Editor’s Note: This story appeared in the February/March 2022 issue of Brain & Life. Singer Tony Bennett died on July 21, 2023.
The signs of memory loss were subtle and gradual at first and could reasonably be brushed off as aging—or “Tony being Tony,” says Susan Benedetto, wife of the legendary singer Tony Bennett.
“I'd ask him to make a decision about something, and a lot of the time he'd say, ‘You do it for me.' But that's Tony. I figured, he's a star and people do things for him; that's just the way it is,” she says. Another time—during a quick weekend away without her husband—she called Bennett to remind him to take his medicine. “He said, ‘I don't know what you're talking about.' I told him to go to the bathroom and look for the case that says ‘Monday Tuesday Wednesday…' and he said it wasn't there. Then I called back half an hour later and said, ‘Tone, I need you to take your medicine.' He said, ‘Oh, I took those.' I just figured he's getting older, he doesn't pay attention, and I do more than I should for him.”
Bennett, who turned 95 last August, had long seemed ageless. Born Anthony Dominick Benedetto in Queens, NY, he started his career shortly after he returned home from the front lines in Germany after World War II. He first became famous as a crooner with chart-toppers like “Because of You.” When he recorded the show tune “Stranger in Paradise,” from the Broadway musical Kismet, he became an international celebrity. In the 1950s and 1960s, he focused on jazz and standards, recording with the Count Basie Orchestra and releasing dozens of hits, including his signature song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”
The singer's popularity waned in the 1970s and 1980s, and his career stalled. Record companies suggested he update his image and song repertoire, but his efforts in that direction flopped. Eventually, his older son, Danny, stepped in as manager and made his father cool again. When Bennett appeared on MTV's Unplugged with Elvis Costello and k.d. lang in 1994, the children and grandchildren of his early fans discovered Bennett's appeal, and his career began anew. The album based on his MTV appearance went platinum.
In the years that followed, Bennett toured and performed extensively; he appeared on Saturday Night Live in 2006, sang with Billy Joel in the final concerts at Shea Stadium in 2008 before the stadium was demolished, and released a 2011 album titled Duets that paired him with 17 singers— including Aretha Franklin, Willie Nelson, Queen Latifah, and Lady Gaga—from a surprising range of genres. In the mid-2000s, Bennett was still doing more than 100 shows a year. It seemed that nothing could stop Tony Bennett. To borrow a phrase from Rod Stewart, another ageless performer, he appeared to be forever young.
But the memory problems that had begun in 2014 became more pronounced. “It took me a while to realize,” says Susan, 55, who's been married to Bennett since 2007 but has been his partner for more than 30 years. “I'd say, ‘Where are your glasses?' and he'd reach up and grab them out of his pocket and look at me like, ‘Are these them?' I thought he was just teasing me. Or we'd go to a dinner party and I'd say, ‘Tone, tell them a story about Frank Sinatra.' And he'd just say, ‘He was my best friend,' and not tell the story. I'd think maybe he didn't like the people or he didn't want to go out that night, but in hindsight he just wasn't able to tell the story.”
Turning Point
Then one day in 2015, Bennett mentioned to Susan that he couldn't remember the names of the musicians with whom he was performing. “These are guys he's worked with for years,” she says. Susan asked him if he wanted to talk to a doctor about it, and he agreed. “That took us down the path that so many people affected by this disease are familiar with.”
A year later, after numerous tests and doctors' appointments, Gayatri Devi, MD, FAAN, a neurologist at Manhattan's Lenox Hill Hospital, diagnosed Bennett with Alzheimer's disease. For several years afterward, Susan, Bennett's other family members, and doctors honored his wish to keep the information private. “He never wanted the public to know he had problems,” Susan says. “He never believed in getting publicity that way. He always felt he was in the business of making people feel good and forget their troubles. Who wants to go to a show and have the singer stand up and talk about his problems?”
As the disease progressed, Susan would run interference for Tony when they had dinner with friends or took a walk in Central Park. “If I'd see a friend coming our way, I'd say, ‘Hey, Tone, you remember Gina, right?' I tried to get him to fake it. He wouldn't want to have you feel insulted if he didn't remember you,” she says. “And he'd give a big smile and say, ‘Hey, hi, sweetheart!' He wouldn't have to say more than that, and I'd carry the conversation.”
Bennett was often disengaged or vacant—unless he was in front of the piano. Whether he was onstage or rehearsing at home with his longtime music director and pianist Lee Musiker, as soon as he began to sing—sometimes as soon as he heard the piano music—he was the old Tony Bennett again: in glorious voice and in full command of his vast repertoire of songs. The shadowy mask of dementia was replaced with the easy charm of a lifelong entertainer.
Even when other things fell away, the music remained. “Tony has painted for most of his life, but he hasn't kept that up. I can sometimes get him to at least sketch, but it doesn't last long,” Susan says. “I'll show him videos of him sketching, and he might say, ‘Why don't I do that anymore? I should do that, Susan.' The only thing that stimulates him and gets him to be in the absolute present is when he's performing, and especially performing in front of an audience. It's the music that saves him.”
