Mick Jagger's fans bought records with their allowances. Sinatra's people bought them out of wages.

Sinatra's endurance has become a rallying point for many people who feel that their sacrifices and hard work are no longer honored.

People become writers in the first place by those things that hurt you into art, as Yeats said it. Then they become separated from what started out affecting them. Journalism forces you to look at the world so you don't get cut off.

The run I was on made Sinatra, Flynn, Jagger, Richards, all of them look like droopy-eyed armless children.

The Anarchists set off World War I with a gunshot in Sarajevo - but they faded away. It wasn't that the police drove them out of business. The ideology had nowhere to go except into permanent negativity.

Sinatra slowly found a way to allow tenderness into the performance while remaining manly. He perfected the role of the Tender Tough Guy and passed it on to several generations of Americans. Before him, that archetype did not exist in American popular culture.