One day-I don't even know what happened-I'd been up all night, playing out of town, and I drove into town to get my methadone. Then I went to a friend's house and shot some coke and fixed some heroin, and the methadone on top of that, and the no sleep ... I was driving my beautiful new car. In 1976, Les advanced us the money to buy this brand-new red Olds Cutlass Supreme Brougham with all the extras. I decided to turn left. To this day, I have no idea where I was going. I pulled into the left turn lane going too fast, and by the time I saw the cars stopped in front of me, waiting to turn, it was too late. I crashed into them. My head almost went through the windshield. The other people were injured slightly. I got out of the car and looked at this wreck. I was having memory lapses. I thought, "Boy, somebody sure got wiped out." I was walking around among all this glass. An ambulance came and the police, and the next thing I knew I was in a car going to jail.
I spent a week in jail. As it worked out, it cost us fifteen hundred dollars for the lawyer, a fine of about four hundred dollars and three more weekends in jail. One of the things that saved me was a contract I had for another tour of Japan. I think that impressed the judge or the D.A. Since I was on the methadone program, there was no point in putting me on probation. The methadone program can be very strict. I got thirtysix months summary probation.
In April of 1978, I toured Japan for nineteen days with my own group. We did eighteen concerts. It was really hard, and I had very little energy, because I wasn't using coke anymore. I was depressed and tired, but the audiences were wonderful. We played to packed houses. After the concerts, the fans would line up; they had all my albums, and they wanted my autograph.
I did do some heavy drinking in Japan after the concerts. I came back to the U.S. and did a tour of Oregon. I was unbelievably tired, and my memory was failing me. I couldn't remember the words for things. I couldn't remember what tunes we were playing or how long we'd been playing. My fingers were stiff and hard to move. Laurie kept begging me to give it up and go home. I wouldn't do it. I didn't play the last night of the tour. I didn't even know if it was day or night anymore.
Laurie had called the V.A. from Oregon. When we got back to L.A., my counselor from the methadone program came to the house and took me to the hospital. I was fighting against it. I thought Laurie had ratted on me. When I checked in, the head psychiatrist asked me what month it was. I said it was March. It was June. I couldn't remember the name of the President of the United States.
They kept me in the hospital for about two months. I underwent a million tests. They found some brain damage, and they diagnosed anemia, in addition to the Thalassemia Minor I was born with. They gave me lots of food and vitamins and put me on an anti-depressant. By the time they let me go, I was more or less back to normal. Later, Laurie took me to her doctor who looked over my records and said my problems might be a result of my liver disease. I'd wanted to have another operation on my hernia. It's a blow to my ego to have my stomach stick out like that. The doctor at Kaiser said an operation could be fatal. My liver might not be able to handle the anesthetic.
My mother is dead. My father is dead. My daughter's grown up; she's a stranger. I've set up a barrier between us that I'm afraid to cross. I have very few friends, and one of the best of them, Les Koenig, died not long ago.
When my contract with Contemporary expired, several people asked me to do one-shot recordings. I was scared but I did one, Among Friends, and that helped restore my confidence, and then I signed with another company. I did my first album for them a few weeks ago. On it I played "Patricia" again, the ballad I wrote so many years ago. It came out very well. It might be the best thing I've ever recorded.
As for the future-physically, emotionally, I can't work very much. I can't take much pressure, but I do have to survive, and I do still want to play. I do still need to be accepted as an artist. But I want to be more than just a "jazz player" playing. I want to make the people forget the categories and hear what's really happening. I want to make them feel the joy or sadness. I want to make them open up and listen. That's what I've always wanted. I'll do the best I can.
JAZZ: PEPPER RETURNS WITH STYLE by John S. Wilson
... he has developed a clear, full-toned style, glistening with bright, glancing lines and bubbling, dancing phrases that flow easily. There is no suggestion of pushing or frenzy, and yet he projects a fiery intensity that becomes overt only occasionally, when he seizes a phrase and shakes it like a terrier.
Mr. Pepper shows an unusual sensitivity in his use of colors and textures, particularly in a slow, atmospheric piece ("Lost Life"), which carries a brooding air of sorrow that avoids obvious sentimentality. The New York Times, June 23, 1977.
