Words Without Music: A Memoir (36 page)

I knew that it had been made years before, and I asked Jasper, “Are you still working on those
Number
paintings?”

“Oh yes, I’m still working on them,” he replied.

The painting I was looking at was probably seven or eight years old, but he was still painting on it. It impressed me greatly that he was able to focus his attention to that degree.

At that time John Cage was Jasper’s houseguest, and Jasper had lunch prepared for us every day. For that hour, we all stopped work—Jasper, John, Richard, and me—to eat together. It was very good company.

THROUGH A SERIES OF LUCKY EVENTS,
by the end of 1971 my ensemble was able to make its first recording. It came about in this way. Carla Bley and Mike Mantler, two well-known jazz composers, were in Martinson Hall on the top floor of the Public Theater recording a new work,
Escalator over the Hill
. They were using a mobile studio, packed into a van owned by Steve Gephardt and Bob Fries, who worked under the name “Butterfly Recording Studio.” Carla and Mike and I had become friends as active composers in New York and they offered me their setup, free, for two days on a weekend when they wouldn’t be working. The work to be recorded was music I had written in 1970,
Music with Changing Parts
, an evening-length work we had been playing in Germany, London, and New York for most of 1970 and 1971.

I was in the habit, in those days, of sending in six copyrights together, because one could send in the form and register up to six pieces and only pay a single fee. Musicologists later would find paperwork that showed that a piece was written at a later date, but it wasn’t
written
at a later date, it was only
copyrighted
at a later date. I did that to save the six dollars. One writer published in a book the copyright of a certain piece, just to prove that it was written at a later time. He thought I had backdated it, but actually, I just didn’t get around to registering the copyright until later. I also had the mistaken idea that if I postponed the copyright date, the copyright would last longer, which isn’t true because the term of copyright goes from the death of the composer, not from the birth of the composition. I didn’t know that at the time, so I often made my dates later, thinking I would have more control over the rights. I was very aware at that point that the ownership of the music was mine. It didn’t belong to a publisher or to anybody else. As I told my mother on her deathbed, I never gave copyrights away. Later, working on film music, it turned out not to be always true.

In
Music with Changing Parts
, the players improvised, within prescribed limits, extended long tones. At times, clouds of notes would emerge that formed harmonic clusters, as if surfing through the ongoing ocean of rhythm. Because I was using a much larger musical structure, it became possible to make a very extended piece. There were certain things that remained the same: a constant beat would always be there—a steady stream of notes. Within that, the texture could change and the melodies could float throughout. There could be a wash of sound, places with just a little bit of rhythm, and places with barely more than long tones. It could sound like a cloud of music that would shift from being structured to amorphous. At moments, just as the rhythmic structure became audible, the long notes had a way of overriding it, adding a depth to the music. The only other times I would use this technique would be in Part 4 of
Music in Twelve Parts
and in “Building” in
Einstein on the Beach.

We played
Music with Changing Parts
straight through for the recording, but problems remained. Martinson Hall wasn’t set up as a studio at all, so we didn’t have the possibility of isolating the players. There were nine of us in one large room playing together. In addition, we had never done a recording before and had to spend time learning how to set up the microphones and how to balance the instruments correctly. Above all, we had to be able to hear ourselves, and at the same time avoid feedback from the monitor speakers. In spite of these complications, and others that we hadn’t anticipated, it was an exhilarating two days—something I think you can hear in the recording.

Even though we were getting the studio for free, I still needed money for musicians and manufacturing costs. It wasn’t anything enormous, and I had some cash, but not enough, so I went to an office on Second Avenue. I can still recall the sign on the door—“Hebrew Free Loan.” I met a gentle, sympathetic gentleman who explained to me that they made small, interest-free loans. I told him I was starting a record company, Chatham Square Records (we were no longer rehearsing on Twenty-Third Street, but in Dickie Landry’s loft in Chinatown). I explained that I had recorded my music at the Public Theater and had gotten the studio for free, and now I had the master tape and the only thing that stood between me and making the record was about a thousand dollars.

