Читать книгу Liona Boyd 2-Book Bundle - Liona Boyd - Страница 10

Guitar Woes

Los Angeles is such a vast and sprawling city. I once described it as a melting pot of creativity, reckless ambition, absurd fantasy, and violent crime — a city built by dreamers and schemers from all over the world. It is also home to millions of hard-working Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans in search of a better life. Indeed, L.A. is dependent upon this constant flow of labourers, some legal and some not, in order to build the freeways, clean the houses, sweep the streets, gather the trash, maintain the pools and gardens, mind the kiddies, run the restaurants, and harvest the produce. L.A. was also now my home.

I was first introduced to this fascinating metropolis in 1976 when I opened for Gordon Lightfoot and performed four sold-out concerts at the Universal Amphitheater. I was instantly impressed by the profusion of palm trees, the colourful shrubbery flowering under cerulean skies, and the Spanish architecture and street names that seemed to add to the city’s charms.

While there, I met the famous pianist and showman Liberace along with many other artists and performers. Liberace’s manager, Seymour Heller, tried to convince me to move to Los Angeles, so in order to test the waters, in 1980, I rented the smallest room in the Beverly Hills Hotel. My stay was a short one, however, and I fled back to the safety of Toronto a month later, exasperated by the “casting couch” mentality that seemed endemic there, and by the horror of having to continually fend off sleazy producers, agents, and record company executives. Toronto seemed a much safer place for a serious classical guitarist. Nevertheless, I continued to commute to the “City of Angels” for guest appearances on television shows from The Tonight Show to The Merv Griffin Show and The Dinah Shore Show.

In January of 1991, I decided to give Los Angeles another chance. This time, fate intervened. Three days after renting a pied-à-terre in Beverly Hills, my girlfriend Dale, from Vancouver, introduced me to a statuesque widower, John B. Simon, known to his friends as Jack — the man I instantly knew would become my husband. The problem was that I was engaged to another man at the time — an exceptionally bright man named Joel Bell. If I wanted a relationship with Jack, I had to undertake the painful task of leaving Joel. I hated to break the man’s heart, as he had been presuming that he would one day be able to make me his wife, but thankfully Joel and I were able to part on amicable terms, and he eventually married and moved to New York.

And so it was I found myself madly in love and at the peak of my classical career. At that time I knew “The First Lady of the Guitar” had it all; a wonderful new family of four stepsons, a husband who adored me, a beautiful Beverly Hills home, and many international friends. I was even able to maintain an affectionate relationship with my former lover, Pierre Trudeau, who had come to visit us.

• • •

However, after fourteen fulfilling and happy years of travelling the globe with Jack and the World Presidents’ Organization, and performing everywhere from the Cairo Opera House to the Kremlin, from the Meyerson in Dallas to Windsor Castle, our fairy tale life began to unravel. I have always been a restless spirit, “taking a big bite out of life,” as my music producer once commented, and I have always sought new and varied adventures over security. It is often difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is that causes a relationship to break down, and to this day Jack maintains that had I not experienced a little-understood condition called musician’s focal dystonia, we would still be together. Perhaps now is the time to recap how it all happened and go back to a time when my married life was still picture perfect, when the word divorce was not even in my vocabulary.

As early as 2000 I noticed that my arpeggios and tremolo were not as smooth and synchronized as before. I had always taken my right-hand technique for granted as the fingers seemed to work on autopilot and never required much attention, other than the scales and a series of exercises that I was in the habit of doing by rote while I sat watching television with Jack. We had come to an agreement that in the evenings, when we were home, if I threaded a Kleenex under the strings to dampen the sound, I could practise scales to keep my fingers limber while he flicked through the TV channels. I had no idea that this mindless activity would contribute significantly to the gradual loss over six years of my ability to use my right-hand fingers in the specialized movements required for classical guitar technique.

Learning about my frustration, Jack had taken me to the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, where I underwent a series of rather unpleasant nerve tests that determined I had no neurological damage whatsoever. The doctors concluded it was probably something called “task-specific focal dystonia” or, more precisely in my case, “musician’s focal dystonia,” which can be triggered by repetitive fine motor motions and lack of mental attention to what the fingers are doing. When neurons in the brain have fired over and over again due to the same repeated movements, and the brain is not carefully focused, the brain maps can eventually become “smudged” and confused, sending incorrect messages to the fingers.