NEWPORT JAZZ: ART PEPPER by Robert Palmer
... Art Pepper's appearance was an unqualified triumph .... the celebrated alto saxophonist ... brought a lively and cohesive group and a precarious but riveting balance of technique and emotional intensity to his set.... The New York Times, June 29, 1977.
IN PRAISE OF ART PEPPER
ART PEPPER: THE WHITENESS OF THE WAIL by Gary Giddins
... His present work is alive with splintered tones, modal arpeggios, furious double timing, and acerbic wit. He continues to play from deep inside.
... He plays like a knowing athlete, trained and poised. The Village Voice, July 4, 1977.
SUDDENLY, ART PEPPER IS RED HOT by John B. Litweiler
... At no time was the extent of Pepper's total mastery clearer than in a particular version of "Straight Life." Pepper had been bummed out by some customers who'd talked through his preceding ballad; he unloaded by choosing an incredibly fast tempo, and then, as his solo progressed, speeding it. He managed to lose each of his accompanists, however briefly, to the absolutely vicious solo, and its most stunning feature was the perfect clarity of every note, even the smallest-valued passing ones. The theme of "Straight Life" is made up of broken phrases, and these served as the model for asymmetic, angular lines in a cathartic fury. Beyond the wealth of invention here, the demarcations of note values, lines, and space was surely an ultimate answer to any possible questions about Pepper's powers.
... Pepper, above all, is an architect of emotion .... [He] has proved the best show of 1977 in jazz .... The Chicago Reader, July 29, 1977.
(Marty Paich) You know, there's honest musicians and there's dishonest musicians. Let me clarify that: An honest musician, to me, plays with his heart and soul and gives you his all, all the time. And then there's the dishonest musician who plays, and he gives you his all, but not all of the time. It's like a race horse. When Art plays, it's all, all the time. I never heard him lay back at any time, and that, to me, is an honest musician. And there aren't too many of them in the entire world.
(Don Menza) There are a lot of pressures on an honest player like Art, pressures of having to create and perform. Some musicians ... Dizzy Gillespie can be a clown, make it look as if it's really easy and fun. However a lot of people don't have that outlet, and when things really get bad on the stage, they don't know how to grab a handle on it, how to hold it together. Dizzy can just loosen up immediately. And then there are people that do the total opposite; there are the Charlie Minguses ... take the bass and break it over the piano player's back, you know? You know what I'm talking about? But Art, I've seen him get super tense and not be able to really say what he wants to say, or say what he means, and I could see his knuckles turning white and see his color drain. And still not be able to cope with it. Maybe that's got something to do with his other problems. He's a super sensitive cat, and that shows in his playing. It's obvious. You listen to him play a ballad or a pretty lyrical song. A certain style is involved in that kind of playing. You can't be a cold-hearted bastard and be able to play that way. It's very obvious the kind of person he is underneath, regardless of what he may have been doing at one time or another. And I don't have on record, I don't know of anybody saying, "He turned around and beat me for this; he beat me for that." Anybody. Everybody feels bad th
at it hasn't worked out better than it already has for him.
(Shelly Manne) Musicians should really sit down by themselves and realize what a great life they have. They're doing something they want to do. They're being creative. Very few people have an outlet for their creativity. They're getting paid for it, and, when gifted, get paid very well for it. They can travel all over the world, expenses paid. They eat the best food in the world. They have it made, especially when they have talent and are available and working. To destroy that by being irresponsible, unreliable, which are the main reasons that guys end up down the tubes .. .
What the hell. Art's playing because he wants to play. Hopefully, to make a great living. Hopefully, to be accepted by his peers. But he gets to that point, and when he's at that point it destroys him. He's got to turn his head around. He's got to realize that all those people write about him and there's a resurgence of Art Pepper because they love him. That's not a hate relationship. That's a love relationship. They dig what he's doing. They dig what he's been through. They understand what he's been through. And to see him come back and play great, that's what they want. That's why they're paying money at the door to come in. That's why they go to the concerts, write an article in the New Yorker, whatever the hell, about Art. Those are love things. People aren't trying to put pressure on him to destroy him again. He's got to get some psychiatric help if he thinks that. He's got to get his head turned around where he becomes selfconfident about those things. He's Art Pepper.
