HOWZAT

Songs like this are the anthems of mature America, both public property and personal soundtrack. Magnificent with a 32-piece big band, but if you can’t lay your hands on such a thing they’re still great in the shower.

When Bennett surveys the state of popular music he finds himself heaping praise on the masters of the form who dominated the middle of the 20th century — Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, Richard Rodgers. To say nothing of the musicians themselves — Bill Evans, Miles Davis, Count Basie, Duke Ellington. “Just like a renaissance,” he says. “You know, when I came out of the services at the end of the war, I had a teacher who said: ‘Tony, don’t try to imitate singers, imitate musicians.’ And so I did.

“At that time, on 52nd Street alone, there was Art Tatum, Billie Holliday, Stan Getz, George Shearing and Erroll Garner. Tatum was the most phenomenal musician I ever heard. Put him up on a shelf, and then there’s the rest of them underneath. He played with the tempo, broke it up, swung it one moment and then took it back to a ballad. So I took him and Stan Getz, who had that beautiful honey sound on the sax, and kind of combined them and arrived at my style.”

He says you can’t really teach someone how to swing; they’ve either got it or they haven’t. This is particularly true if they have been classically trained and are hence dependent on a score. “So there are two mediums really, and the really good classical musicians understand this. Once I was working with Plácido Domingo in Austria, and the conductor said there was something I wasn’t singing right and Domingo interrupted him and said, ‘No, that’s the way Tony sings’.”

So what about these kids he’s been playing with — McCartney, Costello, Billy Joel, George Michael, and so on? There’s a conciliatory feel about this choice of singing partners given that rock’n’roll just about did for him in the Sixties and Seventies. “I am such a big fan of Paul. The guy is so talented, and also such fun to be around. And Elton, he really impressed me. He just came in and sat down at the piano and did the song (Rags to Riches) in a single take.” Like Sinatra used to? “Ah well . . .” He tails off as if to say that’s never going to be a fair comparison.

Even in this project Sinatra’s influence is palpable. It was he who made two albums of duets in the early 1990s with such diverse artists as Luther Vandross, Gloria Estefan . . . and Tony Bennett. The difference is that Bennett has made all the recordings with his duetting partner present in the studio. He gave each singer four numbers and let them choose one. When Celine Dion heard about it she asked if she could be included. He agreed and she chose If I Ruled the World.

We reprise a few of his low times. Apart from the two divorces there were other personal and financial problems. These were straightened out by Danny, one of two sons from his first marriage, who became his manager, while the other became his producer. There was also a nasty run-in with cocaine and an overdose. But when he says that “everything fell apart” he is referring less to his own nadir than his country’s. “1968. The country smashed. The American Dream shattered. Another Kennedy killed.” And now? “Look, I’m a tough guy to talk to because I’m against war.”

Earlier I’d asked how he had been affected by being present at the liberation of a Nazi concentration camp and he’d waved the question away as if it was an obscenity. “With the wars that I have witnessed I am a very different individual as a result. I’ve become a pacifist. I just don’t believe in war — it’s the lowest form of human behaviour.”

So Bush should bring the troops back from Iraq? “It’s impossible for me to make a political statement because as far as I’m concerned they should melt every weapon in the world. War is about power and greed and ugliness, and as a singer and an artist (he paints and exhibits under his birth name of Benedetto) that is not what I see. I see beauty everywhere. I find it wonderful to be alive. How futile it is to have these things going on instead of realising that life is short and beautiful.”

Short? “Yes. When you are young you feel each day is long. Then the more involved you get the faster the days begin to go.”

By which time the morning has indeed gone. Here’s the last of the world’s great crooners sounding oddly like a collaboration between one of his own lyricists and, well, Bono. Perhaps they’ve been hanging out. I look down the track listings on the new album and there, sure enough, is the Irish rocker, joining Bennett on I Wanna Be Around. I put it on. He does OK, Bono, but he’s got a bit of work still to do on his breathing.

Duets: An American Classic is out on Monday on Sony

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