The doctors told me it was basically an incurable affliction and that most musicians have to end their careers once this condition occurs. They recommended, however, that I try finger splints and suggested I see a rolfing therapist as they also found the muscles in my arms to be pretty tight. Back in Los Angeles, I endured ten torturous sessions, during which my poor arms were kneaded by a rolfer, whose arms were three times the size of mine. But my stubborn fingers still misbehaved.

I began a series of therapies, each time praying for a miracle: I flew to North Carolina for a week to learn Alexander Technique, consulted acupuncturists and chiropractors, and even spent a month attending sessions in Scientology at the Celebrity Center in Hollywood where Tom Cruise assured me that Scientology would, of course, be the solution to my finger problems.

Scientology was one of the stranger experiences in my life — being “audited” using their E-meter, having to strain to remember any “bad” things I might have ever done, lying on a massage table while one of their zombie-like members did their standard “feel my finger” routine, touching various points on my back, arms, and legs. Needless to say, all of this accomplished absolutely nothing. I quit after a month, realizing I had just wasted a few thousand dollars.

Looking back I really must have been pretty desperate to have sought help from this bizarre cult, known for exploiting its members. I chalked it up to one of my rather weird life experiences and was glad I had not wasted too much time being brainwashed by L. Ron Hubbard’s techniques.

Despite the failure of all of these supposed “cures,” I refused to give up. Stubbornly, I did not want to accept the recondite diagnosis of focal dystonia and felt desperate to discover another explanation.

I wondered if, perhaps, my problem could be the result of some deep-seated desire to abandon my guitar or my marriage. To test this theory I drove over to the San Fernando Valley for five appointments with a renowned hypnotherapist, followed by a couple of further sessions with another one in Brentwood who had been recommended to me. I found this one to be unpleasant and condescending, and concluded that hypnotherapy was not the answer.

Everything I tried seemed to no avail, all the efforts and therapies had no noticeable effect, and to my dismay my right-hand dexterity continued to deteriorate. It was breaking my heart to realize that my fingers, once known for flying over the strings with a speed that even Andrés Segovia and Julian Bream had marvelled at, were now in serious trouble.

I was still able to play “rest stroke,” but the “free stroke” required for advanced pieces was deteriorating. And my perfect left hand was no use to me if the right-hand fingers could not keep up! Was it now my destiny to abandon my beloved guitar? Would I ever find a way back to the music I had devoted my life to? I felt as though I had a deep ribbon of sadness running through me. I remembered how poor Schumann had struggled to design a finger-strengthening device trying to correct his fingers when they began misbehaving.

There was only one guitarist I knew of who had recovered from musician’s focal dystonia, and he had apparently taken a ten-year break from playing before retraining from scratch. For me that was not an option. Nevertheless, I made the trek to his place in Manhattan, but after a month of following his approach, which involved making huge sweeping motions with the right hand while imagining the movement originating in the muscles of the armpit, my fingers were no better off at all.

• • •

At around this time, Strunz and Farah, a virtuoso nuevo flamenco duo based in Los Angeles, had invited me to be their special guest on a new CD they were making called Stringweave. At first I refused, knowing full well I could never compete technically with their dazzling “mile a minute,” Latin jazz style of playing, but after hearing a demo of “Rimas de Cuerdas” that Jorge Strunz had especially written for me, I agreed to visit their studio.

Jorge and Ardeshir were both workaholics who rehearsed daily for hours, to the point that their playing was mind-blowing in its synchronized perfection. As a result the duo had developed a fanatic following around the world. For me, it was a great experience to stretch musically and play jazz with these amazing guitarists. It fuelled the inspiration to put out my own Latin style album the following year. I was fortunate to have them return the favour, as my special guests, performing on a piece that I wrote with their dazzling technique in mind. The CD, aptly named Camino Latino, which means Latin journey in Spanish, did indeed lead me on a huge life-changing Latin journey … but that is a story for the next chapter.

My motivation for choosing this style of music was a practical one. With my right-hand guitar technique giving me major problems, a less demanding style of music seemed like a sensible option. Why not opt for pieces that my fingers could manage more easily, and invite some of the guitar world’s Latin jazz and nuevo flamenco superstars to do the heavy lifting? Besides that, I had developed an appreciation for this appealing, Latin-based genre that radio stations such as The Wave in Los Angeles were choosing to broadcast.

