And Again, One More for the Road

By Jeffrey Ressner

And now, the end is near,

And so I face the final curtain . . .

With those familiar lyrics, Frank Sinatra began crooning an encore of My Way to a sold-out crowd in Richmond, Virginia, a week ago. Midway through his signature tune, dripping with sweat, the 78-year-old singer called for a chair, then suddenly collapsed. The audience gasped as he landed facedown with a thud. "I thought he had died," Sinatra's bass player told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. "I always figured he'd go onstage." Revived a few moments later, Sinatra was rushed off in a wheelchair and spent a few hours in a local hospital before flying to his home in Rancho Mirage, California.

Though his spokeswoman insisted he had merely succumbed to heat, the accident marked the latest in a series of events that have left Sinatra's fans puzzled and saddened. Just days before the Virginia incident, Ol' Blue Eyes went misty as he was honored with a special "Legend" award during the annual Grammy Awards ceremony. In a move that had television audiences scratching their heads, CBS abruptly cut away from his rambling, emotional remarks, apparently at the behest of his own handlers.

During recent concert appearances, Sinatra has appeared bothered and bewildered, occasionally missing song cues, forgetting lyrics, rambling insensibly and needling his son and conductor, Frank Sinatra Jr. Reviewers have treated his performances with varying degrees of reverence and revulsion; some calling for the Chairman of the Board's retirement, others allowing that such lapses in memory and manners are to be expected if not excused.

Sinatra himself makes no excuses. "I'm feeling fine," he told TIME last week in a rare interview, conducted via fax. (It is the way he handles all requests for comments from the press.) As for Grammy night, Sinatra admits to being emotional. "When I walked out onstage at Radio City Music Hall, I wanted to shake hands with everyone there."

Sinatra's troubles come just as he is enjoying yet another resurgence, winning back old fans as well as acquiring new admirers from the yuppie and slacker generations with his Duets album. The disk electronically melds Sinatra's prerecorded tracks with those by younger pop icons like U2's Bono. It is his most successful album since 1966's Strangers in the Night.

This week sees the release of Sinatra and Sextet: Live in Paris, a time trip to a swinging 1962 show taken from recently discovered master tapes. Also in the works for 1994 is a sequel to Duets, and though his singing partners have yet to be confirmed, prospects range from Axl Rose to Luciano Pavarotti.

But Sinatra is not content with rummaging through the vaults or using high- tech studio tricks. Despite his embarrassing lapses and hints of health problems, the singer presses on with a concert schedule that takes him on the road for a week or so every month, with three dates still planned for March.

Why does he do it? "He's a man who absolutely needs an audience," explains Kitty Kelley, author of the best-selling 1986 biography His Way. "We're all wired differently, and he needs that feedback. The constant gratification dissipates the fear of age; it keeps him functioning."

Even a devoted admirer like deejay Jonathan Schwartz, though, maintains that the functioning is increasingly hollow. The act is done by rote now, says Schwartz, who is the host of Sinatra-oriented radio shows six days a week on % New York City's WQEW-AM. "The process is so machinelike: the limo drive, the placing of the tuxedo on his body by his dresser, the sip of alcohol, the psychological procession of ritualistic movement, the depth of his solitude in the middle of it all, the elaborate moat that surrounds his heart and soul -- to say it's an American tragedy is not overstating the case."

Kelley believes that Sinatra is well aware of his diminished resources, his stumbling onstage, his heavy reliance on TelePrompTers for the lyrics to his old standbys. "He can fool a lot of people," she says, "but he's not so far gone that he can fool himself."

Sinatra, however, scoffs at the notion of slowing his pace, much less retiring. "((My wife)) Barbara would like me to spend more time at home, but I tell her to pack some things, bring the puppies, and we go," he said in last week's communication with TIME. "You write for a magazine -- I tour. It's what I do, what I enjoy doing."