Waiting on the Moon, page 19
On one side of the room were two soft easy chairs separated by a Victorian marble-topped cabinet that held his nightcaps—bottles of cognac and bourbon. On the other side of the room, an alabaster bust of Homer sat atop a table next to a long couch, upon which his other guest, Cal, was seated. There was something dramatic and intense in his bearing, stiff and deep in thought. It seemed as if, given the chance, he could absorb all the oxygen in the room. He looked like a man in a great rush who had forgotten exactly where he was rushing to. His salt-and-pepper hair was swept in several directions, and his glasses fit his handsome, angular face well. Head bowed, martini glass dangling precariously from his hand, he stared down at the patterns of the turquoise Persian rug.
Bill entered carrying two chilled thin crystal martini glasses, one for me and the other for himself. The martinis were made with Tanqueray, well shaken, and contained shards of chipped ice, a whisper of extra-dry vermouth, and, courtesy of advice from William Carlos Williams, a delicate slice of grapefruit rind.
Bill held his glass high and made a toast: “Here’s to the company, absent friends, and confusion to the enemies—the son-of-a-bitch bastards, they know who they are! Forgive me, Lord!”
Cal didn’t move, his eyes still absorbed in the patterns of the carpet. Smoke wafted in from the kitchen, and Bill quickly disappeared. I sat down at the far end of the couch. Several minutes passed during which neither Cal nor I spoke. Bill reentered, refilled everyone’s glass, and, as he headed back to the kitchen, said, “Peter, have you introduced yourself to Cal?”
After a pause, I turned and said, “I’m Pete.”
Cal didn’t move. After a few moments, he finally spoke. “What is your surname?”
“Wolf,” I replied.
“Are you German or Russian?”
“I guess a bit of both,” I answered.
“What do you do?” he asked me, his eyes still focused on the rug.
“I play music,” I replied.
“Do you play violin or cello?”
“No. I sing.”
“What kind of music do you sing? Any opera?”
“No. I just pretty much do rock and blues-based stuff,” I answered, watching his body give a sudden jerk. After another moment’s pause, I asked, “What do you do?”
He swiftly turned, looking at me for the first time with a hard, fixed glare that gave off enough heat to melt his eyeglass frames.
As he was about to respond, Bill, fortunately, announced from the kitchen, “Gentlemen, dinner’s on!”
I let Cal get up first and followed him into Bill’s small kitchen. Bill took a shaker of martinis from his freezer and topped off our glasses, saying, “I can finally join the two of you for a formal cocktail.” He then proceeded to uncork a bottle of Spanish red wine covered in a thin wire netting.
“So Cal,” Bill remarked, “as I was telling you, I heard from Elizabeth and Harriet three days ago, and Elizabeth said the reading went very well.”
Cal replied, “Yes, maybe so. I can endure Ginsberg in small doses, but he seems to enjoy readings as his own form of theatrics. The riffraff that come along to these dog and pony shows, and the thunderous stupidity of the questions you’re asked—my God, is there still a functioning educational system in this country?”
At that moment, the clanging clocks throughout the house made their hourly presence known, and Cal almost jumped out of his chair.
“Good God, Bill! No wonder you’re still single. Who the hell could put up with that racket, let alone try to get work done while worrying about the next hour’s chimes? Holy Christ! One, maybe two somewhere around your house, but sixty? Are you mad?”
Cal at last seemed to have broken out of his stupor. He went on to say, “Just a wee bit of wine, Bill. You know, I shouldn’t be drinking, but I don’t have any classes until next week.”
The chops were ready, and so were the baked potatoes, which weren’t baked so much as cremated. Cal didn’t seem to notice as he poured himself another glass and kindly filled mine before filling Bill’s. It finally dawned on me. Cal, who was now explaining in minute detail the horrid state of most contemporary poetry, was the renowned eminent poet himself—Robert Lowell.
Ed Hood had first introduced me to the works of this extraordinary poet. It seems that Lowell had been given the name Cal, short for Caligula, in boarding school. It was common knowledge in the literary world that he suffered from deep bouts of what is now known as severe bipolar disorder. He had been subjected to the brutality of electric shock therapy and prescribed experimental medication that often left him exhausted, confused, and in a numbed, uncommunicative state.
