From the Archives: Writer Nick Hornby.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: MARCH 17, 2000
Time: 12:00
Tran: 031701np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Nick Hornby Discusses `High-Fidelity'
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:06

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TERRY GROSS, HOST: From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with FRESH AIR.

The movie "High Fidelity," starring John Cusack, opens at the end of the month. On today's FRESH AIR, we feature an interview with Nick Hornby, who wrote the novel the film is based on. It's the story of a 35-year-old used-record store owner obsessed with pop culture and with a string of romances gone bad.

Also, Ornette Coleman, the composer and saxophonist who led a revolution in jazz, is celebrating his 70th birthday this month. We'll listen to interviews from our archives with Ornette Coleman, his son, Denardo, and two musicians who played with Ornette, Charlie Haden and Don Cherry.

And film critic John Powers reviews "Erin Brockovich," starring Julia Roberts.

That's all coming up on FRESH AIR.

First, the news.

(BREAK)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

The new movie "High Fidelity," which opens at the end of the month, stars John Cusack as the owner of a used-record store. The movie is adapted from a 1995 novel by the British writer Nick Hornby, which has just been published in a new paperback edition.

On this archive edition, we have an interview with Hornby recorded after the book's original publication.

"High Fidelity" is a hilarious portrait of a certain type of pop culture obsessive, a type you may recognized. Heck, it may be you. the main character, Rob Fleming, defines himself and everyone he knows by their taste in music, movies, and books. He compulsively draws up top five lists -- his top five Elvis Costello songs, top five American films, top five episodes of "Cheers."

When the book opens, he's drawing up the list of his all-time top five worst breakups with women, which leads us to the book's other big theme, Rob's inability to stay in a committed relationship.

Here's a reading from "High Fidelity" that will give you a sense of how Rob, the record store owner, and his employees Dick and Barry evaluate people by their taste in pop culture.

(BEGIN AUDIOTAPE)

NICK HORNBY, "HIGH FIDELITY": "Awhile back, when Dick and Barry and I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like, Barry proposed the idea of a questionnaire for prospective partners, a two- or three-page multiple-choice document that covered all the music, film, TV, book bases. It was intended, A, to dispense with awkward conversation, and B, to prevent a chap from leaping into bed with someone who might at a later date turn out to have every Julio Iglesias record ever made.

"It amused us at the time, although Barry, being Barry, went one stage further. He compiled the questionnaire and presented it to some poor woman he was interested in, and she hit him with it.

"But there was an important and essential truth contained in the idea, and the truth was that these things matter, and it's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party."

GROSS: Well, that's the theory of how his relationships work, you know, you have to find somebody whose taste conforms to yours, and taste is everything. Let's hear how this works in practice. I'm going to ask you to skip ahead to page 161, when a friend of the main characters, you know, has met a woman. The problem is this woman doesn't have very good taste in music.

Why don't you read it?

HORNBY: "`Anna's a simple-minds fan,' Dick confides.

"`All right!' I don't know what to say. This, in our universe, is a staggering piece of information. We hate simple minds. They were number one in our top five bands or musicians who will have to be shot come the musical revolution -- Michael Bolton, U2, Brian Adams, and, surprise, surprise, Genesis were tucked in behind them.

"Barry wanted to shoot the Beatles, but I pointed out that someone had already done it.

"It is as hard for me to understand how he's ended up with a simple-minds fan as it would be to fathom how he'd paired off with one of the royal family or a member of the shadow cabinet. It's not the attraction that baffles so much is how on earth they got together in the first place."

GROSS: Well, Nick Hornby, (laughs) is this an obsession you understand, measuring the whole world by taste?

HORNBY: I understand it, I don't necessarily share it. But I've certainly had my moments, I think.

GROSS: How obsessed are you with your favorites in books, records, television, movies, and other people's?

HORNBY: I'm always very interested in other people's stuff, and I guess it's something that I want to know fairly quickly. But I don't think I'm alone in this, and I think a lot of men in particular are like that, and they'd rather kind of cut to the chase in conversation, and just get people to list things, really.

GROSS: So do you think that the male aspect is the list aspect, you know, the quantifying aspect, or just the obsession with taste?

HORNBY: I think the quantifying aspect is very important.

GROSS: Now, I confess, I really am baffled when people get together who don't share the same taste. I mean, if somebody, like, is obsessed with movies and starts a relationship with someone who doesn't like to go to the movies, you wonder, are their inner lives compatible?

HORNBY: (laughs) Yes, I would say that they probably aren't. I think it probably gets easier as you get older to form relationships and to find points of contact that aren't based on taste. But I think at the times when one is forming relationships, these things are very important.

GROSS: Pauline Kael, the film critic, once wrote in one of her essays that she broke up with someone after they saw "West Side Story" together, because he loved the film and she detested it, and she just couldn't imagine seeing him any more after that. Have you ever been through something like that?

HORNBY: No. A friend has quite recently. They had an argument because a woman described a TV-movie as a great film. And you could feel the doubt in his voice, you know, from a very early stage thereafter, and it really didn't last very long.

GROSS: And the main character owns a record store. How familiar are you with record store culture?

