Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Carnegie Hall in New York City, the home of the
Speaker 1: world's greatest musical events. In the nineteen fifties, television was
Speaker 1: a powerful new spotlight in search of a talent that
Speaker 1: could shine back, just as Bryan and here is Mr Bernstein.
Speaker 1: When it landed on Leonard Bernstein, the young Conductor more
Speaker 1: than shined back. His primetime show, Leonard Bernstein's Young People's
Speaker 1: Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, was a benchmark of
Speaker 1: quality programming and seduced the entire country. No matter how
Speaker 1: many times people tell you stories about what music means,
Speaker 1: forget them. Stories aren't what music means about at all.
Speaker 1: Music is never about anything. Music just is Music is notes,
Speaker 1: beautiful notes, and songs put together in such a way
Speaker 1: that we get pleasure out of listening to them. That's
Speaker 1: all there is too. Bernstein was a masterful teacher, explaining
Speaker 1: classical music with a passion and clarity that couldn't help
Speaker 1: but influence an entire generation of musicians and artists. In
Speaker 1: those days, there were far fewer celebrities, and Bernstein was
Speaker 1: one of the biggest. He wore it well, taking his
Speaker 1: seat at the piano at the center of the party.
Speaker 1: He really enjoyed the public. Leonard Bernstein he loved and
Speaker 1: he loved being famous, and he loved meeting everybody in
Speaker 1: the world and in fancy hotels and flying first class.
Speaker 1: And he'd take us along and share it with us,
Speaker 1: like isn't this cool. Bernstein was a musician, a conductor,
Speaker 1: a teacher, and a composer of classical music as well
Speaker 1: as Broadway musicals. He was also a father. I'm the Boss.
Speaker 1: Bernstein and his wife Felicia had three children, Jamie, Alexander,
Speaker 1: and Nina, and while they knew him in the tucks
Speaker 1: and Tales, they also knew him as the dad who
Speaker 1: loved games. He was a killer at Anagram's the word
Speaker 1: games you might have no idea, and always up for
Speaker 1: tennis or squash or skiing or touch football. Two of
Speaker 1: Bernstein's children, Jamie and Alexander, spoke with me about their
Speaker 1: legendary father and what it was like to grow up
Speaker 1: with people like Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins as regular
Speaker 1: house guests. When we were really little, Alexander and I
Speaker 1: used to share a bedroom when we were like, you know,
Speaker 1: really little. And we lived in the Osbourne, which is
Speaker 1: that grand old building, and Alexander and I slept you know,
Speaker 1: at sort of right angles to each other in this bedroom,
Speaker 1: and we would go to sleep listening to the grown
Speaker 1: ups carrying on downstairs. Is what we fell asleep to,
Speaker 1: the noise of the you know, the laughing and the
Speaker 1: roaring around the piano, singing, speaking of the glasses, and
Speaker 1: the smell of the cigarette smoke walking up the stairs.
Speaker 1: We could not wait to be grown ups because obviously
Speaker 1: all grown ups did was have fun. That's interesting, That's
Speaker 1: how it seemed to us. And it seemed like our
Speaker 1: dad certainly had fun when he was working too. So
Speaker 1: we never saw anything that resembled drudgery, which is probably
Speaker 1: be a thing that most kids perceive in their working parents.
Speaker 1: You know what about your mother? Was your mother someone
Speaker 1: who was his companion and she was along for the
Speaker 1: ride and all of it and loving it. Or was
Speaker 1: she someone who was sitting in a room going when
Speaker 1: is it going to stop? He's the energizer bunny and
Speaker 1: the Martini in his hand and a pell mell in
Speaker 1: the other. Scotch not Martin's Balentine's beer, I don't know,
Speaker 1: and she had a Chesterfield vodka and the other. But
Speaker 1: your mother was his trusted companion. She was she was in.
Speaker 1: She was all in. She was all in, and I
Speaker 1: think it drove her crazy every bit as much as
Speaker 1: she loved it all. She was very social. Who was
Speaker 1: from and where did they meet? They met at a
Speaker 1: party given by Claudio? And who was her teacher? Because
Speaker 1: who was studying? She had told her parents that she
Speaker 1: was coming to New York to study piano, but she
Speaker 1: really wanted to be an actress, so she came. She's
Speaker 1: a beautiful woman, and she was beautiful, very beautiful. So
Speaker 1: she had this understanding with all that she would be
Speaker 1: sort of studying with him, But meanwhile she was studying
Speaker 1: with my parents. Now make this sound of the piano
Speaker 1: in his background were like gotta make parents Now in
Speaker 1: exact America, I think it was very much like that.
Speaker 1: It was and the legend has it that our mothers
Speaker 1: sat at his feet and fed him shrimps one by one.
Speaker 1: That was the beginning of the Roman. Yeah, yeah, not
Speaker 1: around she might have been doing that and they got engaged.
Speaker 1: But where she added in his career then? So he
Speaker 1: had already had his big debut with the New York Philharmonic,
Speaker 1: because that was where he filled in for He filled
Speaker 1: in the a ling Bruno Valter, as he's always referred
Speaker 1: to in that circumstance. I thought his first name was
Speaker 1: ailing anyway, So this must have been like maybe four
Speaker 1: or five years later. So he was riding high, but
Speaker 1: he was not yet. That'll be a name by stay
Speaker 1: in a hotel in from I love good names for hotels.
Speaker 1: I'm going to stay in a hotel under the name
Speaker 1: e h. Naming Bruno is the name Woe, and so
Speaker 1: Bruno was that. That was November four, good afternoon, United
Speaker 1: States Rubber Company again invite you to Carnegie Hall to
Speaker 1: hear a concert of the New York Philarmonic Symphony Orchestra.