Everybody has inner doubts. You've got to realize that. But what can they do to you? Who's gonna do what to you? I want to play. I want to have fun. And you've got to realize that those great moments, when you're playing, when it's almost like selfhypnosis, when you're almost outside your body watching yourself play, and when everything you play turns to gold; nothing goes wrong; the group is swinging, and you can do anything you want, even things you thought you could never do ... those moments don't happen everytime you pick up your horn. That's not possible. It's not possible.
Conclusion
I WAS GIVEN a gift. I was given a gift in a lot of ways. I was given a gift of being able to endure things, to accept certain things, to be able to accept punishment for things that I did wrong against society, the things that society feels were wrong. And I was able to go to prison. I never informed on anyone. As for music, anything I've done has been something that I've done "off the top." I've never studied, never practiced. I'm one of those people, I knew it was there. All I had to do was reach for it, just do it.
- I remember one time when I was playing at the Black Hawk in San Francisco. I forget the date, but Sonny Stitt was touring with jazz At The Philharmonic. He came in, and he wanted to jam with me. He came in, and he says, "Can I blow?" I said, "Yeah, great" We both play alto, which is ... It really makes it a contest. But Sonny is one of those guys, that's the thing with him. It's a communion. It's a battle. It's an ego trip. It's a testing ground. And that's the beautiful part of it. It's like two guys that play great pool wanting to play pool together or two great football teams or two magnificent basketball teams, and just the joy of playing with someone great, being with someone great ... I guess it's like James Joyce when he was a kid, you know. He hung out with all the great writers of the day, and he was a little kid, like, with tennis shoes on, and they said, "Look at this lame!" They didn't use those words in those days. They said, "God, here comes this nut." And he told them, "I'm great!" And he sat with them, and he loved to be with them, and it ended up that he was great. That's the way Sonny felt; that's the way I've always felt.
I said, "What do you want to play?" Sonny says, "Let's play `Cherokee.' " That's a song jazz musicians used to play. The bridge, which is the middle part, has all kinds of chord changes in it. It's very difficult. If you can play that ... If some kid came around, and he wanted to play, you'd say "Let's play 'Cherokee,' " and you'd count it off real fast. I said, "Well, beat it off." He went, "One-two, one-two;" he was flying. We played the head, the melody, and then he took the first solo. He played, I don't know, about forty choruses. He played for an hour maybe, did everything that could be done on a saxophone, everything you could play, as much as Charlie Parker could have played if he'd been there. Then he stopped. And he looked at me. Gave me one of those looks, "All right, suckah, your turn." And it's my job; it's my gig. I was strung out. I was hooked. I was drunk. I was having a hassle with my wife, Diane, who'd threatened to kill herself in our hotel room next door. I had marks on my arm. I thought there were narcs in the club, and I all of a sudden realized that it was me. He'd done all those things, and now I had to put up or shut Lip or get off or forget it or quit or kill myself or do something.
I forgot everything, and everything came out. I played way over my head. I played completely different than he did. I searched and found my own way, and what I said reached the people. I played myself, and I knew I was right, and the people loved it, and they felt it. I blew and I blew, and when I finally finished I was shaking all over; my heart was pounding; I was soaked in sweat, and the people were screaming; the people were clapping, and I looked at Sonny, but I just kind of nodded, and he went, "All right." And that was it. That's what it's all about.
Af to rwo rd
THIS BOOK was begun in April, 1972, completed early in 1979, and first published in November of that year. Art died in June, 1982, but during the two and a half years between its publication and Art's death, STRAIGHT LIFE changed everything for him. It and the publicity around it revived and created interest in Art's career; there were television and radio interviews and articles in major newspapers and magazines worldwide. As a result, Art spent those last years performing almost continuously, all over the world, for the biggest and most receptive audiences he'd ever seen, and recording more albums (with more major jazz names) than he had during the whole rest of his life. All of that finally got him the critical and popular recognition he'd craved, and put him, finally, jazz-historically speaking, on the map. He confidently predicted that after he died he would at last be elected to the down beat Hall of Fame, and he was-beating out Sonny Stitt who died the same year. It would be easy to say, therefore, that Art died happy. But that isn't the whole story. Not the way Art would have told it.