HORNBY: (laughs) Well, I've never worked in one, but I guess I've spent a lot of time in them. So I'm pretty familiar.

GROSS: Why don't you describe the record store that your main character owns, Championship Vinyl?

HORNBY: Well, it's a rather seedy second-hand store for collectors, really, and it sells pretty well all vinyl, I would imagine. They don't have that conversation, but when I imagined it in my head, it's just rackfuls of vinyl. It's pretty empty most of the time, so the three guys who work there spend most of their time arguing with each other, and they don't make a lot of sales.

And it sells, I suppose, the pop music canon, you know. If Harold Bloom has a canon, these guys have a canon. And it's kind of R&B, New Wave, '60s rock, all the kinds of things that rock critics would approve of, really.

GROSS: Plus a little skaa.

HORNBY: Oh, yes, yes.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Now, some of the customers in this record store are people who really virtually have no life outside of looking for rare singles. About one customer the main character thinks, "I can't imagine telling him anything of a remotely personal nature, that I had a mother and father say, or that I'd been to school when I was younger. I reckon he'd just blush and stammer and ask if I'd heard the new Lemonheads album."

What (laughs) -- what made you think of a character like that? Do you find a lot of people like that who seem to have no life and who live in book or record stores?

HORNBY: Yes, well, it was the thing, I guess, that interested me about people like the characters in the book, because it's the -- what they listen to all the time is incredibly emotive, and yet they're very anal about stuff. And so there's this great dissonance between the music and its consumers. And it was that sort of area that I wanted to write about.

GROSS: You know, I find with people who are obsessive about music or books or whatever that there's the kind of person who just has the list, who just has, Well, these are my favorites, I like this, I don't like that, and then there's the person who has just a whole kind of constellation of thoughts surrounding it, and for who those lists represent a kind of, like, deep inner life and a rich sensibility. Do you know what I mean?

HORNBY: Oh, sure. I mean, I guess it's the difference between a rock critic and a rock fan a lot of the time. And I think music is a terribly hard thing to write about, and people like Peter Guralnick and Graham Marcus (ph), who are capable of these -- I mean, they have very defined tastes, but they are capable of striking sparks and thoughts off their lists, as it were.

Whereas there's a sort of lumpen rock fan who just can't do anything with a list apart from know that this is the stuff he likes.

GROSS: Where does your character fit into that?

HORNBY: Well, the central character, I think, is emerging from an obsession with pop music. I mean, he's -- his 35th birthday takes place during the narrative of the book, and he's beginning to think that it's about time he did something else, or thought about something else, but he's not really sure what those things are to think about.

So he's kind of in between two camps, really, which is quite an uncomfortable place for him to be.

GROSS: One of his early girlfriends, back in 1973, her top five recording artists were Carly Simon, Carole King, James Taylor, Cat Stevens, and Elton John. And the main character thinks, "I can imagine what sort of person she became, a nice person."

HORNBY: (laughs)

GROSS: Tell me how you chose that list for this early girlfriend.

HORNBY: Well, I guess that was pretty much a composite of the record collections that I saw in girlfriends' bedrooms at the time in the mid-'70s. They were all -- one of those artists was always represented in any collection that I saw.

GROSS: You know, an interesting thing is, a lot of times -- and I think this is particularly true of boys and men, they want to be the mentor in a relationship, so they'll almost, like, seek out somebody who's younger or at least more inexperienced or uneducated in something so that they can teach them.

HORNBY: Yes, I think that's very interesting, and I think it's very representative and very common male behavior. And in the book, in "High Fidelity," Rob Fleming spends a lot of his time making compilation tapes for women that he meets. And it's -- you know, I guess it's like the -- in a way, in a rather unpleasant way, it's like dogs and lamp posts, and it's setting your mark in some way. And to that extent, virgin ears are very important to that kind of man.

GROSS: Tell us more about the compilation tapes he made -- makes, and how he uses them.

HORNBY: Well, I mean, they are a kind of means of seduction, and he meets Laura, who's the other central character in the book, at a club where he's a D.J., and he offers to make her a compilation tape of the music that she's been listening to and dancing to in this club. And so that becomes a very important thing that he has introduced her to all sorts of things.

And then there's an echo of that later on, where he meets somebody else, and he finds himself making a tape for her too. And Laura sees him and knows exactly what he's doing. But he has very strict rules about compilation tapes, about what kind of music can go next to what kind of music, and he can't have black music and white music together, and he can't have fast stuff and slow stuff together, he has to build all these little bridges between tracks. So he's very fernickety about the compilation tapes.

GROSS: You know, I have to tell you, I've always found that kind of -- that male urge to mentor a girlfriend kind of irritating.

HORNBY: Yes, I should think it is, actually.

GROSS: Yes, it's, like, you -- like, somebody who doesn't want an equal, someone who doesn't want somebody they can share an interest with, but they want to be able to, like, teach it.

HORNBY: Yes, it really -- you're trying to turn the other person into a female version of yourself, which kind of defeats the point of the relationship. (laughs)

GROSS: Exactly. (laughs) Right.

Nick Hornby is my guest. He's the author of the novel "High Fidelity." Let's take a break, and then we'll talk some more.

This is FRESH AIR.