Bennett toured regularly right up to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Until he was 91 or 92, he could perform for an hour and a half with no teleprompter,” Susan says. Bennett's last show before the shutdown was on March 11, 2020, at the Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, NJ.
During the pandemic, Susan has made sure Tony has had a regular routine of performing, even if it is just in their New York City apartment. Musiker comes to rehearse with him for an hour or so twice a week, and on the other days Susan sings with him. “We have a trainer who comes in five days a week to exercise with him, and we go to the park every day when the weather is good,” she says. “I've learned that routine is very important for people with Alzheimer's disease. He needs to know physically where to go and what's going to happen next, and we try not to get him from A to B too fast.”
Passion Embodied
In late 2020, the impending release of Love for Sale, Bennett's new album with Lady Gaga—they'd formed a close friendship after that 2011 duet, and Cheek to Cheek, their 2014 album of standards, had debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's Top 200 pop/rock chart—meant his diagnosis could no longer be concealed. Promoting the new record would require interviews, something Bennett was unable to do. Susan and Danny decided it was time to make his diagnosis public.
“We knew we couldn't keep it from people forever,” Susan says. “In an ideal world, Tony would never want to tell people his problems, but we thought that maybe his story could be inspirational for others and we could do a little good here.”
Susan believed her husband would want to go public if it could help others. “He has always been there for anybody in need, so hopefully he can continue to do that by showing people that the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease doesn't mean you go home, shut the door, and lose your entire life. You can still contribute. You can still connect. And you should keep doing whatever you're passionate about for as long as you can. That will help you.”
The power of that passion was on full display in August 2021, when Bennett and Gaga performed at New York's Radio City Music Hall to celebrate his 95th birthday. During the two sold-out shows, Bennett sang more than a dozen songs and got at least 20 standing ovations. The concerts were months in the making. “You should have seen me—I was driving myself bonkers,” Susan says. “I kept rehearsing with him. ‘In case this makes a difference, let's go over this song for the 20th time today.' There was a lot of ramp-up, but boy, did he deliver.”
One Last Time: An Evening with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, which aired on CBS in November, showcased Bennett at his best as he performed favorites like “Steppin' Out with My Baby,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” and “This Is All I Ask,” with its poignant final line, “And let the music play as long as there's a song to sing, and I will stay younger than spring.”
“Should we keep going?” he asked the crowd after one of the many standing ovations. “Wow! What a great audience!”
When Gaga joined him onstage in a dazzling gold evening gown and greeted him with a saucy “Hey, Tony!” Bennett responded like his old self. “Whoa! Lady Gaga!” he proclaimed. As Gaga took a twirl in that sparkling dress, Bennett grinned. “I like that! Do it again!” She obliged, and the audience went wild.
What they didn't know was that it was the first time Bennett had greeted his friend by name in a long time. Lady Gaga later told Anderson Cooper in an interview on 60 Minutes that during rehearsals, he'd always greeted her as “sweetheart,” and she wasn't entirely sure he knew her name. “When I walked out on that stage and he said, ‘It's Lady Gaga,' my friend saw me, and it was very special.”
When the show ended and Lady Gaga escorted Bennett offstage, he told Susan, “The public loved it!”
His singing in a concert five years after his diagnosis is meaningful for people, says Susan. “He became Tony again. When he rehearses, he'll sing beautifully and chat a little with the piano player, but it's not the same as the performance.”
Onstage, she says, Tony's old mannerisms return, he understands what he's singing, and he's totally connected with his audience. “When he sang, ‘Beautiful girls, walk a little slower when you walk by me,' he chuckled on that line, which he never did in rehearsal. Nothing stimulates him like being in front of an audience.”
Reality of Caregiving
Bennett's days are punctuated with visits from his sons and grandchildren, the trainer, and Musiker, his pianist and music director. But Susan is his primary caregiver and rarely leaves his side. “It's up and down. Sometimes I think I have a handle on this, and sometimes I think I don't,” she says. She does her best to stay healthy as a caregiver. “I try to eat well. The COVID-19 pandemic has given us no choice. I've been doing a lot of home cooking, so I've made very healthy meals for both of us. I exercise as much as I can. And I rely on a small handful of really close friends to help me through the tough times.”
She admits it can be difficult. “I'm not complaining at all, because I know things could be far worse, but it's a strain. Tony's neurologist is one of my dearest friends, and she's saved me so many times. When we go for our appointments, she'll tell me, ‘Go out and take a walk. Tony's fine right here.'” Susan also takes time to visit friends or run errands when the housekeeper or Bennett's trainer arrives.
That's essential, because caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's disease can be isolating. “I'm kind of alone in a way, unless he's having a really good day,” she says. “Like today, for example, the morning has been busy, but once the trainer leaves, Tony's got nothing on for the rest of the day. It's cloudy and the weather's bad, so we probably won't go to the park.” That's when she feels alone. “But when he rehearses, when I hear him sing, that makes it all worthwhile. That gets me through. Then I realize: That's Tony.”
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