by Barbara Cook
My life was a complete mess. I didn’t shower or brush my teeth for days at a time. I couldn’t imagine cooking a meal, or writing out checks, or going to sleep without liquor. It never occurred to me that alcohol was the problem. I thought if I could just work out some of my difficulties I wouldn’t have to drink. I could not and would not accept the fact that I couldn’t fix anything until I stopped drinking. In this regard I was no different from any other heavy drinker; there is a complete and total nonrecognition that alcohol is the problem.
Most of the people close to me drank. That’s not surprising because I think when you have that problem you tend to surround yourself with people who drink. Alcoholism ran in my family—four of my mother’s siblings were alcoholics—and when, in addition, you have an addictive personality, the desire to take a drink when you get in trouble is that much stronger. There is no one moment to which I can point and say, “Ah-ha—this is when I became an alcoholic.” It was a gradual process. I don’t remember anybody around me, besides my mother, talking to me seriously and saying, “You really ought to see if you can cut this out.”
My mother was very upset about my drinking, but by this time she had zero credibility with me. Always trying to fix things and run my life, she even called a man I used to date in Atlanta and talked to him about my problem; I think he was the man my mother had always wanted me to marry, a fellow I liked as a person, but to whom I had no physical attraction. He was an acquaintance, nothing more. She called him up and said: “Barbara is in terrible trouble, she’s an alcoholic. Can you help her do something about it?” He called me, and of course I replied, “Don’t be silly. Sure, I drink, but I’m not an alcoholic.” What I didn’t know at the time was that although he was a successful attorney, he was a major alcoholic himself and subsequently died from the disease.
I was very angry with my mother at what I considered a terrible invasion of my privacy. I didn’t even think I was in deep trouble, but of course I was. In hindsight I realize that, clumsy as my mother’s attempt at help was, she was acting out of genuine concern. The problem was that I wasn’t listening—she could have told me anything and I simply wouldn’t have heard it.
This brings up the question of therapists and why they didn’t help me with my drinking. I saw my first therapist when my marriage began disintegrating, before I became an alcoholic, but he soon moved his practice to North Carolina. My next therapist was concerned about my drinking, but he gave me Stelazine, a very potent antianxiety drug that they give to people who are institutionalized. I was now on a major tranquilizer but still drinking, a combination that could have led to disaster. I was supposed to take Stelazine twice a day, but I reasoned that if I took half of the first dose and skipped the second, I could still drink. I was really playing with fire. Compounding the problem was the fact that although I was depressed, I didn’t necessarily see it as depression; I thought I was just neurotic. In reality, I was deeply depressed, and of course alcohol just depresses you further.
Deep depression became the norm of my daily existence. I wasn’t working, and I slept a lot. I would get up and get Adam off to school and then go back to bed and sleep the day away. I would set the alarm so that I’d be sure to be awake when Adam came home from school. I didn’t want him to think I’d been in bed all day, but I wasn’t capable of doing much of anything. I was running out of money, but I also could not push myself or muster the energy necessary to obtain work, let alone deliver the goods onstage. This state of affairs is hard for people to understand and now when I talk about it it’s even hard for me to absorb, but that’s who I was in the early 1970s.
I sold the co-op apartment fairly quickly for $45,000. After the lawyer obtained his percentage, and by the time I had paid all of the closing costs as well as my very large stack of bills, I ended up with about $15,000 to my name. I can still remember the awful sinking feeling of not bringing in any money and watching that $15,000 dribble away, week by week, month after month. Terrifying.
I moved to a rental apartment, and, with no work, I borrowed whatever I could from friends. One awful afternoon there was a strong, repeated knocking at the door. I knew what the knocking signaled: I was months behind on my rent, and the super and the owner were at my door. I asked Adam to be very quiet. I told myself that if they thought I wasn’t in they would go away. There was a moment’s silence and then I heard their key in the lock. The door opened and there I stood. It was horrible and humiliating.
