(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)
Part 1: Biographical Approach and Methodology
Lawrence Peryer: Well, I have to tell you, I've been looking forward to this one. It's so long overdue. Your multidiscipline background in terms of being an academic and a composer—I'm curious how your technical understanding of music and instruments shaped your approach. How do you think that would be different from how a more journalistic biographer might approach this?
Jonathon Grasse: The answer may be a bit complicated, but streamlining it—I had to walk back the technical stuff. I worked with some people in the publishing process, and it was deemed better to either go off into the deep end and try to do transcriptions and more complex harmonic analysis, or focus on a broader general audience that would appreciate every page of the book.
There are no music examples, and that's by design. As for how that shaped the project compared to something more journalistic—I really appreciate journalistic writing in that it's engaging, typically with fresh use of language and an inviting tone. I do my best, but I struggle with that side of my writing. A compromise came along with the skeleton of the project itself, which is really a day-to-day, diary-type approach to accounting for his recordings, whereabouts, and interactions. The technical side of the academic background receded into the back of the room.
Another challenge that complicated the approach was really the lack of primary sources. Dolphy has been dead for sixty years. I did contact people like bassist Richard Davis, who is still alive, although it wouldn't have been appropriate to use any interview material due to his advanced age and the nature of some of his answers to my questions. There are very few personal contacts, and that isolating factor left it up to me to structure this in a very streamlined, direct, timeline sort of fashion.
Lawrence: I appreciate your comment about Richard Davis. I had a somewhat similar opportunity to talk with McCoy Tyner several years back, and I actually chose not to. I used to live in New York for a very long time, and I'd go see him several times a year at his Blue Note residencies. I just felt that—the best way I could say it, this isn't quite articulate—but I kind of felt like I should just leave him alone. He was clearly having his health issues as he was older.
He was so soft-spoken. As I read other interviews with him, I saw that he relied on the same stories or tropes to get through interviews, and it just didn't feel like it would be worth it, however exciting it would have been personally for me. He's my musical hero, but it seemed like I didn't have a larger aim of what I wanted to get out of him. So why do it? I know it's different in that you had a clear purpose, but I can relate to that—how the advancing age affects things, and there's only so much we can expect from people to recall events with clarity that happened a literal lifetime ago.
Part 2: Research Discoveries and The Los Angeles Years
Lawrence: Something you brought up that I'm very curious about is this sort of day-to-day or diaristic aspect as you were dealing with session dates, personnel notes, and things that I think you wound up cleaning up or clarifying in your process. Do you think you made any discoveries that shed new light into either Dolphy's development? Were there things you came across where you thought, "Wow, that's a missing piece for me," or that's genuinely additive?
Jonathon: Well, for me personally, yes. The process of putting everything together was like a proverbial light bulb effect pretty regularly through writing. It was like, "Oh yeah, I see now he actually did leave the Free Jazz session and go straight to Englewood, New Jersey to record another album that day."
There are plenty of anecdotes, like always assuming Eric was part of an Ornette Coleman concert in Cincinnati. There's this incident where a promoter promoted it as "free jazz" and all these people showed up expecting no admission, and Ornette apparently cancelled out of frustration that no, it wasn't free. Even a very recent Ornette biography says Eric was there, but he wasn't—he was in England touring with Coltrane in November of '61.
There are a lot of little things like that, but mostly discoveries in putting it all together was not just a challenge but a call. Part of the expectation for any reader at this point, if you're going to say "Hey, this is the first real full biography," is that you have to pull everything together.
The timeline reveals interesting things about his time in and out of the Mingus workshop. He wasn't in consistently month after month, year after year. He left several times whenever he could for opportunity and his own career. Mingus loved Dolphy very much—they were very close—and being the somewhat hard to get along with group leader, antagonizing some of his ensemble members pretty regularly (that's a matter of record, not just my opinion), to characterize Dolphy as going in and out of the Mingus workshop is accurate.
