Free B009HOTHPE EBOK by Paul Anka, David Dalton Page A

through the stuff I was writing about there was no guesswork about how teenagers would react to my songs. I was one. Every generation is going to have its own needs, its own flock of screaming teenagers. A lot of people in the business are going to scratch their heads and not be able to get what’s going on. But this was my time. I may not have been the best at any one thing, but somehow the package came together: writer, performer, the right age, the look and that was it.
    When “Diana” went to number one in the USA in September, a month after my sixteenth birthday, I found myself all of a sudden booked on The Ed Sullivan Show ! Aside from American Bandstand all we watched back then was The Ed Sullivan Show . Sure, there were other shows— Milton Berle, I Love Lucy , Howdy Doody —but The Ed Sullivan Show was the thing. One minute I was sitting there as a fan and then, all of a sudden, I was going to be on it. I was scared to death.
    I had to fly into New York from wherever we were on tour, Pittsburgh I think it was. Originally, The Ed Sullivan Show had been filmed in this little studio where David Letterman is now, but for some reason they moved it to Madison Square Garden and I didn’t find that out until I got there. So there I was, rehearsing in this huge space. The band is way the hell over on one side and I’m way the hell over on the other side—not intimate at all. This was only my second time on national television in the U.S. and I’m, like, “Shit!”
    Also I’m singing live, unlike American Bandstand and shows today where they play the tracks and you’re lip-synching to the band. It was a very weird situation: you’d have a hit record that you’d cut in mono in a studio with simpatico musicians and then you’d have to sing it with a band that not only hated the music, but were simulating the instruments on the record—a sax and a trumpet, a guitar—with an orchestra. The sound had nothing to do with what was on the record. You’re standing there live and you know it’s live so you can’t stop and go back and start over again. I remember walking in there and going, “Shit, I’ve got to just stay focused as I can, ’cause I don’t know how I’m gonna get through this!”
    And Ed Sullivan? Stiff, unusual-looking guy, big jaw, but stylish, always a custom-made shirt and tie, sharkskin suit, which kind of hung weirdly on his shoulders. You never felt relaxed when you talked to him. He remained a columnist at heart; they put him in the position of being an emcee but he was never at ease with it. It was a tough gig for him. He was very uptight, an odd, almost Frankenstein-like character—big, with this funny pronunciation. Head too big for his body. A truly strange guy to be an emcee. Emcees usually are, “Al right, and here … they … are!” As if you’re about to hear the greatest band on earth. Ed often sounded almost embarrassed and he never got all the names right. That was Ed. It was like one of those movies where the wrong guy gets shoved on stage and has to ad lib. But he was always a gentleman.
    “Diana” entered the charts in July and stayed there for eighteen weeks, replacing Debbie Reynolds’s “Tammy,” which was number one at the time. I think “Diana” was initially a bigger R&B record than it was a pop record. That’s how my future manager Irv Feld, who produced the The Biggest Show of Stars, knew it was going to be huge—because he sold R&B records at his drugstores in Washington. He had the superstores right in the middle of Rhythm & Blues Alley, you know, and they would come in and whatever they were buying, whoever the hits were to the largest amount of audience, then he would know who to book for his tours—all on account of his drugstores!
    He’d put speakers in the windows and play the new records as they came out to attract customers. Soon the music part of the business became bigger than the drugstore or the soda fountain, so over time he converted it