(END AUDIOTAPE)

(BREAK)

GROSS: We're listening to an interview with Nick Hornby recorded in 1995 after the publication of his novel "High Fidelity." The novel has been adapted into a new movie starring John Cusack. "High Fidelity" is about a 35-year-old used-record store owner obsessed with records, books, movies, and television. He defines himself by the top five lists he constantly compiles.

(BEGIN AUDIOTAPE)

Now, what about your top five singles of all time? Do you have such a list?

HORNBY: I guess that the permanent number one is Marvin Gaye, "Let's Get It On," which I think is the greatest piece of pop music ever made. And then the four after that change periodically, but there's always something like "Hey, Jude" in there, and I have a residual fondness for "Maggie Mae," Rod Stewart, so that those three are always there or thereabouts.

GROSS: And do people expect that your top three will be more obscure than that?

HORNBY: (laughs) Yeah, but I think I've gone through the obscure stage now. In fact, the records that you tend to end up listening to when you've been listening to pop music for 20 years are the great ones, and the great ones tend to be the famous ones.

GROSS: Now, your main character not only divides pop culture into top five lists, he divides up his life that way too, and the book starts with, "My desert island, all-time top five most memorable split-ups in chronological order." And then the lists are the five women who -- or girls who he -- who left him during his formative years.

Did you ever find yourself doing that in real life? Or is this just an extreme you invented for your character?

HORNBY: This is something I invented for the character, yes. (laughs) No, I tend to try and forget as quickly as possible. But...

(LAUGHTER)

HORNBY: No, I think it's something that he would do, and it's another difference between him and me.

GROSS: Now, when you were writing this book, did you have to do any research, so to speak? Did you hang out at a record store or observe certain people who you felt were really close to the character that you created for your book? Or did you just already know all this stuff inside out?

HORNBY: I think really I knew this stuff inside out. There's some stuff about women's underwear in there...

GROSS: Oh, I was just going to mention that.

HORNBY: (laughs)

GROSS: I was just going to -- that's a really funny part. I mean, this is a character who is really disappointed because, you know, he finally figures out that women save their best, really sexy lingerie for Saturday nights when they expect to actually be sleeping with someone. But then when you actually move in with the woman, there's these kind of, like, tattered, torn undies all over the radiators hanging up to dry.

HORNBY: Yes, I mean, that was something that obviously came from bitter experience. But...

GROSS: (laughs)

HORNBY: But I did check it out with a lot of women friends, and so that was my one piece of research, was to ask women about their underwear.

GROSS: And did they concur that that was true?

HORNBY: Yes, they did, yes.

(LAUGHTER)

HORNBY: I'm getting a nod here from the studio, so...

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: This is your -- that was your engineer...

HORNBY: Yes, that's right.

GROSS: ... in England, nodding?

HORNBY: Yes.

GROSS: So how big is your record collection? I'll move the subject off of underwear for a moment. (laughs)

HORNBY: Well, I guess I have 700 or 800 vinyl albums and a few hundred CDs, and quite a few tapes as well. So I've got to the stage when I have most things I want, really.

GROSS: Well, that's actually pretty modest for a collect -- by collecting standards.

HORNBY: Yes, I'm not really a collector, and I have ditched loads of stuff as I've got older, which Rob Fleming, the guy in the book, would never do. I mean, he'd never get rid of anything. And because he uses his records as a kind of autobiography, whereas I practiced a sort of Stalinist rewriting of history.

GROSS: (laughs)

HORNBY: So...

GROSS: What do you mean?

HORNBY: Well, so, you know, you sell all the dodgy heavy metal albums, all the Black Sabbath records I bought when I was 16, and they're now no longer to be found in my record collection.

GROSS: Well, did you ever have to divide up a record collection after living with somebody for an amount of time?

HORNBY: No, I've always kept things very separate.

GROSS: Now, how do you keep your record collection, just alphabetized straightforwardly?

HORNBY: Alphabetized, but with the first names first, so Bob Dylan would be under B.

GROSS: What? (laughs)

HORNBY: Yes.

GROSS: Why?

HORNBY: Because (laughs) I've always had the thought -- I've always found this problem with certain artist groups, like, you know, like the J. Giles Band, if you walk into a record store, you never know whether to go to J or G. And it's firmly under J in my collection. I think it makes sense.

GROSS: Uh-huh. Well, I guess this answers the Sun Ra question. I mean, (inaudible)...

HORNBY: (laughs) Absolutely, yes.

GROSS: How you deal with that.

HORNBY: Sun Ra, there's a band that used to be here called Danny Wilson, and everyone in the record store thought that Danny Wilson was a solo artist, so they always put their records under W. But it was actually from the Frank Sinatra film...

GROSS: Right.

HORNBY: ... "Danny Wilson." So again, you see, that's the kind of little problem that this clears up. And I recommend it to all your listeners.

GROSS: Have you ever wanted to call a moratorium on taste, so that no -- for a day, nobody would have any taste?

HORNBY: (laughs)

GROSS: (laughs) And you wouldn't be thinking, Well, what do they really like and what does that say about them? And what do I really like and what does that say about me?