Speaker 1: Bruno Voter, who was to have conducted this afternoon is ill,
Speaker 1: and his place will be taken by the young American
Speaker 1: born assistant conductor of the Philharmonic Symphony, Leonard Bernstein. And
Speaker 1: he had to get up there on a moment's note.
Speaker 1: And he'd been up all night the night before because
Speaker 1: he had had a premier of a song cycle of
Speaker 1: his cult I Hate Music, and it had premiered the
Speaker 1: night before, so of course it was a party with
Speaker 1: a town hall and and it was very well received.
Speaker 1: Then of course there was a party afterwards, and they
Speaker 1: were up all the live long night. And at the time,
Speaker 1: you know, our dad was living in Carnegie Hall in
Speaker 1: those little apartments they used to have at the top.
Speaker 1: So he gets back to Carnegie Hall at you know,
Speaker 1: five in the morning and passes out, and then like
Speaker 1: an hour and a half later, the phone rings and
Speaker 1: it's Bruno Zerato of the New York Philharmonic saying, this
Speaker 1: is a kid. You have to go on this afternoon.
Speaker 1: And it was on the radio as a national broadcast,
Speaker 1: which was why it was such a big deal. Then
Speaker 1: it burns. Dan has come out on the platform. It
Speaker 1: was highly covered in the press, probably because it was
Speaker 1: the middle of the war and everybody needed a feel
Speaker 1: good story. American boy makes good kind of thing. So
Speaker 1: one guy said, it's like a shoe string catch in
Speaker 1: center field. Make it. You're you're a hero, Muffett and
Speaker 1: you're a dope. Bernstein made it. Did he ever reflect
Speaker 1: on that to you, meaning when people have that kind
Speaker 1: of debut. He came up that night and everything changed.
Speaker 1: After that he pretty much knew that it was a
Speaker 1: sort of Cinderella tale and that he just got this
Speaker 1: unbelievable lucky break. Yeah, and did he believe was it
Speaker 1: ever discussed even by your mother or people like that?
Speaker 1: Did your father realize he must have that his sexuality
Speaker 1: and that his his his good looks were as much
Speaker 1: a part of his talent as anything else. I think
Speaker 1: there's no doubt of that there. And I he played
Speaker 1: it probably from high school on, you know, and as
Speaker 1: soon as he started playing the piano and knew he
Speaker 1: had this incredible talent and could play at parties and
Speaker 1: get all his attention and he had a meeting out
Speaker 1: of his hands, Oh my god, and U of the hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he was still a little geeky. I mean the
Speaker 1: pictures of him with the Philharmonic after the debut, where
Speaker 1: he's all exhausted and tousled and sweaty, he actually looks
Speaker 1: like like a bar mitzvah. Boy. It looks a little funny,
Speaker 1: um and it. And I think he kind of grew
Speaker 1: into his groovy nous over the subsequent years. So your
Speaker 1: father he had three children over ten years. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and what was that like for him? In terms of
Speaker 1: were there, did he have certain kind of rules in
Speaker 1: terms of how he protected you from the public and
Speaker 1: the schools you went to and the way you lived
Speaker 1: your life, or was he just very lucy goose. You know,
Speaker 1: I would say that he was not a mother charge.
Speaker 1: He was the one who really designed the way our
Speaker 1: lives went on a day to day basis. He was
Speaker 1: busy being the maestro, and then he would come home
Speaker 1: and play with us and hang out and have fun
Speaker 1: and have fun. But he was not really the designer
Speaker 1: of the domestic scene. He was a great time. He
Speaker 1: was home. He was really home, you know, he didn't
Speaker 1: have an office to go to. And when aware of
Speaker 1: who your father was, you know, you when you're growing up,
Speaker 1: your family is just your family. You have no no
Speaker 1: objectivity about it, and your parents are just your parents,
Speaker 1: and you don't really think about how different they might
Speaker 1: be from the others until you get older. At some
Speaker 1: point when we were pretty young, there was an episode
Speaker 1: of The flint Stones The time is it Betty, It's
Speaker 1: temis to nine, Betty and Wilma, We're gonna go to
Speaker 1: the holly Rock Bowl. I love to watch Leonard Burnstone,
Speaker 1: conductor and The first thing on the program is at
Speaker 1: gorgeous Symphony by Rocky Man. Enough, that's when we knew
Speaker 1: really hit the big time. And how old were your kids,
Speaker 1: little kids like you know, nine and six even less?
Speaker 1: Was there a downside to what did you feel like?
Speaker 1: There were things that were tough for you with him.
Speaker 1: Looking back on it now or when we got older,
Speaker 1: probably look back and think about some downsides. But at
Speaker 1: the time it really didn't seem so bad at all.
Speaker 1: It were really little. It was just a lark that
Speaker 1: I I often try to think back to come on,
Speaker 1: you know, there must have been some shadows. But but
Speaker 1: we had a pretty fantastic early childhood. It was. It
Speaker 1: was kind of wonderful. He's not some tortured introspective. He
Speaker 1: was a happy guy and he was a celebrity. He
Speaker 1: was he was. But but back in those early days
Speaker 1: of our family life, um, that was overshadowed by the
Speaker 1: joy and the happiness, the business and the family life.
Speaker 1: And from any he kept that from you. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you for in my memory, the moment when it changed
Speaker 1: was November twenty nine, sixty three, the day JFK was assassinated.
