I backed my way into an appreciation of Frank Sinatra.

It was courtesy of a fairly unlikely source, an artist far removed from the small-

gesture elegance of the "Chairman of the Board" -- the late Sex Pistols bassist

Sid Vicious.

If he had ever encountered Vicious, Sinatra might have threatened the junk-

drunk punk with a smack. Vicious himself likely fancied his snarling 1978

recording of Sinatra's signature tune "My Way" as a clever kick in the old man's

teeth.

I can hardly remember if I even knew who Sinatra was when I first heard

HREF="http://www.addict.com/music/Sex_Pistols,_The/My_Way.ram">"My

Way" (RealAudio excerpt) by Vicious. At that point, I may have not yet

heard Sinatra's version of "My Way," having fallen prey to the same type of

temporal cultural ignorance that is embodied in the kid who asks, "Paul

McCartney was in a band before Wings?"

Once I got into my teens, I began to appreciate the Vicious track even more,

having heard what I considered then to be the schmaltzy, overwrought original. I

could relate to Vicious, as pathetic as he was, but Sinatra seemed frozen in

another era. Sinatra seemed too quaint for my taste, which likely ran as far back

as the Ramones and Blondie at the time.

I managed to ignore Sinatra for the better part of the '80s, until I headed for

college in Madison, Wis. There, I moved in with a red-blooded Cheesehead

whose family would teach me a thing or two about martinis and Ol' Blue Eyes.

It's surely an understatement to say that my roommate's dad was a fan of

Sinatra. A powerful man with a thick shock of white hair and powerful hands, Mr.

R had Frankie on the brain. The family basement housed a shrine to Sinatra,

comprised of a jar of Sinatra spaghetti sauce, concert tickets, key chains, CDs

and other assorted marginalia that Mr. R cherished.

In a neat stack next to his karaoke machine, there were dozens of Sinatra

karaoke tapes. Mr. R knew all the songs by heart. Once he retired, Mr. R would

travel with these tapes to lodges and receptions throughout the state and

perform his eerily accurate Sinatra shtick. R's loving wife would be there,

beaming at her make-believe crooner, suppressing a hint of a giggle at how

serious he was about the whole thing.

At my roommate's wedding, he and his siblings, knowing their father all too well,

put a "not-before-10-p.m." Sinatra karaoke rule into place. Mr. R, of course,

couldn't resist, and he was crooning

HREF="http://www.addict.com/music/Sinatra,_Frank/In_The_Wee_Small_Hours

_Of_The_Morning.ram">"In The Wee Small Hours Of the Morning"

(RealAudio excerpt) before dessert had even been served.

For a moment, I was transfixed. Here was a grown man who had spent half a

lifetime adoring Sinatra, wanting to sing like him, be like him, live like him,

searching for that fleeting, magical moment that would allow him to feel,

however briefly, what Sinatra's life must be like.

In many ways, that is the definition of a star: someone you want to be like, or be

around, or just be. After that night, I began to think of Sinatra not as an old-

fashioned singer of dusty standards, but as the embodiment of an old-school

cool that had disappeared along with those outmoded, pet Sinatra terms for

women -- "broad" and "chick."

Later, I would catch the Chairman's Rat Pack caper film "Oceans 11" on late-

night TV and be mesmerized by his calm coolness. U2 singer Bono (a

professed Sinatra fan) catapulted himself into the rock stratosphere by adopting

outrageous poses and commissioning Tower of Babel stage sets to prop up his

anthemic songs. But in reruns of old specials, Sinatra matched the power and

pull of a grandiose stadium show with the flick of a cigarette ash or a caustic

aside leveled at his Rat Pack pals.

There's nothing inherently cool about Bono or, for that matter, Mick Jagger.

They seem like scrawny punks that the young Sinatra might have dispatched

with a shrug of contempt. But Bono clearly understood the rock-star allure of

Sinatra. During a 1994 speech and presentation of a "Lifetime Achievement

Award" Grammy for Sinatra, the U2 singer said,

"Frank never did like rock 'n' roll. And he's not crazy about guys wearing earrings, either. But he doesn't hold it against me. And anyway, the feeling is not mutual.

Rock 'n' roll people love Frank Sinatra because Frank has got what we want:

swagger and attitude; he's big on attitude. Serious attitude, bad attitude. Frank's the Chairman of the bad. Rock 'n' roll plays at being tough but this guy, well, he's the boss. The boss of bosses. The man. The big bang of pop. I'm not gonna mess with him, are you?"

Current Reprise president Howie Klein said he wasn't always a Sinatra fan, and

he runs the label that Sinatra founded in 1960. Reached on Friday, less than a

day after Sinatra passed away at age 82, Klein said that part of his teen-age

rebellion was to hate Sinatra because it was the music that Klein's father

idolized.

"When I took over here [three years ago], I went back and educated myself on

his work and I began to appreciate that he started the label to gain artistic

freedom and because he wanted to work with other arrangers," Klein said. "And

I could really appreciate that. He was the coolest guy out there."

I'm glad I backed into Sinatra the way I did, via Vicious and Mr. R. It was the

perfect ironic-distance introduction to a s(w)inger whose voice and presence

were so strong that he never needed irony to be cool.

Sinatra was simply born that way.