HORNBY: Yes, I think it is a terribly burdensome thing, but those habits are so deeply ingrained that it's, I think, very hard not to judge. But it would be nice, yes, John Lennon should sing a song about it...

GROSS: (laughs)

HORNBY: ... "Imagine There's No Quentin Tarantino," yes.

GROSS: (laughs)

HORNBY: "It's easy if you try."

GROSS: Your main character in your novel works in a record store, then owns a record store. A lot of people, particularly, like, writers, musicians, often work in book or record stores before being able to make a living as a performer or a writer. You apparently didn't go that route. But what kind of jobs did you have before you actually were able to make a living as a writer?

HORNBY: Well, I was a teacher for some years, and later on, as I started to write a bit more, I was a part-time teacher. And then I got a job working for a very large Korean multinational company as a kind of dogsbody...

GROSS: Excuse me, a what?

HORNBY: An English expression, a dogsbody, where, you know, you just do what they tell you to do. But anything where it was easier to be English than to be Korean, then I did the job. So I did a lot of letter writing and some speech writing and shopping and arranging and all kinds of things like that. I was actually paid very well, and I didn't have to work very many hours, so it was an idea job.

That was the last job I had before I became a full-time writer.

GROSS: Now, did you know then you wanted to write?

HORNBY: I'd always wanted to write since I was about 16 or 17, I guess like most people do, and also like most people, I actually didn't do a thing about it. Each new job that I got, I just thought, Well, I'm going to be a writer someday, and then it occurred to me that I actually had to sit down and do some stuff if that was ever going to happen.

So it took me a long time before I sat down and did it. But I'd known for a long time that I wanted to.

GROSS: Well, Nick Hornby, I'd like to end with one of your favorite records. Do you want to -- you want to choose a record to end with? It could be your favorite single of all time, or something else.

HORNBY: Well, I think I'd choose the favorite single of all time. I'd like to hear "Let's Get It On" by Marvin Gaye.

GROSS: And defend your choice.

HORNBY: Because it's sort of three and a half minutes long, which is the length that pop music should be. It has more voices than just about any other record since the "Hallelujah Chorus," and they're all Marvin Gaye's voice, which is a beautiful voice. And it's a very sexy record, so...

GROSS: Well, I want to thank you a whole lot for talking with us.

HORNBY: Thank you.

(END AUDIOTAPE)

GROSS: Nick Hornby, recorded in 1995 after the publication of his novel "High Fidelity." The movie adaptation, starring John Cusack, opens at the end of the month.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(AUDIO CLIP, EXCERPT, "LET'S GET IT ON," MARVIN GAYE")

(BREAK)

GROSS: The saxophonist Ornette Coleman, who led a revolution in jazz, is celebrating his 70th birthday this month. Coming up on this archive edition, we celebrate his birthday by listening back to interviews with Ornette Coleman, his son Denardo, and two musicians who played with Ornette, Don Cherry and Charlie Haden.

Also, a review of the new movie "Erin Brockovich."

(BREAK)

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 877-21FRESH
Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: Nick Hornby
High: Nick Hornby's novel "High-Fidelity" has been made into a new film starring John Cusack as a 36-year-old obsessed record-collector who has just lost his girlfriend: a casualty of his devotion to music. The movie opens March 31st.
Spec: Art; Movie Industry; Entertainment

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 2000 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 2000 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Nick Hornby Discusses `High-Fidelity'

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: MARCH 17, 2000
Time: 12:00
Tran: 031702NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Ornette Coleman and Son Discuss Their Musical Careers
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:30

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Composer and saxophonist Ornette Coleman is celebrating his 70th birthday this month. On this archive edition, we celebrate the occasion by featuring interviews with Ornette Coleman, his son Denardo, and two of the performers from the original Ornette Coleman Quartet, Charlie Haden and Don Cherry.

In the 1990s, Ornette Coleman was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was given a four-concert retrospective at Lincoln Center.

Today his standing as an important jazz innovator is unassailable, but as a newcomer in the late '50s, he was a controversial figure in the music world. His quartet was so rhythmically and harmonically radical that it provoked an uproar among musicians, critics, and listeners, who all jumped into the fray to attack or defend this new music.

This is how the group sounded in 1959 playing "Lonely Woman" from the Ornette Coleman album "The Shape of Jazz to Come."

(AUDIO CLIP, EXCERPT, "LONELY WOMAN," ORNETTE COLEMAN QUARTET)

GROSS: The Ornette Coleman Quartet, recorded in 1959, featuring Don Cherry on trumpet, Charlie Haden on bass.

Today Haden is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed bass players. In 1959, Charlie Haden moved to New York from Los Angeles to become part of the Ornette Coleman Quartet.

In 1985, I spoke with Haden about his first encounter with Ornette Coleman.

(BEGIN AUDIOTAPE)

CHARLIE HADEN, ORNETTE COLEMAN QUARTET: I was 19 years old, and we played all day long. And he had a room full of music strewn all over the floor, the walls, the ceiling. He was constantly writing music.

And he told me, "Before we start to play," he said, "Charlie, I've written these pieces now, and here's the chord changes. Now, these are the chord changes that I heard inside myself when I was writing the melody. But these are just a guide for you. I want you to be inspired from them and create your own chord structure from the inspiration or from the feeling of what I've written. And that way, constantly a new chord structure will be evolving. And we will be constantly modulating, and we'll be listening to each other, and we will make some exciting music."