Speaker 1: That was when the shadow fell over and and life
Speaker 1: became sort of real. Up until that point, you know,
Speaker 1: grown ups just had fun as far as we could perceive.
Speaker 1: And then that day we saw our parents fall apart.
Speaker 1: They were crying because they were friends of the Kennedys.
Speaker 1: They had been to the White House, they had had dinner,
Speaker 1: just the four of them. Imagine, they had been centerpieces
Speaker 1: of Kennedy's cultural programming in the White They could not
Speaker 1: have been more connected to the Kennedy administration and everything
Speaker 1: that it stood for. So on that day when when
Speaker 1: he was assassinated, our parents just fell apart, and so
Speaker 1: did the whole rest of the family and all their friends.
Speaker 1: And they pulled down the shades and sat around crying
Speaker 1: all day and just watch TV. Now we could perceive
Speaker 1: that there were shadows and that there were ups and
Speaker 1: downs that wasn't visible to us. The world itself can
Speaker 1: affect people psychologically. What about your mom in terms of
Speaker 1: her music appreciation. I mean, she studied the piano, but
Speaker 1: did she go on to have any kind of a
Speaker 1: serious career even or in her young years when she
Speaker 1: was with a raw did she play? Did she study?
Speaker 1: Once she met in marriage her father, did all that
Speaker 1: stop her piano playing stopped. She would play sometimes at home,
Speaker 1: and quite beautifully, but she wasn't as passionate about it,
Speaker 1: no passionate about her acting. She kept at that sometimes
Speaker 1: she would And what were some of the things she
Speaker 1: was working on during her course? She did a lot
Speaker 1: of early television Playhouse ninety and Crafts Theater and all
Speaker 1: those live dramas that they had in early television. She
Speaker 1: did a lot of that and a lot of stage work.
Speaker 1: Did that stop at some point? It kind of receded
Speaker 1: as she became Mrs Maestro and a mom, which was
Speaker 1: a double job that could keep anybody, of course, And
Speaker 1: was she generally happy to do those things or did
Speaker 1: she have a voice? Because it's interesting to me to
Speaker 1: have someone who is in the world of music herself.
Speaker 1: She was a studied with a raw a serious opportunity there.
Speaker 1: She had aspirations about music and acting. And did she
Speaker 1: miss those things? Did she ever say, gosh if I
Speaker 1: only did she have a little bit of a wistfulness
Speaker 1: about she was pretty ambivalent about it? Yeah she did,
Speaker 1: And she didn't really talk a lot about her inner self.
Speaker 1: When she did talking about a little bit was that
Speaker 1: she had some stage fright issues, and so when she
Speaker 1: started performing less in public, she would say that she
Speaker 1: was relieved and and that being you know this, this
Speaker 1: Mrs Bernstein persona was a way of not having to
Speaker 1: confront her fears about performing. But I think you know
Speaker 1: anybody who has performed as a part of them that
Speaker 1: still wants to perform. But she knew that that, like
Speaker 1: it was just going to be too hard to have these,
Speaker 1: you know, two rampant egos in the household. Probably a
Speaker 1: good call coming up more about Bernstein's early years in
Speaker 1: Massachusetts and his final concert at Tanglewood, which his brother
Speaker 1: described as Lenny coming home to die. H. This is
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin you're listening to. Here's the thing. I'm talking
Speaker 1: with two of Leonard Bernstein's children, Jamie and Alexander. I
Speaker 1: see someone like your dad who sounds very childlike did
Speaker 1: the Young People's concerts, father faun and joy and family
Speaker 1: and love bursting with love. Leonard Bernstein is someone to
Speaker 1: me who when he's on the podium, love is just
Speaker 1: shooting out of him like a rainbow. Love of this
Speaker 1: and love of that, and love of life, and love
Speaker 1: of sex, and love of sound, and love of women
Speaker 1: and love of beauty, and I wonder was it because
Speaker 1: as the result of his classical training, did he not
Speaker 1: have enough childhood? His childhood was uh, not about music.
Speaker 1: He was he was. He was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: and then shortly thereafter they moved to the Boston area.
Speaker 1: First they lived in Roxbury, they moved around. He was
Speaker 1: a hair product salesman. He was a salesman, and his
Speaker 1: mom was she musical. How did the music get into
Speaker 1: his life? Well, here's the thing. There was this aunt Clara,
Speaker 1: who moved to Florida, and so she sent all her
Speaker 1: furniture over to her brother Sam's house, and along with
Speaker 1: all the couches and break fronts arrived this upright piano.
Speaker 1: Our dad was ten years old. The piano got hauled
Speaker 1: into the house and as our father told it, he
Speaker 1: touched the piano and that was it. He knew it's
Speaker 1: one of those stories. And he taught himself theory. He
Speaker 1: just play the piano. He figured he could. He could
Speaker 1: figure it all out in the modern breup. And the
Speaker 1: thing about his dad, Sam Bernstein, is that Sam, you know,
Speaker 1: it was a depression, but Sam was very proud that
Speaker 1: he was able to tide his family over the depression
Speaker 1: because he had this very successful beauty supply business to
Speaker 1: Samuel J. Bernstein Hair Company in Boston. It's Bernstein was
Speaker 1: the slogan, and he had the New England franchise for
Speaker 1: the Frederick's Permanent Wave machine. Even a depression, there's two
Speaker 1: things you don't let go of, booze and vanity, and
Speaker 1: all those women would go and be attached to that,
Speaker 1: that machine that looks like Bride of Frankenstein. Now they
Speaker 1: were all doing it. So they got through the depression.
