Good Things Happen Slowly

by Fred Hersch

  To fill in the calendar and keep the books balanced, I took a few money jobs for commercial clients, composing and recording anonymously. I wrote jingles for watch companies, shirt manufacturers, and sporting equipment. I wrote and produced the jingle for Woman’s World, a B-grade supermarket magazine published on the Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge. The magazine was no worse than many others like it, actually, and neither was my jingle. In my newfound role as Fred Hersch, businessman, I saw no shame in keeping my company afloat with some work that nobody would ever associate with Fred Hersch, jazz pianist. That said, I rarely talked about my commercial work with my jazz colleagues until I started working on this book. David Hajdu, the music critic and cultural historian, once told me during a late-night conversation about our early careers that he had been writing articles for Woman’s World under a pseudonym at the same time I was writing the magazine’s jingle.

  Through the studio I met producers Ettore Stratta and Mike Berniker. Berniker was a longtime fixture as a house producer at Columbia Records. He produced Barbra Streisand’s first albums, signed the popular group Duran Duran, and produced most of Columbia’s mainstream older pop artists. Through him, and back when there were budgets for such things, we went often to London to record classical/jazz crossover albums, big orchestra records with artists such as Johnny Mathis and Jack Jones, and schmaltzy records of songs from the British invasion of Broadway in the 1980s: The Phantom of the Opera, Me and My Girl, and Les Miserábles. We stayed in fancy hotels and ate well on CBS’s dime. Berniker was a blast to work with, and it was at his urging that I did my first arrangements for string orchestra, a musical skill that became more a part of my life as time went on.

  The end of Classic Sound came one night in 1988 when I was playing with Joe Henderson at the Village Vanguard. It seemed like every musician was coming up to me on the set breaks with some variation on “Hey, Fred, how’s the studio?” I went out after the last set for a few drinks at Bradley’s, arrived home a bit wasted, turned on the control room lights, and looked at all the gear there—some of which I didn’t quite know the purpose of. I said to myself, That’s it. Within a month I had sold the tape recorder, microphones, and console and started sleeping in the control room. I never looked back—the adventure had lasted five years and put me in debt for the first time in my life. Through the studio I learned about sound and producing records while becoming quite comfortable in the recording studio environment as a musician. I also met a lot of people who would figure in my life as I went forward. But I was living a double life in my musical ventures of jazz pianist at night and studio owner by day. How many lives could one person live at the same time?

  Back a few months before the studio was under construction, toward the end of my relationship with Eric, I was preparing to work with Stan Getz for the first time. He came to the loft one day to rehearse late in the afternoon. He buzzed the buzzer on the ground floor, and I let him into the building. While he was coming up the elevator to the fifth floor, I looked over the place to make sure everything was in place for the rehearsal. He got out of the elevator and buzzed another buzzer to get onto my floor, and I buzzed him in again. There’s a long hall from the elevator to my loft, which is at the rear of the building. While Stan was walking down the hall, I was doing some final tidying up before meeting him at the door—and it suddenly hit me that if Stan used the bathroom in the back of the loft, he would be able to see that there were two toothbrushes on the sink: mine and Eric’s. I panicked.

  Acting cool, I showed Stan into the main room. As he put his saxophone case down, I darted to the bathroom, grabbed Eric’s toothbrush, and hid it in the bathroom drawer. I made a quick pass around the room to make sure there was nothing “gay” out where it could be seen.

  When the rehearsal was over and I was alone in the loft, I went into the bathroom to put Eric’s toothbrush back where it belonged. I held it in my hand, and I froze. I just stood there and stared at the toothbrush. I thought to myself, What am I doing? This is my home. This is my life. Eric is part of my life. Why am I hiding? Why am I pretending?

  It would have to stop.