And that's exactly what happened.

GROSS: Were you surprised at how controversial the music was when you started playing it? You know, a lot of people couldn't handle it at all, musicians, listeners.

HADEN: I was very involved in learning about the playing. We were all involved, because it was a brand-new language. We didn't even think of it as being a brand-new language. We only thought of it as, we're hearing something, and we got to play it. And we were constantly learning about what it was we were doing. Things were being born every day out of what we were doing. And there was a lot of controversy around us.

When we opened up at the Five Spot in New York, fights used to break out right in the club. People would be putting us down, people would be praising us. The club was packed every night with everybody from different parts of the art world, painters, famous writers, filmmakers, dancers, musicians. I would look out, and standing at the bar would be Paul Chambers, Percy Heath, Charlie Mingus, and they would be looking dead in my eye, you know, and saying, OK, what are you going to do?

And I would be playing, and have my eyes closed, and one night I opened my eyes and there was Leonard Bernstein with his ear glued to the front of my instrument. And I looked over at Ornette, I said, "What is this?" He says, "I'll tell you later." Then we were invited to Leonard Bernstein's table. He invited us to Philharmonic rehearsals, and he couldn't believe that I was self-taught, and he wanted to try and get me to study music. And he was very helpful in me getting a Guggenheim fellowship 10 years later in composition.

But it was like that every night. It was very exciting. The violence wasn't exciting. I mean, people -- one guy set somebody's car on fire one night, I remember. Somebody came back in the kitchen, we were standing talking with Ornette, and I won't say who it was, and hit Ornette in the face, you know. I mean, it was really a very strong excitation time. New things were happening, not only in music but in people's minds every night from that music, you know.

And people were always asking me why I was the only white musician, and I never thought about that until people asked me about it, you know. And -- but that's the way life is. That's the way human beings are.

(END AUDIOTAPE)

GROSS: Charlie Haden, recorded in 1985.

The trumpeter Don Cherry was also with Coleman when Coleman led his revolution in jazz. Cherry died in 1995 at the age of 58 of liver failure caused by hepatitis. He spent the first part of his career in the late '50s and early '60s with the Ornette Coleman Quartet. He later played in Coleman's alumni band, Old and New Dreams.

In 1990, I spoke with Cherry about playing with Coleman.

(BEGIN AUDIOTAPE)

When you played with the Ornette Coleman Quartet at the Five Spot in 1959, the music you were playing was considered very revolutionary, and some people really loved it, and other people thought it was -- well, you couldn't even call it jazz. Would you share one of your memories of what it was like then to be in the middle of all this controversy?

DON CHERRY, ORNETTE COLEMAN QUARTET: Yes, well, what's interesting about that is that in that -- when we came to New York in the winter of '59, everyone came, from Leonard Bernstein to Thelonius Monk, and like you say, some people loved it and some people hated it, didn't like it. And there would be arguments and fights and a lot of different scenes have happened.

And I remember one night Charlie Mingus bringing Phineas Newborn, and Phineas Newborn has perfect pitch. See, now, you can have relative pitch or perfect pitch, and he had perfect pitch. And Charlie Mingus wanted him to play with us. And there was a piano there, so Charlie Mingus had brought Phineas Newborn to set in with us. And we started the set, and Charlie Mingus set Phineas Newborn in front of the piano, and the whole set -- we had played four or five tunes, an hour set, and Phineas just sat up there and looked at the piano while we were playing and didn't play a note.

And at the end of the set, Mingus came up on the bandstand while Phineas was sitting there, and he took all his elbows and hands and put all the notes on the piano. (puts elbows and hands on the piano)

GROSS: (laughs)

CHERRY: Like that. And he said, "That's what -- that's where it is, it's all there." (laughs)

GROSS: Is one of the reasons why Ornette Coleman didn't use a piano, and -- in the quartet of the '60s, because everybody was playing slightly off key intentionally, you know, slightly sharp or whatever, and a piano was tuned, and you couldn't get between notes on a piano?

CHERRY: You're saying -- yes, the temper, it's a tempered instrument.

GROSS: Tempered, yes, exactly, thanks.

CHERRY: Yes. And actually, this is something else I've learned, and it's funny, certain things you're involved in, and you don't really understand, but you feel it's something of value, and later in years you understand, is from studying Indian music again, we realized there's 36 notes in an octave in Indian music, and this semitones, or minitones, they're called srutis. And we -- pitch is one particular reason for not using the piano, because of us working with tones and not just notes, and the different ways of tuning.

But one of the reasons for not using the piano I can also see is the freedom of percentage of improvisation. What I'm saying is that you can improvise and go in more directions by not having a piano. If there is a piano player that has the ear enough to know the voicings and can be able to voice it in a way where that you can hit those in-between tones or voices that -- which I know Thelonius could, and Abdul Ibraham Darabrand (ph) can.

GROSS: You used to play in unison with Ornette Coleman on the themes, so it would be trumpet and alto saxophone in unison, but it wasn't a kind of, like, polished, simultaneous playing. You both had tones that sounded like cries in a way.