“What are you going to do with the thousand dollars?” he asked.

“I need it to print and package the records.”

“How much will you sell the records for?”

“I’ll make five hundred records to start with and I’ll go out and play music and I’ll sell them at my concerts, probably for five dollars a record.”

“We started this place for immigrants,” he said, looking at me thoughtfully. “People who came from the old country. If they wanted to start a business, they came here and we could give them enough money to get started. So we really started this for them. But it doesn’t say anywhere that I can’t do this for you. You’re as qualified as anybody else.”

“That sounds good to me,” I said. “How do we do this?”

“Well, I’ll give you a thousand dollars and you pay me a hundred dollars a month for ten months.”

“All right,” I said.

I had a check by the next afternoon. He asked for very little documentation and no collateral—he just trusted me. He had my address and my phone number. He didn’t even ask if I was Jewish. I think he liked the idea that I was a young man who was born in America and needed his help. He practically stuffed the money in my pocket, and I paid it back just the way he asked.

I SAVED WHATEVER CLIPPINGS, PROGRAMS,
and announcements I had gathered from the European tour with Richard and, after getting back to New York, began sending out letters to schools, art galleries, and museums. “I will be with my ensemble in your area, and I would be happy to present a concert,” said my letter, written so that it could be used for any recipient, the idea being to communicate that I could do the concert at a very low price because I would be already on the road. In my mind, I figured the fee they would offer would be five hundred dollars, but I never asked for that.

I sent out 120 letters with copies of all my programs up until then: I had programs from the Cinematheque and the Guggenheim Museum in New York and from Europe, but I didn’t have any reviews that I could show to anybody. I received nine replies and organized a twenty-day tour for the ensemble and myself, renting a van for three hundred dollars from Lee Breuer. Two of us drove the van, and the rest followed in a beat-up station wagon I’d bought. All of our sound equipment would be in the back of the van, along with our personal baggage.

This first real tour in the spring of 1972 began at the University of California at Irvine and continued through Pasadena and Valencia, California; Portland, Oregon; Vancouver, British Columbia; Seattle and Bellingham, Washington; Minneapolis (two concerts); and St. Louis. The promoters had to provide housing, usually in the homes of music supporters. I believe I paid the ensemble members six hundred dollars each for the whole tour. When I got home I was in debt for a couple of grand, which took me several months to pay back. However, within a few years of this initial touring, there were enough performances for the ensemble each year to allow me to pay the players a minimum of twenty paychecks per year. By registering the ensemble as a company, filing the necessary paperwork, and paying the employer’s share of the premium, the players qualified for unemployment insurance for the weeks when we had no performances. With the financial basis of employment stabilized in this way, it guaranteed a consistent membership in the ensemble, which in turn allowed us to reach an amazingly high level of performance. Most of the players have remained with us for periods of between fifteen and forty years.

I traveled without any money whatsoever for promotion or advertising, but I had LPs with me, and not just to sell at concerts (though we did that, too). There was, I soon discovered, especially in the States, a network of college radio stations operating everywhere. There was always some bleary-eyed college kid with an all-night radio program. It was dead easy to get on the program, especially with a new LP, which they were always happy to play in its entirety. One such young man I met in that way was Tim Page, who had an all-night radio program on Columbia University’s WKCR. Tim would grow up to be a highly respected new music radio personality, a well-known critic, a writer, and a lifelong friend. I was also quickly learning how to talk about music, art, and travel. Without the usual “new music” institutional support, which I never had, I was really on my own, touring and making records. For the next few years and really up to
Einstein
in 1976 I was inventing the tools I would need to make a place for myself in the music world.

