My First Guitar

by Julia Crowe

  When my family returned home from Varese, I started to study with Jeff Van in Minneapolis. He left on sabbatical when I was sixteen. I had already had a few lessons with Sophocles Papas in Washington, D.C. My father had arranged for me to meet Pappas because it was on the way to my father’s work. Papas introduced me to Segovia, and I had my first lesson with Segovia when I was fourteen. This is something I was able to do for several years. Papas was the first to tell me I should be practicing scales. He said, “If you don’t learn all the Segovia major and minor diatonic scales by your next lesson, we’re going to spend the whole lesson doing that.” Well, I didn’t like that threat, so I learned those damn scales. That really made a big difference, to start to get some discipline into my life. And then I discovered, the more time I put in, the better I got and the more I enjoyed it. By the time I was in high school, I was able to practice five hours a day.

  What really made that happen is that when I was fourteen, I entered a competition with the Minnesota Orchestra and won. The reward was to perform two concerts with the orchestra in front of five thousand people, each day. I played the Vivaldi Concerto in D Major and I thought, “This is even more fun than what I was doing before,” which had been spending hours building and launching model rockets and dissecting worms, bugs and caterpillars under the microscope. So I decided it was time to switch gears from science to making music my profession because I figured this is where I wanted to go.

  I remember working shortly with Alirio Díaz and Van in the summer and being exposed to the whole world of Latin and South American music, which was exciting. Diaz had been talking about some tours he had done and said to me, “You, too, will do that.” I said, “You think so?” and he said yes. Sure enough, when I was sixteen, I played a concert at Rice University, where my brother was going to school. It was a full house at Hammond Hall, my first real professional performance that was given a wonderful review, which started off, “They say she is only sixteen …” The reviewer clearly didn’t believe it.

  In those days, I was using a Mark Leaf case. I had just gotten into the elevator in Toronto to go to the hall where my competition was taking place. I stepped onto the elevator with a case that was shut but not locked, and someone noticed, bless their heart. At any moment that guitar could have fallen out and that would have been the end of that. My life would have taken a very different trajectory.

  When my family had come back to Minneapolis after living in Italy, one of the recordings that really inspired me, one that I would listen to every night before falling asleep was Julian Bream playing Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez and on the other side, Britten’s Gloriana. It doesn’t sound like any Britten you’ve ever heard. They’re Renaissance-style court dances. It’s absolutely delightful. My dream was to play the Concierto de Aranjuez. That was my goal. I’ve had more than my fill of that work now, after hundreds of performances!

  Minnesota was a great place to grow up because there were a number of music organizations that catered to young people and their growth, such as the Schubert Club, Thursday Musical and the Minnesota Young Artist Competition. They also had the performance forums, such as hospitals and schools. There was a chance to really groom yourself for the profession. In each of the competitions I entered, I was always the first guitarist to have ever entered. I had to petition them.

  There was one situation where it was a different competition, affiliated with the Minnesota Orchestra and geared more toward college students. I applied to enter this competition two years after I’d won the Minnesota Young Artist Competition. They accepted my application and, a week before the competition, they phoned to tell me I would not be able to participate because the guitar was not an orchestral instrument. I said, “Well, then how could you have let a saxophonist win last year?” They said, “Once in a while, a saxophone does play with an orchestra.” I said, “Once in a while the guitar plays with an orchestra, too.” I compiled my sources and drew up a list of all the symphonic works for guitar and matched them against symphonic works for saxophone. The list was at least comparable, if not longer for guitar than it was for saxophone. I presented this material and they said, “I’m sorry but that still won’t work.” When Lee Foley, the head of the competition, found out about this, he threatened to resign if they did not let me enter. He was concertmaster and head of the jury. They were forced to let me enter. It turned out all this was going on because the donor of the $1,000 grand prize was a big supporter of the Minnesota Orchestra and she had it in her mind the guitar was a gutter instrument that was only useful to accompany pop singers. Apparently there were telegrams flying back and forth to her in Europe, where she was vacationing, and Lee Foley’s threat forced them to at least allow me to enter. However, they told me I would not be eligible to win the prize, whereupon Lee Foley again said he would resign. I ended up winning. The prize included performing with the Minnesota Orchestra, and that’s when I did my first concerto premiere. I commissioned the Israeli composer Ami Maayani to write a concerto.

