Straight Life
Page 38
(Hersh Hamel) Art was at Quentin or someplace, and I had bumped into Diane. She told me Art was going to be out in about a month and asked if I could help, come by, drive him around, get some clothes for him. They didn't have a car, and she knew that I really dug Art and I'd help.
Art got out, and I took him around to get some shoes, some clothes. I took him to his Nalline tests downtown, and if it looked like he wasn't going to pass the test, he was messing around a little, I'd take him over to the Beverly Hills Health Club, get him in the sweat bath, stay in there for a couple hours to try to sweat it out of him.
At that time, we decided to form a group. I was running around with a drummer, Bill Goodwin, who's a great drummer, and we got Frank Strazzeri, myself, and Art, and we went up to my brother's house, who I was living with in Laurel Canyon, and we rehearsed and got some music together. Art had written some tunes in Quentin which were very interesting, "D Section," "The Trip," "Groupin'," nice tunes, and I wrote a couple tunes, so we had a little library of original things. When Art first came out, he wasn't using much at all; we played a gig at Shelly's Manne Hole and Art had a tremendous lot of fire.
Art was very influenced by Coltrane at that time because he was in jail with some pretty radical players. Art heard those guys in Quentin, and at first he didn't like it so much, he said, but after hearing them practice day after day, he started to pick up on what they were doing and to like it more and more. And then, when he came out, he was pretty well exploding, I can tell you, musically. So much so that when we went into Shelly's in 1964, Shelly Manne and some of the other guys criticized him terribly, "Oh, no, that's not the old Art." You know, "Doesn't sound like Art Pepper." And Art is so sensitive. When people start criticizing, he immediately starts bending. So he started coming off what he was doing. He started using shit again because he was getting some criticism. Diane said she liked the "pretty" Art Pepper better. She didn't like the harshness he was playing with. And I think some of the harshness came from the fact that Art had spent a lot of time in jail. There was a lot of hostility, a lot of pent-up emotion, and when he played he was barkin', boy! It was raw emotion, and it was great. Incredible. Whether he might think so now or not. If we could have recorded at that time! Les recorded us on a few tunes, but he didn't like it.
We went up to San Francisco at that time. I got some jobs for us and we worked at Don Mupo's club in Oakland for two nights. We started Friday night; on Saturday night the last tune we played was "The Trip," and the people were standing on top of the tables. I kid you not. The place was packed solid. You couldn't get into the club or out, hardly. People were standing on the tables, cheering, while we were playing. I've never seen anything like it; in jazz this very rarely happens.
Art wasn't using much then. Drinking some. But a couple of months later we came back to Frisco, to the jazz Workshop, and he was using. Funny thing, on a night when he wasn't using, he'd come in and complain about Frank Strazzeri and be real uptight with all of us and be really nervous about all the tunes. One night we played our ass off, the rhythm section just burned, and he was uptight all night. The next night, he came in all stoned out of his mind, and I didn't think we sounded anywhere near as good, and he was just smiling, knocked out with everything. So it wasn't really the way the band sounded, it was the way Art felt. But at that time, the level we were playing on was very, very good.
(Shelly Manne) When Art came out of prison, a lot of music had been happening. I always loved the way Art played. His lyricism was the main thing I really loved, a very emotional way of playing. And very coherent, well-constructed solos. Well, sometimes a musician feels challenged, feels that he's going to be left behind, that what he's saying isn't the in thing at the moment. The problem is, too many people, critics, magazines, newspapers, they make music a competition like a sporting event. It's not a sporting event. You don't go to a museum and say, "Well, I give four votes for Rembrandt and five for Van Gogh." You can't do that. Each person, if they can really play and they are artists, which I consider them to be because jazz is definitely an art form, if they have that inner ability, that creative drive to say something very personal ... There are no "greatests," you know what I mean?