Adam, age thirteen, decided he had had enough of me and wanted to live full-time with his father. I was devastated. It was absolutely the right thing for Adam to do, but of course I didn’t see it that way at the time. On one level it was obvious even to me that my life was a complete mess, but Adam was the only steady thing in my life, and I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. I was horrible to him: “How can you? How can you desert me? Did you know I have something in my mouth and it could be cancer?” This was terrible of me—there is no other word for it—but I couldn’t stop. I was desperate. When he left I remember sitting on the edge of my bed, holding myself and rocking. Crying endlessly. The tears just wouldn’t stop. I was utterly adrift and drowning in an alcoholic depression.
In oh so many ways my life was a disaster. I was in my forties and had gained a tremendous amount of weight. It was not a pretty picture, but I certainly never thought I was going to die, which made me even more furious when David told Adam, “I think your mother’s going to die soon.” (I should never have said to Adam that I might have cancer; in fact the bump in my mouth was just that—a bump. I still have it forty years later.) Adam actually has a slightly different recollection, one in which David never used the word “die,” but even if he didn’t, that was the gist of his remark. I emphasized to Adam: “Please do not worry about this. I am going to be okay. Do not worry about this.” I just wanted to reassure my son.
David was now completely in charge, and he ran with the power. I had no financial input into Adam’s life, and when it came time for him to choose a college I was not included in the decision at all. There was no discussion whatsoever. I actually don’t think Adam had much to say about it himself. David decided he wanted Adam to go to a private school, specifically USC, which David himself had wanted to attend. I think his mind was set in this direction because that’s what David had dreamt of when he was a kid.
Once Adam was no longer an adolescent I hardly saw David at all. We would occasionally argue about something on the phone, but that was it. He had married again, a very nice woman named Beth. She and I became friends, a relationship which has continued to this day. She told me that she eventually left David for exactly the same reasons that I had. He just could not abide change and had to control everything; she told me that a week or so after they were married he declared: “You must never invite anyone to the house whom I don’t know or who doesn’t know my work.”
Beth was very kind to Adam. She helped him a lot, and when David gave their son Jacob a dirt bike, but Adam only a book, Beth was furious on Adam’s behalf. After their divorce, Beth received a certain amount of money for her share of the house, so she had a bit of financial wherewithal, though certainly not a lot. She promised Adam part of the money she would be receiving from the divorce, and she did in fact give money to him, even though her resources remained limited. Who could have predicted that turn of events? My ex-husband’s second wife, now divorced from him, was helping my son with money. It was another lesson in how complicated, and how amazing, people can be—and a lesson in how stupid it is to try to put anyone in a box. Beth is an extraordinarily decent woman, and even though she and David divorced, she promised him that she’d be there when he died. It was a promise she kept, and when his time came, Beth stayed by his side, sleeping on the floor right by his bed until he passed away.
We can’t ever fully know another person, no matter how close we are to them or how much we love them. I was about to learn this lesson in spades with my new musical director/arranger/accompani
st and very close friend, the brilliant Wally Harper. Wally was about to change my life for the better. I just had to hit absolute rock bottom before that could happen.
14 • WALLY HARPER
I RETAIN ABSOLUTELY no recollection of the very first time Wally and I met, a fact which made both of us laugh throughout our years together. Wally had done summer stock with Joan Kobin, my voice teacher Bob Kobin’s wife, and one day when they were talking, Wally said, out of the blue, “I really admire the singing of Barbara Cook.” Joan said, “My husband is her teacher”; and when Wally came back to town he met Bob. They shared an instant rapport, and Bob became a kind of surrogate father to him.
Wally and I were both also very friendly with Joan, a delightful, very feminine woman whom men adored. One night she and I were at the opera, and Joan was wearing a beautiful dark-red velvet dress. After the interval, when people were returning to their seats, a gentleman stopped in front of her, admired her dress, and said, “I’ve been falling into you all evening.” Ooh-la-la!
