by John Lurie
I felt bad that I hadn’t been up to see him in the hospital more often.
There was a memorial for my uncle at the Promenade Theatre. He had been a part owner. The place was packed. Eli Wallach headed the whole thing. Stella Adler was there.
Sarafina performed. Actors’ Equity had said that it was time for Sarafina to return to South Africa, that they must now be replaced by local performers. That is just so incredibly wrong and Jerry saw that. He fought hard, pro bono, to keep them in the country. Now they were playing his memorial.
It was really all kinds of beautiful.
The band all agreed to lug their own equipment and play at ten-thirty in the morning for the memorial because they all liked Jerry that much. Was incredibly sweet of them.
We had a song that is on the Voice of Chunk album called “Uncle Jerry.” I had written it quite a while before he died. It was important to me that it was understood that this was not written as a posthumous tribute. It was something written when he was healthy and alive. I try to explain that to the packed house of mostly older people and it just comes out all kinds of wrong. Sounds kind of wise guy–ish or something. I don’t know why, but it’s off.
We start to play and it’s good. We’re really playing. I go off into that mode. I am in the music and playing my heart out. When I go to that place, I basically forget everything else. I don’t know where I am. I am just gone, I am just gone in the music.
When the band plays live we usually end with something powerful and uptempo that will lead the crowd into calling for an encore. We have a hard out and then I yell, “Thank you very much!!” and we leave the stage.
Well, we are playing at the memorial and we are in it, we’re really playing. The song ends, I throw my arm over my head and scream, “Thank you very much!!”
And then I have the unsettling realization of where we were.
Most of the people there are in their seventies and have the look of a crowd that has just witnessed something deeply inappropriate. My eyes go up to the middle of the theater, where Kazu, Stephen Torton, and my sister, Liz, are sitting, just in time to see all three of them cover their faces with their hands, all at exactly the same time. Like Oh, John, what did you do now?
35
John Lurie: Pathetic and Ignorant
An outdoor shower in the tropics is one of those perfect things. It opens your pores to life. Wholesome and erotic all at once.
I rented a house on the beach in Ajuda, Brazil, for a week before the band came down to play in Rio de Janeiro. This was at the end of the summer in 1988. Stephen Torton was living in Belo Horizonte and met me.
The house only had an outdoor shower, which had a hot water heater that was oddly wired. You could take a shower but would get a shock when you turned the water on. Then during the shower, when you were wet, you’d get a much worse shock if you touched the taps. Then you were guaranteed your worst shock of the day when you turned the water off.
Stephen and I would hear each other in the shower going, “Ow!” and the one not in the shower would find it very amusing.
Two journalists sat in the sand on the beach in their suits looking for me. They didn’t know what I looked like. They had a photo of me, which they held in their hand and referred to. We’d walk past them on the sand and they would look at their photo, squint at us, look back at the photo, and then decide that I wasn’t me.
Another group of journalists showed up and asked me to do an interview. I said no.
They said, “Very good for you, very good for Brazil.” They were very pushy. Since this sentence, “Very good for you, very good for Brazil,” was repeated over and over again, and appeared to be the full extent of their English, I refused.
They published an interview without talking to me at all. They just filled in my answers like they wanted. A third group showed up. They seemed fairly bright and respectful, so I, finally, acquiesced. When the article came out, it said that Stephen was my boyfriend.
To get to our house on the beach, one had to take a ferry from the village. The ferry went from one rickety wooden dock over rushing water to another, all day long. Instead, Stephen and I rented two gigantic kayaks to go back and forth. Not normal kayaks, but clumsy, twelve-foot-long plastic boats. They were heavy and difficult to carry.
We find the easiest way is to each take an end of each kayak and try to negotiate our way through the narrow streets. The village is surrounded by a high concrete wall and we can’t figure out how to get the kayaks into the water. The locals watch us straining with these monstrous, colorful things as we walk to where we think the water is. But when we get to the end of the street, there is the ten-foot-high concrete wall barring us from the water. We have to retrace our steps. The locals see us struggling and stare at us with the same lack of expression. It makes us start to laugh. For some reason whenever I am carrying something heavy with a friend, it makes me start to laugh, but we have to walk past these guys, again, drinking beer, leaning against the wall and it was just too silly. We go down another little street that leads to the sound of the rushing water, but although the water is right there, splashing on the other side of that wall, we are blocked.
We have to walk past them again. My arms are straining under the weight and the laughter from my chest is making it hard to breathe. We take another route, but there is still the wall. I tell Stephen that I cannot walk past those guys again and we decide to hoist the kayaks on top of the wall and push. They plop into the ocean, and we have to then climb the ten-foot wall quickly and swim after our kayaks that are being swept away by the estuary.
