Straight Life (68 page)

I'd gone into Synanon in '68 because my life was chaos and I was suicidal as a result of using pills, pot, and alcohol. In 1979, I'd been clean for eleven years. Then one day, while I was repainting the bathroom, Art suggested that a sniff of coke would make the work go faster. I'd never tried it before. Within the next week or so I'd not only repainted the bathroom, I'd put new linoleum on the floor, built shelves, made window curtains, repainted my office and the kitchen, wallpapered Art's room, and recarpeted the whole house. By my self. With probably half an ounce of coke. And built a trellis around the front porch and planted bougainvillea to climb it in front of this dilapidated shack we were renting in Van Nuys.

Over the next months and years I continued to use cocaine. It wasn't always fun. Frequently it was nerve-wrack- ingly, teeth-gnashingly just awful, but whenever it was around, I still had to use it, and it was around most of the time because it was Art's fuel. I started drinking in order to come down. I gained weight, lost health, lost dignity. Many people we knew during the next few years used coke, too, and I believe I was sufficiently sneaky to make most of the ones who didn't use it think I didn't use it either. No one, except Art, seemed to notice that I was an addict. And Art liked me getting high with him, especially since, when we only had a little, or we were traveling and had to make it last, all the coke was his. Not long after Art died I cleaned up for good.

So I was using coke on the book tour. I was energetic and efficient, keeping us moving, confirmed, and on time. Right around then Straight Life, the album, was released.

The record company Art refers to in the last chapter of the book was Fantasy Records (Art recorded on their Galaxy label). The album he talks about was Art Pepper Today. It was a wonderful album and very successful, voted the best jazz album of the year in France, really popular in Japan, it even sold well here. They had recorded and released a second album, Straight Life, to coincide with the book tour. That album is one of my very favorites, and it did well, too.

When Fantasy signed Art early in '79, it seemed like a miracle to me. Since Les's death, I'd been trying, with no luck, to find Art a label. And he desperately longed for the security of a recording contract and the sense that some company would be his home. He needed a Daddy. He found one in Ralph Kaffel, the President of Fantasy. Ralph was actually seven years younger than Art. That didn't matter. Ralph was perfect. He's calm and enigmatic, has a beard and just a trace of an accent (he's Russian). He's witty and very, very smart, softspoken, unpretentious, a little eccentric. He was everything Art admired in a man: He was a gentleman. And he obviously liked Art or why would he sign him?

This is how it happened: In June of '78, I had brought Art back from the Oregon tour during which he'd suffered some kind of a physical "episode." He was aphasic. He was confused, frightened, resentful, incredibly lethargic. I put him in the V.A. Hospital. I was working as a temp, and during weekends and evenings I was doing all the interviews I used in STRAIGHT LIFE-which had been bought by Macmillan. I visited Art every day. I brought him his clarinet but he wouldn't even try to play it. It was at this time that I first heard from Fantasy. Their main office was and is in Berkeley, but at that time they had a small L.A. office, and they employed a fellow named Bob Kirstein. Bob called me in the middle of this and asked if Art would be interested in signing with Galaxy, Fantasy's jazz label. I'd never heard of them. I told Bob the truth. I said that Art was hospitalized and didn't even know his own name. I didn't know whether he'd get better or how much better he'd get or whether he'd ever play again. A C.A.T. scan had turned up some brain damage, but they weren't sure of the nature of it.

Bob was very laid back. "Well," he said, "just please keep in touch with us and let us know how he's doing; we'd really like to sign him." A week later Bob called again. How is he? A week later, ditto. I mean, these people wouldn't leave us alone. And Art slowly got better. In July Art and I went to see Bob in Fantasy's L.A. office. Art was still kind of out of it, but we'd carefully discussed the terms of the contract before we went, mostly standard stuff. We'd been warned Ralph Kaffel would have to approve everything. We sat down, and I told Bob what we wanted. He listened. When I finished Art spoke up for the first time. He said, "And a non-recoupable bonus of $10,000 for signing." I nearly fell off my chair.

I like to think I kept a straight face. Bob nodded. That night he called us and said that Ralph had agreed. In August we flew up to Berkeley. Art said they wanted to make sure that he could walk and talk. We chatted with Ralph who took us on a tour of the studios. He informed us that Ed Michel, working freelance under Orrin Keepnews, head of A&R, would be Art's producer. I objected.

