Herbie Hancock

by Herbie Hancock

  Ever since I’d first smoked crack cocaine at that birthday party, I had been trying without success to stop. I managed to keep it under control for several years, sometimes going months without smoking it. But then Gigi would go out of town and I’d think, I have a few days, I’ll just do it one more time. There were only a couple of people who knew that I did it, because they were doing it, too. Even my best friend, Wayne Shorter, and his new wife, Carolina, never knew.

  I didn’t feel good about hiding it from Gigi, but I was more embarrassed about the fact that I was doing it at all—and not only because she had quit doing coke in the ’70s and quit drinking not long after that. The truth is, smoking rock cocaine wasn’t like smoking weed or snorting coke—there was a stigma attached to it. Even the musicians I knew who did coke would have looked askance at smoking crack. It’s just a different kind of drug.

  I couldn’t seem to quit, so I tried a way of lessening the effect. Instead of smoking a rock of pure crack in a pipe, I would take a cigarette, empty out some of the tobacco, and then mix the tobacco with coke or rock cocaine, and put it back into the cigarette. Smoking it that way gives you a rush, but not like smoking it in a pipe. I tried that a few times, but I always ended up going back to that pipe.

  In 1999 I started smoking more often. I had kept my cravings for it under control for a long time, but now, instead of doing it every other month, I was doing it every other week, and then every week. On crack your heart beats fast, your breathing speeds up, and because it affects your nerves, your breathing sometimes comes in gasps. Depending on how much you smoke, you might be in an altered state for hours, and when you finally come down, you feel numb—no emotion. You’re just drained. I didn’t want to see Gigi until the whole cycle played out, so I would often go out at night and not come home until the next day, because it’s not a short high.

  This wasn’t so unusual for me, as I’ve always been a night owl, and Gigi was used to my staying awake until all hours, often with friends or in a studio somewhere. For a while she didn’t think anything of my nighttime absences. But eventually she noticed how tired I looked, and that my face was drawn. I didn’t look healthy, even though I didn’t notice that myself.

  Crack also makes you paranoid. I mean, I was scared already, because I really didn’t want to get caught doing it. I knew that a night of indulging in crack meant being somewhere for a long period of time, because I definitely didn’t want to be in public in case someone saw me and figured out I was high. Beyond these normal fears, though, I’d think the FBI was outside, and peek through the blinds, imagining things. Once I had to check out of a hotel where I’d been smoking in my room, and I was paralyzed at the idea of having to go down to the lobby, where people would be milling around. I was sure they’d be able to tell, just by looking at me, what I’d been doing.

  Toward the end of 1999 things were getting out of control. I was smoking a lot now, and acting in ways I’d never acted before. One day in November Gigi had an asthma attack, but instead of taking care of her or taking her to the doctor, I left the house. I couldn’t handle it.

  On November 11 Jessica turned thirty. I had gone out the night before and hadn’t made it home yet, so Gigi called me on my cell phone. “Herbie, it’s Jessica’s birthday today. Remember, we’re going out to dinner tonight.” Gigi had arranged a small birthday dinner for her, just me, Gigi, Jessica, and Jessica’s best friend, Rebecca.

  “Yeah, I’m good,” I told her. “I’ll be there.” I had been smoking the night before, and although I was fine when I talked to Gigi—I wouldn’t have picked up the phone otherwise—I smoked again that afternoon. I completely forgot about Jessica’s birthday dinner, and the three of them sat at the restaurant, waiting for me, until they finally gave up and ordered, realizing I wasn’t coming.

  I was going down the rabbit hole now, frequently in search of my next high and sometimes oblivious of the consequences to others. I knew I needed to quit, but I still didn’t realize quite how bad it had gotten. By now Gigi was aware that something was very wrong, but she didn’t know what. Then, a few weeks after Jessica’s birthday, the last straw came.