Bob taught his method to Wally, which proved to be a big advantage when we planned and performed our concerts. Thanks to Bob, Wally understood exactly how I sang, and our musical partnership evolved into a shorthand that was closer to musical telepathy. He knew where I was headed both musically and lyrically, and was able to provide the musical underpinnings that gave me both freedom and security onstage. Bob died far too young, suffering a fatal heart attack at only forty-eight, but his work lived on through Joan, who continued to teach until she died several decades later. I miss them both terribly.
As to that first meeting with Wally, when I was in She Loves Me, Bob came to see me backstage and brought Wally with him; Bob introduced us but I have absolutely no memory of meeting Wally. Then, sometime after that encounter Wally wrote a musical, The Ballad of Romeo and Juliet, with his then partner Paul Zakrzewski, and they wanted me to play the nurse. They sent me a script and I went to Wally’s apartment to discuss it. I decided I didn’t want to do the show, but we met again in the summer of 1973, when I was appearing in The Gershwin Years. Wally came to see the show three or four times, but for some reason I didn’t connect the person visiting backstage with the Wally Harper who had written the Romeo and Juliet musical. I really didn’t make the connection until I was moving from one apartment to another and came across the script by Paul Zakrzewski and Wally Harper. Finally the lightbulb went on. Of course I was aware of Wally’s work on Broadway as a dance arranger on Company, and as a composer (he wrote new songs for the Debbie Reynolds show Irene), but I had never done any work with him.
By now I hadn’t sung in New York for several years and the fellow who was our advance man on The Gershwin Years decided he wanted to present me in a solo concert. I had been told by Nancy Dussault that Wally was absolutely the best accompanist around, so people got us together. It’s not like I expected an instantaneous meeting of the minds, because everyone has different tastes, but I thought to myself, “What the heck. Let’s just see how this turns out.” And so, on a cold, wintry day in February of 1974 I went to Wally’s apartment on West Seventy-ninth Street to begin working. I walked into his little penthouse carrying the first daffodils of the season, feeling nervous because I didn’t know what to expect.
With the thought of that concert (which never came to pass) in our brains, Wally and I began talking, a conversation that never really stopped for the next thirty years. We’d work on songs and then spend hours talking and getting to know each other. Wally was fourteen years younger than I, born in Ohio in 1941. It turned out that his mother was a music teacher who helped to foster his interest in music, particularly a love of the piano, which took hold of him when he was still a small child.
On that first day together we stood in his kitchen, talking about our lives and about music, and even at that first meeting, Wally already had some extraordinary ideas about arranging for me. Ours was a true musical match because our musical sensibilities dovetailed perfectly.
I think the fact that Wally had studied at Juilliard and the New England Conservatory and loved classical music helped put our relationship on a very solid footing. I’ve always loved classical music, a fact that has informed a lot of my work and phrasing. When, years later, we performed “Not While I’m Around,” the Sondheim song from Sweeney Todd, there’s a point after the bridge when you go back to the melody, and it really kicks in then—it should feel symphonic at that point. It worked like gangbusters when Wally and I performed the song because we both intuitively understood that moment: it’s big because it’s a sudden broadening. There’s no way you’re going to understand that unless you have classical music in your ear and in your DNA, and Wally had it in spades.
When I met Wally, he rescued me professionally, plain and simple—that’s not too strong a word. I was still at a terrible place in my life and had been forced to give up my apartment and use a friend’s place. I was so broke that I was stealing food from the supermarket by slipping sandwich meat in my coat pocket. It was such a terrible moment in my life—I would have been starving if I hadn’t stolen from the store. I wasn’t shoplifting often, but the fact remains that I did when I was desperate. I had let my appearance go and was wearing patched clothes—in every way I was a mess.
