• • •
As the party guests arrived, their cars were valet-parked in a concealed compound and they were ushered toward the elegantly curving boathouse, where an electrically powered replica of a traditional Japanese lake boat was waiting to transport them silently past the large waterfall (courtesy of the giant engineering firm Bechtel) to the landing stage of the main house. From there they wandered from house to house, stopping to take in the vistas and to marvel at the craftsmanship of the little wooden buildings. People would stroke the satin-smooth surface—achieved by planing and neither painted nor varnished—of the cedar wood and pine.
With the exception of McNealy, whom Ellison had once identified as a possible successor at Oracle, there were relatively few Silicon Valley movers and shakers on the invitation list and only two from Oracle—Sohaib Abbasi and Safra Catz—apart from board members such as Don Lucas, Jeff Berg (the Hollywood über-agent), and Michael Boskin (a professor of economics at nearby Stanford). Among those present were admired friends such as Tom Lantos, the distinguished California congressman and campaigner for human rights, and Joshua Lederberg, the Nobel Prize–winning geneticist.
But for the most part, the guests were people Ellison had known for a long time. If there was a dress code, it spanned from woolly sweaters and jeans to one or two full-length ball gowns. He had even sent his plane to Chicago to make sure that his family would be there. Despite the grandeur of the setting, a Japanese banquet of considerable sophistication, and after-dinner music courtesy of one of the world’s greatest classical guitarists, Pepe Romero, it wasn’t a show-off’s party. In some ways, it felt more like a christening or a wedding. Ellison, with Melanie affectionately at his side, radiated pride and happiness. For a time, Oracle’s problems seemed a long way away.
• • •
Ellison’s preoccupation with the Japanese aesthetic had been triggered during a business trip to Japan in his late twenties, when he had been working for Amdahl, a junior rival of IBM. While there, he managed to squeeze in what turned out to be a life-changing excursion to Kyoto, where he visited the Heian shrine. “By Japanese standards it’s not a spectacular garden, but it was the first authentic Japanese garden I’d ever seen, and it had a profound effect on me. I spent five hours there, sitting on a bench, taking it all in.
“I like all gardens, but Japanese gardens seem to have been painted by God. The controlling hand of man is hidden from view. It’s as if you were wandering through a forest and just happened upon a beautiful mountain meadow and lake. The sights, sounds, and scents of a Japanese garden trigger something deep inside of us. There’s this primal connection to the sound of the water, the moisture in the air, the rich smell of pine needles, and the damp soil. Early man would always build his villages near water. Japanese gardens re-create our evolutionary environment. When we visit a Japanese garden, we recall our ancient home. The memory fills us with a reassuring sense of safety and peace. It’s a sublime experience.”
Other qualities of the Japanese aesthetic also appealed to Ellison. The relatively small scale of even the houses built for princes was another aspect of its determination to achieve a harmonious relationship with nature—very different from great European palaces and the imitations erected by bombastic American tycoons that were designed to dominate the landscape and encourage a feeling of awe. Ellison also liked the way the minimal interiors reflected the simplicity of the gardens outside; he’s fond of saying, “Your garden is not complete until there is nothing more you can take out of it.” Above all, he prizes the deliberate ambiguity between outdoors and indoors. “Japanese houses,” he says, “are so low to the ground that when you open the shoji [paper wall], you can put your hand out and touch the ground.”
Further inspiration came from Kona Village, an exclusive resort in Hawaii made up of grass huts strung around a lake, where Ellison had spent family holidays with Steve Jobs. He says, “Gradually the design took shape. I wanted to have a lake surrounded by a village of small wooden buildings. An upper pond was to be connected to the lower lake by a pair of streams, so that the garden would be filled with the sound of running water.”
