TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 48

[Tobie Shapiro]

November 3, 2000000006



Dear Old Friends,

	Feyna got a 95 on her mid-term in 
California History.  This was especially 
significant because she went into it so 
frightened.  She was afraid she couldn't do it. 
She'd never done anything like it before:  three 
essay questions.  How could she manage?  She 
shivered.  She cried.  Luckily enough, she has 
special compensation because of her ADD, OCD, 
anxiety and slow processing to take tests in a 
quiet environment, and take twice the time that 
the others take.  Without those accommodations, 
she couldn't do it.  With them, she did her 95. 
And you know why else this 95 is significant? 
Well, Feyna has some friends who live out through 
the tunnel into Walnut Creek and beyond.  They 
are friends and Feyna makes it a threesome.  The 
fellow of the group is just not a good friend to 
have.  He tells Feyna to dress differently, wear 
big slutty hoop earrings, shave under her arms, 
and like rap music.  He's uncultured and proud of 
it, eats nothing but junk food, and gets upset 
over tiny imagined infractions, and then huffs 
off, refusing to speak to her.  He and Feyna's 
other friend, a girl she's been a good friend of 
for five years, and this young man read over 
Feyna's first paper for the class, and they both 
talked her down.  She should go take a remedial 
course.  Go back to high school.  The paper was 
eighth grade stuff.  This upset Feyna no end.  It 
took a lot of logic and encouragement to get her 
out of that tailspin.  I read the paper, and I 
said she'd do fine.  It was her first paper, and 
it wasn't bad at all.  So, Feyna went into this 
mid-term scared and low on self esteem.  It turns 
out that her "friend", the one who wants her to 
dress like a slut and prides himself in being a 
top notch student, got only a 93.  He was jealous 
and angry about it.  He wanted to win.  I try not 
to tell Feyna about this boy.  He's bound to 
cause her misery, already has, with his temper 
tantrums and petty concerns.  He lies, too.  But 
Feyna has to learn this herself.  So Mama keeps 
her mouth shut.  I'm afraid Feyna will get hurt, 
but that's not the worst that could happen.  She 
could avoid getting hurt because of my sound 
advice, and then not learn the lesson yet.  This 
is rough on Mom.

	Another thing that was rough on Mom.


 
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How not to Build an Empire

	When I was seriously chasing the music 
business around, I had an idea, a vague idea, of 
what it could do for me if I were successful.  I 
had a round about yen to be famous, but I didn't 
desire or envision performing.  That's a strange 
combination for someone making the rounds with 
her demonstration tape.  But that's what were the 
facts.  I never did like performing.

	When I was a kid, my father would force 
me to play the cello for company.  I hated that. 
I knew no one was interested in hearing the 
middle child perform her latest etude, or a 
snippet of some concerto she was working on.  But 
when pressed to the wall with, "Wouldn't you all 
like to hear Tobie play the cello?"  of course, 
the guests had no choice but to say, "Yes".  And 
so, after protestation and squirming, I would be 
railroaded into getting out my cello.  I could 
tell before I had the instrument out of its case 
that the company would prefer to be elsewhere, 
and I always resented my father for forcing me on 
them.  A few times, I flatly refused and kept 
refusing relentlessly, and when that worked, 
there was no turning back.  He never asked me 
again.  But that was one of my associations with 
performance.  The other association was with my 
father's thirst for performance.  He was always 
performing in one way or another.  He always had 
his eye out for what effect his current act was 
having on people, how much he was being noticed, 
and he did his best to be the constant center of 
attention.  Even when he asked me to play cello 
for guests, he  would stand, front and center, 
making comments and stealing the show for 
himself.  The whole routine of getting me to play 
was an act from which he derived sufficient 
attention to hold him for a while.

	So I hated performing and yet here I was 
banging on the doors of the music business. 
"Won't you listen to what I write?"  That is what 
I loved doing, and what I was compelled to do -- 
write music.  Those simple folk tunes I'd started 
out writing evolved into 20th century lieder  -- 
poems that I set to music.  I took myself very 
seriously.  I wanted recognition and praise.  I 
wanted to communicate what I had to say and sing 
to the other humans.  As communication, on a 
small enough scale, I could tolerate performance. 
Oh, how did I expect to make it in the music biz? 
It was another piece of illogical magic that I 
sought.  However, I did get pretty close to 
signing contracts with a number of record labels. 
However, there was always some juncture at which 
the effort failed.  I was not willing to do what 
many young artists were willing to do.

