The Stars of Stage and Screen: Song #42/250…My Way by Sid Vicious from the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to the Film Goodfellas

A year or so ago, my daughter Leah was doing some Sociology homework at the dining room table. Her assignment had to do with gang culture and, specifically, why people become involved in gang-like groups in the first place. Leah, being as good a kid as she is, remarked that she would never allow herself to become involved in a gang because of the violence and other illegal activities gang members practise and because in the end, it all usually turns out poorly via death or incarceration. Then she looked at her dear old dad and asked if I had a theory as to why people joined gangs despite how obviously bad they all seem to be. The words that popped immediately into my mind were spoken in the voice of actor Ray Liotta who said, “As far back as I could remember, I always wanted to be a gangster”. 

That line stands as one of Hollywood’s great opening movie lines. As soon as Liotta utters that line to begin the movie Goodfellas, we are given an insider’s view of what it is like to be a member of a gang. The gang in question is a Mafia crime family. The allure of it all is clearly evident over the next twenty minutes as the movie unfolds as seen through the teenage eyes of a young Henry Hill. According to Hill, to be a real-life mobster is to be able to do anything you want. You can park in front of fire hydrants and not get a ticket. You get the best tables in every restaurant you enter. Everyone wants to shake your hand. Everyone pays you respect. To the likes of Henry Hill, being a mobster is a realization of the American Dream, where anyone can go from being a nobody to being somebody that everyone else knows and admires and ultimately, fears. Who wouldn’t be tempted by a life like that?

Martin Scorsese directed Goodfellas. Many say that the movie is his best work. Not only that, many also say that it is the best crime movie ever made, even better than The Godfather trilogy.  Whether one movie is better than the other is really an irrelevant debate because both are excellent in their own way. For guys, it is like being asked to choose between a Playboy centerfold and a Victoria’s Secret runway model if that is your thing. Neither choice is a bad choice. You can’t go wrong either way. The same is true with regard to The Godfather and Goodfellas. For the sake of this post, I am going to focus on Goodfellas. Specifically, I am going to focus on one aspect of Martin Scorsese’s skill set and that is how he uses music in his movies. 

There are 48 songs used in the movie Goodfellas. Each song was specifically chosen to add layers of meaning to the action in a particular scene and/or to the motives behind what the onscreen characters are thinking or doing. Scorsese uses music in his movies the same way a cinematographer uses light and shadow to create mood. For Scorsese, a piece of music has to meet two criteria in order to be used in one of his movies. First of all, if it is to be played as part of a scene, then it has to be time period appropriate. In Goodfellas, this means that when the movie is dealing with action set in the 1950s, the music being played is all from that time period as well. For example, after Henry Hill says his opening line and the scene shifts back in time to Henry Hill remembering what it was like to be a teenager and watch the mobsters on his street from his apartment window, the sound of Tony Bennett’s “Rags to Riches” begins to play. Twenty years later, when Henry Hill begins his downward descent, the music being played is by The Rolling Stones and other 70s music acts. All throughout the film, the soundtrack helps to add a layer of realism to the times in which the scenes are taking place. The second rule of music placement that Martin Scorcese always follows is that the song has to contribute to the mindset of the actor in the scene. So not only is music used to add a realistic element to the setting of the scene by placing it in a time-appropriate moment but it also moves the action in the movie forward, too. A good example of this is when Henry Hill first meets his bride-to-be Karen, played by actress Lorraine Bracco. There is a scene in which Hill shows his new girlfriend how big of a player he is by taking her through the back door of the Copacabana nightclub, through the kitchen (where he pats people on the back and gets acknowledged), all the way to the main room where a special table is set up for the two of them right at the foot of the stage. During the entirety of this scene, the song “And Then He Kissed Me” by The Crystals plays. While it plays, you can see Liotta’s character’s chest puff out in pride as he is treated with the respect that he always saw other mobsters being treated with. At the same time, his girlfriend is getting to understand that she is with someone of note and that she will never be safer with anyone than she is at that very moment. It is an intoxicating moment for both characters and the height of their happiness as a couple. 

