NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tony Bennett, who witnessed the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks, said audiences feel a special bond with the song "New York State of Mind'' that on Friday earned the evergreen balladeer his 20th Grammy Award nomination.

The 75-year-old singer, winner of nine Grammy Awards and a lifetime achievement award last year, was nominated in the best pop-collaboration-with-vocals category for his duet with singer and composer Billy Joel in a remake of Joel's 1976 hit.

"Everybody identified with the song after the tragedy,'' Bennett told Reuters from the stage at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, where some of Friday's Grammy nominations were announced while the main event was being held in Los Angeles.

"The audiences go crazy for it. It gives them a lot of courage,'' Bennett said.

He recorded the song with Joel in June, three months before the two hijacked airliners destroyed the 110-story twin towers and killed almost 3,000 people.

The native New Yorker said he was still "traumatized'' by the tragedy, which he watched unfold from the Frank Sinatra School for the Arts, a public school which he helped found in his home borough of Queens.

"I saw the first plane hit from the window in the men's room,'' said Bennett, who was at the school, which has views of Manhattan. "Thank God the children didn't see it.''

"I was devastated. The world will never be the same. I'm still traumatized myself.''

Bennett, who won his first Grammy in 1962 for "I Left My Heart in San Francisco,'' which became his signature song, said receiving Grammy recognition was still special.

"It's a thrill,'' Bennett said. "The young people like my records as much as their parents and it's a thrill for me.''