Straight Life - Art Pepper [144]
While Art was still out on bail, Diane got out of Norwalk. Art asked if he could bring her out to my house in Manhattan Beach. I said sure. I was curious. He brought her, and she was very paranoid at first because she didn't know what I was to Art, but I had nothing to hide. In fact, I told Art he didn't have to pay back anything because it was given. I asked nothing in return. Diane could recognize a female threat and I wasn't. I've had a lot of male friends that way. Art and I became friends because he knew I wasn't asking anything of him, sexually or emotionally. I just wanted to know him. I accused Art one time.
I said, "You're so stingy. I bet you don't even have a peepee!" And he pulled down his pants, and he showed me, and he said, "And it really gets big, too!" He ought to remember that one. We just cracked up.
Art had Diane in anklets and tennis shoes and cotton dresses. Frumpy. I asked her why she dressed like that and she said, "Because Art likes it." Then he went back to jail, and Diane was living with her sister, Marie, and she called me up and she said, "Why don't you come to Hollywood and pick me up. I feel like doing something." I didn't recognize her on the street corner. She had her hair done and she looked sharp and pretty. She was Polynesian or something. She had a small nose; wide, very, very dark eyes. Her mouth-the bottom lip had a nice contour but the top lip was in two points instead of round. And she was always sort of smiling when she spoke. Diane was very articulate, very fastidious, took good care of Art, kept him nice. But when he went to jail, boy, she came out! She looked like she was on the street, whoring, only high-class. A high-class call girl.
Diane could be mean to Art. Going to score in East L.A. one time, I was driving, with Art in the front seat and Diane in the back, and Art was whining or something. Diane said, "Art, stop it!" He wouldn't, so she took her purse and just beat him over the head with it. Art had my radio, and he took this radio, laid his head on it, and buried himself in the sound.
During the times Art stayed with me, he never listened to music. I played his records and he was forced to hear 'em, but when I was at work he'd just watch TV. He wasn't interested in what anybody else was doing. He didn't have to hear it. He had his own thing, his own feelings, his own thoughts. Music was nothing Art ever had to struggle with. It was always there, it seems. He never practiced that I know of. He could pick up a horn ... One time he blew a horn-the upper register was out-and he just blew around it. His mind eliminates any kind of hassle, say, pads falling off. He just ignores it. And Art has no tolerance for imperfection in other musicians. Frank Strazzeri had started out as a classical pianist and had just recently been blowing jazz, and they were at the Lighthouse, and Frank wasn't blowing to Art's satisfaction, and I guess Art put on that scowl. People look at him and think he's smiling. I guess it's for the audience so they don't really know what he's