Tony Bennett, still loving to perform at 84

NEW YORK - On a rain-soaked Monday when the Manhattan monsoons robbed everybody of composure, Tony Bennett popped into his Central Park South studio, his natty sportcoat and sockless shoes not looking in the least bit damp. Maybe the rain doesn't fall on him?

He certainly has enough inner sunshine these days to ward off rainy-day blues. The 84-year-old Bennett is still performing in the seventh decade of his career, not simply because he wants to sing - which he will Saturday at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts - but because "I can't not do it."

The velvet-voiced crooner of the 1950s and the high-energy jazz singer of the 1960s gave, in 2010, one of his more emphatic performances, recorded live in a new EP download from iTunes Festival London. The now-raspy Bennett voice extols the beauties of life in a manner that resembles oration as much as singing.

Applause doesn't give him a "mission accomplished" signal as much as it inspires him to do it again - to repeat the song's most climactic moments. Ella Fitzgerald, he recalls, had much the same attitude: "We couldn't wait to get in front of the audience and knock them out of their seats."

Life seems to be a series of simple truths for Bennett these days. In an hour-long interview, the Queens-raised Anthony Benedetto showed how he has emerged into his 80s without cynicism, despite the failed marriages, career dips, and drug dependence that came with those 15 Grammy Awards.

Question: I love the moment in your concerts, usually near the end, when you sing without a microphone. How did you come to do that?

Answer: Years ago when New York cabdrivers were all philosophers, I had one guy, he had a Brooklyn accent, who said, "All you guys are a bunch of bums. You use microphones. I grew up in an era when Al Jolson and Ethel Merman used to hit the back wall with their voice." And that stayed with me. The microphone is almost like . . . an invisible curtain between you and the audience. When you eliminate the microphone, the curtain disappears. It's like you're visiting something really personal.

Q: Often, late-in-life singers maintain their voices but lose their fire for performing. They seem bored. I can't imagine you falling into that.

A: You should never be bored. In the Italian American neighborhood where I grew up, my siblings and I would entertain the family, and we were so young and cute that everybody loved us. That stayed with me the rest of my life. . . . Frank Sinatra was a great friend of mine and he made me realize that instead of being frightened of audiences, that they will help you. If you're nervous . . . and if you want to do it right, they'll support you. The old tradition that some audiences are cold is not true. That means the artist is cold. If the artist loves to perform and wants everybody to have a good time, the audience sees it right away. They know when you're first walking onstage.

Q: Pearl Bailey once told you that you'd need 10 years to learn just how to walk onstage.

A: When Rose Clooney and I first started happening, all of the great ones, like Jack Benny, Danny Kaye, and Bob Hope, they said it's going to take six or seven years before you feel like a consummate performer. The audience teaches you every time you perform. When I walk off the stage, I'm thinking, "I should've left that out, or I should do more of that."

Q: How did you develop your singular jazz/pop singing style?

A: I was told not to imitate singers; then you'll only be part of the chorus. You have to imitate musicians. Find out how they're phrasing. I like Art Tatum. He was the most unbelievable piano player. Stan Getz had this honeyed sound. I put those two together and got my own style.

Q: From there, you dipped into film and musical theater, but generally stuck to the concerts and recordings. In the heyday of the TV variety show, I don't remember seeing you very often. Why is that?

A: When I lived in Los Angeles, Fred Astaire would come by to chat, and he told me something that changed my life completely. Don't make a move without care. You don't know how quickly you can find yourself in an alley and saying, "How the heck did we get here?" If something is not completely right, I just say that I'm busy. I won't make a move unless it's just right for the audience and the musicians I'm performing with.

Q: You've talked about the battles with Columbia recording executives from Mitch Miller to Clive Davis, who pushed you to record music you disliked.

A: Sometimes Mitch Miller would say, "You have to do this song!" And we'd battle about it. If it was real stupid I'd stay away from it. But every time I had a big million-seller, they'd say, "Record what you want." Then I would do the American songbook. It ended up that I created this vast catalog of the American songbook albums during the years, and they never went to No. 1, but those are the ones that are still selling.

Q: Somebody recently told me that you can't have a full creative life if you also have a drug habit. Did you witness a lot of that?

A: That's a big subject for me. As a young man, I started delving into drugs and if I had some marijuana or cocaine, I'd hide from everybody and sneak around. Jack Rollins, who handled Lenny Bruce years ago, said something that changed my life: He said that Lenny had sinned against his talent. I dropped everything. And I stopped at the right time.

Personal friends who had drug habits . . . they were so damaged. You see pictures of Lenny Bruce and Judy Garland when they were young, and then later . . . everything was wrinkled up and tired. All the energy had gone out of them. You finally get wasted.

The great Bill Evans was a genius of the piano. The most distinguished albums I ever made were with him. But it was a period in his life when his whole body would swell up and he had to lie down after playing a 20-minute set. Here was this handsome man, highly educated, very intellectual family . . . I asked him if he ever thought of stopping and he said, "Tony, I wish that the minute I stuck a needle in my arm with heroin that somebody would've knocked me out so I would've never done it again."

Q: Did you seek outside help for your own habit?

A: I did it on my own. I had no withdrawal. I felt great right away.

Q: One of the great might-have-beens is a live album you made with Count Basie in Philadelphia. Any chance of that coming out?

A: We had a very ineffective producer and had to rerecord it in the studio. It wasn't the spirit of what happened in Philadelphia. It was a tremendous night.

Q: Any chance the original concert tapes still exist?

A: That's very possible, come to think of it. I'm going to try to look that up.

Q: What further recording plans do you have?

A: Stevie Wonder keeps telling audiences that he wants to do an album with me. He once received the highest honor in France and he only now got around to picking it up 30 years later, so he's a different kind of guy. Whenever it [the album] is, I'll welcome it. Everybody's reaction is "I can't wait to hear it."