Then and Now (20 page)

Elaine would call me from time to time, and the surprising thing was that she would greet me as if we were bosom buddies. It was as if she assumed we were much closer than we really were. At the very end of her life she moved back to her native Michigan to live near her closest relatives. When she died, in July of 2014, her death was front-page news in the
New York Times
, which seemed only fitting. She'd have loved the placement. There will never be another like her. She could make me crazy, but a part of me loved her, too.

After the
Follies
concerts in 1985, I took on a full-scale musical in 1988, the infamous and ill-fated
Carrie
. The show was a Royal Shakespeare Company production based on the best-selling horror novel by Stephen King, and was to play in Stratford-Upon-Avon. From the start, everything went wrong, and the show became the stuff of legend for all of the wrong reasons.

This was offbeat material to begin with, a musical about a girl with telekinetic powers seeking revenge on those who have abused her. I was to play Margaret White, Carrie's fanatically religious mother who ultimately tries to kill her daughter to save the world from her destructive power. It was all a long way from Marian the Librarian. At the climax of the show there was going to be blood everywhere onstage as lives were ended or ruined—it was all pretty far out. And yet . . . I liked some of the score a great deal. Actually, there were two scores: one for Carrie and her mother, and the other, a 1950s rock-and-roll score, for the high school students. The relationship between mother and daughter had the po
tential to be complex and emotionally involving. The key word here is “potential”—because I think it didn't turn out that way.

Fran and Barry Weissler were originally slated to produce the show, and it was they who first asked me to sign on. I turned them down, but then director Terry Hands came to speak with me; Terry is a very smart, seductive man, and he explained certain scenes in such clear detail that I could see myself in them. I knew I could perform the show he described, and it was exciting to think of appearing in a Royal Shakespeare Company production. I said yes, but the one smart thing I did was sign only for England. There was no mention in my contract of my appearing in the transfer to Broadway. The company manager mentioned to me he was aware of my not being signed for New York and brought it up several times with the producer, who always said, “Later, I'm busy now.”

In Terry's first meeting with Fran Weissler, she told him she wanted the show to have the feeling of
Grease
. He thought she meant “Greece” and the next time they met he had costume designs for the gym teacher and girls with all kinds of classical-era drapery. Fran and Barry dropped out, but by then Terry was wedded to the Grecian drapery and helmets. He was convinced that
Carrie
was a Greek tragedy. It's hard to believe this next point, but, please, believe me, it's true: sometime after
Carrie
Terry left the RSC, and was being interviewed about his career. When the subject of
Carrie
came up, he said: “I realize I made many mistakes with
Carrie
. Chiefly among them I thought the show was a Greek tragedy. I was wrong. It's a Roman tragedy.”

Soon after we started rehearsals I realized that not one person involved had ever put together a new musical from scratch. The most basic, essential building blocks eluded the creators, and at one point during technical rehearsals the entire company and orchestra
sat doing absolutely nothing while Terry Hands lit the show. Tens of thousands of dollars were flying out the window. I actually went to the lead producer, Friedrich Kurz, and told him, “These people don't know what they're doing. Put whatever deutschmarks you have left in your pocket and walk away. It will be a disaster.” Friedrich didn't listen—he felt he had to honor his commitment.

I went to Terry and said, “There's nothing wrong with asking for help—everyone does it all the time.” But no one was willing to acknowledge the need for help in nearly every department. They didn't even have a dance arranger lined up, and I asked for Wally Harper to come over to London and begin work on arrangements. The composer, Michael Gore, was furious when Wally arrived. He felt I just wanted Wally with us to join my camp, and I think he was afraid Wally might want to change some of his music. But the existing dance arrangements were far from the only problem. Debbie Allen, the choreographer, had also never put a new show together before. Since
Oklahoma!
back in 1943, musical numbers have had to further the story, but the numbers in
Carrie
came across like nice dances for television—nothing more. Matters were not helped when I gave an interview and, when asked how it was all progressing, blurted out: “We're doing a lot of work but it's like rearranging the deck chairs on the
Titanic
.”

I began keeping a journal because the entire experience soon became utterly surreal. I said to the production stage manager that no one could believe what was happening, because they would have no frame of reference.