During the summer of 1959, when I was in my teens, I worked at an L.A. coffee house called The Ash Grove. I sold records in a shop in the club. Ed Michel was the house rhythm section. He played the bass for the folkies who didn't bring their own bands. Ed was dating one of the waitresses, and he and I became good pals. When he wasn't working we'd spend hours talking and philosophizing. He was wise and old. I think he was 21. I went off to college and Ed went to work for Pacific Jazz and then for Verve in L.A. He worked for an American based company in Europe. So Ed and I never saw each other again. For eighteen years. Until one Saturday in 1976 or '77, Les Koenig called to say that he would be coming by Donte's, an L.A. jazz club, to hear Art play. That was rare. He was bringing two friends, both record producers. John Snyder and Ed Michel. Ed Michel! Does he play the bass? Same guy. The evening was fine; Art played wonderfully. He played some ballad, and Les, not given much to praise let alone hyperbole, remarked that Art was probably the greatest ballad player living. John agreed. Ed said, "Oh, I don't know...."

Once, during the book tour, when I asked Art after an interview why he seemed to have taken such an obvious dislike to the interviewer, he gave me this classic reply: "He wasn't reverent enough." Well, Ed Michel has never been reverent enough-toward anyone, about anything. Even though I still had warm feelings for him from the past, I didn't think he deserved to produce Art's albums. I told Ralph I didn't think he was the best person for the job.

Ralph smiled. He said, "Well, let's go and talk to him. I think you'll like him." We talked to him. Ed can be really charming when he feels like it. He felt like it. Art liked him well enough. I was reconciled. Ed became Art's producer and was the shrewd and patient guiding force behind some of the best work Art ever did.

(Ed told me later that when Ralph informed him he was signing Art, Ed said, "What do you want to do that for? He's a great player, but he's nuts. Why do you want all that trouble?" I asked Ed what Ralph said to that. Ed said Ralph smiled.)

These were some of the key creative relationships of Art's last years. John Snyder promoted and sponsored the '77 East Coast tour which put Art back on the scene. And the magnificent Contemporary recordings of Art at the Village Vanguard were made possible largely through his efforts. He also produced what turned out to be four of Art's great late recordings (So In Love, Artworks, The New York Album and Stardust). Ed Michel produced most (but not all) of the rest of them. Ralph Kaffel gave Art the support and security he required. Another creative relationship was the one Art had with George Cables.

Les had brought George in to play piano for Art's The Trip album and for the one that followed it, No Limit, in 1977. After that Art worked with George, locally, whenever he could, and in 1979, I managed to hire George away from Freddie Hubbard for our third and so-far biggest tour of Japan. (Three terrific albums eventually came out of that tour, Landscape, Besame Mucho, and Tokyo Encore). Art loved the way George played and compared him to his all-time favorite pianist, Wynton Kelly. I have a series of snapshots of Art listening to George solo in a nightclub. First, listening raptly, eyes closed. Then staring with amazed delight. Then, gesturing to the audience, "Did you hear that? Isn't he incredible?" George is probably also one of the sweetest people on earth. He's a decorous man, but he's an affectionate man. Art was always afraid to touch people, but he loved to be hugged, patted, and pushed by those open and generous people, like George, who are able to do that sort of thing. George has an empathetic, tender heart, and it comes out in his music, and Art responded to him on every level. In those years George was irresponsible and late, late all the time. It didn't matter. Art was overjoyed to see him when he showed. One of my nicknames for George was "Monsignor," and George told me that, in fact, when he was young he'd planned to be a preacher. George is just good. And George is black, and that was really important to Art.

The scrap of poetry at the beginning of STRAIGHT LIFE comes from one of Ezra Pound's translations-of a poem called "Exile's Letter." The whole poem seemed apropos to me, because in Art's view he had been exiled, by color, from his own world, the world of jazz.

He was hanging out, actually working on Central Avenue from age fourteen. He was accepted and admired in a world he loved. Then he was suddenly rejected by that world. That's how he saw it, at age 18, when he experienced racism for the first time in North Carolina. He spent most of the rest of his life in a state of chronic paranoia, only it wasn't always paranoia (as I first believed) because the bad vibes he got from many black musicians-sarcasms, slights, willful incomprehension, onstage shenanigans-were not usually imaginary (and were not a response to anything he, personally, had done). And he was incredibly sensitive to that stuff. Always expecting it. As he said in STRAIGHT LIFE, "people don't like you, pretty soon you don't like them." Pretty soon he got bitter, suspicious, and nasty. And then prison just exacerbated everything.

