My parents, the effect that [Frank Sinatra] had on the Italian community, in terms of all our friends at the house were multicultural. We weren't just Italians. My dad's close friend was a black gentleman - this was back in the early 50s when Tony Bennett was reprimanded for having lunch, when he was in the military, with a black man.

I had a different upbringing - my dad worked three jobs. You know, it wasn't as easy as they had it.

It didn't feel organic and [Tito] Gobbi was one of the artists that was able to, along with Maria Callas, incorporate not just the sound, but the emotion, the technique of the singing.

[Frank] Sinatra, to everyone, even Tony Bennett, was such a huge influence because he had mastered not only music, but film and radio.

I didn't want to become this stiffened - and that was just a personal choice, at that time. And, the idea was also to go to film first, get enough notoriety in film that I could interpret some of the opera stuff the way I would want to interpret it.

I would want to bring a certain kind of unity and awareness to different things. Even in the 80s, I wanted to do something with Unicef, and I wrote a song for Unicef, but I didn't have any means or the celebrity.

That's what [Frank] Sinatra did. He was the first artist to come out in a major way against anti-Semitism and racial bigotry. And those are huge things back in the 50s and 60s and 70s - and he was doing this in the 40s.