Ellison began to make sketches and build a series of scale models. His collaborators were Ron Herman, who had landscaped the Japanese-style garden at Atherton; Paul Discoe, an eccentric perfectionist who, in his zeal to become a Zen priest, had wandered around Japan, often barefoot in the snow; and Isuke Shigeru, who spoke almost no English but knew all about the placing of rocks and boulders.1 Discoe was a largely self-taught architect who had no engineering background, but what Ellison liked about him was his passionate dedication to authenticity. After he constructed a perfect small teahouse in the grounds of Ellison’s home in Atherton, Ellison had no hesitation in entrusting the project to him.
At times, even Ellison has been startled by Discoe’s intensity. He says, “I learned to be a little wary of Paul’s zealous quest for authenticity. Authenticity has its limits. Paul wanted little itty-bitty lavatories—holes in the ground, basically. I prefer toilets with running water.” More recently, Discoe refused to sink lighting into the cedar ceiling of the houses. After nearly a year of pressure from Ellison—“Hey, guys, gimme a break, I gotta live here. It gets dark at night. I want lights”—Discoe relented, but not until he and the carpenters held a small ceremony during which they begged the forgiveness of the wood gods for the brutalities that Ellison had ordered to be inflicted upon them. Ellison says, “It was quite traumatic for them.”
After Ellison had bought the land, removed several existing houses in the process, and satisfied the local planning authorities that the lake and the houses would comply with stringent earthquake regulations, the work could finally begin. Ellison went to Japan to recruit master carpenters and plasterers. “The best craftsmen in Japan are considered national treasures. That’s who we hired.” The rest of the team included an army of aging hippie craftsmen, most of whom came over from Berkeley each day, and hard-hatted civil engineers from the likes of Bechtel.
The first projects were the landscaping and the lake. To ensure that in an earthquake the water wouldn’t carry half of Woodside down to Highway 280, the lake had to be built with three layers of concrete with a water membrane between each two layers—a major feat of engineering over such a large area. In all, seven houses ring the lake: the bridge house, the two parts of the main house, the Katsura house, the waterfall house, the guest house, and the boathouse. Each of them is different in size and character, the architectural styles spanning from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The idea, says Ellison, is that it should look like a village that has grown up over time. Beneath the houses, hidden from view, are mighty concrete foundations, the filtration system that drives the waterfall and replenishes the lake with drinking-quality water, a cinema, offices for staff, and parking for cars.
Although the overall effect is startlingly beautiful and the houses look, smell, and feel gorgeous, I still find myself wondering whether Ellison and Craft will enjoy living here. Will the carefully contrived perfection of the place turn out to be stifling? Will those “human-scale” houses actually seem too small once they are occupied? Will the rigorous asceticism of Discoe deny them too many creature comforts and technological conveniences? Ellison says simply that if he doesn’t like it he won’t live there, but that he can’t imagine that happening.
• • •
If Sanbashi seems like an extravagant fantasy, Ellison’s other “grand project” is just as ambitious: nothing less than one of the biggest and most beautiful private yachts in the world.
Ellison’s first “proper” yacht was October Rose, which he had bought in 1996 from Kirk Kerkorian for $10 million. The 192-foot October Rose was a gorgeous boat but a little too slow and staid for Ellison’s tastes. A couple of years later, he paid the widow of the Mexican media tycoon Emilio Azcarraga $25 million for one of the fastest megayachts ever built, the 244-foot Francis design Eco. With two 5,000-horsepower diesels flanking a
n 18,500-horsepower GE turbine like the ones that power an F-18 fighter jet, Eco could do more than thirty-five knots.
But for Ellison, that was only the starting point. He renamed her Katana and poured another $35 million into her. He stripped out her garish interior and replaced it with the light woods and cream-colored furnishings he loves. Out went the seaplane that hogged the afterdeck and in went a basketball court, a giant plasma-screen viewing system, a two-tier owner’s “apartment” complete with wing station–mounted outdoor hot tub, six spacious guest staterooms, and more than twenty full-time crew to sail the boat and cosset Ellison and his friends.
