INTERVIEWS

ROLLING STONE: Tell me about your first moment of musical inspiration.

ALAN SEIDLER: The truth is, I don't know. I saw musical programs on TV when I was little, and I liked the piano. I started asking for one of my own - at first my parents didn't want to make the investment because they weren't doing all that well financially at the time. But shortly before I turned seven they bought this big old upright - and it's history from there. I began spending all my time there, and quickly picked up how to notate and began writing my own stuff, and it's been with me ever since.

RS: You were initially drawn to ragtime and blues?

AS: Well, that's a part of my "dual personality." My mother, in 1928 or 1929, when she was 11 or 12, had sung with bands up in the Catskills. And my two grandmothers were both experts at all the old pre-WW1 pop, which I loved. One of my grandmothers, my father's mother, because she'd had a thyroid operation, sounded just like Marlene Dietrich to me and she would sing old songs like "Til We Meet Again" in this weird accent, and I really picked up on that. I also have a strong sentimental streak, which has really tied me to a lot of the stuff from that period. Beginning in the 30s, other influences and too much cleverness started coming into pop in general - before that it was just "WHOP" - it hit you right in the face with what it was going to say. And I don't think things really improved for years after the Depression.

RS: What were your first compositions like?

AS: The first things were really straight out of whatever piano primer was popular then. But shortly I moved on to classically-influenced stuff - Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, et cetera. My first compositions were very Chopin influenced. I thought that by the time I was 8 or 9 I had written a whole bunch of symphonies and operas - but most of them were about a page long - I just didn't know the difference. But I did know that I was writing and I knew that was what I wanted to do, as well as performing.

RS: Is that what you played in your earliest concerts?

AS: Yes. And, like I said, I got into the old pop quite early. One of my mother's favorite songs was St. Louis Blues, and she had learned the first 8 bars of it on the piano when she was young - and she could still play it, until a fairly late age - so she taught me that.

RS: What were your first concert experiences like, in terms of relating to the audience and performing?

AS: In some ways I was a shy kid - but from early on I never really had stage fright. As soon as I walked on stage I did what I had to do, like going into a trance.

RS: At what age did you first compose what you would still call "serious" music?

AS: Pretty much right away. But the first things I still count as part of my catalog were written when I was about 16. Art songs, mostly. One was a setting of a Dickinson poem - Poem 540. Another was e.e. cummings - the first two words were "At dusk," so I called it that.

RS: Were your working with other people?

AS: From the time I was in my teens, I was working in and out of school as a piano accompanist and eventually as musical director for local theatrical productions and revues in New Rochelle and neighboring communities. Gene Feist, who founded the Roundabout Theatre Company, had been my junior high school drama teacher, and when he started the theatre, he made me musical director for his first production, even though I was only 15.

RS: When did you do "Standing By"?

AS: That was even earlier than that: 1965. I did it together with a guy I was in school with - unfortunately, he was so hard up for cash that went to Amateur Night at the Apollo and sold the thing to Johnnie Taylor for 50 bucks.

RS: So even than you were balancing, for example, settings of poetry and soul songs. Why were you drawn to poetry?

AS: I always found it easy to set poetry, because if you look at it right it tells you what to do, right off. And I think the voice is close to the roots of music.

RS: Why Dickinson and cummings?

AS: They just happened along. I read a lot of this and that, and those are the first two settings I thought were good enough to save.

RS: Any other poets that interested you?

AS: As I did my first setting of Whitman at Juilliard [The Last Invocation], which was short but fairly good, I still think.

RS: How did your family feel about your interest in professional musicianship?

AS: They were proud of my talent, but when they realized they couldn't talk me out of a career in it, they said, "At least learn to type," which I did easily.

RS: What bearing did your family life have on your music?

AS: The largest bearing my family life had on my music, and this is strange to say, is related to the dual nature of my career and my life. From the time I learned to speak I had to play mediator between my parents, in a very unpeaceful household - which maybe helped me learn to jump from side to side personally and musically - but I'm really just psychoanalyzing myself now.

RS: Did your trouble at home influence your decision to move to New York City?

AS: Yes, I'm sure it did. As soon as I was old enough to realize I didn't have to live at home for the rest of my life I started looking for another place to live, and I discovered the City. Actually, I ran away for a while and ended up in a hippie commune in D.C. I had been to New York before, obviously, but my first extended exposure to the city was when I came with the theatre company when I was fifteen. After that, I developed friendships and so forth that brought me back.

RS: Did you at that age idealize the city as the place to go to pursue your music?

AS: At that time I thought it was the only place to go. I really just wanted to get out of New Rochelle, to tell you the truth. I wasn't exactly the poster boy for the Glenwood Lake Neighborhood Association.

RS: So what did New York City mean to you?

AS: It meant freedom, really. It meant I didn't have to answer to anyone but myself.

RS: Did you know anyone working in music in New York?

AS: Well, I knew the people from the theatre, and I knew people whom I had met while I was a junior counselor at a music and art camp, and we became very close. That's when I really started to hang out. And then the following year I got into Juilliard and that sealed the deal.

RS: Tell me about how you won a scholarship to Juilliard.

