Adrianne Geffel

by David Hajdu

  EPILOGUE

  The first time Adrianne Geffel went missing, as a girl of nine, a couple of able troopers from the Pennsylvania State Police soon found her, asleep in the back of a truck. The next time, when Geffel was twenty-six and nationally renowned as a pianist and composer, a couple of State Police officers, no matter how able, would not be sufficient. The search for Adrianne Geffel has gone on for decades now, with little to show in the way of solid information. Most of the information we have on Geffel’s status since her disappearance is unsolid: fluid—slippery and ever shifting; gaseous—thin and ethereal; and everything else that unsolidness means or suggests as a value fungible as any term of analogical forced poeticism.

  This much we know from the historical record since Geffel’s disappearance:

  Ann Athema, working under her legal name, Valerie Koshka, in collaboration with her first husband Jeffrey Knudsen, arranged for Geffel’s previously unheard music to be released on an independent label they formed for the purpose, Adriatic Records, its name a play on the notion that the music came from “the Adry attic.” (Infini Records’ suit against the label, contending that it unfairly infringed on Infini’s brand association with the Adriatic region because Infini had sold recordings by the Albania Symphonette and the Slovenia Navy Chorus, is unsettled at this writing.) The first project of the new label was Geffel’s album, Oh, Positive, in the form Geffel intended, with all the original recordings, unedited and undoctored. Athema (Koshka) and Knudsen restored the overtly positive titles Geffel had written for the tracks, such as “April Face” and “Lullaby for Barb.” (See the Discography in the back of this book for a full rundown of Geffel’s known recorded output.)

  In addition, the new label released a collection of home recordings Ann Athema found on cassettes Geffel had been storing in her piano bench. Athema was unaware of the existence of the tapes until piano movers arrived at her apartment unexpectedly, under telephone orders from Barbara Lucher, to ship the instrument to Beethoven Pianos in Yorkville, and Lucher opened the lid of the bench for the first time. (According to Athema, Lucher was the beneficiary of the sale, which transpired shortly after Geffel disappeared and immediately before Lucher left the country; in all likelihood, the sale funded Lucher’s travel and, Athema surmises, aided Geffel as well.) Athema and Knudsen named the album for one of the song titles Geffel has penciled onto the cassette J card, “Yummy Sounds.” The release comprises four complete pieces, including yet another tune in tribute to Lucher, “If She Were a Carpenter,” as well as a series of joyful fragments that Geffel recorded under the umbrella title “Chew Toys.”

  The critical response to these albums in the classical and “new music” press was tepid to harsh. Even so, the records changed the conversation about Geffel and re-positioned her as a multipurpose symbol of strong emotions of more than one kind of musical expression. She was now recognized as an artist with a unique ability to give voice to human passions of varied colors, from stark black to warm pastels. The later albums never sold in pop-hit numbers; still, the general public’s lack of familiarity with the music in its particulars only enhanced its utility as a locus of cultural discourse and a fulcrum of debate.

  The mystery of Geffel’s disappearance factored significantly in her rise from provincial urban glory as the “doyenne of downtown music” to mainstream cult status—a kind of fame for being unfamous, an ephemeral figure whose absence imparted an aura of cryptic martyrly untouchability. Norman Mailer tackled this mode of thinking and, after making the tackle, fell on top of it and passed out, in his booklet-length “essay” on Geffel, Arrivederci, Adrianne.

  One can only presume Geffel herself would have been gratified to see the release of her later work, music evocative of what may have been the happiest time in her life. Then again, she may well have been even happier the day after she disappeared and happier still the day after that, and so forth. We know nothing for certain about Geffel’s life—or if, in fact, she has been alive—since the evening of the aborted concert at Weill Recital Hall. In the absence of knowledge and certainty, theories and fantasies about Adrianne Geffel have flourished. Many of the most credible, the somewhat plausible, and the wholly unlikely postulations about Geffel’s possible fate were dramatized in the TBS infotainment special, Whatever Happened to Adrianne Geffel: How Good Is Your Guess?

  After her disappearance, journalists started digging into Adrianne Geffel’s history, and news of her neurological condition and her role in the development of the Sony Walkman surfaced. In an article published in the annual audio-equipment insert to Rolling Stone, Sony engineer Kazuhiro Takashima, father of Geffel’s Juilliard classmate Sue Takashima, told the story of his finding the inspiration for the Walkman in the cassette-recorder-and-headphone setup he saw Geffel wearing. The piece, by electronics journalist Robert Heffer, went on to describe Geffel as “the girl genius” whose “mix-and-match audio accessorizing” made her “arguably the mother of what could be called ‘personal entertainment’” or “at very least the pretty thing who caught the father’s eye.” Although Sony contested the account and demanded a retraction (which it received, as a major source of hi-fi advertising revenue), the tale became part of the lore of the young tech industry, and fed the theory that led off the TBS special.