He would leave when he could, and he was grateful for the livelihood when he was welcomed back, which was any time he was available, as far as I understand. In an earlier version of the book, I tried to extrapolate that relationship. I didn't want to contrive anything, but there's something to say about that relationship and with Coltrane for sure. I hope future writers who come across memoirs or have some other sources extend an understanding of Dolphy's work with Mingus and Coltrane, because there's still more out there. I just had to draw the line in the sand and finish the book and continue.
Lawrence: Well, I'm curious about Los Angeles as a place where Dolphy received so much education. You talk about some of the figures that he studied with and worked alongside. I'm curious about Los Angeles in the '40s and '50s as it relates to his musical development and foundational work there. Could you talk about the role of place and his place in that setting?
Jonathon: Certainly. I think it would be appropriate to start with his parents—the fact that he was the only child of loving immigrant parents who cherished the thought of him becoming a professional musician. That's the feeling I get from the sources—they encouraged him to take music very seriously, and he did from roughly the age of six onward.
The home life, the stability of that, and also the importance of place—we can go to my habit in the book of mentioning the distances from his home. A club was two blocks away, or he could walk to his junior high school. Central Avenue was just down Jefferson Boulevard as he was coming of age, the prime of Central Avenue.
And the other thing you mentioned was learning and teaching. His coming-of-age space was filled with public school music opportunities and these wonderful music teachers. I'm saying they're wonderful—who knows—but the outcome was wonderful. He excelled. He was encouraged to become a multi-instrumentalist by the age of 13 or 14. His music teachers were like, "Try the flute now, try the oboe, try the alto sax." He absorbed that type of positive encouragement and support through public school music programs.
Obviously, his parents gave him the right of way to practice at home, which could have been torture for a while. But after a while, they gained a lot of respect for his accomplishments, I think, because there was structure to all that. It's not just woodshedding and practicing—there were performances and memberships in school orchestras and winning little awards.
Part 3: Professional Development and Third Stream Music
Jonathon: Moving on through into the '40s—those were amazing times. The rise of bebop, he was a fan of R&B, he loved classical music. He had adolescent dreams of playing oboe in an orchestra. That's a painful reality to come of age in segregationist, racist America. As we all know, the color line—that phrase is a sad reminder that he would have had zero chance of making it through the ranks. There's the pretty verifiable rejection by those running a USC summer program for student musicians—he was rejected because he was African American. I include that in the book without documentation, but so many people reference it.
When he comes of age and becomes a jazz musician, he has Central Avenue. He has Gerald Wilson. He has Lloyd Reese, an independent music educator. And of course, his friends and colleagues in the clubs and his experiences with Roy Porter and the 17 Beboppers is still educational, even though he's out of high school. He's 20, 21, playing professionally, getting hired for these side groups and discovering those things.
Putting all those experiences together was important for me—Nat Meeks and different gigs that he held on to, some subbing jobs through Gerald Wilson. All these topics could branch off from the discussion of place in Los Angeles. But it also ties into his time in the U.S. Army stateside during the Korean War. Upon his return, a lot of that nightlife was gone. Central Avenue had been swept aside by the economic decay of the post-war years and other social factors that definitely altered the landscape of Los Angeles.
LA figures strongly in any Dolphy story, simply because of that ample musical broadening and all the opportunities it offered. The entertainment industry is certainly significant—Buddy Collette being a primary mentor while also being a pioneer African American breaking into the entertainment industry and coaching Dolphy on his multi-instrumental development. He helped Dolphy become a valid young musician, taking entry-level gigs in the industry, whether for rock and roll or session work for a crooner.
Between Buddy Collette, Gerald Wilson, and Jerome Richardson—who to me somehow still remains a mysterious persona but was an accomplished musician and great session player and multi-instrumentalist—that group really provided the perfect upbringing for a still-young musician with great chops, reading skills, and tone on three instruments, which is pretty remarkable.