AS: It came from the Young Artists of New Rochelle Fund. I had a long history of performing locally, they decided to give it to me on the basis of my performance. I had already been accepted there, so that helped, financially, certainly.

RS: Had Juilliard ben a goal of yours?

AS: Just because of the name. Understand, I wasn't very sophisticated then.

RS: When exactly did you move to the city?

AS: Right after I graduated from high school. I initially moved in with friends at 17th and Park Avenue South, near Irving Place and right around the corner from Max's. And a short while later, I moved to the Chelsea, which in those days was $9 a night with one night a week free.

RS: Describe the downtown music scene as you encountered it then.

AS: It was obviously very different than it is now. I would play at CBGB's before it was CBGB's. Hilly Kristal still owned it at the time; it was called Hilly's on the Bowery. Max's, of course, was legendary - I ran into a lot of the Warhol crowd and rock and roll people. And of course, when I moved to the Chelsea, the Airplane was staying there, and the Incredible String Band - not in $9 rooms, though.

RS: Those experiences must have changed a 17-year-old from New Rochelle incredibly.

AS: Absolutely. New Rochelle was a nice enough place, but I had no intention of staying there longer than I had to. So, I entered Juilliard as a piano major, simply because my portfolio wasn't big enough to do composition initially. But by mid-year, I switched my major to composition.

RS: Describe your relationship with Vincent Persichetti.

AS: Persichetti was a great man and a great teacher. He approved of what I was doing, but he was the only one. I was the only person in the department, those days, not adhering to twelve-tone serialism. In fact, you could call a lot of what I did in those days almost punkish proto-minimalism. Elliot Carter really did call me the worst composer in New York State after I left.

RS: Where were your ideas coming from?

AS: You know, I don't know. I never did adhere to just one style. And if you listen to my work over the years, it doesn't matter if you listen chronologically or not, because I've always jumped all over the place. I write what I feel, and that changes at least once a day, and probably more like once every five minutes and certainly way more than once every piece. But at the time, at Juilliard, my individuality was not appreciated. After I debuted the "Three Profundities for Screaming Unison Chorus" there, somebody asked the other composers in the forum "How would you rate this on a scale of 10," and the first one piped up "Do you mean a scale of 1 to 10 or 0 to 10?"

RS: For which instruments were you writing, primarily?

AS: At that time I was beginning to get away from the piano. I still play, obviously, but I've written very little as an adult for the piano as a solo instrument. I don't know why that is exactly, only that I don't hold the instruments of 18th C. Western Europe as sacrosanct only because they were the instruments of 18th C. Western Europe.

RS: When you do play the piano now, what do you play?

AS: I play some of my old silly songs, and I play some of my old romantic repertoire, which I used to keep up for years to play for my mother, until she went to the old age home. And I don't use the piano when I write, unless I need to try out a specific combination of sounds.

RS: Where else did you play while you were at Juilliard?

AS: CBGB's, before it was CBGB's, and I did gt into the Bitter End and the Village Vanguard, but not officially - they let me sit in between sets.

RS: What would you play there?

AS: At that time I was beginning to write a lot of the stuff that showed up on the Duke of Ook, so I played that, plus more traditional blues and ragtime.

RS: Who were your favorite blues and ragtime musicians?

AS: I can still do a pretty mean "Maple Leaf Rag," you know, much faster than it's supposed to be played: Scott Joplin was great. Eubie Blake, who I knew pretty well, was really something. He had a townhouse in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and we used to go over there all the time. People would play stuff that [ragtime] ended in this impressionistic, inverted minor chord, and he would stand up and say, "That's not the way it ends - it ends like this!" and he would play this loud C-Major chord. And Blue Goose, you know, was a subsidiary of Yazoo Records, who reissued a lot of the old blues from the 70s and 30s. So I heard a lot of Blind Blake, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Sam Chatmon, and on and on and on. Nick Perls, who ran the company, didn't particularly like Bessie Smith and that crowd - it was a bit too "city" for him - bit I did.

RS: At that time in your life, when you were dividing your time between Juilliard and downtown clubs, in which style did you prefer to compose and play?

AS: It's always more fun to go to clubs than to go to school. But I'll tell you this: At school, I made friends almost exclusively with the actors and the dancers - my fellow musicians were so boring. All they cared about was rushing to beat each other out for the nearest practice room, where they would stay for the next five hours. And I began to know then that becoming a concert pianist was no longer a goal. Maybe I was too lazy for that, but I think I just had too much creativity to tie myself to that.

RS: Were you reluctant to take your music in new directions?

AS: No, not at all. I always craved attention in one way or another, and that was one way to get it. And there was the period when I worked at WBAI-FM, which really got me going in that direction. Speaking of WBAI, I need to add something here that's been bothering me for some time. When I worked there I did so for free, because at that time it was a place where people wanted to work, even for free, simply because so much that was new was going on there. Over the last couple of years, the network has been taken over by a Corporate Cabal, but it's more than plain "corporate greed." They have no alternative to what we used to call "alternative programming," and they are running their stations like a bunch of fascist criminal lunatics and thugs. Over the past year, I have received literally dozens of e-mail communications from the Pacifica Campaign, a grass-roots coalition of former employees and listeners of the network, which has nationwide support, reporting on each new outrage and in some cases, asking for my help. I don't know how I can bet give this help other than to finally speak out as I'm trying to do now. It is a terrible, terrible thing when an enterprise that started as a symbol of freedom is turned into a place of tyranny and violence and I really feel that people inside and outside the industry need to continue to reunite in opposition to these insane goings-on.