If I tried as a drummer to play like Tony Williams or Elvin Jones, I'd fall on my ass. It doesn't make me not love them any less as artists because I can't do it. And in my own experience, I found myself going through a period, when I owned a nightclub, of having these guys work in my club, and the next thing you know, I'd be trying to play like them because I'd be so strongly influenced, so delighted, by what they're doing. And I saw how the crowds reacted to it. I thought, "Oh, they consider me old hat." But I'm older and a little wiser: the festival I was just on, there were a lot of drummers there and I didn't go up there fearing that they're watching me or that I'm not going to play my best. I just go, play, and have fun because music is fun.
Everybody should try to improve; their playing should constantly change by absorbing playing from other great players. You should never stop growing. But the one thing you have when you're playing the way you feel, you have an individual way of playing. And I felt when I first heard Art, when he came out of prison and did his first club date, I didn't like what I heard. Not because he wasn't doing it well. But I didn't feel that it was an honest expression of the person I was listening to, after listening to him for all those years. It's okay to borrow from somebody like John Coltrane, but Art lost a lot of that lyrical quality that I love about him. When Art overblows his horn, the individual sound he has just disappears. I love Art on tenor, too. He has an individual sound, which is one of the things all the great players have, whether it be Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Art. He was destroying that, and I was sorry to see it, and now, more recently, I heard him reverting to himself. And that other stuff is absorbed into his playing and is expressed by his own identity, which makes it still an individual thing. But there was a period when I thought he was losing his way as far as Art Pepper is concerned. That happens to a lot of players, but they find that the best thing to do is just go play the way you feel because nobody can do it the way you feel, and if it's good, it's good. And not to be influenced by what's happening at the moment. Everybody has great favorites of the moment.
WHEN I went into San Quentin I didn't know what was going to happen with Diane. She'd gotten out of Norwalk after her suicide attempt, and I told her if she wanted to go ahead and get a divorce she could do that. There was no telling how long I'd have to stay in San Quentin. I'd rather have her get a divorce. But she said, "Oh, no, no! I love you! I want to be able to take care of you! I want to do everything I can for you! Please, please don't deny me the chance!" So I said alright-against my better judgment.
Diane came to visit me after I'd been in San Quentin for several months. She got a ride up with someone. She'd been straightening up, and she looked like she was fairly clean, and I thought, "Well, maybe she'll be cool." She went back and wrote all the time, nice letters, and finally she got another ride up and came to visit me again. She told me she couldn't stand to go back to L.A. She'd decided she was going to get her stuff and come and stay in San Francisco and wait for me to get out. I didn't feel that she was together enough, and I didn't want her uprooting herself. In Los Angeles she had her mother, who was a lesbian, but nevertheless she was her mother and would help her. She had her sister and her father, who was a good man, and her father's wife. But I couldn't talk her out of it. She went back to L.A. to my dad and, I didn't know about this, but she told my dad I had said it would be okay for him to give her all my things. She wanted to move to Frisco and she wanted to have everything of mine there so when I came out I would have a place and all my stuff. She got all the things I'd sent my dadshoes, a lot of nice clothes, and scrapbooks and pictures and stuff. I had all my school things, report cards, pictures of my army career, mementos of my time with Kenton, clippings, awards I'd won, and a bunch of music. My dad didn't want to do it, but Diane conned him out of my stuff.
It was approaching Christmas. That's the only time you're allowed to receive anything in San Quentin. They give you a list of things you're allowed to have. You're not allowed cigarettes but you can have candy and nuts and cigars. There were a bunch of different things listed, and they had to be packaged and sent from the factory or from the store so no one could inject dope into them. You only have one sheet, one list, and you have to pick one person to send it to; if that person doesn't come through with your present you're out of luck.
Diane came to see me and she asked about Christmas, and I made the mistake of telling her about the list. I told her I was going to send it to my dad. It would give him something to do. I didn't tell her I was doing it that way because I trusted him and not her. She said, "Oh, you've got to let me do it! I'm your wife! I love you!" I told her if anything happened and she couldn't send it, it would really hang me up. You have to have been in prison yourself to realize what getting these little extra things means. It's blown all out of proportion by the circumstances.