  This experience taught me several things right away: “No” means just put up a better fight. Stand up for what you believe in and never back down. Stick to your principles because that’s the only way there’s ever going to be growth and change. And don’t let anybody ever tell you what to do if they’re wrong. It’s usually just ignorance that causes the barrier. You’ve got to forge a path. Don’t take no for an answer if it’s just a matter of changing someone’s way of thinking. This was something that proved very useful later on. It’s given me the philosophy that somewhere there is always a solution. It may not be the one you’d planned on, but there is always a solution.

  Once I happened to be traveling and I caught a story on CNN about this fellow, Roscoe Wright, showing this unique travel guitar that is basically a wooden guitar neck with three removable aluminum tubes that attach to make the body shape of the guitar. A nine-volt battery along with earphones allows you, and no one else, to hear. It can also plug into a sound system to be heard by others or in concert. I thought this was great for portability and ease — this is exactly what I had been looking for to go on vacation with and not feel like I have to give up practice. I tracked him down in Eugene, Oregon and spoke with him. It took me a while because I’d thought he’d be so busy making these guitars but it turned out he was about to go out of business. I said, “You’re kidding me!” He told me no one knew about his guitar. So I wrote about his SoloEtte travel guitar for my very last column in Acoustic Guitar magazine. It worked. He started to get orders and was soon able to expand his shop. This was just over ten years ago. He sent me an instrument, and it’s everything that I dreamed of. What’s wonderful about it is that nothing is changed about how you hold the guitar — it’s as if you are holding a three-dimensional instrument. This is so important, because otherwise you’ll mess around with some aspect of your playing and ruin your technique. The other part is the sound is great. I’ve used it in concerts, when I did the Guitar Summit Tour with Stanley Jordan and Michael Hedges and played duets with Steve Vai.

  One day in 1995, I got a call from an astronaut named Chris Hadfield. He was living in Houston and working at the Johnson Space Center for his training, and he’d seen someone playing one of these travel guitars in a park in Houston. This person told him where to get it so he ordered one to give as a gift to the Russian cosmonauts on the Mir space station. One of the other cosmonauts was a classical guitarist.

  The only change he needed Roscoe to make was to install a hinge on the middle of neck so it could bend and fit through the tunnel that connects the Atlanta Space Shuttle with Mir. He came back with tons of photographs, including one of my CDs floating in the shuttle. They had an astronaut band, in fact. Several months later, when I was in Houston for a concert, he gave me a four-hour tour of the Johnson Space Center. If you’ll remember, rockets were once my passion. So the two parts of my life were reunited: I got to sit in the space shuttle simulator used for training and use the controls to see the stars flyi
ng by.

  The Music Conservatory of Life

  Within months of landing in New York, I started writing a monthly column for Classical Guitar magazine in the U.K., along with cover stories, features and reviews for other U.S. guitar publications. Speaking to working guitarists in their milieu became its own education, particularly as we strayed from interview questions to consider such relevant topics as whether to fill up the spare suitcase intended for effects gear with the entire hospitality stash of Red Bull.

  While my fellow classical guitarists studiously applied Schenkerian analysis to Bach cello suites, the Music Conservatory of Life had my cell phone vibrating in my back pocket. Gary Lucas called from Prague to check our interview time. The hilarity was not lost on me that a rock star was calling from Prague, right in the middle of my gig at a Turkish grocery, where I had been playing in their outdoor café, seated beside the trash bin buzzing with yellowjackets. I apologized for the distracting noise of someone smashing their crunchy plastic salad tray into the bin. He understood.