RS: Did you debut the pieces on the Duke of Ook in the Clubs?

AS: I did for some of them, little by little, but not the whole thing at one time.

RS: When did you begin to meet people like Nick Perls, and John Fahey?

AS: I met Nick Perls initially in 1970. The friends I was living with had thrown me out, and then I moved to the Chelsea. But he was the landlord of the townhouse they lived in and I continued to keep in touch with him even after I left. So I was living at the Chelsea at the time - I saw the Airplane, the Incredible String Band, and a lot of the Warhol people were still around. I was a very open scene there, in a lot of ways - party, party, party.

RS: What did you learn from them?

AS: They taught me to keep doing what I was doing, following my creativity.

RS: Who of that group had the greatest effect on you?

AS: I lived only a couple doors down from Virgil Thomson, the composer and music critic for the Herald Tribune for many years. I was fortunate to meet him, particularly in terms of what I was still doing classically at Juilliard.

RS: Who were you listening to?

AS: At the time, before I stopped listening to mainstream radio, I liked the Stones, and the Airplane, Tim Buckley - and the Doors, can't forget them.

RS: Were you writing or playing anything "classical" at the time?

AS: As I was still in school at the time - I wrote a couple of orchestral pieces.

RS: When did you quit school?

AS: In 1972, after the end of the year. I couldn't really balance both [ways of life] anymore. I had had some radio exposure by then. And Nick Perls signed me to Blue Goose, so there really wasn't a reason for me to stay. At that point, anyway, I didn't show up for classes anymore, and the faculty's opinion of the pieces I did was less than wonderful - with the exception of Persichetti.

RS: Tell me about your relationship with Persichetti.

AS: He seemed to be a very scholarly type, which in a way he was. A fairly conservative guy, but he was performing a lot in those days, even though he's undervalued and half-forgotten now. I used to run into him at bars now and then - and he taught me that Tullamore Dew was a good drink for a composer. But he also taught me to, when I got stuck on something, just keep working. He would say, "Take a piece of paper, put a note on it. Now you have infinitely more than you had before. Now put in a second note. You have a hundred percent more than you had a minute ago." And so on and so forth. That's something I've never really lost. I think that's the greatest thing he did for me, aside from tacitly encouraging what I was doing, because he didn't like all of the serial stuff that was going on.

RS: When you met Perls, what was he doing musically?

AS: He had founded Yazoo in the late 60s, first on East 8th Street. Then he moved to King Street where I met him. Then in '71, he branched out into Blue Goose, sort of a modern version of Yazoo, and I was one of the first people signed. The first album I was on with him was the JoAnn Kelly album, with John Fahey, Woody Mann, and John Miller. On the back of that album was a picture of me at the piano in a top hat and cape, with a ridiculous but funny blurb. That was really the beginning of that image.

RS: Tell me about that image.

AS: I really did walk around town dressed that way for a while, but in those days it wasn't that strange. I would show up for midnight showings at the old Elgin Movie house at 19th and 8th (now the Joyce Theatre) dressed in tails and a dead stuffed Robin Redbreast on the lapel, and with a beret and shades. And I referred to myself as Baron Von Boha, supposedly from Transylvania - but B-O-H-A really stood for "Big Old Hairy Ape." See, my father had indoctrinated me when I was very young into the cult of gorillas. My father had seen King Kong and he became incensed at the bad rap gorillas had then. The fact is, they're herbivores, they don't eat meat, they don't attack unless provoked - but that's not what was projected for years and years. I kind of kept that through the years, and eventually added on to it the concept of a gorilla with hooves, or a Hoove Ape.

RS: What was the aesthetic statement you were trying to make?

AS: I don't know if there was - probably just wanted attention. Just seemed to be the thing to do at the time - the first years of the 70s were really just the last years of the 60s. I would walk around and say, "I am Baron Von Boha, 49th of my line, and LAST." And some people actually believed it.

RS: When did you move out of the Chelsea?

AS: In 1971 I moved up to the West Side, supposedly to be near school - and I've lived in four places in the same zip since. But I'm hoping to come back downtown, because that's where everything is happening now. The Upper West Side simply isn't what it used to be. The Metropolitan Opera, the Philharmonic are never going to do my stuff. Juilliard's never going to give me an honorary doctorate. Those institutions have been supported by philanthropists, the Rockefellers, and whatnot, but those people are basically gone, and it will only get harder for such institutions to keep going. It's certainly not in the best interests of Bill Gates and Company to keep them alive. Nothing could be further removed from the their interests.

RS: Where did you play on the Upper West Side?

AS: The Ginger Man, which is no longer there, the place on 64th and Broadway, which is presently The Saloon but has been a whole variety of things. And once I played at a catered party accompanying Luciano Pavarotti singing "Younger than Springtime." That got me nowhere, but was a lot of fun.