But I believe Art's last years were a period of reconciliation for him. The tension never ended, but during those years it seemed a lot of black musicians became kinder, more tolerant, and Art was always exceedingly grateful-and my tongue is not in my cheek. He was cynical, but when he found genuine acceptance he was so grateful. A typical example of the kind of bad/good thing that happened: In 1980 Art was playing a prestigious European concert in a major concert hall as part of an all-star lineup. Each soloist got one featured performance piece. Art chose to do "Over the Rainbow." He was accompanied by an all black rhythm section, a very well known pianist, and a bassist and a drummer who were fairly famous. Art, during that time, always played "Rainbow" with a long a capella intro, a kind of wild, passionate, personal statement, and then, unlike most jazz players, he explored not just the song's melody and structure but its emotional content as well, so he kept the tempo slow, never sped it for variety or pyrotechnics. He loved ballads so much. He revered and envied the great singers who sang them. He couldn't make his voice hum an identifiable phrase, so he used his horn to speak and sing these beautiful songs. And he played each one, each time, as if his life depended on it. On this important evening, he carefully told the band what he wanted. He told the pianist, "Don't play an introduction. I'll start out alone and signal when I start the melody." He told the drummer, "No double-time, just brushes." They preceded him to the stage and sat down. Art was introduced and walked on. But before he could reach the mike, the pianist lifted his hands and dived into an introduction. Maybe he forgot the instructions. Maybe he resented them. Art's previous experience told him that it was sabotage and racially motivated. In the middle of the song, the drummer, very obviously bored with just brushes, got up and left the stage during Art's solo. Just walked off. After a few minutes, he wandered back on with a glass of water in his hand, casually sat down and picked up his brushes. It wasn't a long song. How thirsty could he have been? Art got mad. He always played great mad. He played great that night. He got a long, long, standing ovation. At the end of the show, all the stars were lined up on stage, and each took a bow. Art got an absolute roar of love from the crowd, and as the guys came walking off (I saw and heard this), Freddie Hubbard put his arm around Art's shoulder and said, "Man, you got the biggest hand of all of us." The drummer overheard and said, "Yeah, why was that?" Freddie said, "Because he's the greatest alto saxophone player in the world, that's why."

When we were at the Nice festival the second time, in '81, one of the booths at the festival had jazz photographs for sale. Art stopped to look at the pictures. He asked the girl in the booth, "No white jazz musicians? You don't have pictures of any white musicians?" She giggled and stared at him. I said, "Art, she's French. She doesn't understand you." He said, "She understands. No white guys?" The girl blushed, shook her head, and said, clearly, no, they had only black musicians. She giggled again, and Art laughed with her, resigned, but not bitter. The band we were touring with then was the Art Pepper Quartet, George Cables, David Williams, and Carl Burnett: three black guys with whom Art had found accord. With George, especially, there was intimacy and love. Although it wasn't exactly Central Avenue. One time, when Art was explaining to George how he wanted a tune to sound he kept using a phrase he often used-it meant funky-he said, "down home." George got irritated, and he finally said, "What do you mean, 'down home,' man? I'm from Brooklyn!"

George, Carl, David, Ed Michel, the greatly talented Bulgarian, Milcho Leviev, Art's alternative pianist during those years-these were good friends. But there were bad friends, too. As far as I was concerned, the bad friends were the fans who wanted to be near Art no matter what, and who gave Art bad drugs-in order to spend time with him. They couldn't be reasoned with, wouldn't be discouraged or driven away. They messed him up. And then they got to tell people that they knew Art Pepper, and, "Boy, he's really messed up." Bad drugs were alcohol (he had very little liver left that wasn't cirrhotic), powerful downers, uppers that burned up his body and his brain, and Valium. Valium: First it made him dopey and forgetful, then, as an afterthought, it rendered him psychotic. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but it seemed to happen the same way every time. He'd take some Valium and then, six to eight hours later, he'd decide that he'd lost a gram of coke and that he had to find it. He'd ransack the house, turning out every single drawer and closet, every container, taking things apart, dismantling the beds, all the furniture, pulling up the carpeting (he did that once in a motel when we were on the road). I could promise, I could deliver, more coke. It didn't matter-he had to find that particular gram. I never touched Valium. Years earlier I'd learned that its hangover depression made me want to kill myself. Art never learned, and these people always gave it to him. "It was only Valium," they'd say. The not-so-bad drugs were small amounts of cocaine, which he was using anyway, and marijuana (which affected his sightreading ability. He stopped being able to read music, even his own charts, when he smoked).