Straight Life - Art Pepper [206]
(Jerry Maher) I saw Art again in '67. I was living in Orange County with my ex-old lady, Lynn, and one afternoon, out of the clear blue sky, got a call, and it was Art. He was callin' from the Manne Hole. I don't even know where he got my number. He said, "Why don't you come on out?" So I took Lynn and this Chinese broad, Virginia, and went out there that night. Art had Tommy Flanagan on piano, Will Bradley, junior, on drums. After the last set we all went up to Art's pad. He was livin' with Christine at the time, not too far from the Manne Hole. He was drinkin' brandy; I was drinkin' VO. I had a little stuff. I was chippyin' at the time. He asked me if I had any, and I told him no, I wasn't usin', because I knew he'd want some.
It was a weird little pad. It was sorta like a maze you had to go through to get into this one little room. Art went in there to change his clothes and he said, "Jerry, come here a minute, man." I walked in there, and he told me, "Check this!" He opened his shirt, and there were three big, huge gouge marks down his side. You could tell by the thickness and width of the scab on `em that they were deep gouges, and I said, "Jesus Christ, brother, what happened to you?" He said, "It's that bitch, man! That bitch, she's violent!" I looked at him and asked him, "Can you whip her?" And he says, "Just barely, man." Hahahaha! "And I think she throws those!"
Christine was just a big, typical Hollywood, superhip, nothin' bitch. Stereotype. "Hey, baby, what's goin' on?" I never liked her brother either. I saw him the same way. I heard later he turned into a stool pigeon or somethin'.
20
On the Road with
Buddy Rich's Band
1968-1969
I WAS FRIGHTENED. And I was tired, really tired. I didn't want to do anything at all. I realized that all the time I'd been using dope I hadn't had to face anything because once you give yourself up to that life there's no decisions to be made: you just have to score, and you have the drive to score because you're sick, and if you get arrested you go to prison and there's nothing you can do about it. All I wanted now was to relax and stay home. I didn't want to perform. I didn't want to put myself in a position where I might fail. I was tired, and I wanted to spend the rest of my life just sitting someplace. I used to think that if I could only have someone take care of me, it would be wonderful just to stay in some house. As long as I had the rent paid and a few dollars for some food, a TV or a radio so I could listen to the ball games-that's all I would want forever. Then I got this call to go with Buddy Rich. I was given an offer, and there was no way, in all honesty, I could refuse it. Maybe if I'd been alone I could have said I had some kind of disease, that I went to the hospital for a checkup and they found out I had cancer or that I had TB and couldn't blow. I could have come up with something. But I was with Christine, and I felt obligated to make the money, you know. She had worked-delivering automobile parts, driving a little pickup truck, borrowing money so we could eat and pay the rent. I felt I had to repay her.
Buddy Rich's band was a very modern band. The ar rangements were hard to read and loud, and they played a jazzrock thing. Buddy Rich, I'd heard, was really a taskmaster and temperamental, and if you goofed at all he would hear it and rank you, ridicule you in front of everybody, which is something I've never been able to take. And I had -a reputation-being a junkie, being in prison. Those were things Buddy didn't like. I was putting myself in a lion's den.
The phone rang and Christine said, "It's for you." I'd been afraid for many years to answer the phone; a lot of times I'd just let