RS: Who else was on Blue Goose and what were they playing?

AS: JoAnn Kelly, for one. R. Crumb, the cartoonist, also has a band called R. Crumb and His Cheap Suit Serenaders. And for a while they rented John Fahey, whom I had a lot to do with a bit later. There were also a lot of old blues guys - Bill Williams and Son House. I met them all through Nick Perls.

RS: How many copies of a record did Blue Goose hope to sell?

AS: It depended on the record. For a label of that size, Duke of Ook did fairly well. I believe it sold 50,000 copies, or something like that. I only got ten copies and Nick gave me the option to buy more to sell as I toured around. I didn't do it at the time, but I obviously should have. Now most of the stuff isn't well documented.

RS: I think a record company like that would do well now.

AS: Yes, I agree, it would do well now. But unfortunately, most of the stuff is tied up and unavailable. I can't even get my press book back now.

RS: Did you have an interest in that type of music before you met them, or did your style develop under their influence?

AS: We all learned from each other, for the most part. Essentially, the things I did at Blue Goose were a continuation of the things I had been doing. I had always been interested in pre-Depression pop, and Crumb did a lot of that stuff too. That type of showmanship always appealed to me - like, even though it's not really politically correct to say now, Al Jolson.

RS: Speaking of Jolson: Did you perceive your Duke of Ook era music as fitting into some racial or ethnic lineage?

AS: Well, some of it was obviously derived from black country blues. And one number started with a monologue that has been seen as racially offensive but was actually lifted almost word-for-word from the much earlier song "The Sales Tax," which I think was a Bo Carter song. Jolson, I think, was entirely misperceived, for a long time, as a racist. The stuff he was doing was not racist - it was perfectly acceptable at the time. Eubie Blake himself told me that when he went to this hotel in Miami where Jolson was staying, Jolson said he would leave if the hotel didn't allow Blake to stay. There wasn't any evil spirit behind what he was doing; in those days everything was fair game. The whole idea of racial and ethnic identify hadn't become what it is now.

RS: How many albums did you play on with Blue Goose besides Duke of Ook?

AS: Duke of Ook was my only solo release with them, but I probably played on six or seven others. But Nick [Perls] did record upward of fifty tracks of mine that he never released.

RS: What do you remember most fondly from your career with Blue Goose?

AS: Nick was a good friend, and he taught me a lot about that type of music. He also introduced me to a lot of other people, including Fahey. I went with Fahey to California to record on Takoma, but that ended up not coming to much. I was horrified to learn that Fahey had died this past year. I contacted Dr. Demento when it happened, who was actually John's roommate in UCLA grad school, to try to do something to commemorate his life, but that didn't work out because John's last partner and attorney disapproved of the idea.

RS: Tell me about your relationship with Fahey.

AS: He was one of the strangest characters I ever met. He was almost a professional bear-baiter, in a lot of ways, but he was also a genius. At the time I met him he talked in a very bizarre way, like "Hello, po, young man, pan," and so on. And no matter what side you took on an issue, he would always do the opposite, just on principle. But he was a real innovator and a real genius, and he deserved a lot better than what he got. I did spend a couple of months at his house in L.A. and he did try to take me along to Warner after he had to sell out to Chrysalis and they [Warner] signed him. I did go ahead and write a piece commemorating him based on the poem "Simplify Me When I am Dead," by Keith Douglas, the only classical piece I have written with a guitar part.

RS: Have you participated in anything else to remember Fahey?

AS: I haven't been approached to do anything, no. But it does seem to me and to a couple of other people I know that the time is right to do something. Some people say that certain projects that have been suggested wouldn't honor him properly - well what would honor him properly being forgotten? I don't think so.

RS: Let's move on to the Duke of Ook itself. When did the writing for that album happen?

AS: Over a long period of time, from the late 60s until at least '74. It was recorded in November and December of '74, and then released in '75. Most of the ideas had been jelling in my head for a long time, and many of them did come from traditional blues. And of course it all tied into the Gorilla thing, which I still can't explain. And, to my surprise, it made me a cult hero for some time just after the album was released.

RS: Was there an overarching musical vision for the album?

AS: I'm not sure what an overarching musical vision is.

RS: Was there a theme?

AS: I don't think so: more a compendium of nonsense. As I said, if you were looking to be offended, there was surely something in there to offend you. But I didn't do it for that reason, I did it because it was fun.

RS: But people also saw a socially conscious side to it.

AS: Yes, but I'm not sure where that came from. I certainly was socially conscious at that time, if you want to call it that, but I didn't intentionally put anything political on the album. But there were some reviewers who called me the Tom Lehrer of the 70s for a while.

RS: Which songs specifically, or lyrics, might have inspired that?

AS: I'm really not sure - you'd have to listen for yourself. I was politically active in the late sixties and early seventies: in fact, I led the protests and Juilliard at the time of the Kent State Massacre. But the feeling that my album or my songs were political was also likely a product of the time.

RS: What did you do after the Duke of Ook?