  I had been out of town and was flying into Burbank airport. When the plane landed, I called Gigi and let her know I was coming home—but as I got into the car that was waiting for me, I asked the driver to take me to a particular house. I wanted to get high.

  The driver took me to the address I gave him, and I asked him to wait. I went into the house and smoked, as I’d done so many times before, and the hours ticked by. When I was high on crack, I had no real concept of time and didn’t really care.

  By around 7 a.m., the driver, who was still sitting in his car outside the house, was tired of waiting. We were in a nice neighborhood, so he wouldn’t have had any real reason to worry about my safety, but hours had gone by with no sign of me, so he decided to call the house. Gigi answered and he said, “Herbie asked me to drop him off somewhere, and he never came back out.”

  “Oh, my god,” she said. “Give me the address. I’m coming there now.” She told the driver to go to our house and drop off my luggage, and that he could go home after that.

  Gigi got in her car and drove to the address the driver had given her, but it was an apartment building, so she still didn’t know exactly where I was. She’d been calling my cell phone, but I was so high, and so paranoid, that of course I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to speak to her until I could come down enough to talk normally.

  Gigi was so scared and frustrated that she started crying. She called our friend Susie Sempers. “I don’t know where he is, Susie,” Gigi cried. “I don’t know if he’s dead or alive.” She’d been sitting in her car in front of the building for an hour, and had no idea how to find me, so finally, at Susie’s urging, she decided to drive home. But before she did, she tried my number one more time.

  This time, I picked up. I don’t remember much about the conversation, but I know that Gigi told me that she’d called the police and that they were on their way to the apartment building—so if I didn’t want to be arrested, I’d better get out now and find myself a taxi home. She hadn’t called the police, but I didn’t know that. It was her way of making sure I actually left the apartment, which I did.

  I called a taxi and hurried out of the building, scared but finally coming down from my high. When I got home, I tiptoed up the stairs in case Gigi had gone back to bed. I was so tired, I just wanted to sleep and deal with any fallout in the morning. Despite the fact that my Buddhist practice had made me more empathetic and more compassionate, doing crack brought out the exact opposite in me. I just wanted to be able to get high and not think about the consequences, not answer to anyone about it.

  But as I was tiptoeing up the stairs, I heard Gigi call to me from the chanting room, across the hall from the bedroom. “Herbie, can you come in here for a second?”

  I opened the door and saw Gigi, Jessica, and our dear friends Susie Sempers and Matilda Buck sitting there. These were the people I cared about most in the world, the people I felt most embarrassed to see in the state I was in. They knew. And I felt so sorry, so terribly sorry, for having disappointed these people whom I loved and who loved me. It all just came crashing down on me in that moment, and I burst into tears.

  Gigi’s eyes were red from crying. “Herbie, I’m not going to watch you die,” she said. “If you continue this way, you are going to have to move out.” I just looked at her, my heart aching. “I made some calls, and here are the numbers for some rehab places. But I’m not going to force you. You have to do it for yourself.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, to Gigi and everybody else in the room. I didn’t know what else to say. This was an intervention, and I was so embarrassed, but there was another feeling creeping in, too: relief. I had been struggling with this habit, and this secret, for so long. I looked at my daughter and sobbed, wondering how I had gotten to this place but thankful that
it was finally going to end.

  I called Hoag Memorial Hospital rehab services that night and booked myself a stay. But before I could go, there was one gig in Las Vegas that I was afraid to miss. I never canceled gigs, and I was scared that people would find out I had missed this one because I was going to rehab. I had finally revealed my secret to Gigi, Jessica, Matilda, and Susie, but I never wanted anyone else to find out. And in fact, I never told another soul for years, until I decided to reveal my addiction and rehab in this book.

  I used a false name in rehab, and I don’t want to say too much about the program, to protect the other people who were there at the same time I was. But I do want to give credit to the doctors, nurses, and staff at Hoag, because they took care of me with grace and discretion. I’m sure some of them realized who I was, but nobody ever revealed it.