However, as my daughter Leah so correctly predicted at our dining room table that day, the life of a real mobster rarely ends well. There are no happily-ever-after scenes in Goodfellas. Instead, there are downfalls, betrayals and disappointments. One of the reasons that Goodfellas is as highly regarded a movie as it is, is because Scorsese doesn’t view the Mafia with any sense of warmth or nostalgia. Instead, he sees it for what it truly is…a criminal organization that eventually implodes because of violence, greed, or because the legal authorities eventually catch up to it and shut their operations down and send everyone to prison. The movie Goodfellas was based upon the book by Nicholas Pileggi called Wiseguy. The book was based upon the life of the mobster named Henry Hill. In real life, Henry Hill became an associate of the Gambino crime family in New York. One of the earliest lessons in being a mobster that Hill learns as a teenager happens when he is arrested for illegally selling cigarettes in a neighbourhood parking lot. Just before he is brought before the judge, he is given the two most important rules of being a mobster: keep your mouth shut and never rat on anyone that you work with. Hill keeps his mouth shut, takes the penalty from the judge like a man and, as a result, is rewarded by the Gambinos by being welcomed into their midst. That’s how the movie and the book both start. How they both end…..SPOILER ALERT!!!…is the opposite of this. They end with Henry Hill in the government’s witness protection programme, having informed on everyone he worked with in order to save himself from spending the rest of his life in prison. This act of betrayal breaks Hill. The closing scene is of Hill in a bathrobe, fetching the morning paper from the front step of a nondescript house in a nondescript neighbourhood. He is officially a nobody. His version of the American Dream has crashed down around him and proven to have been a facade all along.The genius of Martin Scorsese is that the song he picked to play as this scene unfolds is one of music’s most audacious cover songs in history. Not only that, it is a song that makes a complete mockery of the American Dream. It is “My Way” as covered by Sid Vicious of The Sex Pistols. Here is why the ending of Goodfellas was as iconic as its opening line. Here is the story of “My Way”.

“My Way” was originally a French song composed by Jacques Revaux with lyrics by Gilles Thibaut and Claude Francois called “Comme d”habitude”.  While touring in France in the 1960s, singer/songwriter Paul Anka heard it played one day and thought that there was something special about it. He was smart enough to acquire the English-language rights to the song, which allowed him to write his own lyrics as long as he kept the musical structure the same. When Anka began work on the song that ended up becoming “My Way”, he did so at a time when the musical landscape in North America and Western Europe was changing for singers like him. The glory days of the crooners were coming to a close as modern rock n’ roll was becoming all the rage. Fewer and fewer people wanted to listen to the likes of him or Elvis or his friend, Frank Sinatra, anymore. Instead, everyone was all agog over John, Paul, George and Ringo, Mick and Keith and the rest of the modern rockers. As Anka worked on “My Way”, he did so in the knowledge that his friend Frank Sinatra had made it publicly known that he was considering retirement because of how the music business was changing and was leaving him behind. Anka used this sentiment to fuel his lyrics. When the song was done, he took it to Sinatra and personally begged him to give it a try. Being the pro that he was, Sinatra nailed the recording of the song in a single take. As we all know, “My Way” became Frank Sinatra’s signature song. Those who heard the song took it to be a take on the American Dream, as the lyrics paint a picture of a man who lived life on his own terms and was content with his choices as the end drew near. The ironic thing about “My Way” being such a hit for Frank Sinatra is that Sinatra, himself, claimed to have not liked singing the song, not because it was a poorly written song, but because the lyrics of the song didn’t fit well with his own life choices. Sinatra never felt he was the best father because of how much time and energy he took from his family obligations to focus on his career. It was also well known that Frank Sinatra was associated with many different mobsters and wasn’t always comfortable with those relationships, either. Regardless, the song “My Way” came to be inextricably linked with Frank Sinatra’s image. It became a fan favourite of those older fans who stayed loyal to The Chairman of the Board as the music world changed and left all of them behind. To those people, loyalty equaled integrity. They would stand by Sinatra and his famous defiant song no matter what else happened. This is the same choice that many mobsters made in Goodfellas as well. They kept their mouths shut and remained loyal to the very end. To them, maintaining the code of silence and honour was its own form of possessing personal and professional integrity. In a twisted version of reality, these mobsters went to prison with their heads held high.