  In this hypothesis, Adrianne Geffel attracted the attention of developers at Samsung, then an under-achieving player in a fledgling Korean electronics industry emulating the Japanese model. Samsung slyly, quietly lured Geffel to South Korea and set her up in secluded luxury, hoping she would generate a bounty of concepts for unimaginable wonders of electronic gadgetry. In the TBS take of this possibility, Geffel (portrayed by Phoebe Cates), accompanied by Barbara Lucher (Alyssa Milano), stumbles onto a country school for girls during a morning walk and joins the children in song. Geffel bonds with the girls and, taking advantage of the tech facilities at Samsung, develops a whole new genre of cheery, electronically processed music that comes to be known as K-pop.

  In another hypothesis, Geffel moved halfway across the world in the opposite direction, to the Middle East. Struck by accounts of Geffel’s habit of wearing headscarves in public (to shield her ears from ambient music), a few writers wondered if Geffel might have relocated to an Islamic community, where she could be physically shrouded inconspicuously. Implausible at first glance, if only for the challenges life under orthodox Islam could pose for Geffel and Lucher’s relationship, this notion gains some credibility upon close examination of the careers of two Muslim women notable in the field of electronic dance music. Priscilla Bakalian, a DJ from Lebanon, and Magda El Bayoumi, an EDM producer of Egyptian/Polish descent, have both talked in interviews about having been influenced by similar encounters with a mysterious woman in a Hijab (El Bayoumi used the phrase “Shabh in a Hijab,” using an Arabic word for phantom) whom they heard on the street, making eerie sounds as she passed by. “The woman I saw was an American,” said El Bayoumi. “She made strange music. Who else could she be?”

  Rumors and speculation about Adrianne Geffel lace through the recent histories of every genre of music that accommodates extremes. A sampling:

  •Adrianne Geffel and Barbara Lucher moved to the West and took up farming. Settling in Boise, Idaho, Lucher worked behind the scenes for a construction co-op for women in agriculture, and Geffel put together a noise band called Magic Sword. To protect her identity, Geffel performed masked and cloaked, under an obtuse stage name, and persuaded her bandmates to do the same. The group made a dark music with an Eighties feeling sometimes described as “neo-Geffel” or “would-be Geffel.” Might the “would-be” be a “could-be”?

  •Geffel, presumably accompanied by Lucher, again, relocated to Sweden. She continued making music in the joyous, tuneful mode of her later work in New York, got a sex change, and became Max Martin.

  •Geffel, with or without Lucher, found a flat in London and hatched a way to record and release music with no public profile, using digital technology. She created a virtual
band of digital avatars and named it Monkeyz in homage to the Sixties made-for-TV group the Monkees. Unfortunately, a pair of British men, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, stole the idea and used it for a virtual band they call Gorillaz.

  •Geffel left New York, with Lucher, to live quietly in rural Warren County in northwest New Jersey. At the recommendation of Laurie Anderson, they leased a patch of land outside the village of Blairstown, where Anderson and her husband Lou Reed kept a country hideaway. Geffel continued making music, in secret, with Anderson and their neighbor Keith Jarrett, while Lucher worked as a foreman for a local builder, Hajdu Construction, a company founded by my uncle Louis. This theory has gained considerable currency since word of my work on this book surfaced in publishing circles. I am in no position to confirm or deny this proposition, though I wish it were true. That would be cool.

  •Geffel and Lucher moved back to the area of western Pennsylvania where they had been born and raised. They set up housekeeping just a few miles from Geffel’s parents’ propane business on Route 6 in Venango County. Geffel enjoyed making music at home, in private, and Lucher made a woodworking shop to sell craft furniture by mail order. No one from New York looked for them there, and no one in the county recognized them anymore. This is among the most feasible of theories about Geffel’s whereabouts, if also the most boring.

  •And then there are those who believe—or, in romantic morbidity, wish to believe—Geffel died, either on the night she was supposed to play at Weill Hall or at some point over the ensuing years. Images of Geffel as a spectral presence appear in songs from artists as notable as the art-pop singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, who wrote a cheekily mournful tribute to Geffel, “Adry in a Dream”:

  I think I met Adry

  Once in a dream

  I asked her to sing with me

  She said oh no, oh no

  In my part of heaven, we don’t sing

  We scream

  As we know from Anastasia Romanov, Jimmy Hoffa, D. B. Cooper, and other cases throughout history, tales of mysterious disappearance can spark dubious visions of reappearance. Innumerable Romanov cultists thought they saw Anastasia for decades after she vanished, and, for all we know, some may really have seen her. Over the years since Adrianne Geffel disappeared, a small but slow-growing group of Geffel enthusiasts have reported and compared notes on “Adry sightings.” The earliest I know of were shared on the now-dead early AOL listserv, wheresadry@aol.com, which predates the period of my scholarship on Geffel and would be a lot of trouble for me to find at this point. Inevitably, Twitter quickly became the nexus of information from and for people around the world who believe they might, could, or should have spotted Geffel somewhere. The hashtag #isawadry served this purpose for a time but stirred some confusion among admirers of the Palestinian-Scots poet Isa Wadry. In time, #isawadry2 became the go-to source on “Adry sightings,” and, indeed, was the place where I first learned about some of the theories on Geffel’s whereabouts outlined above. (See also: #isawadryintheday, which deals with the time of Geffel’s activities in New York, and #isawadryinthenight, which is in the vein of fan fantasy.)

