggest hits, “My Way”, yet it was a song he quickly grew to loathe, and otherwise sales were sliding. Sinatra was searching for something. Valli, a devoted fan, persuaded him that writer-producer Gaudio could write it. At that point, Gaudio had moved far from “Big Girls Don’t Cry”. Inspired by hearing Jake Holmes . . . Gaudio collaborated with him in 1969 on The Four Seasons’ own post-Sgt Pepper psych-pop concept opus, The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette. When the chance of writing for Sinatra presented itself, they set out to craft something similarly ambitious, but in his image. . . . Gaudio and Holmes built him a concept album in the contemporary sense – a song cycle forming a specific narrative – which drew on Sinatra’s legacy while tailoring it to the era. The record’s narrator is a lonely man in the vulnerable tradition of Sinatra’s 1950s classics, but far removed from their sophisticated urban milieu. He’s a smalltown working guy, and his story is as simple as he is: his wife left. She had ambitions that outgrew him and their backwater town. She had an affair. Now she’s gone, moved to the big city, chasing some modern something he can’t comprehend. Meanwhile, he’s
left there, frozen in grief, trying to raise their children. . . . . [Sinatra brings] depth and complexity of emotion . . . to his masterfully understated vocals, the ageing voice cracking beautifully along the edges. For the first time, rather than record live with the orchestra, Sinatra chose to overdub afterwards, but it was no case of phoning it in. He attended the band’s recording sessions, and sang scratch vocals in the room, but decided to hold back final takes until he had lived with these new songs longer alone, got to know them. Gaudio and arranger Charles Callelo frame him in a lush pop palette that leaves Watertown both lyrically and sonically distant from the popular notion of “a Frank Sinatra record”. It met with bafflement from Sinatra’s traditional audience . . . . Inhabiting the songs, he produces one of his great acting jobs. Live with the record a while, and you feel the tidal forces of pain . . . trembling everywhere just beneath the very simple surface. . . . Sinatra holds it all back with the most delicate restraint. Still, in Watertown, he’s drowning.https://www.uncut.co.uk/reviews/album/frank-sinatra-watertown-138909/
Charles Waring tells us of Gaudio’s recollections:
Gaudio remembered being asked by Sinatra to “come up with something unusual, something different; a concept album” and after giving it some thought, he reconvened with Holmes to begin work on what became Watertown. Sinatra certainly got something different. “Jake and I tried to picture some place he hadn’t been musically or lyrically. That, for us, was the story of someone whose wife left him, and he was bringing up the kids in a small town,” he explained in the liner notes to the 2022 edition of the album. . . . Gaudio and Holmes wrote eleven songs and then submitted a demo of one of them to Irving “Sarge” Weiss, Sinatra’s music director, who took it to his boss. A week later, Weiss had a message for the two songwriters from Sinatra: “He wants to do all of them.” “I think he fell in love with the concept, the love story,” Gaudio has said, explaining Sinatra’s enthusiasm for the project, which they began recording in July 1969. . . . Gaudio explained that “overdubbing gave him the luxury of not worrying about how in charge he would be with unfamiliar songs and knowing the songs inside-out as he did with standards.” Sinatra’s vulnerable tone is perfect for expressing his character’s sense of quiet despondency as the world he knew and trusted falls apart. . . . Though Watertown focused on the failure of a marriage, its overriding message wasn’t about defeat; rather, it highlighted the value of stoicism and surviving the obstacles to happiness that life throws at people.
https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/frank-sinatras-greatest-unknown-album/
Here’s the 2022 remix from the CD reissue of Watertown:
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