  CHAPTER 8

  HORIZONS

  Before there was a medical term for it, gay men knew something very, very bad was happening in the early 1980s. The first signs appeared in 1981 and ’82, as word spread through the gay community that previously healthy people were suddenly developing strange symptoms and, before long, dying. First there was a report of gay men on the West Coast who had come down with what appeared to be a rare strain of pneumonia—or getting Kaposi’s sarcoma, a cancer that until that time had only been seen in elderly men from the Mediterranean region. Then came stories about men in cities around the country who seemed to be falling gravely ill for no apparent reason. In less than a year’s time, the disease—whatever it was—was inescapable.

  You’d be at a bar or on Fire Island, and the guy you had seen not long ago looking totally sexy—hardy, energetic, and bright-eyed—was almost unrecognizable. Now his skin was gray and loose on his bones, his eyes were dim and set deep in their sockets, and his face was splattered with purple lesions. Then you would never see him again. I had an unrequited crush on a man prominent in gay circles, Paul Popham, who was warm, smart, and drop-dead handsome. But when I saw him last, right before his death, there was just a shell of a man, stooped over, walking with a cane, and wheezing.

  Nobody knew what the problem was, how it started, how it spread, or if there was any way to treat or contain it. The only thing the victims seemed to have in common was that they were, in the majority of known cases, homosexual and male, Haitian, or drug-addicted. (In time, terms such as “victims” would be supplanted with the less stigmatic designation PLWA—people living with AIDS.) It was a pandemic in process, and one of seemingly devious selectivity. With no other name for it, people were calling it the gay plague; its first acronym was GRID (gay-related immune deficiency).

  In the fall of 1982 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Intervention named the mysterious ailment acquired immunodeficiency syndrome: AIDS. For gay men it was a horror beyond comprehension. It had been less than fifteen years since Stonewall—when men first dared to be out without much fear of being locked up—and to many of us, looking good and having lots of sex defined being gay. AIDS depleted the body in a highly visible way as it contorted the mind, feeding the sublimated homophobia that was all too common for homosexual men in those years. You’d wonder: Why is this happening to so many gay men? What are we being punished for? Is there something wrong with us? Then you’d shake your head and realize how terribly wrong it was to be thinking that way.

  With the newly named but still mystifying and terrifying contagion of AIDS spreading uncontrollably, this was a treacherous time to be a gay man playing the field. I wanted to enjoy my newfound freedom but not at the risk of my life. No one yet knew what AIDS was, exactly—a “syndrome” by definition, though all that meant was that it was something, a condition of some kind. It was not until mid-1983 that researchers determined that AIDS appeared to be caused by some kind of virus. No one yet knew how it spread or why certain people or groups of people seemed to be more susceptible to it than others. Could it be airborne? Carried on clothing or drinking glasses or environmental surfaces like tabletops and the handgrips in subway cars? Or contracted through the exchange of bodily fluids? If so, which fluids? Saliva? Blood? Semen? Sweat?

  At this point, having been successful as a gigging jazz musician and now running a recording studio of my own, I was fairly assured socially. I had no trouble talking to strange men, for the most part, and I was confident sexually, even though I tended to be attracted to men who were physically or emotionally unavailable—much like my father was to me, a not uncommon pattern for gay men. And as with many gay men, pornography became a part of my life once the VCR was invented. But like most of us, I was appropriately terrified of AIDS and not entirely sure how to function socially and sexually in the atmosphere
of what was rapidly emerging as an epidemic. And yet even as I acted out my feelings with compulsive sex, as many of us did at the time, I read everything I could about the issue, which was being covered exhaustively but without undue panic or sensationalism in the Advocate and other gay publications. I followed the health recommendations as they were made, trying to be as responsible as I knew how to be. I mostly (but not always) had protected sex and never once took drugs intravenously. Thinking back on the time I had done heroin with Chet Baker, I was glad I had snorted and not shot up.