As Lowell was talking to Bill, I studied him. He had something that few people possess: a charismatic face and captivating charm. I refilled my glass as these two friends trolled back and forth with opinions about which translation of Homer they preferred.
“I like Lattimore for the Iliad and Fagles for the Odyssey, but then there’s also Fitzgerald,” said Bill. They went through Coleridge, Roethke, Cummings, and Bishop. Though I wish I had paid closer attention to the discussion than I did to the wine, I tried to follow it all. They continued on to Chaucer, of whom Bill was a leading scholar, Dickens, Thackeray, and Hardy, until the conversation turned to the perennial question, Is there a work that can be defined as the great American novel?
Lowell debated the question. “The English have a wealth of great writers. Why does it need to be so categorically defined here in the States?”
Melville was mentioned before Lowell turned to me, asking, “What thoughts might our young gentleman have on the subject?”
I was caught off guard. “Ah… well… exactly what point of the issue would you like me to respond to?”
“Melville! Melville, of course!” Lowell replied, but I was lit, and Bill’s kitchen was spinning.
“Well… ah… you mean the guy who wrote the one about the big white whale?” I was so inebriated that I couldn’t remember the title Moby-Dick. It must have been because Bill was such a religious man that the good Lord then intervened on my behalf, saving me from further humiliation by instructing every clock in the house to again burst forth with chiming and gonging.
Laughing, Bill got up from the table, and Lowell put his hands over his ears. Bill then called us to join him in the sitting room while he reached for a bottle of Old Crow whiskey, setting out three glasses. I was reminded of Lowell’s poem for his friend the poet Delmore Schwartz, written just a few blocks from the house where we were seated:
We drank and eyed
the chicken-hearted shadows of the world.
Underseas fellows, nobly mad…
After that first night, I met Lowell several more times, always while dining at Bill’s. He was friendly toward me, even recommending some recordings of Schubert lieder. At what was to become our final dinner together, we adjourned to the sitting room. The topic turned to how best to describe the all-American woman—and who that might be if there was one.
Lowell asked, “Is there such a thing as the quintessential Englishwoman or Frenchwoman? Why does one even need that archetype?” I might as well have been backstage shooting the breeze with rock-and-rollers. At the end of the day, we were all men in search of a muse.
I attended Lowell’s funeral, at the Church of the Advent, tucked away in the lower part of Beacon Hill, not far from 91 Revere Street, where he grew up. “He has at last found peace” was the comment most heard from the attendees. I hoped he had, for with his fiery, hyperfocused mind, peace is what he deserved.
Years later I was having cocktails with Lowell’s second wife, the writer and critic Elizabeth Hardwick. Her presence could envelop you, and her opinions were straightforward and honest almost to a fault, so abrupt that they could end friendships. I had a big crush on her, and I believe she knew it. Lowell was reported to have been returning to her the day he died. I told her about the Melville incident, being caught off guard by the great poet himself and saved by Bill’s symphony of clocks. She paused, then laughed. With a mischievous gleam in her eye, she said, “Oh, those evenings at Bill’s. You were saved from Cal by the ringing of bells. Now, honey, that’s poetry!”
19
FUN FOR A WHILE
John Lennon and Harry Nilsson
THE RECORD PLANT studios were located in midtown Manhattan on several floors of a featureless office building. On any given day you might find David Bowie recording, Bob Marley mixing a live album, or Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band camped out on the first floor in studio B. There, in the spring of 1974, the Geils band was mixing its fifth album, Nightmares… and Other Tales from the Vinyl Jungle, in studio A.
One evening as I strolled down the long, narrow hallway on my way to the bathroom, I noticed a blond, unshaved, scruffy-looking character sitting on a bench outside studio B. He was wearing an Irish walking cap. One hand held a bottle of cognac and the other an empty snifter. He looked like an aristocratic hobo as he sat chatting with a limo driver dressed in a black suit, a black tie, and a chauffeur’s hat. As I approached, I could hear the scruffy fellow say to the driver, “Listen, if you take a quarter of your earnings each week and invest it in the stocks I mentioned, you’ll have a comfortable padding of savings in five years. Now, wouldn’t that be nice? Then maybe you can buy your own limo and go into business for yourself and not have to split your earnings with anyone.”
