Career Celebration

Paul Anka has the stories, no one's arguing that.

How -- and when -- to tell them? That's a little trickier.

The singer with long-standing ties to the Strip returns this weekend for his first Las Vegas dates in more than three years. His Las Vegas Hilton shows today and Saturday are billed as a celebration of his 50 years in show business.

Given that the crooner is still 65, to say he got an early start is an understatement. In fact, Anka already was looking for a new image -- today's buzzword would be "reinvention" -- at age 18, when he made his Las Vegas debut as Sophie Tucker's opening act in 1959.

"(Bobby) Darrin and I used to talk about it all the time," he says. "Obviously heavy rock had not hit, the Beatles didn't come along until '64. We looked up at the Rat Pack, that's all we could look at."

Though his early run of hits had him right at the crossroads between puppy-love pop ("Diana," his 1957 breakthrough hit) and beyond-his-years melodrama ("You Are My Destiny"), Anka could see his teen idol status crumbling in the wake of Elvis Presley. "We're not going to survive what's going on here," he remembers thinking.

"We started looking at Vegas and the nightclub circuit, put the tux on and learned to do what those cool guys were doing," he says. "That's what we all emulated."

Anka was accepted into the ranks of the Rat Pack well before he was of legal drinking age. "I think I'm the last one left to talk about it," he says of the roaring days of the Sands.

In 2005, he was a big hit on Howard Stern's radio show, telling stories about the old days to promote his "Rock Swings" album of rock remakes. "It's amazing because you take a lot of things for granted," he says of the era. "When you start articulating that to people in any fashion, their jaws drop."

After the radio show, a book publisher called and invited him to write a memoir. It's nothing Anka hadn't considered before, but this time, both he and the publisher agreed the time is right and the research is now under way.

Since at least 2001, the singer also has talked about an autobiographical stage musical with a Broadway-style presentation. The hit musical "Jersey Boys" might help people envision the possibilities. The success of the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons biography -- which will open in Las Vegas early next year -- creates the option of a stage show being about Anka's life and times rather than just a performing vehicle for him.

"There's so many ways it could go," he says, "and you have to be really careful because it's a one-time shot."

For now he's content to stay in the recording studio, putting the finishing touches on a new album in the historic Capitol Records studio in Hollywood. "My Way: Swings and Strings" has been pushed back from April to an Aug. 28 release and has been expanded to two discs.

That gives Anka more time to re-record some of his earliest hits, do a duet with Jon Bon Jovi on "My Way" -- the French tune for which Anka famously wrote lyrics for Frank Sinatra -- and even a cover of the Killers' "Mr. Brightside."

"They're real nice guys. I really like them," Anka says of Las Vegas' homegrown rock heroes. Singer Brandon Flowers has credited the Las Vegas legends as inspirations during his days growing up in rural Utah. The band asked to be introduced to the singer upon learning they were both in Montreal at the same time.

"They were very gracious and nice guys (who said) 'It's kind of because of you that we're in the business,' " Anka recalls. After that meeting, he decided, "I'm gonna take a shot at 'Brightside.' " And now he declares, "It's one of the highlight tracks."