AS: I did a couple more albums with them, but mostly I toured the country and did a lot of college shows, and some TV. I made one particularly ridiculous appearance on Canadian TV - the CBC's "90 Minutes Live" - with the entire Monty Python troupe. I played the "Gorilla Song" on the piano, but when the time came to interview me, I got down on all fours and started crawling around, and of course they all joined me. But when I tried to pull the same stunt on Merv Griffin, they cut me right off.

RS: Where did you tour colleges?

AS: On the East Coast, mostly. The response was very mixed. Some places people were very into what I was doing. But other places, like SUNY - Buffalo - where I played in the middle of the football stadium - there was talking during the performance and people weren't really interested. But it really varied from place to place. Some of my biggest popular successes were in the Newfoundland and, according to ASCAP, at least, in Japan, Sweden, and even the Soviet Union - places where there were a lot of American exiles at the time.

RS: What was the international appeal?

AS: Got me, really. I think it was the times. People were rebelling, in whatever way - evading the draft, moving abroad - and maybe they heard some of that in my music.

RS: Was the record a rebellion?

AS: I think in some ways I have always been rebelling in one way or another - consciously, semi-consciously, or not. Not always on purpose, but it seems to turn out that way. Some of my classical stuff is really conservative; then again, some of it isn't.

RS: When was Dr. Demento playing your record?

AS: He played me for years and years, and actually kept that part of my career alive for a long time. I met him out in California this spring, and he started playing the record again, though he told me that he had been forced in the late eighties and nineties to stop playing the "DOAP Song." It was supposed to be a song from a junkie to his dealer, asking for some D-O-A-P Dope, but I guess the political climate changed and people weren't as receptive to it as they had once been. The sixties were the sixties, and I think everyone was at a party, but I maybe forgot to go home. But during the eighties the whole political correctness thing was in place, and things really started changing.

RS: What's your favorite song from Duke of Ook?

AS: I hate talking about favorites, choosing between two or more things. There's nothing on it I'm ashamed of, at all.

RS: Why is the cover still so popular?

AS: Crumb's involvement in it is important, of course. And it's funny. It shows a very fat version of me - I did drink a lot of beer that year - seated at the piano, with bottles all along the top and half-eaten sandwiches on the floor.

RS: Are people who are fans of the cover fans of the music, the artwork, or the time?

AS: Probably a bit of all the above.

RS: Well, what's most important to you, the music? Or the social legacy?

AS: It's all important to me. No, in fact it's not important. It was all fun, and that's what counts. What I'm doing now is a great deal different, but that part of my personality hasn't disappeared.

RS: What else from that time period do you remember fondly?

AS: I got to do some celebrity endorsements, believe it or not, as a result of the album's success. One for KFAT Radio: "FAT radio, you're too fat for me, but yet you see, I love you." And a lot of that was due to Dr. Demento.

RS: Where did the lighter side of your music come from?

AS: I always had this sardonic side that I wanted to express. And I always either confronted or ignored authority, socially and musically.

RS: Was that style of music unique to you?

AS: Aside from some of the Crumb stuff, probably. Perls was very open-minded, and wasn't scared of offending some people.

RS: Why didn't you follow the Duke of Ook on Blue Goose?

AS: We are going to do an album of Cliff Edwards songs - he was an old Vaudeville performer who did a lot of double-entendre songs. But it just never came to fruition. Nick got sick in the later 70s - and by the end of that decade my contract with him had expired, I was increasingly hard to work with, and he was wrapping the business up.

RS: Why were you hard to work with?

AS: The old show-biz curse of too little work, too much play. But I'm not sure which came first.

RS: Do you regret it?

AS: As I've said, I have paid a heavy price for the choices I made. I don't entirely regret it: I do wish I had done certain things differently and made certain different decisions.

RS: Such as --?

AS: Such as not crawling around the floor on national TV. That didn't help promote where I was going. And I wish I hadn't ignored the more serious side of the music for so long. But everything we do brings us to where we are today, and I suppose that's what really counts in the end.

RS: The eighties were a transitional time for you.

AS: I began to take stock of my life, musically and personally. I knew I had fairly trashed my serious career, and I really wanted to get back to composition. I established a vocal coaching practice for a while, which worked out halfway well.

RS: Why did you want to get back to serious composition?

AS: That was my original goal, and I had, willingly or accidentally, abandoned it.

RS: Did you have, do you have, specific goals within that field?

AS: On one level I always wanted to win a Pulitzer, just to say I did it. But really I just want to express myself, just as anyone creative does. And I knew there was more to express than just the Blue Goose side.

RS: What kind of music were you writing?

AS: It completely depended on the situation, on what was required of me. I wrote one particularly scathing electronic scene, for Julia Cameron's production of a play called Public Lives, which was done at the McCarter Theatre in 1983. The scene was a little girl riding a carousel who got bitten to death by snakes - which didn't happen in reality, of course - and then the whole thing went into chaos. So, I started with carousel music, playing this traditional tune "Dreams of Heaven," and ended up, little by little, turning the piece into this screeching thing.

RS: You said that when you write for yourself you write differently. What were you writing then?

AS: I wrote some art songs in the late 70s. I wrote very little in the early eighties, but in the late eighties, after I met Giampaolo Bracali, I began to write a lot of chamber music and a lot of choral music. And I did have that Merkin Hall concert in '95, which was a big thing, even though it got mixed reviews, to say the least - mostly due to the perceived change of styles from piece to piece.