(AUDIO CLIP, JAZZ EXCERPT, ORNETTE COLEMAN AND DON CHERRY PLAYING THEME IN UNISON)

GROSS: Tell me a little bit about how you'd rehearse and what you'd be going for when you would play in unison on a melody.

CHERRY: Yes, that's interesting, because now he's really working on something called harmelodic unison. But at that particular time, we would learn the compositions frontwards and backwards, and then we would -- I -- he would write a composition, and I would play the melody, and then Ornette would play with me and write a harmony to the melody.

And it's funny, in the harmelodic concept, it ends up that when that happens, the harmonies that he had written, put with the melody that I was playing, would end up being the melody, and the melody that I was playing from the beginning would end up being the harmony.

So, like, an example of that is when we would play with Dewey Redmond and myself and Ornette. Dewey Redmond's a saxophone player from Texas that is really fantastic, he's one of the few musicians that really knows the harmelodic concept. But it was a period when we would play together, and Ornette would write a third part, and I would be playing the melody, and Dewey would be playing maybe the harmony part that Ornette had written from the second voice, and then he would write a third voice. And it would end up where that the third voice that he would write would end up being the melody, and the other two parts that we would play would end up being the harmony.

(END AUDIOTAPE)

GROSS: Don Cherry, recorded in 1990, five years before his death.

We'll hear from Ornette Coleman and his son Denardo after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

(BREAK)

GROSS: Ornette Coleman is celebrating his 70th birthday this month. On this archive edition, we're celebrating his birthday.

I spoke with Coleman and his son, drummer Denardo Coleman, in 1995. Our interview was recorded after the release of the CD "Tone Dialing" on their label Harmelodic, named after what Ornette Coleman calls his harmelodic approach to music.

Denardo produced the recording. Here's the opening track.

(AUDIO CLIP, JAZZ EXCERPT, ORNETTE COLEMAN QUARTET)

(BEGIN AUDIOTAPE)

GROSS: Denardo, what did free jazz mean to you when you were young? When you were a child?

DENARDO COLEMAN: Didn't mean anything to me. I didn't...

GROSS: It just meant more music?

DENARDO COLEMAN: No, I didn't -- wasn't even aware of it. (laughs) I was not even aware of free jazz or any categories, you know. Like I said, to me, it was just a natural sort of experience just, you know, playing music with my father and other guys that were playing with him, and you know, I made some records, and I would actually go and play some performances, and that was it for me.

ORNETTE COLEMAN: You know, when you play (ph) free jazz, I feel the same way. I never told him when I was playing free. In fact, I went to -- I promoted (inaudible) in Cincinnati, and he had posted around there, city (ph), "Free Jazz Concert, Ornette Coleman." And the night of the concert, about 5,000 people showed up, and not one had bought a ticket.

GROSS: (laughs) They thought it was free (inaudible)...

ORNETTE COLEMAN: Yes.

GROSS: No admission. (laughs)

Denardo, can I ask you to share your earliest musical memory of hearing your father's music?

DENARDO COLEMAN: Probably playing together, you know, I think I expressed an interest in playing when I was really young, maybe 5 or 6 or 7. And I wanted to play the drums. And so, you know, he got me a drum set, and we just started playing together. And for me, that's really how I became a musician, or learned, you know, what music was about, was just actually playing and listening and being in the environment as, you know, that we were rehearsing in. And all the people that played with him, you know, particularly the drummers, were really my influence, like Ed Blackwell and Billy Higgins, Charles Moffat (ph).

GROSS: Ornette, I think the reaction a lot of parents have when a child asks for drums is, Couldn't you have asked for a quieter instrument? Did you ever have that reaction yourself?

ORNETTE COLEMAN: No, because I think I suggested him to play the drums. I -- you know, I told him, you know, forget about how someone is seeing you through their eyes (ph), or their concept of who they are. Just enjoy what you like doing, whether -- you know, don't -- I don't think it's -- I don't think anyone has to please someone in order for them to enjoy what they like to do.

GROSS: When Denardo started to play drums, did you think that eventually you'd be in a band together?

DENARDO COLEMAN: Well, actually -- I love your questions, because I really feel very bad that I've taken up more of Denardo's time for him to assist me in what I -- what my needs are in relationship to a composer and a performer, because basically, Denardo has his own expression and his own music, and some way he has to put that on the back burner to assist me and his mother.

GROSS: Denardo, when you started playing drums, did your father have any rules about -- around the house about when you couldn't practice because it would bother the neighbors, you know, the typical (inaudible) problem.

DENARDO COLEMAN: Yes, no, no, although I remember once when we were practicing, like, in the garage -- at that point we were living in Los Angeles. And, you know, I don't if the neighbors complained or somebody, but there would seem like a whole battalion of police showed up one day, very aggressive.

ORNETTE COLEMAN: And they pulled a gun.

GROSS: They pulled their gun?

ORNETTE COLEMAN: On (inaudible) -- on -- yes, (inaudible)...

DENARDO COLEMAN: (inaudible), you know, him and I just in the garage rehearsing. I don't know what they were expecting, but, you know, I do remember that.