I knew from day one that I was not doing my best work because I never felt comfortable with the material. As rehearsals continued I told the creators that the mother—namely, me—needed a song about how horrible it would be to kill her daughter. Better
yet, I said, give her a song during which she makes the decision to kill her and we see what her thoughts are. They agreed and then wrote a beautiful song about how quiet the house would be without Carrie. WRONG. It was a lovely song, but it didn't touch on what I had asked for. I think they didn't always know which parts of the story should be musicalized.

No one had thought through any of the practicalities. One of the early scenes took place in the doorless showers of the girls' high school locker room, so while they were in the shower the audience could clearly see their microphone battery packs and that they were wearing their underclothes. Believability went right out the window. When the same girls put on their Grecian clothes for gym class in present-day United States, you had to be thinking, “What the hell is going on?”

In the end, we had a show made up of two separate and distinct musicals: one was about the kids in Carrie's high school, and the other was a serious musical drama about Carrie (played by the terrific and very young Linzi Hateley) and her mother. The two shows never came together, and audiences were justifiably confused—and sometimes provoked into fits of unintended laughter.

I left the show at the end of the engagement in England, but I did go to see it during its very brief run on Broadway in May of 1988. It was still a disaster, and they hadn't solved any of the basic problems, let alone details like why the gym teacher was leading class in high-heeled pumps . . . I was incredibly relieved not to be a part of the show but found myself moved by Linzi, who at the very young age of seventeen gave a strong, solid performance. She had turned in a terrific professional performance in England and was even better in New York. There was so much chaos putting this show on, and she was the rock that held us all together, but she
couldn't make this wrongheaded show into a hit.
Carrie
had been a very popular, successful book, and a very popular, successful movie. The musical proved to be neither. In 2012 it came back as a much smaller-scale musical. The reviews were far from vitriolic this time, most of them remarking on how bland the show now seemed, as if all the juice had been drained out of it. It ran for one month and then quietly disappeared.

In 1994, six years after
Carrie
, I returned to London to appear in concert at the Sadler's Wells Theatre. I had a great time, the show was recorded live, and I received perhaps the most laudatory review I've ever received, from Alastair Macaulay in the
Financial Times
: “Barbara Cook is the greatest singer in the world. . . . Ms. Cook is the only popular singer active today who should be taken seriously by lovers of classical music. Has any singer since Callas matched Cook's sense of musical architecture? I doubt it.” I know we're not supposed to take reviews seriously—good or bad—but I ain't gonna forget that one. I was grateful for the praise, but I also maintained a healthy dose of self-doubt—was I really that good? I knew I was singing well, but I always feel there's more to learn. What I do think is true is that by this time I felt so free onstage that it was like entering a kind of zone, my own world, where sometimes, when the song ended, I didn't really want to come back, because it felt so good in there.

In the same year as the Sadler's Wells concerts I was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame, in a ceremony at New York's Gershwin Theatre. It was a great honor, but I don't think of myself as being in a “hall of fame.” I feel like I'm still a work in progress. (I felt the same way in 2002, when I was named a “living landmark” by the New York Landmarks Conservancy, for “having defined the city in my own legendary way.” Those are very nice words,
but obviously I can't begin to think of myself that way. A living landmark? I just want to keep working. And maybe learn to swear a little less.)

Wally and I continued with a busy schedule of concerts and recordings, including an appearance at the Sydney Opera House as part of the 2000 Summer Olympics Arts Festival. The biggest milestone, however was the show we called
Mostly Sondheim
, which premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2001 and was subsequently released as a live recording that sold very well.

Both the show itself and that inspired title were Wally's ideas. He's the one who remembered an article in the Sunday
New York Times
Magazine
in which Stephen Sondheim listed a lot of songs he wishes he had written. Wally said “Let's do a show—half the songs will be by Stephen and half will be those he wishes he had written.” We could call it
Mostly Sondheim
. It was a brilliant idea.

After Carnegie Hall we took the show to London's West End, to the Lyric Theatre, and I received two Olivier Award nominations, one for Best Entertainment and another for Best Actress in a Musical. I didn't win either award, but that was fine with me; I was performing material I loved, singing songs that were so complex and sophisticated that I discovered new facets at every single performance. After London we took the show to Lincoln Center, where we performed it from December 2001 until August 2002. I received a Tony nomination for Best Theatrical Event, and although I didn't win I was thrilled with the reception the show received. It wasn't just the chance to explore Stephen's gems like “In Buddy's Eyes” from
Follies
; it was also the sheer fun of singing songs none of us ever imagined Stephen might have wished he'd written, like “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee” and “Hard Hearted Hannah.” Mike Nichols came to see the show and wrote me a
lovely letter about how much he had enjoyed the evening: “You and Wally breathe together and it's impossible to know where one leaves off and the other begins. Together you are immortal. You gave us something we will never forget. I had Judy at Carnegie Hall, for which I was there, and now you at the Beaumont. Thank you.” I was overwhelmed. Coming from Mike Nichols, that letter meant everything.