WHEN I LOOK BACK, THE BIGGEST INFLUENCE
on my music has been in fact the energy system known as New York City. The city is in the music, especially the early ensemble music. The concerts that I did at the Guggenheim Museum,
Music in Twelve Parts
,
Music with Changing Parts
, and even
Einstein
—all of them right up until 1976—come right out of the guts of New York City. I had grown up in Baltimore, but New York is a 24/7 city. Paris goes to sleep at night—the métro shuts down, the sidewalks are rolled up—but New York never goes to sleep. That’s why I came here.

The artists I knew and worked with weren’t part of the entertainment world, but were all part of the New York experimental art world, often
very
experimental. You would see Jack Smith walking down the street in the East Village and you might think he was a homeless person. Or you might meet someone like Moondog (whose real name was Louis Hardin), a very funny and completely unconventional grown-up.

My friend Michel Zeltzman had first met Moondog where he hung out on the corner of Fifty-Fourth Street and Sixth Avenue. “C’mon, I want you to meet somebody,” Michel told me one day. He took me to see Moondog, who was about six foot three or four, blind, and dressed like a Viking, with a big helmet with horns that came to a point and made him look like he was seven feet tall. He wore robes and boots he had made himself and walked with a spear. If you bought a poem from him for twenty-five cents, he would sing and play a little music on drums that he had built himself.

I got to know Moondog a little bit, and when I read in the paper that he was looking for a place to live and sleep, I went up to see him.

“Moondog, I’ve got a house down on Twenty-Third Street. If you want to, you can room in one of the upper floors.”

“That’s very kind. Can I come and visit you?”

“Yes, come any time.”

“Tell me the address,” he said. “I’ll come and see you.”

A week later I was looking out the window when I saw a Viking walking down Ninth Avenue. It was Moondog, moving very confidently and fast, crossing Twenty-Sixth Street, then Twenty-Fifth Street, then Twenty-Fourth. As he reached each corner, he stopped to wait for the light to change before crossing the street. When he arrived I asked him, “Moondog, how did you know when to stop for the light?”

“That’s easy. I stand where the light is, and I can hear the electricity when the light changes, and I can feel the traffic. If it’s going to the right, it’s going across town. If it’s going downtown, I can tell. I wait until after it’s gone, then I hear a click, and then I walk.”

I took him upstairs up to the big room on the top floor and I said, “This could be your room, if you like it.”

“Where are the walls?” He was trying to reach out and touch the walls.

“Well, it’s kind of a big room.”

“No, no, no. Do you have a small room?”

“Right next to it there’s a small room.”

“Take me to the small room.”

I led him there, and when he reached out toward the walls, he easily could touch them.

“I’ll take the small room. If I get the big room, I’ll lose things in it. In the small room, I can figure out where everything is.”

As it turned out, Moondog stayed with us for a year. The biggest problem—and there were several problems—was that he would always eat takeout, usually from Kentucky Fried Chicken or something similar, and he would put the trash down on the floor, forget it was there, and never pick it up. He simply didn’t know where it was. I discovered this right away, so I would go upstairs once he had left for the day, clean up after him, and take the trash out.

At that time, the ensemble was having rehearsals at my place once a week, and before too long Steve Reich and Jon Gibson and I began playing with Moondog, rehearsing together once a week as well. The four of us sang his songs, usually in the form of a round. Jon and I occasionally played flute, with Moondog on the drums. Steve recorded five or six of the songs on his Revox tape machine and held on to those tapes for a long time. Recently, a book was written about Moondog, and those recordings were included with the book.

After a year, Moondog was given a small property somewhere in the Catskills and was ready to move on. He was a modern Pied Piper of sorts, often surrounded by young people, and a number of them went with him to the country to help build his new home. He was still staying with me while the construction was going on, and I asked him what his house was going to look like. From his description, I understood there was one central room, small enough that he could touch all its walls with his arms extended. Five long hallways, each of which led to another small room, extended out from the central room. From above, it must have looked like a five-legged spider. Strange perhaps, but perfect for a blind man.