GROSS: Did you ever find out who called the police?

DENARDO COLEMAN: No, no. But, you know, I don't really remember anything else in terms of, you know, being restricted, though.

GROSS: Well, I guess (laughs) that taught you a lesson of how angry people could really get. (laughs) Geez, I guess I thought (ph) you were really different (ph), last to know about the police.

DENARDO COLEMAN: (inaudible)

ORNETTE COLEMAN: I don't think it was music, I think it was racial.

GROSS: Right, right.

Ornette, remember you said earlier that you sometimes feel bad that you, you, you, you feel like you've maybe limited Denardo's options because you needed him to work with you in the band, and managing you and all that. In what sense do you feel like you, you need Denardo, that he's doing something that someone else isn't going to be able to do for you?

ORNETTE COLEMAN: I love your questions, because it sounds -- it's -- those questions sound to me psychological, social, and racial, and everything else. But basically, what I was referring to is the fact that I read in the paper the other day where a brain specialist, a guy went in the hospital and say, This leg is going -- this is the leg I want you to take off, do you know the right leg? And when he woke up, it was the other leg that was taken off.

So for me, I would rather work with someone that know what I'm trying to achieve.

GROSS: Right, right. You feel like with a lot of people, they misunderstand you.

ORNETTE COLEMAN: No, no, uh-uh. I said to know what I'm trying to -- for instance, I had an interview with a very good critic in Europe last week, and he said, Oh, you know, this music, you -- I really love what you're doing, but I don't understand it. I said, Well, I want to ask you a question. If you did understand it, would you love the music better?

GROSS: (laughs)

ORNETTE COLEMAN: You know.

GROSS: Well, I want to thank you both very much for talking with us.

DENARDO COLEMAN: Oh, thank you very much.

ORNETTE COLEMAN: Thank you very much.

Terry, do you play music or sing?

GROSS: Oh, I've played a bunch of things badly.

ORNETTE COLEMAN: Oh, that's what I thought.

GROSS: Yes.

ORNETTE COLEMAN: I mean, I didn't...

GROSS: (laughs)

ORNETTE COLEMAN: ... I didn't think you played them badly, but I thought you must be connected to music.

GROSS: (laughs) Yes, no, but, yes, I've played piano badly and French horn badly and clarinet badly. And even a little bit of guitar badly.

ORNETTE COLEMAN: The next time we -- next time we play, bring either one of your instruments to our rehearsals. Maybe we could find something good.

GROSS: Hey, I sing really badly too.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Oh, this sounds great. (laughs)

What would you -- say I did that. What would you -- what would the first thing be, what would we do?

ORNETTE COLEMAN: Well, we would first -- I would ask you to do something that you enjoy, that you feel you do well. Then we would play with you.

GROSS: Oh, that's interesting, so you just kind of play around me.

ORNETTE COLEMAN: Well, actually, you know, I was going to ask you if you were a composer, I could give you an example of just how our musicians that I ask to do what I'm asking you to do would feel more comfortable doing that, because for instance, you know, maybe you have a favorite key or a favorite -- for instance, the Bach piece on the record, when I was looking for a classical guitarist, I had asked Chris Rosenberg which piece did he like. And he said, "Oh, I like this piece by Bach." I said, "Well, play it."

Then after he played it, I said, "You know, I'm going to take my horn and interpret what you're doing harmelodically." And when I got (inaudible) said, "I want to join your band," so I said, "That's just the reason why I did this," so you could see why I'm interested in hiring a classical player, because if you listen to that piece on there, on the CD, you will see that he's playing it twice. And the second time he plays it, he sounds like he's playing changes for us to play to resolve harmelodic ideas.

And when he's playing it as a solo piece, it sounds like a melody.

DENARDO COLEMAN: Although he hasn't changed.

ORNETTE COLEMAN: He hasn't changed. Nothing changed.

DENARDO COLEMAN: (inaudible), playing the same thing both ways.

ORNETTE COLEMAN: So you could do that with us very easily, even you would -- even with what you call bad.

(END AUDIOTAPE)

GROSS: Ornette Coleman and his son, drummer and record producer Denardo Coleman, recorded in 1995. Ornette Coleman is celebrating his 70th birthday this month. Happy birthday.

Coming up, John Powers reviews the new movie "Erin Brockovich," starring Julia Roberts.

This is FRESH AIR.

(BREAK)

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 877-21FRESH
Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: Ornette Coleman, Denardo Coleman
High: Sunday marks the 70th birthday of composer and jazz musician Ornette Coleman. He and his son Denardo Coleman discuss their careers. In 1959 Coleman changed the course of jazz with the start of "free jazz" and the formation of The Ornette Coleman Quartet, which included Charlie Haden and the late trumpeter Don Cherry.
Spec: Art; Entertainment; Music Industry

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 2000 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 2000 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Ornette Coleman and Son Discuss Their Musical Careers

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: MARCH 17, 2000
Time: 12:00
Tran: 031703NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: John Powers Reviews `Erin Brockovich'
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:56

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TERRY GROSS, HOST: Julia Roberts stars in the new movie "Erin Brockovich." It's directed by Stephen Soderbergh, who made "Sex, Lies, and Videotape," "Out of Sight," and "The Limey."