STRAIGHT LIFE shows that Art valued honesty above fame, even above art. In the book, people refer to him as an "honest" musician. He believed that truth was beauty and vice versa, and, when he played, he felt he was expressing the beauty of his honest emotion-which he shaped into powerful music with his skill. He had to know-and say-what was really going on. He was obsessed with knowing and with being known and believed that a failure of honesty in his life would contaminate his soul and his music. I don't want to contami nate his story, so I'm going to try to finish telling it as truthfully as he would have. At least this is what the truth looks like to me-now.
Because the book played such a major role at the end, I'll say something first about how it was made.
When Art and I first became lovers and he began telling me his adventures, I thought, as did many other people who had heard them, that they should be in a book. I'd done some writing, but I knew I couldn't write this story. And I thought it would lose too much, it would lose Art, if it were written at all. One of my favorite books is Oscar Lewis's The Children of Sanchez. It's an oral history of a poor Mexican family. Lewis was a sociologist and the book was classified as sociology, but the statistical and political information it included were, it seemed to me, just a pretext for offering the true work-the most poetic, personal, revealing, and touching autobiography I'd ever read. I re-read it in Synanon. I thought Art and I might do a book with that kind of format and told him so. He liked the idea. After he left Synanon and then wrote to me, asking me to join him, I started thinking about it again. I'd studied cultural anthropology and folklore. Art could certainly talk. I was enamored of him, but I could be objective.
I left Synanon in 1972 in response to Art's letter-he was clean, he was working, and he love
d me-though I didn't necessarily believe what he said. (Art could always lie, domestically, briefly and badly about whether or not he was using, but then he invariably eventually blurted out the truth, no matter what it cost him.) I told myself that I was joining him in order to do this book. I also suggested to myself that that was a rationalization; I loved him and wanted to be with him.
We got together in February. He wasn't clean, and I was far from sure we had a future, but I still wanted to try to do the book.
Art said he was willing to tell me his story, but he kept putting me off. He was awfully gloomy at that time. I finally cornered him one afternoon in April, turned on the tape recorder, and began by asking him if he believed he had genius. In answer to my question, he told me the story of his bandstand battle with Sonny Stitt which appears as the Conclusion to this book. When he finished talking, I said, "Wow!" and he started laughing happily at what was clearly a virtuoso piece of narrative. He told me to turn the machine off and began to talk enthusiastically about the possibilities of the book. I turned the machine back on and asked him why he wanted to do a book about his life. He said,
Well, the reason I want to get the book started is because I feel a real sense of urgency, because I feel something pulling at me, and I've been wanting to withdraw and hide. Just miserably unhappy. I can feel this presence. And the presence is death. Before I started talking into the tape recorder, I had nothing to say. I did not exist. I do not exist. My life is lived. My life is finished. But in talking about the past I see that then my life has meaning. So I want to tell my story. I think that's the only way I can give any meaning to my life, for having lived the life I've lived, is by having people know it. And get something out of it. Feel something from it.
During the next months we began to tape every few days. I became compulsive about it. Art started resisting again. At first I thought it was laziness or maybe unwillingness to go into certain aspects of his life, and that must have been part of it. But the real reason, I figured out in time, was that in this storytelling, too, he was an artist, and he demanded so much of himself when the tape started rolling, he might as well have been playing a solo in a recording studio. So, it was challenging, exhausting work with no payoff (but my approbation) and he tried to avoid it. Sometimes he'd get so loaded beforehand, he'd nod out in mid-sentence. I'd kick his foot and he'd start up again just like the Dormouse in Alice. Sometimes I bribed him with candy and ice cream (he was a lazy person, and I was willing to walk to the store). I'd beg him to talk for 15 minutes and sometimes keep him going for an hour.
Straight Life Page 56