But then I met Wally and things just started to fall into place. In the spring of 1974 we did one evening at the Eugene O’Neill Center in Connecticut. It was the first time we performed together. I was very nervous, exceedingly so, but the response was everything we had hoped for. Then the owner of a little club on Forty-sixth Street in Manhattan, Brothers and Sisters, heard we had gotten some material together and asked us to play the club for a couple of weeks. The response was amazing and the cabaret world now opened up, providing me with a completely new experience: when I had been in a Broadway show I never felt that people were coming to see me—they were coming to see the show. I was therefore genuinely surprised when, at Brothers and Sisters, people reached out to touch me as I walked through the crowd and down the narrow aisle to the stage. We were a big hit, our engagement was extended; and one night, Merle Hubbard, who worked with Herbert Breslin, came to see us.
Herbert was a personal manager and publicist for classical artists. He’s the man who was responsible for making Luciano Pavarotti a household name, and he brought Alicia de Larrocha, the pianist, to this country for the first time. Merle insisted Herbert come see us, and although Herbert had never handled a nonclassical singer before, he loved our show and decided he wanted to present us in concert at Carnegie Hall! It was more than a little surreal. The plan was: we were to go from Brothers and Sisters to two weeks at a club in Philadelphia, and then—Holy Hannah!—to Carnegie Hall.
I had played Carnegie Hall, but never as a solo artist. My previous experience at the hall had been as part of a one-night gala in 1961 for Leonard Bernstein’s birthday, a benefit for the New York Philharmonic. The first half of that evening was Lenny’s classical music, and the second half featured his Broadway material. It was the first time I sang “Glitter and Be Gay” since Candide had closed, five years earlier. The applause was thunderous, and I was not only thrilled, but also frightened, and rushed offstage at the end of the song. What happened is that the audience was not only applauding, but also stamping their feet in approval, and the vibration I felt on the stage was so intense that, ridiculous as it sounds, I thought we were having an earthquake. When I made it to the wings I yelled, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” The answer: “Nothing, get back out there!” I was in Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic, singing “Glitter and Be Gay.” So so thrilling! But to counteract any nerves, I just kept telling myself I was in Indianapolis.
Well, that evening in honor of Lenny’s birthday had occurred thirteen years previously, and headlining my own concert at Carnegie was a completely different affair. I was embarrassed by how much weight I had gained, and I was also terrified. Never in my wildest dreams back in Atlanta had I dreamt of appearing in a solo concert at Carnegie
Hall. Never. And to top it off, not only was this my first-ever big solo concert, but it was also being recorded by Columbia Records.
I was still eating too much and I weighed more than I ever had in my life. My drinking was also still a problem. I was feeling pretty lousy about myself and so I shilly-shallied for weeks about committing to Carnegie Hall, just too scared to say, “Yes, let’s do it.” Breslin’s assistant, Merle, called one day and said, “Barbara, today’s the day. Yes or no. If we don’t give Carnegie an answer today we lose the hall.” I paused—everything stopped dead. My heart was pounding, and forty years later I can still visualize the little room I was standing in, the pale light coming in through the apartment’s only window, the feel of the phone in my sweaty hand . . .
And then, in that moment, as Merle was waiting for my answer, I suddenly saw the whole issue in terms of life and death. “Yes” led toward life. When I saw the situation in those terms my answer became an obvious one. “Yes—I’ll do it!” And, to be completely honest, it’s not as if I had a real choice: I hadn’t sung in New York in quite a while until Brothers and Sisters, hadn’t performed much of anywhere in years, and as a result I was nearly flat broke. It was now or never. January 26, 1975, it would be.
Herbert had many connections at Carnegie Hall, and knowing how frightened I was, he did everything he could to help us out. He arranged for Wally and me to walk onto the stage several times so that I could get used to the idea of standing center stage at Carnegie Hall. By this time I had already learned that Wally could be a very funny guy with a sense of humor that was . . . out there. Waaaaay out there. And the Carnegie Hall concert just happened to come up when he was in his furniture-licking period. Yes, furniture. If we were in somebody’s apartment and the owner was nearby, he would lick the furniture behind their back to make me laugh. So it wasn’t really a surprise for me the first time we were allowed onto the Carnegie Hall stage and I saw Wally on his hands and knees, licking the stage of Carnegie Hall.