Diane said, "Please, please, please! I would never hang you up. Of course I'll send the stuff. I'll get everything on the list. The most expensive things that there are!" She took the paper. I signed it over. This was three months before Christmas. She said goodbye. After that visit I never once heard. Never got a letter. Never got a visit. Nothing. Christmas came. I never got a package. I never heard a word, except every now and then somebody would come in and I'd pick up these vibes. People would look at me. Little things would be dropped. Finally some friends came to me and told me that some black guy that had just come in had told them about Diane, Art Pepper's wife, in Frisco. She was strung out on this stuff that was famous there in those days-Percodan and yellow jackets and meth (methadrine) mixed-and she was really a derelict. She was making it with these black guys, and they were laughing at me and talking about me behind my back. That's why I'd wanted her to divorce me in the first place-because I didn't want to go through anything like that. People are really cruel in prison. And I heard nothing from her.
Me and Jerry Maher worked in the paymaster's office together, and we used to get loaded together on weekends, and he had the same situation with his old lady. He'd given her his sheet for Christmas and hadn't heard from her since, but he'd get word that she was balling this guy and that guy, friends of his, and that his kid was left someplace, squalling and dirty. I'm half German and half Italian. He's full German and violent. We would spend hours and hours together: "Here's another Diane story." We would get together and talk about what we were going to do to our wives when we got out. We devised tortures. Our favorite plan was to rent a house with a cellar. I'd get Diane and he'd get his old lady and we'd put them in this cellar and chain them up. Then we'd get a real powerful stereo set and put speakers all over the walls; we'd have sounds of trains and airplanes and war sounds and people screaming; we'd turn the speakers on at all different times of the day and night; and they would never know what time it was. They would never see daylight. We would come in with black hoods over us and beat them with whips. We'd make them give each other head, and then, just before they'd come, we'd beat their cunts with whips. We'd pour ice water on them. We would go on for hours, and there was nothing we didn't envision: water tortures, lighted sticks under their toenails.
I was in San Quentin for three years. Then I was sent to Tehachapi, and that's when I went to the parole board and got a release date. I don't know how she found out about it, but after I got my date, they called my name one day and said, "You have a visitor." It had been two years since I'd seen Diane. When I saw her, my immediate reaction was I wanted to kill her. I wanted to beat her to death. But I wanted to contain myself until I could get at her, so by an unbelievable strengthening of my will and the greatest acting job I've ever done I acted cool.
She looked at me and burst out crying. She said, "Oh, I'm sorry!" She said she had flipped out, and she was sorry, and how can I ever forgive her. She loved me and missed me, but she was so fucked up from the methadrine and the Percodan she was ashamed for me to see her in that state. She couldn't stand to see anybody so she'd hid in the room; she'd nearly gone insane. And somebody had stolen all my stuff out of this room. Everything was gone. And she's sorry, and she loves me. She had finally got back to Los Angeles. She said she was straightening up and she wanted to save money and take care of me. What could she do for me? Would I ever forgive her? I said, "Oh, don't worry about it. I understand. I understand what dope does." Don't worry about the scrapbooks and things I had saved since I was a little kid. That's alright. I was shaking inside. When I touched her it made me cringe. I got ill thinking about all these guys she'd balled. But I was able to play over my feelings, and I told her that if she wanted to visit me it was okay. I told her I had a release date.
Diane came to visit me every week. She brought food and all that. And every now and then she'd look at me strangely and say, "Are you sure you forgive me?" And I'd say yeah. All I wanted to do was get out and have her under my power. Finally the day came. Diane came to pick me up. She'd rented a place on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. I got her into the pad. She took a shower and put on some sexy negligee. I started kissing her. I got her all excited sexually. I got her all worked up until she's wigging out with passion. I got her just to the point where we're going to ball and then I looked at her and spit in her face: "You slimy, stinking, bastard bitch!" I grabbed her by the throat. I told her, "No, I'm not going to kill you. I'm going to make you suffer like you've never suffered in your life before!" I let her go and backhanded her as hard as I could in the mouth, and I threw her against the wall. I smashed her head against the wall and I told her, "Don't touch me, you slimy, filthy bastard!" She begged me, and she crawled along the floor. She had blood running out of her mouth, and I almost had a feeling of pity for her, but I thought of what she'd done to me and I said, "Don't touch me, you dirty bastard!"