Wally and I then put together one more conceptual concert,
Barbara Cook's Broadway!
, which we performed in 2004 at Lincoln Center Theater. I received a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance, but what I remember most clearly from the show is the extraordinary present Wally gave to me.

I talked in the show about always having wanted to see my name in lights—real electric lights, real old-fashioned bulbs—and it was Wally who made that happen. I was onstage at Lincoln Center, chatting with the audience, when they all started to applaud; I didn't know what was happening until I turned around and saw, descending from the flies, a sign composed of brightly lit bulbs that spelled out
Barbara Cook's Broadway!
I was thrilled, and at first I thought it was the theater that had come up with the sign. In fact, it was another of Wally's wonderfully generous gestures. He couldn't say “I love you” to me, but he expressed that love through the gift of that wonderful sign.

THROUGHOUT MY THIRTY
years of working with Wally, alcohol abuse remained a severe problem in his life. There's no other way to say it: Wally was a major, major drunk from the moment I met him. He was what is called a high-functioning alcoholic. Very dangerous. He tried to fool himself into thinking otherwise. He thought, “So I drink. So what! I show up. I do the work. Leave me alone.” I continued to drink throughout our first three years together. But in the very first weeks we worked as a team, he'd ask me if I wanted a drink. And when I asked him if
he
was going to have one, he'd say, “No—Max [his friend] and I have decided that if we don't drink for a month, then we're not alcoholics.” It's a ridiculous statement. If you need to play that game, then, sorry, you
are
an alcoholic. If you don't have a problem with drinking, that game wouldn't even occur to you.

I said to him one day, “You know, I'll bet you became a drinker as soon as you left your family and went away to school.” “Absolutely,” he said. “I was seventeen.” Which means that he drank alcoholically from age seventeen until it killed him at age sixty-three. He would not go to a doctor for help with his problem. He had bleeding hemorrhoids and refused to have a checkup, yet would somehow find a way to get doctors to give him drugs. He had a pharmaceutical book and he would look up what drugs were right for which condition, and he would treat himself.

His fear of doctors was pathological, and it went beyond not trusting them. He would make up lies about doctors, something I found out about in a strange way. Wally became very close friends with Peter Matz, the orchestrator and arranger famous for his work on the early Streisand albums. Wally and Peter were really close. They were like brothers, and when Peter died from cancer, Wally was devastated. He continued a close friendship with Peter's wife, Marilyn. At some point after Peter's death, Wally was telling several of us about how Peter had died, describing how the doctors had actually made his condition worse. When I happened to mention this to Marilyn—“I'm so sorry that the doctors did that”—she was totally mystified. “What? That never happened.” Wally had invented it. It was just a flat-out lie.

Lying becomes a way of life for alcoholics, which I certainly know firsthand. When I was drinking, I would phone and say, “Oh I'm so sorry I can't come to the dinner party.” This would be at the last minute, completely disrupting the hostess's plans. I just couldn't get it together because it was hard for me to function, and hard to be with people, so I lied in order to break the commitment.

I adored Wally, and, honestly, through all those years when we worked together I never felt I was the star of the show—he was. He always called the shots. I usually don't hand over control, but I had such great respect for him musically, as he did for me, that it was hardly ever a problem to do so. Which is not to say it was always smooth sailing.

In the recording studio, for example, he could be really mean. We were always under the gun in the studio because our recordings were made on a minimal budget. We didn't have time or money to waste, so it was always push, push, push. The problem was that if we were slipping behind schedule, Wally would some
times excoriate me in front of the band. Here's what would happen. We'd have a first read-through of the orchestration. I would have notes based on what we just did, but Wally would often want to record the second time through, before I had a chance to voice my comments. As a result, sometimes I would stop during the second take to fix something, and then Wally would explode with anger. I think a lot of other singers, after being treated harshly in front of the orchestra, would have just said, “Shut the fuck up. I'm getting somebody else.” I didn't, and couldn't, and we worked through it, but it was often unpleasant.