  Between the café gig and performing at nursing homes, I was learning to vary my repertoire at a tiny restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen as a way of not becoming a bore to the wait staff, who could easily sway the owner into hiring a belly dancer instead of a guitarist. If I succeeded in capturing the attention of someone who did not come to hear me play but to eat, I considered that its own sweet reward. A Croatian composer and conductor who gave me weekly lessons in Inwood expressed his disappointment that I was wasting my talent and concert material in such a common setting. But audience members at Carnegie Hall are not likely to break bread with you or send you a drink. Nor do they tip or tell you afterward what the music you played reminded them of and what it means to them.

  I imagine that if I had been playing at Carnegie Hall, I would not have to share the restroom with the needle junkie who had just left the walls splattered with blood. (Growing up in a rooming house allows you to recognize what sometimes happens in bathrooms.) I am uncertain if anyone else in my shoes would have had the composure to keep the staff of three together after the waitress, who had succumbed to her curiosity and taken a peek, turned ashen and ran through the kitchen to retch out in the back alley. I played a requested malagueña for our hungry dope fiends, underscoring the madness of this moment. They got up and departed when they saw the busboy rolling by with an ancient, squeaky mop bucket.

  If I’d played at Carnegie Hall that evening, I would not have a story that causes everyone to lean in when I tell it. I have nothing against Carnegie Hall. It’s just that when you play at a place like a restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen, there is no established Apollonian scrim of formality separating life from the music and the audience from the performer. We closed the restaurant doors for an hour following that incident. The waitress pulled a bottle of red from under the counter and poured a round for the staff, who huddled together in grim silence until someone piped up and asked if I could play some Debussy to calm everyone down.

  Not long after this, I traveled to Towson University in Maryland to attend the first and only World Guitar Congress, which featured a melee of guitar classes and concerts ranging from classical to flamenco, rock and jazz. The entire campus shimmered in the summer heat with the maddening drone of a seventeen-year cicada cycle thrumming endlessly. Dogs and people alike swatted at these ungainly bugs zinging lazily through the air, and I tried my best to avoid stepping on the sea of their fallen carcasses. I started pouncing on artists for interviews for this book, including a comical moment in a crowded, chaotic classroom where I’d tried handing Dick Dale my business card.

  He scribbled on the back and handed it back to me. He’d given me his autograph. I tried handing the card back to him, telling him I needed his email address. Seeing the confused look on his face, I explained that I was requesting an interview. Before I knew it, he had inexplicably dipped me backwards and off-balance and planted one squarely on my cheek.

  I watched Marty Friedman acknowledge a bashful, awestruck fan who had approached him to ask for help in learning a Megadeth lick. Marty stood with this kid in the far corner of the room, one leg propped up against the wall to support the guitar, and patiently took the time to demonstrate and break down the passage for him.

  At an evening ceremony, Les Paul received a lifetime achievement award and I had gathered with other photographers at the foot of the stage to capture the moment. Someone tapped me from behind and I saw it was a man who had been seated in the front row. He told me that he and his brother wanted to ask if I wouldn’t mind stepping to the side because I was blocking their view. I apologized and complied. After the ceremony, as Les Paul from the stage the crowd surged forward. There was no way I could even hope to speak with him. People held out guitars for him to autograph and the vibe of the crowd felt unpleasantly hungry, turning into a multi-footed, multi-headed beast breathing hot desperation.

  Les Paul seemed gracious, even when one proud owner of a newly autographed Gibson guitar doffed his cowboy hat and whooped that though his guitar may no longer be playable, it was now worth at least ninety grand, guar-an-teed. I slipped away from this crush and left a message for the event’s publicist, asking if she could communicate my interview request for this book.

  All I could do was wait and hope for the best. When she phoned me back, her response was that Les Paul’s two sons, who had been seated in the front row in the theater, told her they remembered me as the only photographer who had listened to their request to clear the foot of the stage. I was granted a private interview with Les Paul at his hotel room, which his sons videotaped.

