Beyond the Six String Nation #25: "Stockhausen here"

Why I don't take drugs

It’s too incredible to think about, really, but it was a year ago last week that my friend, mentor and co-producer Chris Brookes died by accident in his St. John’s home en route to a holiday in Avignon, France, where his beloved wife Christina Smith is spending time now with the friends they were to have met there. The shock of that loss was the subject of edition #3, if you’d care to go back and read.

Naturally, thinking of Chris and our work on our series The Wire: The Impact of Electricity on Music with co-creator Paolo Pietropaolo made me think of one of the most hilarious moments from those days. And I’m stating right now as a kind of disclaimer that this is a story I have told many times at dinner parties over the years. So for those (looking at you, Richard) who’ve already heard this story a hundred times, you will be forgiven for skipping to the end to see if I’ve included anything new.

For a bit of background, the series was an attempt to explore the myriad ways that electricity is involved in the creation, reproduction, dissemination, and perception of music and we spoke to all kinds of people to try and assemble a rich picture of that relationship that goes back more than a century. Among the musicians and composers we spoke to was the pioneering German composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen.

If you don’t know Stockhausen, he was a groundbreaking composer, theorist and visionary – often referred to as the grandfather of electronic music, a field to which he first applied himself in the early 1950s. He had a profound influence on musicians as diverse as Igor Stravinsky, Steve Reich, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Pink Floyd, Pete Townsend, the Grateful Dead and Bjork and an even more direct influence on his students, like members of Can and Kraftwerk. And, of course, the Beatles, who included Stockhausen on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band for pete’s sake – right between Lenny Bruce and W.C. Fields:

With an ear towards our episode about recording tape, Paolo had lined up an exceedingly rare interview with the somewhat reclusive (and notoriously cranky) then-77-year-old master. It would be a phoner from CBC studio 101 in Toronto to his home in Kürten, Germany, east of Köln, at 12:30 on a Sunday afternoon – his only availability. I had done my research, I had my notes, I was prepared for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Except when all of a sudden I wasn’t.

You see, my friend Kimberly Huie had returned home from L.A. for a visit and we’d planned to get together the night before. We met at Marcus O’Hara’s Squeeze Club on Queen West to catch an early DJ set and then made our way to a house party at an apartment in Little Italy that was a kind of wrap party for a TV show she’d just been a cast member on. I was well behaved – I had a couple of glasses of wine at the Squeeze, got a decent walk in up to College and Euclid or so and then maybe just another glass of wine at the party. And I wasn’t going to stay late because… well, I had a big day the next day, didn’t I?!

Then someone passed around a plate of cookies. You know, special cookies. Pot cookies. Now, I never really liked smoking dope because I’m not a smoker and I never really liked that sort of high and I had scant experience with edibles. But – for whatever reason – I thought that if I had just a tiny bit of one cookie, it would make me super relaxed and I wouldn’t worry about the interview ahead of me and I’d get a good night’s sleep. So I ate maybe a quarter of a single cookie. Still feeling fine and checking the time (it was maybe 9:30 or 10:00pm), I made my excuses and left the party looking forward to my 3km walk home to my loft on Sorauren Ave., which I figured would be just the right amount of exercise to send me straight to sleep the moment I hit the pillow.

But the metabolic result of that walk was to thoroughly and completely distribute the THC throughout my system so I was really feeling it by the time I hit the top of Sorauren. My building was just a bit south of the old Robert Watson Building – a proper artists warren, studio and rehearsal space, not yet converted into condos as it is now. As I passed by the Watson building I spotted a tall blond man – quite well dressed, clean shaven, chiseled features, good posture, perhaps late 50s early 60s – going through a pile of garbage. We exchanged a few words that made it clear that, in spite of him not looking it at all, he was homeless. I said good night, aware that this was indeed an odd encounter, went into my building and climbed the three stories to my apartment, up the ladder and into bed.

In the morning, the clock radio in the bathroom (very much out of reach, snooze-button-wise) went off on schedule and I lay in bed, eyes still closed, seemingly still asleep, incorporating the voices on the Sunday Edition show into my dreams. I didn’t hear the news at the top of the hour, and I didn’t hear host Michael Enright’s voice. Instead, it was contributor Karen Wells deep into a story. And with each sentence she spoke, I came to believe that I knew exactly what she was going to say next because I had in fact read the script (which I absolutely had not). I continued with this fantasy for a while as my eyes opened and realized I’d better get a move on. But once I tried to swing my legs out of bed, it was apparent they were not much use – very wobbly. And I had a ladder to climb down! Going very slowly and carefully, I got myself down the ladder and into the bathroom, where I immediately threw up. I brushed my teeth and continued to feel nauseous. A glass of water – that would make me feel better! I went into the kitchen. On the high-top table in the kitchen was a bowl of peaches. I wrote a poem about them! I got my glass of water. Back to the toilet to throw up the water and consider the poem I’d written.