Wally did try a couple of times to stop drinking, but he was never really willing to give up control. He decided to detox himself at one point, a very dangerous thing to do. He convinced a close friend, a woman who was in love with him, to help him detox. He had had several seizures by this time and at the hospital he had been told he had a vitamin deficiency. I brought in a doctor friend of ours to see him, and the doctor gave him tranquilizers, not knowing that Wally would use them to detox. So, armed with vitamins and tranquilizers, Wally set out to detox himself. How he decided that this constituted a rational course of medical treatment I have no idea. I waited four or five days before I went over to his apartment; one of the reasons I needed to see him was to decide if he would be able to play a date we had coming up, and when he came out of his room I was horrified. He shuffled out of his room all bent over, and was so drugged he could hardly speak. I had to tell him I would have to find somebody else to play for me. “No, no. I can do it,” he mumbled over and over.

The situation was made worse by the fact that his partner loved wine, and even though two doctors had said to get all the alcohol out of the house, Wally's partner kept the wine. I said to him, “Get
this out of here,” and he replied, “Wally doesn't drink wine, so it's okay.” I was stupefied, because I knew—when you're desperate you'll drink anything.

Working with Wally the last few years of his life often became a nightmare. He just wouldn't or couldn't stop drinking. I told him a number of times his drinking was going to kill him. I believed that, but at the same time I don't think I could really imagine him dying.

Ultimately cirrhosis of the liver killed him, though what he really died from was hemorrhaging from his esophagus, which I understand is common with cirrhosis. I was so angry with him for not stopping the drinking, but I could never get through to him. His feeling was, in essence, “Look, I'm here, I'm doing the work, so leave me alone.” The reality was that he couldn't always do the work properly. When it came time to record
Barbara Cook's Broadway!
, it was decided we'd record the show live at an evening performance at Lincoln Center. That afternoon, Wally came in for the sound check so drunk that he could barely find the piano, let alone play. I was thinking, “What the hell? We're going to record and you can't even walk straight?” He went home, took a nap, and when he came back he was somehow okay. He was still drunk, but the sort of drunk where he could play. I could never be entirely certain which version of Wally would show up. Toward the end of his life, things got so bad that several times I toyed with the idea of working with someone else, but I never took that step because Wally impaired was still better than most sober.
Barbara Cook's Broadway!
proved to be a big success and Wally was a big reason for that triumph.

One day I went to Wally's apartment to rehearse and he was simply too far gone to work. I said, “Okay, Wal, I'm going home now. I'll be back tomorrow. Please be ready to work.” Several
times I would have to go home, so when we
were
able to work, I felt I wanted to “reward” him, and in a lighthearted way, I would say, “Today you get a bluebird on your paper.” Day by day, the bluebirds accumulated, and on opening night, Wally gave me a real blue parakeet. Wally's way of telling me he loved me.

When he was drinking, Wally could display a terrible temper, yet at the same time he was one of the most generous people I've ever known, particularly with his time. He was always ready to assist young talent in any way he could, helping the Tony Award–winning lyricist David Zippel (
City of Angels
) when he first came to New York from Harvard. And together we first heard Michael Kosarin playing in the lounge of a nightclub in North Carolina when he was still at Duke University. Michael has now been music supervisor, arranger, producer, and conductor for composer Alan Menken's theatrical, film, and television music worldwide since 1993, and it was Wally who paved the way for him in New York.

I've often thought that Wally was disappointed in himself—disappointed that he hadn't been able to compose a show for Broadway, because when he came to New York that had been his greatest ambition. He did some wonderful work on shows with Tommy Tune—
A Day in Hollywood, A Night in the Ukraine, My One and Only
—but those were never
his
shows. He had arranged but not composed. I think as much as Wally admired Stephen Sondheim, he was jealous of Stephen's extraordinary career. Back in the early 1980s, even before the
Follies
concerts, I had run into Stephen on the street, and he said “Barbara—why don't you ever sing my songs?” Needless to say, I was thrilled to hear Stephen say that, but Wally was, at first, very reluctant to include Sondheim songs in our repertoire. After the
Follies
concerts, Wally finally gave in,
overcame his jealousy, and we placed Sondheim's music throughout our shows.