  Les Paul was a charismatic genius whose voice carried a distinctive Midwestern lilt. His genius revealed itself in his curiosity and eagerness, as well as his penchant for undaunted experiments and endless cheer. As laughter filled the room, I remember thinking, “If I should be so lucky to live into to my nineties, he’ll set the bar for being young in spirit.”

  That same day, I found myself standing in a buffet line with Andy Summers, the guitarist from The Police. I took one look at the food selection on his plate and said, “Aha! You’re on the Blood Type Diet.” He denied it. I said I’d bet his blood type was O Negative. He expressed surprise, affirming that he was O Negative, the ancient caveman blood type, but he insisted that he was not any diet. He spent the rest of that meal giving me a suspicious squint. I sat sandwiched awkwardly at the dinner between him and Maurice Summerfield, the publisher of Classical Guitar Magazine, who announced to everyone at the table I was writing this book.

  “I cannot give you my story because I am writing a book of my own,” Andy responded.

  Later on that evening, at a concert, I found myself sitting alone in a row of seats, stewing about getting rebuffed for the interview. What’s another interview to a rock superstar who has been interviewed thousands of times? To hell with that, I thought. If I did not believe in this book enough to convince others to believe in it then I had no business being here. I got up and brazenly found my way backstage and recognized Andy by his fawn-colored suede jacket. He flinched when he saw me coming, The Blood Type Diet Girl. I clamped my hand on his shoulder and leaned in.

  “You’ve played many, many concerts in your career, no?” He gave me a look somewhere between patience and pity but then his gaze broke away.

  “Oh my god, is that Ralph Towner?” Andy asked distractedly, in awe. The jazz guitarist walked by, looking professorial in his corduroy jacket with elbow patches on the sleeves. I continued.

  “I’ll bet you would rather move on and do something new, musically,” I said, “But at each of these concerts, the audience insists you play some old song that you’re probably sick to death of, like ‘Message in a Bottle.’ They beg you to play these songs. And you oblige them, don’t you?” I could see he was curious where I was going with this.

  “If you give me this one story about your first guitar, it will not detract from your own project because it doesn’t matter how many times an audience or reade
r has heard it before — if it is coming from you, they will want to read it again.”

  Later, I told Andy that I felt bad about cornering him like this because I could sense how important his own book was to him. I suggested a compromise. How about keeping his own story for his book and maybe writing the foreword for mine? He said he would think about it.

  For the remaining days of the event, I bunkered out in the front lobby of Marriott Hotel beside the Starbucks cart, waiting to catch guitarists as they wandered groggily into the hotel’s brunch room. After I had interviewed classical guitarists Eli Kassner and David Russell, an elderly couple eating pancakes at a table nearby leaned in, raised the back of their forks toward me and cheerfully said, “We’ve been watching you every morning, my dear. In fact, we have a nickname for you — ‘The Huntress!’”

  Not every interview fell into my lap so easily. Some had to be ferreted out and pried with Green Eggs and Ham–style persistence due to the reluctance of those who dreaded the unpalatable prospect of doing another interview with yet another punk journalist who presumes to know one’s entire career better than the artist themself. Often, after the interview I would hear, “This was fun. This was actually fun. Have you spoken to Artist X?”

  My mobile phone soon took on a charmed aura, emitting the kind of voicemail stream that must be commonplace for a record executive or music mogul. One of these calls came in as I was teaching my weekly after-school guitar class at a public school in downtown Manhattan. A male British accent on the other end said, “Julia. Do you know who this is?”

  I was frazzled, just having defended the classroom teacher’s stash of personal snacks from being decimated by one famished child and having admonished another for looking up an anatomical body part in the pictorial encyclopedia that was not relevant to the guitar. Now I had a British guitarist on the phone, attempting to stump me. I hoped that he had a sense of humor as the words flew out of my mouth.