  From the moment I walked into Hoag, I wanted to do everything I possibly could to make the rehab work—no excuses. I didn’t want to be the kind of person I had become over the last few months, a person who was trapped in addiction. At that point, separated from my family, my friends, and my music, I was stripped bare. The only thing I had to hold on to was Buddhism, and because the facility allowed me to bring in my Gohonzon, I was able to chant while I went through the program. My Buddhist faith helped me, giving me hope and the conviction that I could stop.

  Gigi and I decided to tell our friends that I was going away for a month to write music and start working on a new project. Nobody seemed to suspect anything, so when my three weeks of rehab were finished, I came back home as if nothing had happened. By this time it was nearly Christmas, and Gigi, Jessica, and I had been planning a trip to Bali with our friends Tom and Cheri Carter. We were going to spend New Year’s Eve there together, the big celebration of 1999 turning to 2000.

  I had always loved drinking champagne, and the Carters had brought Cristal to Bali. But I was attending AA meetings now as part of my continuing treatment, so I knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to drink. As always, Gigi was looking out for me—she had brought bottles of Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider for us to celebrate. And as the clock ticked down to midnight I realized I felt good about not drinking. In fact, I decided right then that I would never drink again, and that’s how I entered the new millennium. I haven’t had any drugs or alcohol since.

  For years I buried the secret of my addiction and rehab. I wanted to suppress the memory of it, because I was ashamed of it. I suppose I thought that if I never revealed it, I could pretend it never happened.

  But it did happen, and I finally understood that trying to keep it hidden is the same as lying about it. If one of our goals in life is to overcome obstacles and turn them into opportunities for victory, then how can I try to ignore the biggest obstacle I ever faced? The fact that I was able to overcome my addiction, thanks in large part to my family and my faith, was a victory, not something to hide from, and that’s why I’m sharing it now. The truth can set you free, and maybe sharing my experience will encourage someone else who is fighting this battle, too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Earlier in my career I was making new records left and right—sometimes two or even three in a single year. But once I decided that every new record had to be completely different from anything I’d done before, my focus changed.

  Now I asked myself, How can I contribute to solutions for the problems humanity is facing? I wanted to use culture as a canvas to illuminate and encourage positive action and critical thinking. I no longer saw myself as a musician; now I was a human being who happened to make music. When you look at yourself that way, the purpose behind the music becomes more important than the music itself.

  That’s why, in the first decade of the new millennium, I made just four records. I could have made more, and at this point in my career maybe people expected me to. But I only wanted to make records that I felt broke new ground. I also decided to create my own label, Hancock Music, because the birth of Napster and file sharing meant that it was possible for artists to get their music directly out into the world. There were still benefits to signing with a big label, because they do have marketing and production engines, but that was no longer the only solution. When you sign with a label, they own the pie and just give you a few slices. I wanted to own my own pie.

  In 2001 I made Future 2 Future, which was based on a concept from Bill Laswell. Bill and I had collaborated on three albums—Future Shock, Sound-System, and Perfect Machine—and my first two Grammy Awards were for music we had made together. Almost twenty years had passed since Bill and Michael Beinhorn had introduced me to scratching, but Bill was still right on the cutting edge of music. He seemed to have his hands in every musical genre, and he loved putting together unusual pairings of artists and styles.

  Bill wanted me to collaborate with the top electronic musicians, guys like the hip-hop turntablist Rob Swift and techno pioneer Carl Craig. Both had been influenced by my early forays into hip-hop on Future Shock. They were just kids when “Rockit” came out, and they came of age on that first wave of hip-hop music in the mid-1980s. Fifteen years later, they were pushing the envelope in that genre even further—so now I was coming around full circle to learn something new from them.