John Powers has this review.

JOHN POWERS, FILM CRITIC: Everyone's familiar with the official film genres, horror, action-adventure, romantic comedy, and so forth. But films can also be divided into other informal camps. Movies with bad titles, movies that are good for you, movies where a superstar does some real acting, movies that you feel like you've already seen before you've even seen them, and movies that make you wonder if you should wait for the video.

As it happens, all these categories fit "Erin Brockovich," a terrifically entertaining movie I wrongly dreaded having to see. Julia Roberts stars as Erin, a twice-divorced single mother of three who can't get a job, constantly flies off the handle, and dresses like the lead in an amateur production of "Pretty Woman."

After losing a personal injury lawsuit thanks to her filthy mouth, Erin decides to get her act together. She steamrolls her lawyer, played by Albert Finney, into giving her a menial job. And it's while doing a routine piece of filing that she discovers that in the small California town of Hinkley, a PG&E power plant has been using a deadly form of chromium, one that has visited cancer, heart disease, and miscarriages on the nearby families.

Suddenly obsessed, Erin plunges herself into the victims' cause, tirelessly digging for evidence, and convincing her wary, honorable boss that his small law firm must take on a $28 billion corporation.

It's an arduous process, but through it all, Erin remains her vibrant self.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "ERIN BROCKOVICH")

ALBERT FINNEY, ACTOR: Erin, how's it going?

JULIA ROBERTS, ACTRESS: He never called me back. I left messages.

FINNEY: You did? Well, I didn't know that. Donald seems to think that you said that...

ROBERTS: There's two things that aggravate me, Mr. Masrey. Being ignored, and being lied to.

FINNEY: I never lied.

ROBERTS: You told me things would be fine. They're not. I trusted you.

FINNEY: Sorry about that, I really am.

ROBERTS: I don't need pity, I need a paycheck, and I've looked. But when you've spent the past six years raising babies, it's real hard to convince someone to give you a job that pays worth a damn. Are you getting every word of this down, honey, or am I talking too fast for you?

(END AUDIO CLIP)

POWERS: Based on a true story, "Erin Brockovich" is nicely written by screenwriter Susannah Grant. While Grant doesn't escape the usual Hollywood formulas -- once again it's David and Goliath -- she takes the story of Erin's empowerment in some surprising, cliche-busting directions. For instance, Erin's unemployed boyfriend, George -- that's Aaron Eckhart -- is a long-haired biker with the word "Dirty" tattooed on his bicep. But he's actually a sweet-natured homebody who enjoys looking after Erin's kids.

In fact, over the months, George becomes a better parent than Erin, who gets so caught up in her investigations that she resembles the classic neglectful husband. She's forever dashing off to work while George stands there resentfully, holding the baby in his beefy arms.

All this is effortlessly put across by director Stephen Soderbergh, best known for "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" and "Out of Sight," who's become a superb filmmaker in the old Hollywood mold of a Howard Hawkes or George Cukor.

Soderbergh takes care to anchor Erin's story in the gritty, sunbaked back roads of southern California, but he knows better than to get bogged down in style. The movie flies right along. He brings out bemused delicacy in the often bombastic Finney, and sexy tenderness in Eckhart, who made his name playing creeps and losers for Neil LaBute.

Soderbergh fills the screen with vividly etched characters, from the dweeby PG&E flunky who fancies Erin to the always superb Marg Helgenberger, who gives a heartbreaking portrait of a woman devoured by chromium-induced disease.

As he earlier showed with Andie McDowell and Jennifer Lopez, Soderbergh gets far more from his leading ladies than most directors. Here, Roberts gives clearly the finest performance of her career. She starts off drawing on her exuberant screen persona but winds up deepening it.

Although Erin has brains, passion, and a good heart, she's more than a little abrasive. She behaves defensively toward men, mocks other women's looks, and tends to shout first and ask questions later.

Played by Sigourney Weaver or Michele Pfeiffer, Erin might well strike audiences as a shrew, but Roberts' renowned likability makes her excesses a cockeyed form of charm. We'll forgive almost anything in a woman with that killer smile.

Because this is a Julia Roberts vehicle, Erin's given a couple too many show-offy speeches, and the ending's tarnished by a triumphant "Pretty Woman"-style payoff. Yet at its best, Erin's story takes the so-called women's picture in an interesting new direction. Most Roberts movies are spent waiting for Julia to wind up with the right man. But here, she has something more at stake than romantic love.

"Erin Brockovich" is about an erratic gal exalted by her discovery that there are problems in this world much bigger and sadder than her own. This knowledge turns her into a woman who's far more than merely pretty.

GROSS: John Powers is film critic for "Vogue."

FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our engineer is Audrey Bentham. Dorothy Ferebee is our administrative assistant. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our theme music was composed by Joel Forrester and performed by the Microscopic Septet.

I'm Terry Gross.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 877-21FRESH
Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia, John Powers
Guest:
High: Film critic John Powers reviews "Erin Brockovich" starring Julia Roberts.
Spec: Entertainment; Movie Industry; Entertainment

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 2000 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 2000 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: John Powers Reviews `Erin Brockovich'
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.