I stayed with her. And whenever she got to the point where she was ready to go kill herself I'd ball her and pretend that everything was alright. Then, when she thought everything was cool, I would turn on her again. I found this beautiful little Hollywood girl up the street and balled her, and I let Diane know about it. I put her through hell, and I felt she deserved every bit of it. But what happened is I got hooked and I couldn't continue it. And then we were both hooked, and that ended my revenge.
Three months after I got out of San Quentin I hung up my Nalline tests. I couldn't make it, so I went into hiding. My parole officer came around. He told Diane, "Tell him to give himself up, and I'll make sure everything'll be alright. I'll get him a dryout, so he won't have to go back to the joint." I agreed to give myself up, and he took me to jail. They gave me six months in Chino. It was better than going back to San Quentin. Chino Institute for Men. They had a narcotics program there. They keep you in barracks instead of cells, and there were three barracks filled with dopefiends. They had women dopefiends, too; I'd see them drive up, the beatest looking bags in the world.
We were all getting counseling. There'd be a social worker or a parole officer, and he'd have a "group." The whole idea was to get people to rat on each other, to try to expose people so they would "learn" and do better. I had never seen anything like it. People informing on each other! We'd meet and "I saw you doing this! I saw you ... " I realized that the only way to make it was to say as little as possible and try to con the people as much as possible to get out. It was a wasted experience. The only thing I can recall of note is that in playing handball I fell over a metal faucet and cut my leg and then from favoring my le
g and continuing to play handball I got an inguinal hernia and had to have an operation there. Talk about inhuman. They give you a little something to put you out, but after that, because you're a dopefiend and a prisoner, they won't give you anything to help you through the pain. I got through it and got okay and got out of Chino, and I went back to Diane. My parole officer didn't want me to go back to her. He kept telling me it was a mistake.
A friend of mine, Arnold, was in Chino with me. His old lady would visit him, so she started bringing Diane. Diane moved to an apartment in Glendale, near Arnold's wife. Arnold got out a little before me, and what happened was he was involved in a burglary, and Diane got involved, too. He'd gotten hold of a check protector and a bunch of blank checks.
I got out, and I went to this place Diane had, and I was surprised to see that it was such a nice apartment. I started looking around and I saw all kinds of things. Every drawer was filled. There was every kind of light bulb and every type of writing paper, every kind of soap and perfume, and every kind of cleanser. It was like a warehouse for a grocery store. And everything was brand-new. The cupboards were filled with food and cheese and nine different kinds of crackers and canned goods, canned meats. The place was jammed full of stuff and I said, "What's happening here?" Diane had clothes, clothes still in the packages, sweaters and shirts and socks, and I said, "My God, what's happening?" Diane said, "Well, I've got a little thing going. I didn't want to tell you because I was afraid you'd be drug, but I was, like, scuffling and Arnold asked me to help him, so I said okay." I said, "What is it?" And then she told me about the check protector. She went behind the couch and pulled out this machine that writes checks for a company, protects them, and makes them legal. This and the checks had been stolen in the burglary. Diane had gotten a phony driver's license and a phony birth certificate. She'd write the checks out and Arnold would drive her to the stores. There were some markets that didn't have the call-in system at that time-I think it was the Market Basket chain. They'd search around for a Market Basket; she'd go in and buy thirty, forty dollars' worth of groceries and hand them a payroll check for a hundred and fifty, a hundred and seventy-five. Arnold would wait for her. She'd wheel the stuff out. She got a certain percentage of the cash, and they split the groceries. And so, here I am into this thing with all this shit in the pad.