  Future 2 Future was a cross between electronica and jazz, and we brought in Wayne Shorter and Jack DeJohnette to play on some of the tracks. Bill provided the basic structure of the songs, using rhythmic elements he brought me on tape, and we stretched even further than on the records we’d done together in the past. Our palette was larger than before; now we had elements that hadn’t even been in our sights the previous times we had worked together. Many records are like a carpet that’s been woven together, but this one was more like a networking, a webbing, with space in between. Future 2 Future was right on the edge, and like a Michelangelo Antonioni movie, it left a lot of room for interpretation by the listener.

  Chaka Khan sang on the record, too, but the one artist I really wanted to showcase was Tony Williams. Tony had died a few years earlier, suffering a heart attack after he had gallbladder surgery. It was reported that either he was misdiagnosed or the medical staff had missed signs of his heart attack, and that he actually might have survived it. He was just fifty-one when he died, and it’s devastating to think of how much more music he could have given us, how much of his creativity we will never get to see realized.

  As a tribute to Tony, the brilliant spoken-word artist Dana Bryant recited a poem over a sample of his drum work, with electronic music laid over it. The resulting six-minute song, called “Tony Williams,” is a haunting tribute to an amazing man, with Dana, a former jazz singer, repeating these words:

  Only once every millennium

  comes a son as prophetic as this one

  Tony Williams burned through life like the brightest flame. When I met him, he was just sixteen, but he was already one of the greatest drummers on the planet. He had tremendous, otherworldly skills, but that’s not what made him so remarkable. No matter how good he was, he never stopped studying, never stopped trying to improve himself as a player and composer.

  While we were with Miles’s band, I would watch Tony try to play the piano. He’d plunk on it with his two index fingers, trying to pick out melodies for the compositions on his first album, Life Time. Back then he needed me to help him play and transcribe his compositions, but that didn’t last long. He not only began studying music transcription but learned how to play piano, too—with both hands. Later he studied orchestration, and by the time of his last album, Wilderness, he was able to write out full orchestrations.

  Tony was always pushing boundaries, not just for himself but for entire musical genres. Miles Davis usually gets credit for being the pioneer of jazz-rock fusion, thanks to his brilliant 1970 album Bitches Brew. But what few people realize is that Miles was actually influenced by Tony’s band, Tony Williams Lifetime, which was already forging that new territory with the double-album jazz-ro
ck classic Emergency! in 1969. When Miles heard what Tony was doing, he said, “This is the shit,” and he followed in Tony’s footsteps with Bitches Brew.

  Lifetime was the true cornerstone band of jazz-rock fusion—and it’s also the reason I wear a hearing aid now. Tony’s highly amplified band played extremely loud, and I went to see them on quite a few nights. I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time watching Tony Williams do his thing, and even luckier to have had him as a dear friend. Starting with our time together in the Miles Davis Quintet, we became like brothers.

  The next record I did after Future 2 Future was called Possibilities, and it started with a very simple idea. Most musicians get easily pigeonholed: Whatever the sound was on the record that made them famous, that’s the sound their fans want to hear over and over again. And very often the artists do stay in that particular box, because that’s where they’re comfortable.

  I started thinking, Wouldn’t it be cool to invite a few really good artists to explore a genre that’s completely different from whatever made them famous? I thought it would be really exciting to hear Christina Aguilera work her magic on a Leon Russell song, or see what would happen when the Irish singer-songwriter duo Damien Rice and Lisa Hannigan took on a Billie Holiday song. You never know what will happen when people dare to step outside their comfort zones, and that’s what I wanted to get them to do on this record.

  I figured that some of the artists might surprise themselves, but what I didn’t count on was how much they’d surprise me. John Mayer came in and almost knocked me flat with his guitar playing. I’d never met him before and didn’t realize that he’d not only studied at the Berklee College of Music, which has its foundation in jazz, but he’d also been exposed to a lot of jazz players. Many rock and roll instrumentalists don’t read music, and they don’t know much about formal structure, but John did. He was very gifted, and also generous—he brought in an idea he’d been playing around with, and when we developed it in the studio, he gave me half the credit for the song.