Speaker 1: And Sam was so proud that he was able to
Speaker 1: pass the Samuel J. Bernstein Hair Company along to his
Speaker 1: eldest son to run. And of course Lenny had no
Speaker 1: intention of running the Samuel J. Bernstein Hair Company in Boston.
Speaker 1: It's Bernstein. And it was a real problem between had
Speaker 1: a great hat of hair, yes he did, had of hair.
Speaker 1: And then what ham Sam was not going to let
Speaker 1: him be uh kletzmer musician, you know, because he can't
Speaker 1: get weddings and funerals. And that was it, you know,
Speaker 1: that's what a musician does. In the old country, that
Speaker 1: a musician was a beggar, a homeless guy who went
Speaker 1: from stettle to Stettle playing the fiddle and getting a
Speaker 1: few copex at the wedding, you call out a living.
Speaker 1: So what happened? So little by little it became clear
Speaker 1: that he was immensely talented at this and it went
Speaker 1: to the Boston Latin School and then to Harvard. And
Speaker 1: he gets to Harvard to study what music just no,
Speaker 1: they had no music department. No music department. You couldn't
Speaker 1: major in it. So he was he a literature guy.
Speaker 1: She was born in eighteen. So he's there, you know,
Speaker 1: class of thirty. No music department at Harvard. There and
Speaker 1: then just immediately prior to the war not and then
Speaker 1: when he leaves Harvard, where does he go. He goes
Speaker 1: to Curtis Curtis where he goes to the next level.
Speaker 1: He wasn't. Curtis is where the music at Harvard, he's
Speaker 1: writing music, he's putting on shows constantly. Curtis is the
Speaker 1: real temple of musical study that he enters. This is
Speaker 1: the real formalizing of his music legic. And he studies
Speaker 1: with Fritz Reiner, you know, studies conducting big level here level.
Speaker 1: And it was it was tough. He was very lonely.
Speaker 1: It was it was a tough year or two for him.
Speaker 1: At Curtis, he's there for how long? A little over
Speaker 1: a year? I think, then what happens a long time?
Speaker 1: And then he came to New York desperate to find work.
Speaker 1: He was ready to hit New York and do what
Speaker 1: he started. He wrote arrangements, arrangements and stuff under an
Speaker 1: assumed name Lenny Amber. He arranged orn at Coleman Charts.
Speaker 1: He did all sorts of weird things. He did, Uh
Speaker 1: didn't you do? Like a four hands version of ill
Speaker 1: slone Michico. For Aaron Copeland was the big thing he
Speaker 1: got to know Harriic Copeland. That happen that he was
Speaker 1: still in college when he met Aaron Harvard or Curtis Harvard.
Speaker 1: So at Harvard he meets Copeland under what circumstances, Because
Speaker 1: if he's not in a music program, how does he
Speaker 1: rub shoulders with? I think he gets invited to. He
Speaker 1: came to New York for the weekend. He was invited
Speaker 1: to be seeking out and sniffing out the musical world,
Speaker 1: even though it's at Harvard next to Aaron, and they
Speaker 1: get to know each other. And it turned out to
Speaker 1: be Aaron's birthday and Aaron invited our dad back to
Speaker 1: his loft for the party. Clara ships the piano to
Speaker 1: the house. That's that's O moment number one. He gets
Speaker 1: seated next to Copeland moment number two, and then goes
Speaker 1: to the birthday party and plays Copeland's piano variations in
Speaker 1: front of the whole crowd, which our dad was in
Speaker 1: the habit of doing and clearing rooms because it's a
Speaker 1: very gnarly piece. And so he said, are you sure
Speaker 1: you want me to play it at this party because
Speaker 1: it usually clears the room, And Aaron said, not at
Speaker 1: this party. And he played it and didn't clear the room.
Speaker 1: He did not clear that runs. Yeah, it's all of
Speaker 1: Copeland's contemporaries, and he plays, and a friendship and relationship
Speaker 1: with Copeland commences there. And other than I would say
Speaker 1: probably as much, if not more than Slatkin, your father
Speaker 1: was one of the great interpreters of Copeland. I mean
Speaker 1: that the two of them are my two favorites. Bernstein
Speaker 1: and Slatkin are my two favorite Copeland issers. And then
Speaker 1: what is the quick series of steps that gets them
Speaker 1: to the associate directorship of the Philharmonic. I think an
Speaker 1: introduction to Kusowitski going to Tanglewood conducting a tangle She
Speaker 1: was a guest conductor of Tanglewood. He knows he's a
Speaker 1: student student conductor. Tang had just been invented by Kusowitski.
Speaker 1: And and our dad was in that first class. And
Speaker 1: and so Kuzowitski is the one who builds tangle would
Speaker 1: he is? She he's the music directors, the v s
Speaker 1: O who oversees the construction of that. What are some
Speaker 1: of your best memories of your dad there? What would
Speaker 1: you do? Remember? What was this? If you will go ahead,
Speaker 1: give me give me here you're laughing. Were because our
Speaker 1: dad loved to go to Tanglewood so much his entire life.
Speaker 1: Every time he went up there, it was like he
Speaker 1: would be rejuvenated, he would turn into a kid. Again.
Speaker 1: It's a holy place. It's a holy place. And what
Speaker 1: he really loved was being with all those kids. Say
Speaker 1: that again, that that the Berkshires is a holy place.
