Vintage Vegas

Paul Anka is a bottom-line guy, but this is a sentimental time of the year. Therefore, he proclaims, "Let's forget about revenue streams. There still is no place like Vegas."

Anka's dates today through Sunday at The Orleans sold most of their tickets the day they went on sale. One of the last links to classic Vegas, Anka never has ventured into local player's club terrain and doesn't come around as often as he used to.

"Vegas has closed for a lot of stars like myself," he says. "It's another (tour) stop now. ... It's not what it was for me years ago, or as important to play as when I played 12 or 15 weeks a year."

Instead, he speaks now of "globalization" in a year that's taken him to Poland, Spain, Japan and Russia, and to tribal casinos across the United States. "You don't need, nor should you, to do a bunch of weeks in Vegas. It's not in the cards anymore," he says. "I love to come in and do it, but you don't want to sit there for two and three weeks anymore."

Back to the revenue streams: Anka says he is a principal investor in the K/E Center for Advanced Medicine, a 60,000-square-foot diagnostic medical facility going up next year in southwest Las Vegas. It's the first in several centers planned to branch out nationally from a Beverly Hills, Calif., facility run by doctors Robert Koblin and Marc Edelstein.

By this time next year, you might be able to hear a new album or read about the singer in the autobiography he's been writing for St. Martin's Press. The book deal came after Anka told tales of the Rat Pack and old Vegas on Howard Stern's radio show in 2005.

He pledges the book he is supposed to deliver by September will be "forthright and honest," including plenty of vintage Vegas stories: "A lot of stuff (other) people would not be obviously privy to."

Anka, 67, was only 18 when he first played Las Vegas as Sophie Tucker's opening act in 1959. "I've never really opened my veins up and told anyone all my experiences. The good, the bad, the people I've known," he says.

Now, a lot of the main characters such as Frank Sinatra are dead, and anyway, "When the truth is on your side, in most cases you're going to be fine.

"I'm just going to tell my side of it. People I've known, things that I've personally experienced. I was there when Sinatra got his teeth punched out (by Sands casino manager Carl Cohen). I knew Steve Wynn when he was in the liquor business. Our kids played together. I knew him when it was all a dream in this guy's head."

Anka also has been trying to use the momentum of "Jersey Boys" to put his own musical autobiography on Broadway. He has turned down offers to do it here, he says, because the project needs the "musical gravitas" of New York.

"They hit a very lucky stroke," Anka says of the Frankie Valli musical. "There's no reason that show should be on Broadway just with the music. ... It's about the book and (writer) Marshall Brickman making those characters very interesting the first 20 or 30 minutes.

"I'm not looking to do a concert of this favorable presentation of Anka music," he says. Instead, he wants to dig into the drama of his mother dying when he was 18, "my manager and his schizophrenic wife, and the whole backdrop of conflict and the hurdles I had."

Less-heard songs such as "Papa," about his mother's death, would be as important as the hits. "I'm talking about songs that have great theatrical quality, not an inundation of stupid little teenage songs like 'Diana.' There might be one or two new songs for a reason. But the real importance is the book."

This interview was done before news of Anka's latest drama, in which his wife, Anna, was arrested Nov. 28 after reportedly clocking him in the head with a chunk of ice. "It was a stupid little event. It was nothing," Anka told gossip site TMZ. He explained his wife was "having a tough time with her ex over custody issues."

On this day, Anka talked proudly of the couple's 3-year-old son Ethan and his 6-year-old stepdaughter. He also has a 2-year-old granddaughter -- Anka's daughter Amanda is married to actor Jason Bateman -- and another daughter who is pregnant.

All this baby talk inspires him to sing the title line of his 1974 hit "(You're) Having My Baby," and joke "I'm getting that pregnant man to release it."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.