  Of all the witnesses to Adrianne Geffel’s life I interviewed for this book, one, Barbara Lucher, no doubt holds the secret of Geffel’s fate. Lucher, in response to my request for her participation in this project, agreed to take part only on the condition that she would not answer any questions about anything after the events at Weill Hall. But I never promised not to ask.

  At the end of the allocated time in the last of my sessions with Lucher, I asked, “Could you tell me if Adry Geffel is alive and well?”

  Lucher said, “What the fuck do you fucking think?” and prompted me to answer her.

  DISCOGRAPHY

  The Music of Adrianne Geffel

  CONCERT RECORDINGS

  Biran Zervakis Presents Adrianne Geffel

  (Infini Records, 1980. Recorded live at the Jervic Loft.)

  1.Black Frost

  2.February Face

  3.Not Sure I Like This

  4.Bosenbuttons

  5.Where I Live (w/“spoken language” by Darius Epstein)

  6.Variations and Fugue in E-Flat major and Seven Other Keys

  So Far, SoHo

  (Infini Records, 1980. Recorded live at the Jervic Loft.)

  1.Fuck Cunt!

  2.It’s Different for Me

  3.Grand Street Grand

  4.Flammable Material (Duet with Bobby Akbar-Aleem)

  5.Now/Not Now

  6.Burnt Host (for Milijenko)

  Oh, Negative

  (Infini Records, 1981. Recorded live in the gym at Judson Church.)

  1.Gunpowder and Blush

  2.False Positive

  3.Ann Anthem

  4.On the Invention of the Filterless Percolator

  5.Honeymoon in Marshalsea

  6.Gutter Tumbleweed

  The Merkin Concert

  (Infini Records, 1983. Recorded live at Merkin Concert Hall.)

  1.Waking Up in a House Fire

  2.Poodles of Blood

  3.No Standing Any Time

  STUDIO ALBUMS

  Chords and Baffling

  (Infini Records, 1982.)

  1.Pane Relief

  2.Baby Grave

  3.Second Honeymoon in Marshalsea

  4.Secret Exit

  5.Terrible Likeness

  6.Hell’s Kitchenette

  Oh, No

  (Infini Records, 1984. Original tracks recorded in the gym at Judson Church, edited and processed by Infini Musique Laboratories.)

  1.Oh-One

  2.Oh-Two

  3.Oh-Three

  4.Oh-Four

  5.Oh-Five

  Oh, Positive

  (Adriatic Records, 1986. Recorded in the gym at Judson Church.)

  1.Sweet Somethings

  2.April Face

  3.The Third Sock

  4.This Shall Not Pass

  5.Lullaby for Barb

  (Compositions published by Geffel’s Own Music, Inc.)

  Yummy Sounds

  (Adriatic Records, 1987. Collection of home-recorded music compiled by Ann Athema.)

  1.Yummy Sounds

  2.Djuna and the Moon-a

  3.If She Were a Carpenter

  4.Elegy for the El

  5.Chew Toys (fragments)

  (Compositions published by Geffel’s Own Music, Inc.)

  OTHER

  Lofty Ideas: The Smithsonian Anthology of SoHo Music of the 1970s, 1980s, and Other Periods

  (Smithsonian Institution, 1994.)

  Various artists. Includes one track, “February Face,” from Adrianne Geffel.

  Unless otherwise noted, all compositions published by My Adry’s Music, Inc.

  ALSO BY DAVID HAJDU

  Love for Sale:

  Pop Music in America

  Heroes and Villains:

  Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture

  The Ten-Cent Plague:

  The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America

  Positively 4th Street:

  The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña

  Lush Life:

  A Biography of Billy Strayhorn

  Adrianne Geffel is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters, with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, such appearances are invented and do not change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by David Hajdu

  All rights reserved

  First Edition

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  Jacket design: Jaya Miceli

  Jacket photograph: suteishi / Getty Images

  Book design by Daniel Lagin

  Production manager: Lauren Abbate

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Names: Hajdu, David, author.

  Title: Adrianne Geffel : a fiction / David Hajdu.

  Description: First edition. | New York, NY : W. W. Norton & Company, [2020]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020008287 | ISBN 9780393634228 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780393634235 (epub)

  Subjects: LCSH: Musicians—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3608.A545356 A65 2020 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020008287

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