  I began to hear of a few drug-using jazz musicians who passed away mysteriously. The fine pianist Albert Dailey, who played for years with Stan Getz and was one of the first guys to let me sit in on his gig when I was new to New York, shriveled up before our eyes and died—and rumors began to spread about the cause of his death. His was the earliest death that I knew of in the jazz community that was probably from AIDS due to drug use, and it was frightening. I saw men all around me growing ill and recognized the symptoms when I began to get them myself. Over the course of 1984 I felt progressively weaker and weirdly off-kilter, as if I was coming down with a flu that never fully arrived. I felt thirsty all the time. If I got up quickly to answer the phone, I’d feel a little woozy. My skin hurt when I shaved. I developed molluscum facial warts. I was losing weight. I just felt “off.”

  Early in 1984, just I was making plans to record my first album as a leader, I saw my doctor, a general practitioner named Stan Roman who happened to be gay and had quite a few gay patients. He had been dealing with men with AIDS since it had first surfaced in New York. He was attuned to the disease and could recognize its early effects as well as any doctor in practice at the time. Unfortunately for countless men, there was no reliable diagnostic test for AIDS until someone determined what to test for. It was not until April of the year before that a team of researchers at the National Cancer Institute identified the retrovirus HTLV-III as the cause of AIDS.

  Dr. Roman said, “Well, let’s just monitor your T-cell count.” Being a syndrome defined as a deficiency of the autoimmune system, AIDS was associated with a reduction in the number of T-cells in the bloodstream. As every gay man knew by this time, T-cells (sometimes referred to as CD4 cells) play a key role in fighting disease and could be measured by a blood test that was standard for chemotherapy patients and others with compromised immune systems. By the mid-1980s the science of immunology had become part of the standard vocabulary of gay life. In some cases, especially outside the major cities, patients knew more about the disease than their doctors by reading pre-Internet medical journals.

  Scared but still driven in my career, I carried on my usual routine, making music and going out, feeling worse by the week. I tried to keep my calendar booked, figuring that if I had a gig a month or two down the road, I needed to stay alive to do it. Every four months I took a blood test for my T-cell count. With every test, my count dropped. The normal range is approximately 800 to 1,500 T-cells per cubic milliliter of blood. Before the end of 1984, my count had steadily sunk until it got to around 400. Dr. Roman reviewed the pattern of my deteriorating immune system and said, “Fred, this looks like AIDS.”

  This came as no surprise to me. I had felt in my bones for a couple of years that I probably had AIDS. My doctor’s statement only moved me closer to the reality of it. I never knew exactly when and from whom I may have been infected—thus being spared the “if only I would have—or not have—done this with someone in particular” that would have been even more demoralizing. I may have been infected as early as the time I was living with Eric and he was sleeping around.

  But what was in store for me now? Very little was known about the disease except that there was no cure and that it was ultimately fatal. You didn’t die from the virus itself, but the immune system was so compromised by it that you were susceptible to a host of opportunistic infections that could carry you away. By the end of 1984 there were about 7,000 cases of AIDS reported in the United States and more than 5,500 deaths. The numbers would double the following year and double again the year after that. To be diagnosed with AIDS was a death sentence. I don’t say that with self-pity or melodrama. This was the reality. AIDS was an unknown new disease, ravaging and lethal.

  The men I knew with AIDS responded in varying ways. Eric, my former boyfriend, was diagnosed around the same time I was, and his reaction was one of cavalier fatalism: If I’m dying, I may as well go out blazing. I’m going to make the most of the time I have. For Eric, that meant an accelerated and compressed schedule of partying. I wouldn’t begrudge him the privilege, and I found myself having the same kinds of feelings at times—I’m on my way out, so fuck it all! For me, though, the impulses toward resignation or recklessness were at odds with each other. After the initial numbness and denial passed, I began to feel a complicated mix of emotions and urges, some of them deeply dark, some oddly life-affirming and constructive. In an effort to do something positive, I resolved to make my first recorded statement as a bandleader—I didn’t know how much time I had left.

  I probably could have made my debut album earlier. After all, I had been a sideman on numerous dates and even had my own recording studio. But I had a certain amount of pride in wanting to be paid by a real record label to make the album. I wanted them to pay me and the side musicians, to cover the recording costs, and to have a plan and a budget for its release and promotion.

