For some reason this story headline just cracked me up. I guess if Frank Sinatra‘s piping-hot memories aren’t available, Frank Sinatra Jr.’s lukewarm memories are the next best thing.
Turns out that “Frank Sinatra Jr.’s Vegas Memories” are mostly of the shrugging-the-shoulders variety.
“The hotel I worked for years and years and years, the Frontier, is
gone. When I was here we had the El Rancho. The Sands has gone the way
of time. The Desert Inn, which was my favorite, has gone the way of
time.”
He’s the only one missing the Frontier. Today’s Vegas casinos may seem like 99-cent cheeseburgers in $200 foil wrappers, but the Frontier was a flat-out dump. (A generation of Vegas visitors remember the six-year-long union strike that left bored bartenders and housekeepers walking the Strip in front of the Frontier for most of the 1990s.) They blew the joint up in 2007, about 30 years too late.
That’s not to knock Sinatra Jr., who lives with one of the toughest “junior” labels ever to come from a celebrity child. He could have gone nuts or flaked out, but instead he made himself into a hardworking musician and bandleader. We salute him for that. It’s even possible that he doesn’t much care whether we salute him or not.
He’s sure starting to look like the Old Man as an old man, in any case:
See photos of Frank Sinatra Sr. >>
(Photo: WENN)