We row halfway across, but in these ridiculous kayaks, it makes it almost impossible to row in the whirlpool out in the center. There is a point where the ocean rushing in meets the estuary rushing out. We are stuck in one spot rowing as hard as we can and not moving. We go with the current and angle a bit down the shore to get across. Once we are out of the suctioning whirlpool, we can finally negotiate the kayaks to the house. A week later, when we return the kayaks, it is even more difficult. It takes an hour to go fifty yards. We are exhausted and can’t go farther. But if you stop paddling for a moment, you are whisked out to sea. It requires superhuman concentration and effort to even get to the wall, which is still one hundred yards or so from the dock, to return the kayaks. We get to the wall and hang on for dear life. Regroup our strength and then pull the kayaks over the wall, Stephen doing most of the work. When we return the kayaks, we find out that fourteen people in boats, some experienced boatmen, have drowned in the whirlpool spot in the last year.
* * *
—
I don’t know how this happened, because no one knew what flight I was on, coming from Ajuda back to Rio. I didn’t know myself until right before I took it. The little plane struggled so hard against the wind that it seemed like the kayaks and everything else in Brazil went backward. When we land at the airport, there is a chaotic whirlwind of cameras on the tarmac, seventy photographers, all there to take my picture as I get off the plane. At least I have a tan.
Miles Davis, who is the biggest act booked at the festival we’re playing, has canceled. By default, I have been proclaimed a star of enormous magnitude. My arrival is on the front page of all the papers. They have put my hotel and room number in one of the articles. I don’t know what to make of any of this. The press in Brazil seems to have one goal, and that is to drive me insane.
On the front page of one of the papers, I think the Folha de S. Paulo, there is a huge photo of me getting off the plane. In large letters I am proclaimed a musical genius, a great actor, and the most charming and attractive man to come out of the United States in many years.
I am on the front page of most of the papers, and most of them have idiotic headlines saying, “THE SAX APPEAL HAS ARRIVED!” or some such nonsense, but always using the catchy phrase “Sax Appeal.” Meanwhile at the same time in history, Geo
rge H. W. Bush is accepting the GOP nomination, Iraq is celebrating a cease-fire with Iran, and Seoul is preparing for the opening of the Olympics. But what is important to the press of Brazil is that “the Sax Appeal has arrived to turn all the girls’ heads!”
Another paper, maybe O Estado de S. Paulo, sees that Folha de S. Paulo loves me, and because they must disagree with everything their rival writes, they decide that I am an abomination. They write, “John Lurie is very temperamental. Skinny, his white skin burned by the Brazilian sun, he arrived telling everyone how tired he is. Poor baby. Behaving like a French person in front of cheese that wasn’t very good.”
What could I have possibly done to provoke that? I have not yet done an interview. We have not even played and I am despised.
They also hate the band and do things like run photos of Dougie Bowne, our drummer, on the back page, with the caption, “Erik Sanko, The Lounge Lizards’ bass player, one of the festival’s worst.”
Meanwhile, because they have published my hotel and room number, I cannot leave the room without being mobbed by journalists and young women.
I have a terrifying press conference. I want to guide them to talk about the music, but all they seem interested in is who I am sleeping with and what I wear to bed. I make the mistake, during the press conference, of answering the question “Do you like Brazilian music?” by answering, “I hate all nationalities equally.”
Stephen thinks that that is where it all went wrong, but I think it was brewing all on its own and anything I did would have been wrong.
I have been listening to tapes of the Bayaka pygmies. It is the most beautiful thing that I have ever heard. When they ask what music I’m listening to, I tell them about the pygmy tapes, but apparently they think that I am messing with them.
A guy stands up and says, “John Lurie, the musicians think you are a great actor and the actors think that you are a great musician.” There is no question. He just stands up and says that.
This is the first time in my life that the music actually is sounding real to me. We are making breakthroughs and it has a lot of heart. That, and the fact that Jean-Michel and my uncle Jerry have just died, makes the music particularly precious to me at this time.
But nobody writes about the music. They write things like, “John Lurie has come to turn all the young girls’ heads. He is a hunk.” They keep calling me a hunk. Zero Hora proclaimed me “the Hunk of the Festival.” A hunk? I am six foot two and at the time weigh no more than one hundred fifty-five pounds.
The whole thing is gaining a leeringly Machiavellian character. I am getting uncomfortable because photographers are pressing in on me everywhere I go and reporters are misquoting everything I say. If I refuse to say anything, they’ll just make something up.
I am asked if I would like to see some great Brazilian music. There is a lot of Brazilian music that I love, and this thing they want to take me to is presented to me like it is exceptional.
We arrive at the club. I take one step in and realize that it’s a setup. There are photographers everywhere. We are not there ten seconds when the tour manager asks if I would please have my photo taken with one of their most famous soap opera stars. I can’t really say no. I am whisked over to stand next to this aging actress with too much makeup. The next day, in the paper is a photo of me and the soap opera star. The article says that I am pursuing her, but she has decided against it because international affairs are too exhausting. This happens with several other Brazilian actresses as well. Photos I don’t even remember being taken, or I am sitting on a couch next to someone I have never talked to or even noticed and in the paper it states that we are having a torrid affair.