The guitarists who excel at this style of music play using picks, which enables them to play at double speed compared to classical guitar players since a pick can be plucked up and down on the strings, unlike the fingernails. Another advantage these players enjoy is that most of them tend to perform on guitars with very low action.

When speaking of guitars, the term action refers to the closeness of the strings to the fretboard. The lower the action, the easier it is for the left hand to move up and down the fingerboard. Classical guitarists use guitars with higher action, which makes them considerably harder to play. However, more volume is projected by classical instruments, so they can be played acoustically without any amplification, and this results in a more beautiful and natural tone.

In deciding to work with nuevo flamenco guitarists on projects inspired by Latin music, it seemed that I had stumbled upon a perfect solution to my woes as a strictly classical performer, and I greatly looked forward to the exciting new challenge.

My arranger, Richard Fortin, agreed to produce the Latin-flavoured album I proposed. Fortunately he was also a fan of nuevo flamenco so we agreed to abandon our planned recording of classical transcriptions and originals that I had been writing and arranging for the past year. My right-hand fingers were simply not up to it. How sad that my beautiful transcriptions of Debussy’s “Claire de Lune,” Massenet’s “Élégie” and “Meditation,” and Schubert’s “Barcarolle,” all of which I had obsessed over for months to adapt for classical guitar, remain in their folder to this day.

In a writing frenzy, Richard and I took out our manuscript papers in Toronto and Los Angeles and began faxing each other our rough sketches and scores for mutual approval. The internet was, at that time, still in its infancy, so there were no digital files to be exchanged. Richard and I were back in the Stone Age in terms of technology, and we were happy that we could at least fax our scribbles back and forth. We wrote out every piece by hand and mailed each other demos recorded on our cassette machines. It would have amazed us then to learn how the recording business was on the brink of transformation, and that once the digital age fully blossomed we would soon all be sharing music tracks with a few clicks of a mouse.

I invited several well-known guitar players to contribute to the project and soon had on tape stellar performances by many of the world’s best Latin jazz players including, of course, my new friends Strunz and Farah. As executive producer, I undertook the dozens of phone calls to each of these performers in order to coordinate the repertoire, the recording studios, the scheduling, and the payment of all expenses.

• • •

My Camino Latino CD was engineered and mixed by a relatively unknown sound engineer called Peter Bond. Little did I know that many moons later he and I would reunite for several future musical collaborations and a profound journey of friendship that continues even today. I have Richard Fortin to thank for patiently leading me around Toronto to visit various studios, and for his eventual conclusion that Zolis Audio Productions, where Peter was working, should be our choice.

“Parranda” was a catchy solo piece I had recorded on Encore in 1988, but now it was going to be accompanied by a full band, including light percussion. What fun to hear it expand into a new rhythmic version of its former self. “Bajo el Sol” (“Beneath the Sun”) was a piece I composed while on a Hawaiian holiday with Jack in July of 2000. I still have the scraps of stationery from our hotels on which I scribbled rough drafts of melodies that would later evolve into my Camino Latino repertoire.

My Peruvian-style piece, “Las Alturas,” was evocative of the high Andes, and I knew would be great fun to perform live using pizzicatos and double string trills that I was still able to execute.

“Ambos Mundos,” my tribute to Strunz and Farah, blended Latin and Persian-style rhythms and melodies, paying homage to Jorge Strunz’s Costa Rican background and Ardeshir Farah’s Iranian heritage. For the intro we used wind chimes and the old Kenora guitar that I had taken along when I had canoed the Missinaibi River in 1989 to perform in the historic Anglican church in Moose Factory. Using pizzicato to play its well-worn strings produced the touch of Middle Eastern flavour that I wanted for this piece. I used my fast-fingered left-hand runs up the fingerboard and was delighted that our different styles of fingernail and pick playing made for an exotic blend. To this day “Ambos Mundos,” remains one of my all-time favourite compositions. My right hand was not up to tackling complex classical compositions, but it was perfectly adequate for this style of playing.