Speaker 1: Your father loved it there. Time we both worked at Tanglewood,
Speaker 1: what did you do it over a few more years
Speaker 1: than we were guides? We were guides, which was it's
Speaker 1: a fancy name for just doing anything that they need
Speaker 1: to be done. But um, you know, you manned the
Speaker 1: gates and you show people around. That was the guide part.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there would be tours, but and also you would
Speaker 1: extend backstage and helped the artists and move them around
Speaker 1: and picked them up at the airport and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And it was just heaven to be up there for
Speaker 1: a summer. And there was also this sense, I think
Speaker 1: our dad had it from the very beginning that you know,
Speaker 1: everybody was sort of out in this beautiful weather, in
Speaker 1: this beautiful lace with all these fun people, and there
Speaker 1: would be Shenanigan's. We just fell right into the Shenanigan's
Speaker 1: sensibility of the place that you know, it was just
Speaker 1: fun and everybody was partying all night and and and
Speaker 1: you having romances and and it's funny you say that,
Speaker 1: because it is probably one of the two or three
Speaker 1: most romantic places I've ever been. You mean, you can
Speaker 1: go for those people listening who don't know. The Tanglewood
Speaker 1: is in the Berkshires in Massachusetts and it's the it's
Speaker 1: the summer residency of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and you
Speaker 1: go up there to Lennox massive piece of land and
Speaker 1: it's a massive tract of land and in that way,
Speaker 1: in a good way that you can talk about going
Speaker 1: somewhere with someone and driving that decompressing road trip that
Speaker 1: as you drive and drive and get closer and closer,
Speaker 1: you just feel your your body relaxing. And then you
Speaker 1: get to the excitement of going to Tanglewood and you
Speaker 1: go and you get your your basket and your food
Speaker 1: and your wine. That's the real fun is to be
Speaker 1: out on the law. The star. The lawn is even
Speaker 1: better in a way if you've got the basket and
Speaker 1: the girl and the wine or who whatever your preferences there.
Speaker 1: And I think I've never seen more people who are
Speaker 1: getting it right, you know, I mean in terms of
Speaker 1: having a lovely evening and if they get smashed on
Speaker 1: top of it, you know, I guess what I'm saying
Speaker 1: is there's nothing like getting smashed a tangle Wood. The truth,
Speaker 1: it's it's the best kind of you know. The year
Speaker 1: that I was a guide, there was no comment, no comment.
Speaker 1: The year that I was a guide, there was the
Speaker 1: year the Fillmore East came up there like three different times,
Speaker 1: and I saw Who and Jimmy Hendrix. You're saying that
Speaker 1: Bill Graham had his production company. Fillmore reman as a
Speaker 1: production company. Yeah, they can the rider with all those
Speaker 1: the shed. The shed was a bathroom to them. We're
Speaker 1: not say what pleasure it has to be back and
Speaker 1: Tangled again. We were on the here last August. They
Speaker 1: trashed that loan. That's why they were never invited back.
Speaker 1: You would not have wanted. Isn't it funny how we've
Speaker 1: changed back then? I would have been there. Who I'm like,
Speaker 1: we're not having them here. You can have that the
Speaker 1: likes here Entangled Wood. Who else did? The grand Mr Kylie,
Speaker 1: who ran the head of the groundskeepers, was just beside himself. Yeah, coronary,
Speaker 1: he really it was. It was a disaster. Your father
Speaker 1: loved it there though, he loved it, and he loved
Speaker 1: to stay up all night yakking with the students. That
Speaker 1: was what really did your dad admire in his constellation?
Speaker 1: Who did he? I heard a story once from someone.
Speaker 1: They said that they were at your family's home and
Speaker 1: your father standing there with a cigarette in his hand
Speaker 1: and a drink in the other, and someone says, I
Speaker 1: just came from seeing the Beatles and then and the
Speaker 1: quote was a very simple one. They said that Bernstein
Speaker 1: said turned to my friend and said, you came and
Speaker 1: sold the Beatles. I can't wait to see them myself.
Speaker 1: He said, I'm mad for them. And he just had
Speaker 1: a passion for all desperate forms of music. He did,
Speaker 1: and he really did love the Beatles a lot. And
Speaker 1: we were so lucky as we were growing up because
Speaker 1: I was a complete beatlemaniac and my dad loved their
Speaker 1: music too, So together we would discover the Beatles, and
Speaker 1: when they had a new album, I would run out
Speaker 1: and get it and go straight to my father's studio
Speaker 1: and say, look, look I've got Rubbers Old, and he'd said, great,
Speaker 1: let's put it on right now, and we stick the
Speaker 1: record on. And I learned more about music by listening
Speaker 1: to the Beatles with my dad, and I think I
Speaker 1: did any other way. You know, my dad passed away.
Speaker 1: He was very young. My dad was only fifty five.
Speaker 1: He was a year older than I am now. He
Speaker 1: had a very rare form of cancer and he died
Speaker 1: of lung cancer when he was fifty. And your dad
Speaker 1: didn't live in a a very long life either. How old
Speaker 1: were both of you when your dad passed away, Well,
Speaker 1: he died at seventy two, which is not five you were,
Speaker 1: and I was thirty nine, so you were so you
Speaker 1: were grown adult people. But like you, our mother died
Speaker 1: when she was fifty six, and we were much younger
Speaker 1: when that happened. She died in night, so we were
Speaker 1: in our early twenties and he died in so by
Speaker 1: then we were you know, adults more or less. But
Speaker 1: when when our mother died, we were still a very
Speaker 1: young family. Nina was only fifteen or something. But did
Speaker 1: your mother die from lung cancer? A smoker? My point
Speaker 1: is that your dad didn't live a very long life.