We celebrated Wally's sixty-third birthday in London while playing at the Haymarket Theatre. I could never have imagined that he would be dead just one month later. But as it turned out, we had only one more concert date together, in St. Louis. I wrote a journal entry at the time detailing just how troubled Wally was: the night of our performance in St. Louis his gums were bleeding. He had a big bump on his forehead and bruises on his face, all of which he explained by saying that he had walked into a door he thought was open. It's impossible to know what really happened, but I told him to come into my dressing room and I would try to cover the bruises with some of my makeup. He was spreading it on his forehead when I noticed there was blood there, too. I asked what was wrong. He said his thumb was bleeding. As always, he drank too much before going onstage, but was okay until the very end of the show when he goofed up and the sound man couldn't figure out what was going on. As a result, one of the climactic songs of the evening didn't land properly. I was angry and exasperated, a state of affairs that shifted to fear when, after the show, the wardrobe mistress came into my room and asked, “Is everybody all right?” I answered yes, at which point she told me that she'd noticed blood on the floor of Wally's room.

The next day we were flying back to New York, and when we were seated by the gate, waiting to board, Wally said he was going to get a Sunday
New York Times
. As he walked away I noticed a very large dark-red stain the size of a dinner plate on the seat of the raincoat he was wearing. I was embarrassed for him, and when I finally mentioned it to him, he said that it had happened the night before at our hotel. He was visiting with a friend who he said
spilled remoulade sauce on one of the chairs. He then sat down, thinking he'd convinced me, but I knew that wasn't true. The cirrhosis had caused him to hemorrhage. That was on a Sunday. The next Wednesday he and his partner Alan Gruet went out to dinner separately. Wally had returned before Alan, who, when he came back, saw Wally lying on the floor of the living room. He wasn't immediately alarmed because it wasn't the first time he had found him like that, but then he saw Wally was bleeding badly. Even then Wally resisted medical attention, but Alan got him to Roosevelt Hospital, where they tried to stop the bleeding. It didn't work, and on the morning of October 8, 2004, exactly one month after his sixty-third birthday, Wally died.

Because he had died early in the morning there was time to let people know and to organize a gathering at my apartment where we could all grieve and reminisce. The night of his death, I confess, I felt mostly anger and frustration. Now, eleven years later, I'm feeling so much love for him, and I'm drowning in sorrow.

It had been clear to all of us for a long time both that his life was out of control and that he was dreadfully ill, but I somehow felt this wasn't supposed to happen to him. Not to Wally Harper. So many people depended on him for so much, beginning with his incredible musical knowledge; he actually was a great musical leader and made you feel that he had all the answers. He imparted a great sense of security.

I like to remember Wally in terms of his overwhelming talent. His phrasing while playing could be nothing short of achingly beautiful. One conductor called Wally “a musician's musician, a genius even—he made the piano sing.” I thought that was a great way to put it, because while the fact that Wally always felt the rules did not apply to him caused problems in his personal life, it also
gave him free rein when putting together those glorious arrangements.

I loved so much about Wally, particularly his incredible sense of humor. Years back, he had found us a tax man who was a real character; this man saved us thousands upon thousands of dollars but I never fully understood how he did it. I didn't want to know. He also got us in trouble from time to time. Wally's name for him? J. P. Loophole.

The witticisms would just pour out of him, both verbally and musically. When he was a fourteen-year-old boy in Ohio playing organ for Sunday church services, he was asked to provide music while the ushers returned to the altar with the day's offering. Wally's choice of music? A Bach-tinged arrangement of “We're in the Money.”

(Not surprisingly, the pastor told Wally there would be no repeat performance of
that
number . . . )

Toward the end of his life he worked on several shows with Sherman Yellen, who had written the books for the musicals
The Rothschilds
and
Rex
. Somehow Sherman and Wally got the idea that Sherman could write lyrics to Wally's music, but on the first day they began working together, Sherman was very nervous and said, “Wal, I'm not so sure this is a good idea. You know, I've never written lyrics before, and I'm feeling pretty apprehensive about it.” To which Wally retorted, “Are you kidding? A Jew and a homosexual—we can't miss.”

“But, Wal, I have to tell you I'm not much of a Jew.”

“That's okay,” replied Wally, “because I'm one hell of a homosexual!”

Although Wally could never solve his problem with alcohol, I think he was genuinely happy for me when I stopped drinking.
He said to his then partner, Michael: “Of all the people I know, Barbara has changed her life for the better more than anybody I've ever known.” He saw how I had pulled myself together, finally owned an apartment I loved, and that I took great pride in my work. He had seen me in the darkest of times, and he was so happy for me. What an extraordinary generosity of spirit he possessed.