The tour manager ushers me over to a table that is reserved for me. The music is awful, but I can’t leave because no one is watching the pedestrian jam session. They are all watching me, and the press has already complained that I haven’t seen any Brazilian music since my arrival and that I must be an uncultured snob. A journalist asks how I like the saxophonist who is onstage. I say, “He sounds like Jackie McLean with some fingers missing.” One can imagine how that translates.
I am at the table and I feel like they are going out of their way to drive me completely mad. I can’t stand the music and I want to leave. Then a bright light is turned on and directed at my head. There is a film crew there to film me watching this horrific band. I ask them to stop. They just grin and continue to shoot, so of course I throw my drink at them and walk out. The drink was a vodka grapefruit, and what is typically ridiculous is that in every newspaper’s account of the incident, the drink is reported to be a caipirinha, like it has to be a Brazilian drink. Of course, my little tirade is on the front page of all the papers.
Flying saucers have landed in Mexico City, but that story is on page 2.
* * *
—
We have met a lot of great people in Rio, but when you ask if they are going to the concert, they just look at you kind of funny. Turns out that the price of the ticket is about three weeks’ wages to the average Brazilian.
The night we play in Rio, I am taken aback by the scariest, most opulent, jewelry encrusted crowd I have ever seen. So much money just sitting out there. And so little interest in the music.
It’s the first bad concert we’ve had in ages.
I really wanted it to be amazing. I wanted it to be so good that there was no way the press or these wealthy zombies wouldn’t have their world rocked a little bit. But that didn’t happen.
I’m in Brazil and feel it requires that I take some cocaine, so I get some after the show.
On the way out, three young, very sexy women pretend to block my path, smiling coyly. They all speak a little English but not much.
We all go back to my suite. There is a fourth woman who is with them but doesn’t want to go. But from what Portuguese I can understand, they are her ride and she has no choice but to tag along.
I am in the bedroom with the three. Two are sitting on the bed with the third over in the corner, sort of running through a series of sensual poses.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to start this.
As I am standing there, in the awkward silence, one of them, Patricia, takes out my cock and sucks it for about thirty seconds. Quite well, I must add. She really is sucking my cock well.
Then she stops.
I think, Oh good, it has started.
Patricia has a proud look on her face, like, I started it.
Then Bea takes out my cock and sucks it for thirty seconds.
Eventually all three of us are naked and having various kinds of sex, but they aren’t into one another. They don’t even want to inadvertently touch one another. It is really more like, John Lurie is in town and we must fuck him to add his name to our scorecard.
It goes on for a while but is never really the kind of sex you can get into. And while this is going on, every time it seems to be going somewhere, the fourth one bursts into the room and starts screaming in Portuguese that she wants a ride home.
Finally, the posing one, whose name I don’t think I ever got, and the fourth one leave. There is some normal sexual activity and a lot of cocaine.
I wake up in my enormous room, alone and very hungover. I call down for breakfast.
The room service guy arrives with a gigantic, shiny smile and a tray of food.
He goes over and rips open the curtains. Sunlight is not something I planned on dealing with for a number of hours.
But the room has a huge balcony that hangs over the ocean. He opens the door and I realize that he is on the right track when the sea air floats into my brain and cleans it up a bit.
The waiter insists that I go to the outside table to properly enjoy my breakfast.
I follow him out.
He looks over my shoulder, and something that can only be described as terror darkens his f
ace.
He says we’d best go back inside and starts hurrying to pack the tray and move back into the room.
I turn to see what could have possibly frightened him like this.
There is Nina Simone, looking like a predatory gargoyle.
She has the most feral look on her face I have ever seen in a human being. I knew she was in the room next to mine and have always been a giant fan, was hoping to meet her.
But this is different. This is like we have come across a wounded lion and we have invaded her territory. The look in her eyes is filled with absolute rage and is screaming, GO AWAY! GO AWAY BEFORE I HURT YOU!
It is clear that it is not safe to be out there, and we both rush back into my room and close the curtains.
Not another word is spoken between the waiter and me, but as he leaves, our eyes meet. We know we have had a brush with death that no one will ever really understand.
* * *
—
The press madness went on. They went to Milt Jackson from the Modern Jazz Quartet and asked him how he felt playing at a festival with punk bands like The Lounge Lizards. He responded by saying that he didn’t know our music, but The Lounge Lizards didn’t sound like a jazz band to him.
They came to me and said, “Milt Jackson says that your band is not jazz and that it was embarrassing for him to play at a festival with you.” I said, “I don’t think that Milt Jackson has ever heard us, and it doesn’t matter to me if the band is labeled jazz or not.” They went back to Milt Jackson and said, “John Lurie doesn’t care what you think because your band is old.”
I don’t know what Milt said to that, but they came to me and said, “Milt Jackson thinks that it is a disgrace that your band wears sneakers and dirty clothes when you play.” This went back and forth in the papers every day.