Now, normally, on a bright clear Sunday like this particular day – September 26th, 2004, to be exact – I would have biked into work downtown at the CBC Broadcast Centre. A good 25-minute ride. And I had lots of time but I realized I would very likely get killed trying to ride in my condition, so I would have to cab it. No point in calling for one to pick me up as Roncesvalles Ave. was just one residential block away and there’d be no shortage of taxis there – and if the walk the night before had accelerated the affects of the pot, maybe this walk would accelerate the sobering. So I gathered my things for the interview ahead, locked up and made my way downstairs. Still quite woozy, I realized it would be necessary just to focus on my feet as I walked west along Geoffrey towards Roncy. When I think about it now, it’s actually quite a long residential block. I suppose it was shorter in my mind that morning so as I periodically looked up from the ground to check my progress, Roncy seemed to remain the same distance away. Felt like half and hour and it was exhausting.

I finally made it to Roncesvalles and, sure enough, quickly hailed a cab. It’s a pretty straightforward ride I’d done countless times before. You’re in the west end of downtown and you go to one of the more landmarky buildings right downtown – just down Roncy to King and east until you get to John St. and you’re practically there. So I got in and said “CBC Building please”. The driver responded with a kind of questionnaire about my preferred route, listing off half a dozen options. My head hurt. “Any way is fine, your choice”, I moaned. I spent the cab ride trying to gather my thoughts for the interview, shuffling through some of my prep pages. It was no use, I could not focus on anything. In my panic on that car ride, I hatched a plan: my sound engineer for the interview, veteran David Burnham, was a very knowledgeable music head and already a Stockhausen fan. I would get Dave to conduct the interview using my list of questions and then later, when I was feeling better, I’d go in and record myself asking the questions and put it all together after the fact. Genius!

We arrived at the Front St. entrance of the CBC building a few minutes on either side of noon. I got into the elevator and pressed the button for the second floor, where both my office and the studios were located. When the elevator doors opened, Dave was standing right there as if anxiously awaiting my arrival. “Where’ve ya been?” Oh no, was I late? Did I have the time wrong? “The interview’s at 12:30!” he said, checking his watch. I checked mine. Yup – it was 12:04 or something. Plenty of time. I did not understand his agitation. Then I noticed that there were an incongruously large number of people walking around for a Sunday morning. Perhaps I was a whole day late after all! But it turns out there was a reason so many of my Radio Music colleagues were in the building on a weekend: they were there to witness my interview with the great Stockhausen. Nobody interviews Stockhausen. This was historic. So, I would have an audience in the control room. The sub-in-Dave strategy was DOA.

I got my papers in place in a stand on my little sound-damped table in the studio, my head still swirling, as people gathered in the control room with Dave. I put on the headphones and at the appointed time we placed the call. The housekeeper answered the phone. “Yes, it’s Jowi Taylor calling from CBC Radio in Toronto for Karlheinz Stockhausen”. “One moment please”. I was terrified. As I said, not only was he a giant of music and one of the biggest “gets” of our series, he had a very prickly reputation and I was not in any way prepared for that prickliness with all eyes on me.

”Yah. Stockhausen here”, came the voice on the other end of the line. “Holy shit”, I thought. “I’m talking to the guy on the cover of Sgt. Pepper.” And we were off.
I forgot my fears and launched into my questions. He was light and receptive and clearly in very good humour – not in the least bit cranky. His answers, of course, were fascinating. So fascinating that I kept making little notes: that’s an interesting point, I’ll have to follow up on that. At the same time, I was suddenly distracted by the emergence of a pattern in the texture of the carpeted tabletop where my mic was… “I will have to follow up on that also”, I thought. By the end of it, whoever might have been watching in the control room, I felt I was just having a conversation with one of the 20th century’s most influential composers. The picture below was taken almost exactly seven months after our conversation and that’s pretty much how I’d pictured him in my head as we spoke (perhaps without the Wellies).

Karlheinz Stockhausen, 20 April 2005 at home in Kürten. Note the fake lion! (Or is it?) Photo: Kathinka Pasveer

After we’d said our goodbyes and finished the call, the interview was filed in the CBC’s DALET computer audio system so it would be instantly accessible by Paolo, who was based in Vancouver. Feeling quite a bit better by that time, I went to my office, called Paolo and left a voice message:
“Paolo, Jowi here. The interview with Stockhausen is done. I cannot vouch for its quality as I was stoned out of my mind. Have a listen, let me know what you think and I’ll fill you in later”.
At this point there was nothing else to be done but hope that it all turned out just good enough. And my head was clear enough to promise myself never to eat pot cookies ever again.

About an hour later, my phone rang. It was Paolo. I braced myself. “So, how did it sound? Is it OK?”
If I recall correctly, it felt like there was a silent smile in the short pause before he spoke.
“It’s good. It’s actually a really good interview. Fantastic! The only hint that there’s anything wrong is a couple of times when Stockhausen says something kind of profound, you go: ‘Riiiiiiiggghttt’” (universally translated as ‘I’m so high right now’).

Stockhausen died a little over a year later at the age of 79. I still cannot believe my good fortune to have had the opportunity to speak to him – no matter my condition. And in spite of the edibles shop that opened literally in the building next to mine, I have yet to feel the slightest inkling to cross its threshold.

---

Now that I have committed the story to Substack, please feel free to tell me you’ve heard this one before if I ever launch into it at a dinner party.