Fortin composed several catchy numbers including “Frontera,” “Night in Yucatan,” “Torbellino,” and “Carretera Libre.” I hired Rick Lazar to add percussion and Ron Korb to play various flutes that he selected from his huge collection of international instruments. Back in L.A., I asked a Latin jazz guitar whiz kid from the San Fernando Valley, Luis Villegas, to perform with me on “Carretera Libre.” It turned out so well that I chose it as the opening cut on the album. Luis recorded his parts at his own studio, and I sat with him acting as producer and drawing out the best possible performance from his nimble fingers. It was then up to Peter and Richard to choose the most expressive parts and put all the tracks together like a complex audio puzzle.

Convincing Al Di Meola, a huge star in the jazz world, to perform on a fast-paced piece that Richard had written was a real coup. I named the piece “Torbellino” (“Whirlwind”), and Richard and Peter had to work extra-long hours into the night to edit the rather scrambled and messy guitar parts Al had recorded in his home in New Jersey. However, when all was finally pieced together along with my own playing, we were relieved to hear that it worked musically and, in fact, sounded quite amazing. I decided this piece was definitely worth the high fee he had charged me.

Steve Morse, the virtuoso rocker from Deep Purple, sent us his parts for use in Richard’s “Rumbo al Sur.” These tracks bordered on perfection! He even gave us choices of two different solos, each of which were well-thought-out compositions unto themselves. We decided to use both — what a monster player that man is!

When he came to perform in Los Angeles with his band, Deep Purple, Steve set aside a ticket for me, and I found myself in a mosh pit near the front of the stage. I suffered the head-splitting experience until I feared for my ears and retreated to the sidelines, but I met up with Steve backstage for drinks after the show. We hung out together for an hour on the tour bus with his band and posed for photos that Guitar Player magazine had requested. Even if our styles of playing are very different, we performers always love to exchange guitar tips. At that time Steve and I were both pretty much at the tops of our games; although I kept my focal dystonia struggles to myself.

Johannes Linstead, an Ontario-based nuevo flamenco–style player also jumped on board with my project, writing a fast-paced duet called “Zarzamora” that we could record together.

Next I drew on my rudimentary knowledge of Brazilian samba rhythms to compose “Samba para Dos” and enjoyed listening while another rising star on the guitar scene, Jesse Cook, laid down his tracks in his home studio. As we had both studied with Eli Kassner and belonged to the Toronto Guitar Society, there was a comforting shared history between us.

Oscar Lopez, a charming Chilean guitarist, agreed to write and record a new piece for me he called “Enlaces,” but unfortunately his piece and another infectious rhythmic number that I had arranged and recorded (called “Popcorn”) did not make the final cut. We felt that Oscar’s recording, done in Calgary, didn’t quite match the high standards of the other pieces, despite Richard and Peter’s valiant attempts to edit it, and we decided that “Popcorn” was stylistically unsuitable for this Latin-inspired album. The master recording of “Popcorn” would have to wait a few years before its day in the sun, when it would come out in the form of a remix by Peter Bond.

I asked an ambitious young Canadian guitarist of Greek heritage, Pavlo, to write me an original Greek-flavoured piece, and he obliged with “Café Kastoria,” which featured the appealing sound of the bouzouki. For this number I hired Kristine Bogyo to play on her million-dollar cello, but for some inexplicable reason her tuning was slightly off, so Peter had to blend it with sampled cello sounds to make it work with the other tracks.

Finally, by the end of 2001, after adding a soulful solo piece that I had composed called “Mexico Mi Amor,” we had fourteen original pieces. Only fellow musicians would understand what a labour of love this album had been and how many hundreds of studio and telephone hours I had been required to log.

• • •

Now that the album was due to be released by Fusion Music, with distribution by Universal, it was time to try to perform the pieces live … but how without a supporting band? Hiring Pavlo, who had formerly only been playing restaurants and bars on the Danforth, a focal point for Toronto’s Greek community, provided the perfect solution. Accompanying him were Gino Mirizio, Randy Rodrigues, and George Vasilakos — all good-natured, super-talented musicians who played drums, bass, and guitars, respectively. Pavlo and his band were able to back me up and add great variety to my program, so in preparation for live shows and the album release we began rehearsing in an old warehouse in Toronto. It has been gratifying over the years to witness Pavlo’s career take off and watch him develop an international following.