This takes us back to Henry Hill in his bathrobe at his subdivision driveway. Subdivisions, by their very nature, lack identity. Usually, land developers who build subdivisions do so by cramming as many homes into a section of land as possible. The homes are standardized to have similar floor plans which means that they can be built in an assembly line fashion. No one subdivision home tends to stand out. They are all, more or less, carbon copies of each other. For Henry Hill to have ended up in a subdivision home was to literally and figuratively lose his identity. He had been a somebody when he was a mobster. Now he was a nobody in a neighbourhood where everyone was the same. His dream had died an inglorious death. By ratting on his friends and colleagues, Hill had been spared their fate of going to prison, but he had been denied the moral high ground on which his mob colleagues believed they still stood. This, more than anything, was what was eating away at him. To Henry Hill, the American Dream had been exposed as being a fraud. So, in Martin Scorsese’s point of view, what better song to have playing in the background than the Sid Vicious cover version of “My Way”?

Sid Vicious is best known for his role in the most well known/notorious punk rock band in history…The Sex Pistols. He was not an original member of the band. He came along after the band had recorded their one and only album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols. He replaced bassist Glen Matlock, who left because of interband tensions. When Sid Vicious joined the band, it was as much for his stage presence as anything else. He possessed very little musical talent and could hardly play the bass guitar at all. Yet, he could sneer with the best of them. Vicious enjoyed being in front of audiences and often was front and centre at audience-band confrontations. The fact that Sid Vicious was more of a stage actor than a musical performer was part of the in-joke that fuelled the political philosophy of The Sex Pistols as a band. The more popular the band became, the more the band mocked their own fame and the fans who supplied it. This was never more obvious than in a movie filmed by Julien Templeton called The Great Rock n’ Roll Swindle. This movie was a send-up of traditional documentaries. It focussed on the story of The Sex Pistols as told by then-manager Malcolm McLaren. In the film, McLaren makes no attempt to hide from the fact that the band was created by him in order to cause outrage from the public and to generate cash “from the chaos” that ensued. One of the most iconic and infamous scenes from the film occurs near the end. In this scene, Sid Vicious appears at the top of a long staircase. He is dressed as a Las Vegas lounge singer (like Frank Sinatra and Paul Anka and their ilk). As he descends the staircase, he sings his own version of Sinatra’s “My Way”. Sid Vicious changed some of the lyrics and, in doing so, he made a song that was originally about being happy and in control of the choices one makes in life, all about himself and his life (which was anything but in control). At the end of the song, Sid Vicious pulls out a pistol and fires into the audience, effectively “killing” those fans who had supported him. In real life, Sid Vicious was a drug addict by the time it came to film this scene. He had also been charged with murder for his role in the death of his fellow addict girlfriend Nancy Spungen. Six months after this scene was shot, Vicious was dead of a drug overdose himself. 

So, as Henry Hill dies a thousand deaths in that subdivision after having seen his dream of being somebody who was admired and respected crumble to dust, Martin Scorsese plays a song that mocks being in control of one’s life choices as sung by a man whose own life was as out of control and fake as Henry Hill’s now was. There are many ways to die: Sid Vicious and Henry Hill’s “deaths” are merely two. Goodfellas is one heckuva movie in part because of the genius of director Martin Scorsese and the incredible attention to detail he displayed in creating a multi-dimensional world helped by the songs he chose and the exact moments in the movie he opted to play them. It may sound corny to end this post by stating that Goodfellas was as good as it was because Martin Scorsese made it his way, but he did. For that I am incredibly grateful. To my daughter…I hope this post helps answer your question. 

The link to the video for the trailer for the movie Goodfellas can be found here.

The link to the trailer for the movie mockumentary The Great Rock n’ Roll Swindle can be found here.

The link to the video for the song “My Way” by Frank Sinatra can be found here. ***The lyrics video is here.

The link to the video for the song “My Way” by Sid Vicious from the film The Great Rock n’ Roll Swindle can be found here.

The link to the video for the song “My Way” by Sid Vicious as used in the movie Goodfellas can be found here.

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