Speaker 1: Did he die suddenly or did he get sick and
Speaker 1: he knew he was in trouble he got he was
Speaker 1: sick for like six months of being released. She was
Speaker 1: diagnosed with Uh. He had all sorts of chess problems, sure,
Speaker 1: you know, through his life, but it was it was
Speaker 1: not cigarette related, which was probably an asbestos thing when
Speaker 1: he was a kid. Who knows. I mean, it didn't
Speaker 1: help it. He smoked obviously, but um, but you know,
Speaker 1: just having the oxygen and stuff. That was the last,
Speaker 1: you know, a month or so. He died in October,
Speaker 1: and his last concert was at Tanglewood in August. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you could barely get through. The last thing your
Speaker 1: father conducted was a public performance seven. He did the
Speaker 1: Beethoven seven at Tanglewood in August of nineteen and died
Speaker 1: that October. I think about your dad and did he
Speaker 1: just when he knew he was sick and he knew
Speaker 1: it was in trouble healthful Because my dad knew he
Speaker 1: was in trouble. I mean, there was a moment I
Speaker 1: had with my dad where he like, he looked at
Speaker 1: me with this look in his eye, like he knew
Speaker 1: it was over, and he and he just I mean,
Speaker 1: he had a tear one down his face. And my
Speaker 1: father said, I'll never know my grandchildren. And when I
Speaker 1: when I when I think about this with your dad,
Speaker 1: a guy like that, who had so much more he
Speaker 1: wanted to do, did he ever express that too? Did
Speaker 1: he ever talk about that he wasn't done? Yeah, he did,
Speaker 1: you know, And I think you know he had this
Speaker 1: fantastic climactic moment at the very end of nine, the
Speaker 1: year before he died, when he conducted at the Fall
Speaker 1: of the Berlin Wall, and he did the ode to
Speaker 1: Joy and instead of singing Floyd which means joy, they
Speaker 1: sang fly Height, which means freedom. It was such a
Speaker 1: big deal for him to be there when the Berlin
Speaker 1: Wall came down, and it was such a momentous occasion.
Speaker 1: Where were you when that happened? I wish I had
Speaker 1: been there, And in retrospect, I regret that I wasn't there.
Speaker 1: But I had just given birth to my son, Evan,
Speaker 1: like less than eight weeks earlier. That was my excuse.
Speaker 1: So I watched it on the couch on Christmas Day
Speaker 1: while I was nursing my infant son. I watched it
Speaker 1: on TV because they showed the whole thing live broadcasting
Speaker 1: about you. I don't even have an excuse, and I
Speaker 1: can't remember why I didn't go. I can't believe that
Speaker 1: I wasn't there. It's just unbelievable. You know, we didn't
Speaker 1: know he was going to be gone within the year,
Speaker 1: so you know, he was always there, and there were
Speaker 1: always these occasions where you could go and meet him
Speaker 1: on the road, and there were hundreds of them, and
Speaker 1: it was kind of a pain to go get in
Speaker 1: with that whole retinue and the whole madness of being
Speaker 1: of the tour thing, and but did become entourage city.
Speaker 1: You know, right after that, he got really sick with
Speaker 1: the flu and it was like Christmas. And I remember
Speaker 1: visiting him about a month later, less than a month
Speaker 1: later in Key West, and he was just not feeling
Speaker 1: right and he told me so, he said, I just
Speaker 1: I'm not I don't feel right. That was the beginning
Speaker 1: of the slow decline. And then things got a lot
Speaker 1: worse in May, and then he just kind of struggled
Speaker 1: through all his gigs over the summer and then barely
Speaker 1: made it through that Beethoven seven. We were all in
Speaker 1: the audience clutching each other's hands, like, is he gonna
Speaker 1: make it? Is he going to make it? Because he
Speaker 1: was What was his life like after your mom passed away?
Speaker 1: The d didn't remarry, did he? Uh No, he did not,
Speaker 1: And he it was why do you think he was
Speaker 1: so miserable for a long time after she needed her,
Speaker 1: He needed her, and he was just he wasn't for
Speaker 1: a long long time until we went on vacation probably
Speaker 1: I don't know, eight months later or something like that,
Speaker 1: and we sort of saw started seeing signs of of
Speaker 1: a person again. Tell about what happened in Jamaica. After
Speaker 1: the Christmas dinner and then we went to the bar
Speaker 1: Oh my god. This was the vacation in Jamaica. A
Speaker 1: bunch of our family and a couple of friends, and
Speaker 1: we went down to the bar. They were probably a
Speaker 1: couple of people in there. And he sits down at
Speaker 1: the piano in the bar. And this was after dinner,
Speaker 1: after you know, a lot of Scotch whatever, a lot
Speaker 1: of wine, and he plays Rhapsody in Blue from beginning
Speaker 1: to end. It was the most amazing performance you could
Speaker 1: possibly imagine. I mean, you just ripped it. It was unforgettable.
Speaker 1: And then that's kind of when I knew he was back,
Speaker 1: just through the music he was. He tell you where
Speaker 1: through the music? Oh my god. So um, obviously you
Speaker 1: never married again. But why do you think you never
Speaker 1: married again? You see a guy like that, You mean,
Speaker 1: my god, he could have had any woman in New York.
Speaker 1: He didn't have room in his life for that anymore. No,
Speaker 1: And there was some men that he was very close to.
Speaker 1: And uh, and would you say that once your mother
Speaker 1: passed away, was your father's life as a bisexual man
Speaker 1: that he just lived more vividly once your mother was
Speaker 1: gone was much more, much, much more living color about it.
