Straight Life - Art Pepper [210]
When I got out of the joint the last time, in '66, I had no horns. I could only afford one horn, and I got a tenor because, I told myself, to make a living I had to play rock. But what I really wanted to do was play like Coltrane.
In '68 I got the job playing lead alto with Buddy Rich. And that day in Las Vegas, after the rehearsal, I was blowing Don Menza's alto in the motel room. I was jamming in front of the mirror, blowing the blues, really shouting, and all of a sudden I realized, "Wow, this is me! This is me!" Christine was there in the room reading a book, and at the same time she looked up and said, "Art, that's fantastic! Alto, that's you!" Then I realized that I had almost lost myself. Something had protected me for all those years, but Trane was so strong he'd almost destroyed me.
That experience-it lasted about four years that I was influenced so much by John Coltrane-was a freeing experience. It enabled me to be more adventurous, to extend myself notewise and emotionally. It enabled me to break through inhibitions that for a long time had kept me from growing and developing. But since the day I picked up the alto again I've realized that if you don't play yourself you're nothing. And since that day I've been playing what I felt, what I felt, regardless of what those around me were playing or how they thought I should sound.
The first night at Caesar's Palace I sounded good, and everybody congratulated me. Afterwards, Christine and I went with some of the guys and had a bite to eat and some drinks, and then we went to somebody's room and smoked pot and put on our bathing suits and went swimming in the pool. It was fun, and it was great to be accepted into that world. I thought of all the things I'd given up in using drugs. I started feeling good about being a musician and about life.
Every night I got stronger and played better and more together with the band. Me and Al Porcino made the band swing in a different kind of way. I was playing good solos. There was talk about going to Europe pretty soon. We made an album. Then, all of a sudden I started noticing some little pains in my stomach. And when I put my uniform on ... One night I asked Christine, "Do I look heavier to you?" It seemed like every day I'd feel these pains. I felt bloated. I went to the drugstore and bought all kinds of stuff for gas and laxatives, but they didn't help. I got worried.
We finished the job in Vegas and went from there to San Francisco, to Basin Street West. Christine and I got a room right above the club. The pain got worse and worse, but I kept playing, until one night the pain was so bad I couldn't bend over to get my music out. I didn't want to go to a doctor because I was afraid-afraid of what it might be. I was hoping it would go away by itself. I walked out of the club that night, and Christine helped me up the stairs. I sat on the bed. I couldn't lay down. I started to fall over, and I thought I was going to die. Christine got me back into a sitting position and ran down the stairs and hit on Buddy Rich. He'd heard that my stomach was hurting, but he didn't know it was that bad.
Buddy found out from the owner of the club where the nearest hospital was. He helped carry me from the room and drove me to St. Luke's. They weren't going to let me into the hospital because I didn't have insurance, but Buddy flipped out and forced them to take me. He signed for me.
They didn't know what was wrong so they couldn't give me anything for the pain. They put me in the intensive care unit. They put tubes in my nose and in my veins, and they stuck a tube from one vein into my heart so they could measure the way my heart was pumping. They had two things fastened on my chest that went to a machine that recorded my heartbeat. I remember looking at the screen and seeing it. It made a pattern and a