As I walked by, he snidely commented in my direction, “Hey, who does this guy think he is—a Ringo Starr wannabe?”
In the bathroom I stood at the urinal, wondering Who the hell was that schmuck?
On my return to the studio, I thought I’d give him a little taste of the Bronx. I walked past him and said loudly, “Hey, buddy, I don’t know about a Ringo wannabe, but I saw something that looked just like you floating in there, and I flushed it down the toilet.”
In an instant he called after me, “Hey, that’s pretty funny. I like a guy that can fire it back. Why don’t you join me for a cheerful libation?”
He was a curious character with an obviously wry sense of humor. I found him surprisingly engaging, so I took him up on his offer. “I’m Harry,” he said as he held out his hand for a shake.
“Pete,” I said.
He continued, “I’ve been advising this dear fellow, who’s been driving me around most of the week, on how to get himself some dividends and savings.” The driver nodded in my direction.
Harry asked what brought me to the Record Plant, but before I could answer he got up and walked over to studio B’s door. As he opened it, an explosion of loud music came spilling out. The driver and I sat staring in his direction. In a flash, Harry reappeared, carrying a carton of milk and an empty snifter.
“Let me make you a Harry special.” He put down the glasses, poured in cognac, then added milk.
“Isn’t this a brandy Alexander?” I asked.
“No! My man in black, that’s like calling margarine butter. A brandy Alexander is a far more complicated mixture. A Harry special is a divine bit of simplicity. A good amount of Courvoisier VSOP cognac—don’t settle for anything less—and a bit of vitamin D–enriched milk to add strength and vigor. Then pour the milk slowly down the side of the glass, so as not to crush the cognac, and voilà! You have the makings of a gift from the gods. I share this with you because I can tell you are a fellow peregrinus, or pilgrim traveler.” He joyfully handed the glass to me, saying, “Cheers.”
While we clinked our glasses together, he gave strict instructions. “No sipping, my man; just chug it down.” I happily obliged, and he immediately refilled both our empty glasses.
The conversation turned to music. “You like the Drifters?” he asked.
“Like ’em? Hell, they’re one of my favorites. As a matter of fact, I met one of their lead singers, Ben E. King, several times, and he’s a real gent. ‘Spanish Harlem,’ ‘Save the Last Dance for Me’—it don’t get much better than that.”
“Well, follow me. I’d like to play you something.”
Harry got up and once again walked to studio B, holding the door for me. I entered the control room and in the dim lights saw the back of the engineer. He wore a cap similar to Harry’s and was sitting in front of the recording console while moving the track mixers up and down. Tucked in the corner, by the tape machine, was Jimmy Iovine, who worked as an assistant engineer. I immediately recognized a slowed-down cover version of “Save the Last Dance for Me.”
Harry refilled our glasses and filled the engineer’s as he listened intently. When Harry started singing along with the track, I realized that the powerful and rough voice blasting from the studio belonged to this lovable bear of a man. Harry began singing a high harmony part to his own recorded voice. The man could definitely sing.
After a while he yelled into my ear, “Pete, let’s let these guys do their thing.” We left to rejoin the limo driver, who was still sitting outside the studio.
“Hey, Harry,” I said in awe, “you’re quite an amazing singer.”
“Well, you gotta be when you’re working with that guy inside.”
It dawned on me that this fascinating character was Harry Nilsson. I was slow to realize it, since he neither toured nor did many TV appearances and had a rather reclusive public profile. Harry had several big hits in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including his recording of Fred Neil’s song “Everybody’s Talkin’,” from the film Midnight Cowboy.
There are moments in life when you meet someone and have an instant connection, feeling as if you’ve known them for years. For me, this was one of them. Harry and I chatted like old friends.