Along with the 192-foot Norman Foster–designed Ronin (picked up for a bargain $15 million and “fixed up” for a mere $20 million) based at Sausalito and ready to cruise anywhere in the Pacific with its crew of fifteen, most people might have thought that Ellison had as much boat as any human being could reasonably want. But just as living in the pastiche Japanese villa at Atherton had driven Ellison to attempt a more perfect realization of the Japanese aesthetic, so the almost perfect Katana drove him to contemplate what the perfect boat would be like.
Ellison had a clear idea of what he wanted. He and Craft had decided that the new boat would be their second home—a place where they would spend an increasing amount of time, eventually as much as three or four months each year. For several reasons, a much bigger boat than Katana was dictated. The first was that Ellison wanted to have space and privacy in which to live and work even when he had guests aboard, yet he insisted on a shape that was low and sleek. She had to be beautiful and ultramodern, but she must look like a proper ship, not some ghastly floating palace. He says, “This project will result in the creation of a wonderful piece of kinetic sculpture. Modern yachts pack as much structure as possible on top of the hull. I wanted just the opposite. Our design wastes space, but it has the long, low, graceful lines of those beautiful old Atlantic steamers.”
Second, he demanded both enormous cruising range and high speed. Katana achieved her speed thanks to her thirsty turbine, whereas Ronin had a semiplaning hull. As a consequence, both were compromised. The only way to get what he wanted was by conventional diesel propulsion and sheer length along the waterline.
But who would be the equivalent of Discoe and Shigeru, a driven obsessive who would share and articulate Ellison’s vision? Ellison interviewed just about every major boat designer in the world. Finally, in late 1999, he called on Jon Bannenberg, an Englishman in his early seventies who worked from a studio just off London’s Kings Road. More than thirty years earlier, he had designed one of the most elegant yachts ever built, the sublime Carinthia VI. Coincidentally, like Discoe (or maybe not), Bannenberg had no formal training. He was known for being headstrong and difficult to deal with. Ellison recalls, “Everyone told me it was a waste of time to talk to Jon. They said he never designs what the client wants, just what he wants. Well, I wasn’t happy with any of the other designers, and I tried them all, so Jon was my last resort. Within five minutes I knew I had found the right guy.”
Bannenberg was just what Ellison had been looking for: another crazy perfectionist to work with. He says, “People who set incredibly high standards for their work find it difficult to collaborate with people who don’t understand and appreciate their reckless pursuit of perfection. But I love working with these brilliant people with their compulsive personalities. I find them interesting, and I think I understand what drives them. I was very lucky to find Jon. Without him I never would have gone ahead with the project.”
Bannenberg, at an age when most men are well into retirement, had found the perfect client: somebody who shared his aesthetic sense and who had the wealth and ambition to inspire him to do his very best work, to create a masterpiece that might surpass even Carinthia. Right from the beginning, Bannenberg realized that Ellison would be an exceptional client. “I had an instant connection with Larry through all kinds of philosophical things and interests . . . : his interest in architecture, the combination of being a radical thinker yet a disciplined one, his willingness to take on establishment ideas and win. He was fascinating, amusing, opinionated, and very attractive.”
Bannenberg, on principle, had earlier refused to pitch for Ellison’s business by taking part in a beauty contest with rival designers. But immediately after the meeting in London, he contacted Ellison’s yacht broker, Mel Wood, and told him that he would do a drawing and make a model because he was absolutely sure that he could make Ellison what he wanted. “I didn’t see it as a beauty contest anymore. He had been inundated by designs from all these people who thought that because Larry was so rich he must want something very elaborate, whereas what he wanted was a no-nonsense, stripped-down, shipshape, powerful vessel. I knew that I could do it and that nobody else could. Arrogance. So that’s what I did, and of course he went crazy over it. It was what he had in his mind, but no one else had been able to release it.”