RS: How much has Bracali influenced you?

AS: Well, my work isn't in any way similar to his. But he taught me quite a bit about discipline, and has been a great friend. He encouraged me to put the Merkin Hall concert together.

RS: Did your marriage and divorce influence your music?

AS: Not really. We were both so out of it that it didn't matter.

RS: What was missing from your life those years?

AS: I hadn't quite found my way back to composing outside the pop and blues idiom, and I knew I had to be headed back there. In recent years, everything has kind of melded together, which I think is great, but I still had a lot of work to do. And since that time, I've put a significant body of work together. It's very variable. Some of it is very lyric/romantic, because I still have that side - like the early pop stuff. And some of it is very expressionistic - like the piece played at the concert set to a Carl Sandburg poem, "Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind," though usually I just call it "Playthings." There's no telling where I'll go next, really. But it doesn't matter, so much. It matters to a lot of critics, who say that I don't have a voice of my own. But maybe I have a lot of voices. There's nothing wrong with that: it just means I know how to do a lot of things.

RS: When you resumed serious composition, what were your long-term goals?

AS: My long-term goals were to resume serious composition.

RS: Did you doubt that you could do it?

AS: I worry a bit about age. When I read about the hot new composers who are so young, I worry that it might be too late. Do I doubt that I have the talent" No. I just need to be persistent in getting my name out there, which is something I have done in the last few years.

RS: What were your first "serious" pieces like when you began to compose again? Were you happy with them?

AS: I did a Quartet for Piano and Strings, which I'm only happy with one movement of, really. I did a String Quartet which I'm very proud of. It's in traditional form, which I wouldn't use anymore because I think it's outdated, but I am certainly very happy with the content. I really enjoy working with the voice, for many years - maybe one of which is that it makes writing easier, it gives you a road map of where you're going.

RS: How did the concert in '95 come about?

AS: Giampaolo suggested it, and I just thought, "What?" But I looked into it, and found a few people who would help back it. It really didn't cost that much, after I made the right deals, and it really just came together. I got really great people to work with me too. Patmore Lewis, for one.

RS: What did it mean to you to have your work performed in that setting?

AS: In a sense it was a vindication of my whole life, which up until that point had been in disrepute.

RS: What attracted you to Sandburg?

AS: I'm not sure. I just came across that poem and it spoke to me. It's about the rise and fall of nations and civilizations, about how each says, "We are the greatest," which is interspersed with "nothing's left but the rats and the lizards."

RS: How do you represent those ideas musically?

AS: It wasn't easy. There were a lot of special effects and a lot of percussion and a lot of extended vocal techniques, but it was well worth doing.

RS: What, in your second life as a composer are you most proud of?

AS: Certainly the Sandburg setting, and the String Quartet. The piece I wrote to honor John Fahey - "Simplify Me When I Am Dead" - I think is great. It's for baritone voice and a small chamber ensemble. The Whitman piece I'm working on now - "The Mystic Trumpeter" - there's definitely something there, though I may never again do a piece that grand, since it's just not practical.

RS: Many other people have set "The Mystic Trumpeter." How is your take different?

AS: The poem is written as a series of entirely different episodes, and I treat it that way, in terms of the style and everything else. There are no breaks, it's one connected movement, and that gives me an opportunity to play around with the style, to simulate one thing or another.

RS: Why Whitman?

AS: He was a great poet. And he's also in the public domain. And he is grandiose in spots - and I hate to say it, but so am I. We seem to fit together in that way.

RS: He also seems a blender of traditions. Does that resonate with you?

AS: It definitely does. I think that's true. Any blending of perspectives resonates with me automatically.

RS: How far along are you with "Mystic Trumpeter?"

AS: About 70% of the way through.

RS: Will you do other Whitman settings afterward?

AS: Sure. I haven't really taken a good look at what or when, but I'm certainly interested.

RS: What will you pursue next?

AS: The poet I used for the Fahey piece, Keith Douglas. He died when he was 24, he was killed in WWII. He was quite suicidal anyway. But he was a great poet: dark, yes, but I have that side, too.

RS: Are you at all reluctant to indulge that side?

AS: I'm quite willing to indulge that side.

RS: How does it relate to Duke of Ook?

AS: I'm not sure. I know they do relate on some sardonic level. They're two sides of me, but they do come from the same place. And I need to express them both. My father, who was only mildly annoyed Duke of Ook, gets very worried whenever Ii do something like this (related to death as a theme).

RS: What else do you have in mind?

AS: I've been thinking about an opera. Something original, not a setting. My friend and I have discussed a libretto, and we haven't really come up with anything, but we're still working. I would love to do a horror opera, something like "The Shining." Not that I think I'd do it at the Met, or even that I'd want to do it in that style. And I want to get into the fusion of the arts, multi-media stuff.

RS: What do you mean when you suggest that the Met and the Philharmonic might not be around much longer?

AS: It's pure economics. The philanthropists aren't around anymore, and no one will keep those institutions going.

RS: You don't have faith that they will last as creative enterprises?

