“He’s not the old Tony anymore,” his wife, Susan, said. “But when he sings, he’s the old Tony.”
Tony Bennett, the 94-year-old singer who has become a beloved interpreter of the American songbook, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, his wife, Susan, told AARP The Magazine this week. “Life is a gift — even with Alzheimer’s,” the singer tweeted on Monday morning. “Thank you to Susan and my family for their support.” Susan Bennett, and Tony Bennett’s eldest son, Danny, told the magazine that Bennett was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s — a degenerative brain disease that causes memory loss, among other things — in 2016. According to the magazine, Bennett began showing symptoms in 2015. “Even his increasingly rare moments of clarity and awareness reveal the depths of his debility,” the article states. But it said that he had not experienced the disorientation that prompts some patients to wander off, or episodes of terror, rage or depression. Before the coronavirus pandemic, Bennett had continued to perform extensively. But backstage, relatives told the magazine, he could seem “mystified about his whereabouts.” “But the moment he heard the announcer’s voice boom ‘Ladies and gentlemen — Tony Bennett!’ he would transform himself into performance mode, stride out into the spotlight, smiling and acknowledging the audience’s applause,” the piece said. His wife, Susan, would watch nervously, worrying that he would forget a lyric.