	When I played my demonstration tape for 
Alfred V. Brown, of New York City, the supreme 
violist of the NBC orchestra, travelling musician 
with the Beaux Arts Trio, he was immediately 
interested in managing me.  He knew everyone who 
was anyone.  He'd been around a long time.  The 
first person he connected with was Phil Ramone. 
Phil Ramone was (and probably still is) Paul 
Simon's engineer/producer, and he got excited 
about the tape.  I met Phil Ramone in New York 
City on a trip there in 1974.  This was when he 
vowed that I would be at the top of his new 
label.  "We will put out a record, and maybe 
everyone won't quite get it at first.  So we'll 
put out another one, and another, and eventually, 
you'll be a star.  I'll make you a star."  All I 
had to do was wait for him to get his recording 
company together.  Don't go play any clubs or 
perform around (that was a relief to hear) 
because he wanted me to be fresh and unknown, his 
discovery.

	I was scheduled to meet Phil Ramone again 
during Paul Simon's US tour in which he had one 
night in Berkeley.  So, with my Paul Simon Tour 
badge slapped on my chest, I came to the Berkeley 
Community Theater for the rehearsal.  I can't say 
I was nervous, because I wasn't.  Not about 
meeting Paul Simon, anyway.  But I was anxious 
about what would happen with Phil Ramone.  Al 
Brown greeted me and set me down in a choice 
chair in the auditorium.  There were only a few 
other people in the theater.  I watched the 
rehearsal.  I discovered that Art Garfunkle is 
not tall.  It is that Paul Simon is very short. 
And he was a bit green about the gills, neurotic 
and generally displeased with himself.  At a 
break, he hopped off the stage and walked right 
up to me.  We shook hands.

	"You're Tobie Shapiro."

	"How did you know?"

	"The way Phil and Al have been talking 
about  you, I'd recognize you in a crowd near the 
subway at rush hour."

	He admitted he hadn't listened to my 
tape.  He said he was afraid to.  So I promised 
him I wouldn't listen to his recordings.  We made 
a sort of deal.  And then Phil Ramone appeared 
after everyone else went off to eat their tour 
dinner.  And he was the one who remained after 
the concert to chat with Al Brown and me.  He was 
full of himself.  Full of a lot of other things, 
too, I found out, but full of himself.  He was 
staying in a hotel in San Francisco, and around 
the time that everyone was breaking up and 
turning in, he let it be known that he needed a 
ride.  I had a car, and I saw no harm in it.  So 
I offered to drive him into the city.  He 
accepted quickly.  Phil was a large man, and took 
up the passenger seat quite fully.  He was nice 
enough not to smoke in the car.  He gave me 
directions and we wound up at his drop-off place.

	"Why don't you come in?" he asked.

	I saw no harm in it, because I was a 
fool.  What on earth is a nice Jewish girl doing 
coming up to a big producer's hotel room to 
visit?  Was I that naive?  And the answer is, 
"Yes, I was that naive."  I was also that 
hopeful.  I was hopeful that all I was being was 
friendly.  I was hopeful that being friendly with 
no more complications than affability would be 
good for a record contract.  I was hopeful that 
just being myself was plenty enough to cement a 
business relationship.  I was hopeful that talent 
and potential were all I needed to make a deal.

	We walked into his room.  There were two 
queen sized beds, and a sitting room.  There was 
a big television screen, and a phone and the 
phone had a little light on it that was blinking.

	"We're going to be roommates!" said Phil 
Ramone, delighted, which reminded me that I 
needed to call my mother to let her know where I 
was and when I'd be home.  I asked to use the 
phone.  (There were no cell phones in the '70s). 
"How wholesome," Phil brightened, and he winked 
at me.  It began to dawn on me what he expected. 
I skipped feeling like a fool to go straight for, 
"How do I get myself out of this?"  I called my 
mother, and before she could say anything much, I 
told her that I had dropped Phil Ramone off at 
his hotel and would be coming home immediately. 
As soon as I said I'd be coming home immediately, 
Phil lay down on his back on the bed and asked me 
to take his shoes off for him.

	"Okay," I said, "But then, I have to go.  My mother expects me."

	And then he was snoring, his round belly 
looming up from his prone body like the back of a 
turtle rising up out of the ocean.  I closed the 
door quietly behind me, and I rushed to my car. 
All the way back over the bridge, I went over 
what had happened and how I could have changed it 
had I been the least bit savvy.  But I was not 
the least bit savvy, and the thought never left 
me that had I stayed in that hotel room to do 
more than remove Phil Ramone's shoes, I would 
have had a record contract.  Oh, no no no no.  It 
would not have guaranteed a contract.  But 
empires have been built on less.


 
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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net