Speaker 1: His his mother was still alive, and I think that
Speaker 1: played a great role, and that was kind of a
Speaker 1: governor there. That was kind of a governor. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then when she he still had a public it was
Speaker 1: a different time. She outlived him. She was ninety two
Speaker 1: when he died, and she said memorably, this will shorten
Speaker 1: my life. Wow. And so he and so he. Do
Speaker 1: you think that he kept that quiet and kept that
Speaker 1: private not only because it was that that his nature
Speaker 1: private nature. He sort of out sort of a few times. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I think he was once he was hoping people
Speaker 1: would take more notice of it than they did, I think,
Speaker 1: but um, he didn't want his mother to have to
Speaker 1: deal with it with her friends. And you know, people
Speaker 1: talking about if he was alive now, how old diould
Speaker 1: that be? If he was alive now, yes, centennial will be.
Speaker 1: Who was someone? I mean, I'm sure that we're boundless
Speaker 1: people because your father was very generous of heart. It
Speaker 1: seems very passionate. But who were some of the people
Speaker 1: other than Kuzowitski and Coping that we've covered before, Who
Speaker 1: were some of the people that were contemporaries of your
Speaker 1: father that you remember him speaking very glowingly about. Who
Speaker 1: did he admire Lucas Foss would be one. They were
Speaker 1: at Curtis together, that's where they met, and they stayed
Speaker 1: friends and colleagues their entire lives. And Lucas was a
Speaker 1: stupendous pianist in addition to being an excellent composer. So um,
Speaker 1: he played our Dad's Age of Anxiety, which is a
Speaker 1: sort of like a piano concerto, although it's called a symphony,
Speaker 1: and and Lucas could just played a hell out of it.
Speaker 1: And and our dad premiered many of Lucas's pieces with
Speaker 1: the Philharmonic, and so that was he was one of them.
Speaker 1: Michael Tilson Thomas was someone that our dad kind of
Speaker 1: nurtured along when he was to Kuzsky to a degree, Yes,
Speaker 1: to a degree. Whose who else did here? Who else
Speaker 1: did he? Mentor? Well? He was Mr Mentor to a
Speaker 1: great degree. I think, Yeah, another guy with great hair,
Speaker 1: great conduct nothing like that hair flying through the air
Speaker 1: looks great. It's amazing how many great hair conductors there are.
Speaker 1: So Ozawa right well, when he was conducting at the Philharmonic,
Speaker 1: it was his relationship with Sondheim. Oh, that was a big,
Speaker 1: big relationship, big friendship and colleague ship. You know, west
Speaker 1: Side Story. All of them had this phenomenal success. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Initially west Side Story was supposed to be if I'm
Speaker 1: if I'm an Irish Jewish gang, Yeah, a low rest side.
Speaker 1: It was going to the east Side. It was going
Speaker 1: to rest side. Tempers would flare over the Eastern passover
Speaker 1: holidays right right right les versus the yeah yeah, something
Speaker 1: like that. And then apparently Jerry rob And saw some
Speaker 1: article about gang wars with Puerto Ricans in on the
Speaker 1: Upper West Side, and he went, ding, you know the bulls,
Speaker 1: Jerry it was I think it was Jerry or was
Speaker 1: it always so? I don't know, Maybe it was. Arthur's
Speaker 1: probably the most romantic line in the movie I've ever heard,
Speaker 1: and it always brings me to tears when he turns
Speaker 1: to where they have the moment of the dance, and
Speaker 1: he turns to her and says, you're not lying to me,
Speaker 1: are you? And she says, I have not yet learned
Speaker 1: to lie about such things. That's right, I have not
Speaker 1: yet learned to joke that way. I think now you're
Speaker 1: not king. She says, you're not joking. I have not
Speaker 1: yet given to me again, you say it? Here we
Speaker 1: go a live performance go, you're not joking with me.
Speaker 1: I have not yet learned to joke that way, I
Speaker 1: think now. I never really there. And the reason we're
Speaker 1: laughing is because there's a recording of our dad conducting
Speaker 1: West Side Story for in the recording session, and he
Speaker 1: got Alexander and my sister Nina to do that dialogue
Speaker 1: so much to believe you're not joking me, I have
Speaker 1: not yet learned how to joke that way. I think. No,
Speaker 1: I never read. Now, speaking of films, your father only
Speaker 1: composed I mean, other than them transferring The West Side
Speaker 1: to a film, your father only composed one film score
Speaker 1: and it was a hell of a film score? Esque
Speaker 1: And why do you think he only did? Your father
Speaker 1: is someone I mean I see people. This is interesting
Speaker 1: because I see so many people Billy Joe Sting. I mean,
Speaker 1: you see Elton John make his foray into that. But
Speaker 1: I see so many people who I think to myself, Billy,
Speaker 1: especially who's a friend, I say, my god, you could
Speaker 1: be doing so much music a movie score if you
Speaker 1: wanted to, and they just don't. They don't have a
Speaker 1: passion for why did your father just do the one?
Speaker 1: Do you think, well, because he really did not enjoy
Speaker 1: the experience. Why because he was being bossed around. Because yeah,
Speaker 1: well what happened. For the example he gave was that
Speaker 1: he wrote, you know, the soaring music, that the dynamics
Speaker 1: that he composed were all in his head and all
Speaker 1: recorded a certain way, and then when they're mixing, they
Speaker 1: just dunk the fader on it so that, as our
Speaker 1: dad put it, so that you could hear Marlon Brando's
Speaker 1: grunt and and and so just at the climactic moment
Speaker 1: of his love music, you know, in the in the
Speaker 1: final mix, they just dunked the fader. They would say, okay,
Speaker 1: we need fifteen bars of passion and then you know,
Speaker 1: thirty seconds of you know quick. And he just couldn't
Speaker 1: write that that way. It was impossible. He and a
Speaker 1: specific talent, but he just hated doing the work. You
Speaker 1: have children. I have a daughter. If you have a daughter,
Speaker 1: who's how old? She'll be fourteen in two weeks. You
Speaker 1: have a daughter, it's fourteen, and what is she into?