Once news got out that the great boat was going to be built, there was the inevitable feeding frenzy among the major shipyards and the committees of consultants who make a fat living from appearing to manage such projects. Right from the outset, Bannenberg and Ellison agreed that they would work differently. Bannenberg believed there was only one yard capable of the work—Lürssens in Bremen, Germany, which had built Carinthia—and that consultants would only get in the way. Bannenberg pointed out that Lüssens had been going for 125 years. He said, “This business is crazy enough as it is: it’s as if we’re building one-off, handmade 747s with no R and D. It helps that Larry and I have a hugely simple and powerful association. Larry doesn’t demand endless work reports as long as you’re doing the job and you don’t fuck it up. . . .
“One of the greatest pleasures in my life is that through this work I have met Larry. As for where this yacht stands in my life, it’s not only the greatest yacht that I have ever built but the greatest that has ever been built in the tradition of great yachts going back to 1810 because of its absolute purity of purpose. There is no question about that.”
Although Sayonara, as she is likely to be called in honor of Ellison’s world championship–winning maxi,2 would not be radical for the sake of it, the design still called for considerable innovation. The deck was being built completely flush, like a sailboat’s, with all the fittings hidden to ensure that nothing extraneous interfered with the elegant silhouette. The swept-back funnel would be constructed from titanium and carbon fiber. But perhaps the most eye-catching and technically demanding feature would be the glass walls around the top two decks. With the yacht likely to tip the scales at around 70,000 tons, the glass alone will weigh more than 40 tons. Inside, Bannenberg has included a glassed-in walkway across the engine room from which to observe the massive diesels hard at work.
I asked Bannenberg what he would say to people who might well regard a 450-foot yacht for personal enjoyment as an obscene self-indulgence. “If you start on that road, where does it lead? Nobody needs a yacht, nobody needs a racehorse, nobody needs art or music or opera houses. You don’t have to have any of these things—so what’s left? People aren’t motivated, thank God, just by need. If humans didn’t create things they didn’t need, there’d be no art of any sort. Larry is often portrayed by ignorant philistines as just a rich git who likes showing off. There are people building big yachts who just want to show off, but Larry’s not one of them. I encourage Larry to think about the worth of what he’s doing.”
If a fine building could be considered art, why not a boat? It was clear that Bannenberg thought of Ellison as a brave and enlightened patron. And part of Ellison saw himself as an impresario creating the conditions in which gifted and driven people could do their very best work. After all, he had often said that he thought it quite likely that he would be remembered as the man who built Sanbashi rather than as the founder of Oracle. But that’s not why he did it. He built it because he wanted it. Just as with the Woodside project, it seemed far more important to make the boat perfect tha
n to make the boat fit within a specific budget. Is it a form of madness? Probably. No wonder Bannenberg was such a happy man.
• • •
A few months after I met Jon Bannenberg, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He died in May 2002. Although he never saw his creation become a physical reality, his work was largely complete, and, as Ellison said, he saw it as clearly in his mind as if she had been floating at anchor outside his cramped studio.
When he received the news of Bannenberg’s death, Ellison e-mailed me: “Jon was one of a handful of people I liked and admired so much that I made him a role model along with Tom Lantos and Josh Lederberg. He was more fit and vital in his seventies than most people are at thirty. Age failed to slow him down until it conspired with cancer. Even then Jon worked on the project right until the end. He never accepted there was a problem he could not solve or a fight he could not win. I’ll miss our dinner conversations about history and human nature. I’ll miss listening to him play the piano. I’ll miss watching him charm Melanie. What do you think the creator had in mind when he let this happen?”
• • •
In Paul Discoe and Jon Bannenberg, Ellison had found uncompromising, driven perfectionists who shared his appetite to create something extraordinary. But the person he depended upon to make it all work was a San Francisco–based designer, Laura Seccombe. He had first used Seccombe in 1985 for corporate work. Even on that first project some things were already apparent about Ellison. One was that green was his favorite color and “he wanted a lot of green in the building.” The second was that he had a strong sense of visualization. Seccombe says, “A lot of clients can’t see three-dimensionally, but Larry can. It means that when you’re explaining something to him that you want to do, he gets it and remembers it.”
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