Records you remember from early childhood are remarkable things. They send you spinning back in time to your youth when you were new to the world and utterly innocent of its ways. For me, this is one of them.
Like many parents of the Sixties and Seventies, mine had very few records when I was growing up. This was one I can vividly remember from those times. Alongside The Carpenters, The Seekers, The Dutch Swing College Band, Louis Armstrong and a handful of others.
1968 found Frank Sinatra slightly out of step with the world but still standing his ground. He had married Mia Farrow two years earlier when she was 21 and he had just turned 50 to the general astonishment of friends and family. Their divorce was finalised in August of 1968. Cycles hit the marketplace three months late.
It's a fine record though it probably doesn't rank very highly in the back catalogue of Sinatra in afficianado's eyes. I'd describe it as autumnal. Reflective. Sinatra, being Sinatra, doesn't need to get out of second gear to do the songs justice. It's effortless.
It finds him tackling contemporary late Sixties songs from the Folk and Pop fields. Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now, Roger Miller's Little Green Apples, Glen Campbell's By the Time I Get to Phoenix and Gentle on my Mind, (written by Jimmy Webb of course). Given that Frank's were the first versions of these great songs I heard, I'll always associate them with him, rather than the better known originals.
There's a restraint and genuine class about the recordings here that I still appreciate. I also love opener Rain In my Heart which is the most committed moment on the album and shows he can still soar when he wants to. It's a genuine heartbreaker and demonstrates that the human heart is always capable of being broken regardless of the point of life you find yourself at.
From here Sinatra went on to Watertown, an absolutely masterful album, which unlike Cycles is generally considered a late career classic and rightly so. But given my personal investment in this one, it's one I play much more.
It shows that Frank still has it and can still do it. That, (despite what you may think of the man himself), that he knew much more than most of those half his age and would probably ever know. George Harrison and Patti Boyd were among those who vistited him in the studio while he was recording it, (probably largely due to the Mia connection, though also of course because they could and he was Frank).
Sinatra later returned the compliment by stating that Harrison's Something was his favourite Beatles track. He knew a good song when he heard it. Here he shows he could deliver them too, as well and generally better than any.
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