Speaker 1: What does she do? She's into her first year of
Speaker 1: high school and uh, loving it. And she's into the
Speaker 1: theater in a big way. She loves to Um. You're
Speaker 1: raising your kids in the in the city or outside
Speaker 1: the city. In the city, you're raising your daughter inside
Speaker 1: the city. And she likes acting. She likes acting, but
Speaker 1: she's also you know, she loves her English class and
Speaker 1: history class, and her school and her friends and her
Speaker 1: what about you have to have a daughter. Now they're
Speaker 1: in their twenties, now they're in their My daughter, Frankie
Speaker 1: lives in Brooklyn, she's a writer. And my son is
Speaker 1: uh still in school up in the Berkshires. As a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, he's up and he lives in Lee, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: And well, you know, for both of you, your children,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously they know they didn't have to watch.
Speaker 1: In their case, they weren't watching Leonard Burnstone. That wasn't
Speaker 1: the cartoon, wasn't the gateway into an understanding of who
Speaker 1: their grandfather was. But they know who he is, and
Speaker 1: have you had and do they do? They have an
Speaker 1: appetite and a passion to understand who he is and
Speaker 1: see who he is. My kids don't. They're very careful
Speaker 1: about sort of keeping their distance from that whole connection.
Speaker 1: I think it makes them a little shy, a little
Speaker 1: a little anxious, and so they don't they don't embrace
Speaker 1: without getting too personal, because I have an opinion about
Speaker 1: that because of my daughter. Well, what they want is
Speaker 1: that they sense that celebrity has become so exponentially out
Speaker 1: of control now and they prefer their privacy. If knowing
Speaker 1: that I was related directly to Leonard Bernstein was going
Speaker 1: to lead to something appropriate or comfortable or right, there
Speaker 1: would be one thing. But nowadays everybody's after the wrong thing,
Speaker 1: and that's really interesting. I mean I think about that
Speaker 1: a lot because our father really loved being famous, and
Speaker 1: we had fun with it, and it was just a
Speaker 1: different type of thing in those days. It was different.
Speaker 1: It's more of an industry now, and he started seeing
Speaker 1: that more and more starting in the eighties, and you
Speaker 1: talked about it a lot, and he once said to me,
Speaker 1: I'm so sick of Leonard Bernstein. I've had it with him.
Speaker 1: I've always had a problem about time. But when I
Speaker 1: had a problem about time at the age of five
Speaker 1: or thirty, when you're still, at least in part, thinking
Speaker 1: you're immortal and nothing's every good to change the way
Speaker 1: you are, or abbreviated everything's all right. I mean, I
Speaker 1: would go on concert tours and composed in the airport
Speaker 1: or on the plane or on the train, or I
Speaker 1: wrote half of the Age of Anxiety and airports and
Speaker 1: trains and hotels. I can't do that anymore, and it's
Speaker 1: been sometime since I could. One of the reasons is one,
Speaker 1: standards get higher and higher. Self identification with the composer
Speaker 1: whose works you are performing become closer and closer. To
Speaker 1: the point, are there our performances? Which are the ones
Speaker 1: I call good performances, But I know it's been a
Speaker 1: really good performance. It's one in which I have the
Speaker 1: feeling I've written the piece standing there, and and when
Speaker 1: it's over, I don't know where I'm standing. As he
Speaker 1: grew older, Bernstein's connection to the music of Gustav Mahler,
Speaker 1: whom he had championed throughout his career, became even stronger.
Speaker 1: I think he felt a deep association, I mean, apart
Speaker 1: from the music itself, obviously, an association with Mahler as
Speaker 1: a conflicted musician mother being Jewish and in a Jewish world,
Speaker 1: and being a tonal composer in an atonal more atonal world,
Speaker 1: becoming so being a European man who came to America.
Speaker 1: You know that somebody from the classical tradition coming to
Speaker 1: America and suddenly finding themselves in this crazy world. So
Speaker 1: I think there was an affinity there. Plus, he was
Speaker 1: the combination of composer and conductor, which there aren't that
Speaker 1: many of. I would love to have known your father.
Speaker 1: Your father is was so singular and remains so singular
Speaker 1: because number one, whenever he came on, I was happy,
Speaker 1: And whenever he came on, I was excited, and he
Speaker 1: never disappointed me. And when I would see him, I'd say,
Speaker 1: what you get from Bernstein, you can only get from Bernstein.
Speaker 1: He was the original in his field. Leonard Bernstein's children,
Speaker 1: Jamie and Alexander, say their father was so original in
Speaker 1: part because he just never stopped celebrating music, celebrating live.
Speaker 1: He was a terrible insomniac. I think that's probably why
Speaker 1: I managed to squeeze in so much action. He was
Speaker 1: always at it. You know. I wish she was around
Speaker 1: here and I could have hung out together. Oh I'm
Speaker 1: an insomniac. And could you imagine watching YouTube together? Could
Speaker 1: have come over at four am and you could have
Speaker 1: hung out. God, but you could have been watching old
Speaker 1: movies together, and you would have gone to the piano
Speaker 1: and played all the old Bernard Hermann scores. Yes, everything.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin. To learn more about Leonard Bernstein
Speaker 1: and Artful Learning, an educational organization that his son Alex spearheads,
Speaker 1: go to Here's the Thing dot org