A while later, the studio B door opened, and the engineer emerged. I almost fell off the bench when I realized it was John Lennon. As he walked toward us, he spoke in that utterly familiar Liverpool accent. “Harry, me ears need a bleedin’ break. Let’s head over to Downey’s.”
Harry introduced me to John as if I were a long-lost friend, and I was thrilled to be asked to join them. Downey’s, a well-known restaurant and bar just around the corner, catered mostly to a theater crowd. On this Monday night it was fairly empty. John and Harry headed to the darkest far corner of the bar as I followed behind. The bartender had obviously served them many times before and asked if I’d be ordering the same.
Keeping up with Harry was one thing—he was a sharp, fast wit—but in the company of John, the conversation climbed to a higher altitude. There were no safety nets to catch you: either you stayed on the wire and contributed some clever responses or you dropped. If you wanted to remain with the company, you needed to be on point. John wasn’t rude, but in order to hold his attention, you had to be like a master tennis player and return the volley.
A Record Plant assistant came to the bar, telling John, “Ringo’s just called and was hoping to speak with you.” Harry put the drinks on his tab, and we all headed back to the studio. Apparently John had promised to write a song for Ringo’s new album. Once in the studio, he got his guitar and started noodling with a melody while Harry played drums. John seemed frustrated, so he moved on to the piano and asked the assistant engineer to record him singing “Goodnight Vienna.” At the end of the song, John announced, “That version should do him.” Watching John pull a veritable rabbit out of a hat was nothing less than magic.
Several evenings later, as I was leaving the studio, Harry was sitting on the hallway bench, drink in hand. “Ah, the man in black. ‘Welcome, stranger, to the land of the forgotten men.’ For a ten-pointer, what’s the film?”
I answered without hesitation, “My Man Godfrey.”
“Right you are, Pete, and we have for you the grand prize: a set of American Tourister luggage filled with Palmolive products for the entire family to enjoy. How about joining me in a little Harry special?”
Things were moving slowly in Geils land because of technical difficulties on several tracks, so I gladly followed him into the studio. Jimmy was watching John’s daredevil antics, attempting to walk across a row of swivel chairs lined up along the console.
Harry yelled, “John, it’s Downey’s time!” Once again I joined John and Harry around the corner, in the same spot at the bar, as three Harry specials were promptly placed in front of us.
John mentioned to Harry that Yoko might come to the studio later that night.
“Tanker up, tanker up, my boy!” said Harry, as he clinked his glass with John’s and launched into a word-perfect recitation of Eddie Lawrence’s comedy routine “The Old Philosopher.” Eddie’s comedy records were popular on the radio in the mid-1950s.
“‘Well, lift your head up high and take a walk in the sun…’”
John quickly responded, word for word, with the next line of “The Old Philosopher” routine: “‘You say you lost your job today…?’”
They continued to banter back and forth until in unison they loudly exclaimed, “‘Hold your head up high, take a walk in the sun, and never, never, never give up that ship!’”
John and Harry also quoted extensively from The Goon Show, the influential classic British radio comedy. The hilarity of their banter was infectious.
Yoko did come to the studio that night, and she and John had a brief meeting in the outer office. When she left, John returned in a somewhat somber mood and began working on the playback for “Save the Last Dance for Me.”
John mentioned that he’d invited some friends over, and later, after heavy joints were passed around, we moved into the studio, where Harry began banging away on the drums. John grabbed a guitar and started singing Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-A-Lula.” Into this chaos walked Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, and an extremely shy Diane Keaton. When John noticed them in the control room, he immediately stopped playing and enthusiastically welcomed his invited guests.
One could tell John respected Paul. He began playing some of the tracks for him, placing him in the prime seat at the middle of the console. After one or two tracks, Paul was quiet, until “Save the Last Dance for Me,” when John pushed the volume up almost full throttle. The music was blasting. Paul tried to lower it, but John kept raising it even louder. Paul shouted while holding his ears, “Goddamn it, John, it’s so fuckin’ loud you can’t even hear the music!” Paul lowered it; John raised it again. The music presentation came to a halt. Another joint was passed around, and Harry grabbed paper cups for more Harry specials.