AS: No, I do not. Nor am I sure that I have faith that they are creative enterprises anymore. They're more like museum pieces, like the Broadway stage in the past 20 years. What happened to classical music in 1910 happened to Broadway in the 1980s: 90% of what you see are revivals. It's just easier to do that, but it can't last forever. And I'm not sure that it should.

RS: What should?

AS: The traditional bastion of Philharmonics and Mets that do the same thing for a hundred years changed with the advent of the recording industry. Until then, most of what was heard was new music. Not anymore. Maybe composers have hurt themselves lately by writing things that are incomprehensible, knowing that they likely won't be heard.

RS: What will take the place of the "museum-pieces?"

AS: There's a lot of great stuff going on downtown, like the Cooper Union. A lot of small venues down there like the Kitchen are doing things with multi-media. So maybe it doesn't pay to be writing a 40-minute, single-movement works, but that's what I happened to be doing. Big orchestras will continue to exist, on a limited basis, and they'll be trotted out for ceremonies and so forth. But soon that will be their only function.

RS: What do you expect in the future of music more generally?

AS: Vast change. The old venues aren't the same anymore - they're like museums. Most of the good stuff now is going on downtown, away from the traditional institutions.

RS: Is that because "traditional" classical music isn't important anymore? Is it overplayed?

AS: It's definitely overplayed. But such of it that is important will always be so. But anything that has been recorded in the last fifty years is available someplace, so there's no need to keep presenting the same things.

RS: What should classical orchestras do?

AS: They should keep an open mind to what is happening currently, and present the best new music.

RS: Could they spur an interest in new classical music?

AS: Absolutely. If they just didn't limit themselves to older middle-European compositions.

RS: What do you think about the more modern pieced they put on, John Adams or Phillip Glass?

AS: I'm thrilled when they do, and I wish they would do more. I do tend to find some of that stuff tedious, since my own tendency is to be a little more dramatic.

RS: Why has the establishment latched on to so few contemporary composers?

AS: It's not because of necessity, and not because of choice. It's kind of a token attempt at representing contemporary music.

RS: What type of venue will thrive instead of the traditional, large institutions?

AS: Chamber music definitely. But by chamber music I mean any small ensemble, rock bands, rap groups included.

RS: Who's the audience for the new music?

AS: There is a growing number of people interested. Like many of Cooper Union's presentations - which are always crowded. My generation, and also the ones after us, were not brought up to automatically enjoy music written for certain small combinations of instruments in 18th C. Europe just because it's traditional.

RS: What kind of music will the next generation of composers be making?

AS: They'll be writing for small groups, one because of the economic situation and two because of the state of music in the country. And I think they'll be writing for different combinations of instruments. Like my piece for Fahey, which has a guitar in it: I never would have done that 20 years ago.

RS: You're looking for a publisher for the Fahey tribute?

AS: I sent everything off about a month ago, but haven't heard back yet.

RS: What are your goals for the next part of your career?

AS: Like any other composer I would like to write and present my music. But I jut want to stay as active as possible, and involved as possible in what's going on musically. Because there was a time when I did isolate myself very much. And looking back, that was just laziness. Now there's more of an opportunity now to be seen however I want to present myself without being criticized for it. And I certainly intend to take advantage of that. My main goal is and always has been to create music, what that may result in I can't know. But what I'm doing with the Whitman piece combines many styles into one long theatrical movement. But that's a product of the piece.

RS: In the eighties and the nineties did you feel restrained by public perceptions?

AS: My recording career had ended. And I probably lost confidence to some extent that I could go on as a serious composer because I hadn't done it for so long. I had done little odds and endsÉ but I did not have a lot of doubts.

RS: What inspires you now? You've been setting a lot of poems.

AS: I think it's easy and attractive for me to do that now. When you get right down to it, the origins of music are voice and percussion. So poetry works well for me.

RS: What else moves you to create music?

AS: There was a long period of time when I refused to listen to anyone who wasn't me, because I was two things: real arrogant and real impressionable. Right now I don't feel that way. There are a lot of different things going on right now, and I really want to investigate that more. And it turns out where they told us we were supposed to go when we were at Juilliard isn't the place to be anymore. Like the MTV Video Music Awards at the Met. That wouldn't have happened 20 years ago. That wouldn't have happened 10 years ago. But it's going to keep happening.

RS: Are you reacting to that type of cultural change in your music?

AS: Well I'm not at all unhappy to see that type of thing happen. And if I'm not responding those changes directly, I'm reacting in my attitudes, which certainly present themselves in my music.

RS: What do you like about modern music?

AS: I want to get a good deal more involved with music in other parts of the world. There's plenty going on in Asia and India and other place, in terms of their native music, plenty that we don't know very much about. But I also watch MTV: and some of that stuff is hilarious. Like the Fatboy Slim video with Christopher Walken.

RS: So you think the humor in modern music culture is worth holding onto?

AS: Absolutely. I think that was missing in the first three quarters of the last century: that's one reason we composers may be partly to blame for what happened to us.

RS: What else are you listening to?

AS: I tend to have very Catholic tastes. But what I like about everyone I like is their ability to get out there, to have a presence, to really express what they're trying to say. And that comes from my instincts as a performer.