  Having been a sideman on two Art Farmer albums for Concord, I figured I was in a position to ask them for a record deal, and they agreed to take me on. Though conservative in its roster, Concord did have a number of fine pianists on the label, and it would make sure the album got reviews, distribution in stores, and radio play. It was a big deal to me to feel “signed” to a real label.

  I focused with an acute sense of purpose on making this album, a trio record. The classic trio format was favored by many of my piano heroes, and I was doing more and more trio playing at that time. I used bassist Marc Johnson, a musician just a couple of years older than me who had played in Bill Evans’s last trio until Evans’s death in 1980. Marc had a great harmonic sense and a contemporary-feeling approach to line that suited the musically grounded but forward-looking sound I wanted. For drums I used Joey Baron, an adventurous and experienced player. Joey is a highly creative musician with a keen sense of tone and texture as well as superb time. Marc and I had played duos at the Knickerbocker, and Joey, Marc, and I were also playing together backing the Belgian harmonica legend Toots Thielemans. We also did a few local trio gigs around New York City. We had good energy together, and it was a joy to make music with them. I produced the record at Classic Sound with the engineer Michael MacDonald at the soundboard. We did the recording live to two-track over two days of sessions in October 1984.

  I called the album Horizons. I liked the word’s evocation of both equilibrium and aspiration. I used the plural to suggest that multiple possibilities lie before us all—at a distance, perhaps, but in sight. For me, at that moment, the future was clearly uncertain. But I was just beginning as a recording artist. It was strange and disorienting to be starting, in a way, as I was facing the prospect that everything could be ending for me.

  The selections on the album were tunes from all corners of the jazz world that I enjoyed playing: standards such as “My Heart Stood Still,” the Rodgers and Hart ballad from the 1920s, which I refashioned as a bright, swinging number; “Moon and Sand,” one of the treasures by Alec Wilder that I learned from the songbook he had given me at Bradley’s; “The Star-Crossed Lovers,” the lush Billy Strayhorn tune (officially credited jointly to Duke Ellington and Strayhorn but composed and initially recorded by Strayhorn), which Tommy Flanagan had taught me; and pieces from the contemporary jazz repertoire such as Herbie Hancock’s sprightly “One Finger Snap” and Wayne Shorter’s lovely “Miyako.” The album closes with a bright, up-tempo composition I had written for the occasion, “Cloudless Sky.” Though the repertoire was diverse, I deliberately selected
a group of tunes that just felt right to do. I thought that the range of songs would let the public know who I was as an interpretive pianist and as an emerging bandleader. If a young visual artist paints a classic subject—a bowl of fruit, a landscape, or a nude—you can see where that artist is coming from. If all of the music would have been my own (not that I had enough strong original pieces at that point), it might have been more difficult for the listener to place me in the context in which I wanted to be seen. All of the selections were unified by a style that I hoped was becoming recognizable as my own. From the beginning of my recording career, I’ve wanted each album I made to have integrity and a natural progression from tune to tune. Sequencing an album (or a club or concert set) is like planning a menu—you need variety of tempo, key, and mood. You wouldn’t serve a meal of all starches and no vegetables or protein.

  Though we were recording in my own studio and I was playing my own Steinway, I was surprisingly nervous at first. I was also the producer for the album, so I was responsible for both the music and the sound, a lot to take on when you have never done an album as a leader. I recognize now that there is never a perfect time to make your first album—you have to jump into the water and let your experience guide you. You must believe that you will make many more and that this album is just one musical snapshot of where you are at that time, on those two days in the studio. But for me the second album was not a certainty, so everything became loaded—and on the first day I was frustrated by almost everything. I was feeling like I had to drive the musical bus myself, and I was thinking and judging rather than listening or feeling. But on the second day I was less anxious, able to allow the guys in the band to give me their musical support—I put one phrase after another in a relaxed way, and I had some fun doing it. There are flaws, but in the end I was able to make a record I was pleased with.