And we have breaking
news, sad breaking news this morning.
Music icon Tony Bennett has died
at the age of 96.
Clem Los joins us now.
And Chloe,
legend feels like an understatement
to some degree
when you talk about Tony Bennett.
What more can you tell us?
You came along. Yes.
I mean, incredibly sad news
for people all over the world
this morning.
Tony Bennett has died at the age of 96.
His publicist, Sylvia Weiner,
his longtime publicist
confirming this morning.
And this comes as a shock to many.
He lived a long, beautiful life.
I had the honor of meeting him
when he turns 90
and performed in New York
at the Rainbow Room.
We don't know the circumstances
of his death,
but we know that he had been
battling Alzheimer's
for the past several years.
His wife, Susan Bennett,
she actually told AARP magazine in 20, 21
that despite the Alzheimer's,
he was continuing to perform
put out music.
Obviously we know that he toured
and put out albums with Lady Gaga.
I've reached out to her
and I'm sure that this is obviously
a devastating loss for her.
They were just so close.
But his career spanned decades
from the early
1950s and Frank Sinatra
is someone who touted him
as one of the greatest voices
of a generation.
And so I meeting Tony Bennett
there's just nothing like like it.
And he was so charismatic, so kind
and just obviously so talented.
And so it's a very sad day.
For everyone
who had the pleasure of meeting
him, knowing him,
or just loving his music, to know
that he has passed
at his home in New York at the age of 96
Yeah.
And this is a
this is a legend, really,
whose career spans
many, many decades,
going all the way back to the 1950s.
And as you were talking
Chloe, we were playing
some of that video of Tony Bennett
as he was making one
of his last performances,
maybe even the last, with Lady Gaga.
He was able to, even in his final years
as he was battling Alzheimer's, still
perform and
really give the audience
what they've always loved about him,
which is his ability to perform music.
And Lady Gaga
really kind of identified with him,
bringing him in to this modern era.
We actually have with us now
Anderson Cooper on the phone.
Anderson, you've spent some time
with Tony Bennett.
What are you thinking about today
as we mark his passing?
Well, it just
I mean, what an extraordinary life.
I had the honor of
doing a profile of Tony
and his wife Susan.
And for 60 minutes
when he did
his final shows with Lady Gaga
that you were just talking about.
And I got to spend
a significant amount of time with him.
I was in his apartment
watching him rehearse
with his longtime accompanist.
You know,
he has lived just an extraordinary
epic life.
There's a lot of people
who don't know
a lot of the details of his life
and in his service during
the service of the country
during the war.
He was one of the early artists involved
in the civil rights movement
in a very serious way.
Marching is performing.
He sacrificed a lot
over the years for that.
But, you know,
I think his most extraordinary
performances are in
the last three performances
that he did at Radio City with Lady Gaga.
I think everybody who was there
knew that they were witnessing
something really just incredible
that this man who
much of his memory was gone.
He when I was interviewing him,
I would be talking to him.
And he
you know,
he would not remember
what he had just said.
He would not remember certainly
who I was sitting there talking to him.
But his wife, Susan, all during COVID,
kept him engaged kept him
kept him alive and kept him, Tony.
And in the end,
Tony Bennett
knew who Tony Bennett was
when when Alzheimer's had had robbed him
of many of his plays,
of his extraordinary life.
He knew inherently in in his mind,
still that he was Tony Bennett.
And when that music started to play,
he would you could see him
transforming into Tony Bennett
once again.
And I said
I stood there
by the piano in his apartment
while he's rehearsing his.
And I just interviewed him.
And it had been
a very difficult interview
because you could only say
a few sentences and clearly didn't
really know why we were there.
But as soon as his piano player
started playing a few bars,
he trotted up to the piano with this
this incredible energy,
put his elbow on the piano,
and he just launched into an hour
long set of all his greatest hits
without any sheet music, nothing.
It was all from memory and it was all so,
you know, and it just
it was one of the most
extraordinary experience in my life
to stand there and watch it.
And suddenly, while he was singing,
because I was standing
by the piano with him,
he was looking at me
and relating to me as Tony Bennett.
And if I didn't know better,
I would have thought
he knew exactly who I was
or why I was there.
And engaging with it,
he was engaging with me
in a way through the music
that he couldn't do in any other way. So
it's such a it's a sad day.
Of course,
you know,
we've all lost one of the great artists
of our time, and yet
what a triumphant life.
And to have sent this,
you know,
the message
that he sent
to so many families out there
who are people with loved ones
with Alzheimer's,
you know,
this message of hope
and this message of possibility
that he could still have a
vibrant life
because of the love of his wife, Susan.
His son Danny always, always cared
and I'll never forget
the last performance
that I had the privilege
of being at backstage
with him at Radio City Music Hall
just a short time before he went on.
He was in the back and he turned to Susan
and he didn't know exactly where he was.
And he said, you know, what do we do?
And she said,
you know, you're
you're performing tonight
in like 10 minutes.
And he said, Great.
And she said, let's go over the set.
And he said, Great.
And she did.
They went over what number
he was going to do.
He went back.
He went to stand in the wings.
I was standing there with him.
And as soon as he was watching
Lady Gaga perform on stage,
because she was
he did a set and she did a set.
And then he would come out at the end
and she would come out at a certain point
with him.
And watching Lady Gaga,
you could see like the music
just flowing into him.
And he started
tapping his feet
and cooking his fingers together.
He went out. He killed it out there.
He went out there with his first words
with like the crowd just erupted.
His first words were, wow.
And they just loved it.
He did his whole set.
And then
the first night
when Lady Gaga had come out,
he had said like, wow, look who's here.
But he hadn't said her name.
And I
talked to Lady Gaga about it afterward.
And she felt that
he in the moment on the stage,
those first two nights,
he didn't remember her name,
but and while they were rehearsing
in the weeks leading up to it,
she was concerned
that he didn't remember her name.
But on that final night
when she came out and he turned
and he saw her coming out
he said, wow, Lady Gaga.
And she burst into tears.
I mean, everybody just burst into tears.
It was just an extraordinary night. And
I mean,
what what a life we have been able to
to witness
and benefit from over all these decades.
Anderson, CNN has now confirmed
that Tony Bennett has died.
We're expecting a statement shortly.
The 60 piece that you did,
Anderson, was so incredibly poignant.
And I remember when,
you know,
Lady Gaga was kind of describing that,
like it was almost like a switch flipped
and then you demonstrated it.
We also made a great point.
The life lived.
We've only got about a minute
and a half left.
Civil rights in particular, obviously,
his military service
Can you capture what what he was
not just those last performances,
but just overall.
This was a kid
who, you know, didn't have much
when he was born and had a family that
loved him and that supported him.
But he he created who he was and he
he was
all about music
from the beginning to the end.
And, you know,
his son,
Danny was incredible manager for him.
You know, reinterred
duced him to whole new generations
of people
over the decades
in the 1980s,
in the 1990s,
doing duets
with some of the greatest
contemporary artists of the day.
And his
you can't talk about Tony Bennett
without talking about Susan, his wife,
who loved him her entire life, basically
grew up listening to his music
and was
just an incredible,
incredible champion and
partner in all of this.
And my thoughts
are certainly with his family today
and with Tony.
And, you know,
there's
you know,
you still get wherever he is, this'll be.
And I think that we have his music
and we have his voice.
And I'm going to
be listening to him today.