RS: Given the decline of the traditional institutions as you see them, where would you want your music to be performed?

AS: Of course I want it to be performed in the biggest venues around. But I don't think I'll ever write anything of the scope of the Whitman piece again, unless I'm specifically asked to, because I don't think there will be many opportunities for work like that. For economic reasons, mostly.

RS: What future do you envision for the Whitman setting? And what future do you hope for it?

AS: I hope that someone will be able to take it up. Or else I'll get a lot of the old "this certainly deserves to be heard." Which means "it deserves to be heard, but not by us."

RS: And the Fahey piece?

AS: I have to keep sending it out. That kind of legwork is one thing I've been remiss in, and I need to start doing it again.

RS: Have you done anything else on the piano? Any lighthearted songs?

AS: Well, I haven't totally abandoned my humorous side. And I still play songs from the Duke of Ook for myself, but I haven't written much like that for a long time.

RS: Tell me about the Duke of Ook as a persona, as opposed to an album.

AS: The Duke of Ook, from my perspective, really wasn't a persona. But that is how some people perceived it. Like when I did that commercial for KFAT radio - it said, "This is the Duke of Ook for KFAT radio." But my public appearances then weren't "in character": when I did appear on TV and at concerts it was mostly in three piece suits - which was the only thing conservative about them.

RS: Are you comfortable with the personas that you've played, in retrospect?

AS: I don't regret them, certainly. And I even think a few are fairly hilarious - but it is something I've been trying to get away from.

RS: Did the dressing up mean anything to you personally? About your own identity?

AS: I have always been a performer, ever since I was a little kid. So I have always dressed up - collections of hats and things like that. It was natural for me, and we're really talking about 1971 or 1972, so the idea of dressing up wasn't out of the ordinary at all.

RS: Is your movement back toward classical composition also a persona?

AS: There have been several personae over the course of my career, certainly, but they don't cancel each other out. They're all me. I have no problem at all jumping from one thing to another thing that sounds entirely different.

RS: My question is as much personal as musical.

AS: The character you're seeing right now is the real thing, at this point. There are no specific characters attached to my composition now in the same sense that there were before. But in all honesty, I can't guarantee that I won't do something like that again. I don't rule anything out.

RS: What do you want to teach people, or what's the message you want to send?

AS: I hate to sound like Marshall MacLuhan, but maybe the message is that there's a message, and it's malleable over time and space.

RS: How should people respond to your music?

AS: I would hope, first of all, that people find it beautiful, in one way or another. Beyond that, I guess my aim has always been to be effective, in the dramatic sense. I have always thought that we need to wake people up to what's going on, make them realize that there are things going on out there that are new and relevant and maybe just as important as works from 18th C. Europe.

RS: Who are your favorite of the old-guard classical composers?

AS: I've always loved Beethoven. Not only his music but how he lived his life. He died a very wealthy man, and the way he came about some of that wealth was sort of roguish. He would sell the same piece to four or five publishers, only give it to one, and keep all the advances. They couldn't really do anything because he was Beethoven. Which, you know, is pretty smart.

RS: Have you ever tried that?

AS: Never. And if there are any publishers reading this, they can be sure that I never will. Really. I never will. I promise.

RS: What about from your personal history? What have you learned, and what should other people learn?

AS: The best you can do is move forward and avoid making the same mistakes again and again. There are plenty of new ones to be made. Everyone does thing they shouldn't, but it's the past.

RS: What are your old mistakes?

AS: Burning bridges. Which I've done too much of. And I have been in some respects a lazy composer. I wasted a lot of time basking in my limited glories, and I do regret that. But that's why I've been making such a big effort in the last few years to get myself out there.

RS: What are your future mistakes?

AS: Now, now...

RS: What do you want your legacy to be, musically and personally?

AS: Personally, though this may sound somewhat odd, I want people to remember that I wasn't afraid to do what to do. Which has always been important in my life because what I want to do changes from day-to-day. Beyond that, raising people's consciousness just to the existence of art in these United States or ours, is a big job. And whether it will ever be entirely done is very questionable.

RS: What specifically needs to be improved?

AS: The biggest thing that needs to be improved is that some people think there isn't anything to be improved. What I'm doing is important to me, and I want very much for it to be important to other people. I believe strongly in spirituality, though I subscribe to no particular church, and I think when you get right down to it, spirituality is the basis of art.

RS: Finally, tell me about your career.

AS: What a long strange trip it's been. I started real young. It's not anything I had any real encouragement to do, let alone pressure. But I went in a lot of different directions. The worst part of it is that I've wasted time, and the best part of it is that I've had some fun and that I've brought pleasure to other people. There is a reason that I called the production company for the Merkin Hall concert "New Classics Entertainment": that's what most art is or ought to be. And the reason I want this to keep going is that twenty years ago I thought that a whole part of me had ceased to exist. And now I see a lot of things changing and I'm very hopeful about the future, not only for me but also for music in general. When I was at Juilliard, we weren't told about the practical aspects of the business. All we were told is "You're here, you're privileged, work hard and you'll make it - [whispering] unless you don't."

The End