Frank Sinatra Said Over Dinner That He Was Quitting. Paul Anka Went Home and Wrote “My Way” Before Sunrise

By 1968, Frank Sinatra was tired.

Rock and roll ruled the radio, and the Rat Pack days were fading. Over dinner in Florida, he told his young friend Paul Anka something that hit Anka hard: “I’m quitting the business.”

Anka, the Canadian singer behind teen hits like “Diana,” adored Sinatra. And he had a song sitting in a drawer.

On a trip to France, he had heard a French tune called “Comme d’habitude,” which means “As Usual.” It was about a couple going through the motions of a tired marriage. It had not been a huge hit, but Anka heard something more in it. He got the rights with a simple two-page agreement.

Back in New York, at one o’clock in the morning, with a storm outside, he sat down at his typewriter and asked himself one question: if Frank were writing this, what would he say?

The first line came out like a man looking back on his whole life: “And now, the end is near…”

Anka used words he would never use himself, the tough, plain way Sinatra talked. By about 5 a.m., the song was finished.

Sinatra recorded “My Way” on December 30, 1968, in a single take. In America it only reached No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100. In Britain, it spent 75 weeks in the Top 40, a record no other single has matched.

Two months after Anka delivered it, Sinatra called him from the studio. “Paulie? You did it. This is the one.” Anka said he started to cry.

Sinatra did step away from the stage in 1971, but he came back. In this official video from October 1974, he sings it live at Madison Square Garden for “The Main Event,” broadcast on ABC television.

Watch, and you’ll see why the song became his, and only his.