The Paul McCartney Song that Was Rejected by Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra was an influential figure in Paul McCartney’s development as a musical artist. When McCartney became successful with The Beatles, he wrote a song for Sinatra per his request, but the American crooner ultimately rejected it.
Paul McCartney wrote early songs in the style of Frank Sinatra
Growing up in Liverpool, McCartney followed through on his passion for music by playing and writing songs on his dad’s piano. One of the earliest songs he wrote was “When I’m Sixty-Four,” which would later be a Beatles hit. In The McCartney Archive Collection, the former Beatle said he wanted to write a song in Sinatra’s style, which he saw as the pinnacle of success.
“I had my Dad’s old piano at home, that I used to tinker about on when there was no-one in the house,” McCartney said. “And my feelings were, then, that if you were ever going to be a songwriter, the height of it all was Sinatra. That would be the greatest stuff that you could do, really a little bit before rock ‘n’ roll, so you were thinking of standards and things. So around that time, I wrote ‘When I’m 64’ and this other thing. I thought it would be a bit of a Rat Pack, smoochy, with words like ‘When she tries to, run away, uh-huh…’ Boom! And stabs from the band, you know.”
Sinatra turned down a song McCartney wrote for him
Once The Beatles were a success, Frank Sinatra called Paul McCartney and asked to have a song written for him. McCartney decided to give him a song called “Suicide,” another early song in his catalog. Sinatra didn’t seem to keen on the track, and Macca said he regrets not changing it before passing it along.
“It was a real early song of mine, and I used to do it as a joke, really. I actually once got a request from Sinatra, for a song,” McCartney explained. “And I spoke to him on the phone and told him about it, ‘Great, Paul, send it along’. ‘Thank you, Frank’. And I sent it him, and he thought I was taking the piss. ‘Is this guy kidding?’ You know, sending Sinatra a song called ‘Suicide’. He did not get it! But I did think, ‘Oh God, maybe I should have changed it a bit to send it to him’.”
Sinatra covered ‘Something’ by The Beatles
While Frank Sinatra did not sing Paul McCartney’s track, he did show his respect for The Beatles by performing a cover of “Something,” written by George Harrison. Sinatra was a great admirer of that song and famously donned it one of “the greatest love songs of the past 50 years.”
Meanwhile, McCartney still found a way for people to hear “Suicide,” despite Sinatra’s rejection. Over the years, he revisited the track several times, sampling it on other songs and recording various demo versions. It was officially released in 2011 when The McCartney Archive Collection included the 1969/1970 version.