Lawrence: You spoke about the really sad and disappointing history of race relations and how they impacted his artistic and career opportunities. I'm curious about Gunther Schuller and what you know about Dolphy's work and ability to interface with Third Stream. What were you able to learn about what that meant to him?
Jonathon: That's an excellent point. For several reasons, I think it was hugely important to Dolphy. In general, I was previously of the opinion that the Third Stream was questionable—and I add that in my book just as a devil's advocate sort of discounting of that artistic attempt in the late '50s through the '60s. But rather than deconstructing it in that negative way, I really ended up seeing and sensing that Dolphy was extremely proud of being a musician capable of entering a concert hall and playing challenging new music pieces with a conductor, with chamber music instruments, with a string quartet—he loved it.
I think he and Mingus shared, as I say in the book, this universalist approach to all music being powerful and expressive and broadening performance practice goals beyond what jazz had to offer. And that's not putting down jazz—that's throwing a spotlight on the magnitude of these musicians and their capabilities.
The Schuller contact was just a godsend for Dolphy, I believe. They became very close friends from what I gathered. They played and rehearsed together a lot. Schuller seized on this in his own artistic world by featuring Dolphy as a member of many groups—not just in the studio, but with these concert music gigs: Syracuse, Carnegie Hall, Chicago, regular appearances playing challenging concert music that was the so-called fusion with jazz.
I went out of my way to include some negative reception of that in the press—a Down Beat article here, or a mainstream newspaper review there that comments on "Hey, what is this stuff? What's Schuller trying to do?" And then on several occasions, toward the end of the review, it's like, "However, Eric Dolphy was awesome." I think the Schuller contact validated Eric's hard work in becoming a master musician with broad interests in so many ways.
Factoring in the racial politics of the time—African American performers on the stage of a concert hall where oftentimes they wouldn't necessarily have been welcome—I'm not a specialist in that, I don't know that as a part of my research. I'm just happy that I found the sources, whether it's another scholar's work that I quote, or liner notes, or a review. There seems to have been a buzz about how successful Dolphy was in that arena.
Part 4: The Coltrane Partnership
Lawrence: I have to turn to the Coltrane era. And full disclosure, the Village Vanguard performances and the subsequent European tour in '61—it's my favorite music.
Jonathon: Yeah.
Lawrence: And I've gone down many rabbit holes with it, but what an extraordinary gift when they chose to release those full performances. But before we get to that, I think something that's very interesting, not entirely surprising given what we know about Coltrane, but really fascinating to learn about the extent of how much Coltrane and Dolphy played together, even outside the public eye in the context of practice or what they were teaching and learning from each other. I'm really curious about your perspective on their musical relationship off the bandstand. What did you learn about the extent of their musical relationship?
Jonathon: Off the bandstand, they were deeply connected friends. That goes back to '54, and it's kind of legendary, worth repeating, that Coltrane was strung out when he came through LA and was fired from the Hodges band, and Dolphy picked him up. They met, apparently Dolphy helped him out, got him on his feet. What are the details of that? I'm not really sure, but I know that it led to even more connections and friendship when Dolphy relocated to Brooklyn.
There's a strong Coltrane connection there—Coltrane's cousin either owned the townhouse or sublet it. I'm not really sure, but that pad, that crash pad on Carlton, 245 Carlton—right? The tune "245" comes from that place. Apparently, according to Freddie Hubbard and some other incidental comments, when Coltrane finished up with Miles in 1960, they started to hang around. Coltrane was busy gigging and touring and recording, very successful—I mean, my God, you know, My Favorite Things, Giant Steps—really earning the right to call his own shots with Impulse the next year.
Thank goodness having the position with the label, however that worked—the business side, working with management and venues. "No, I'm a quintet now, Eric's playing with us." There's even a little bit of friction—I think McCoy Tyner had mentioned, he's very polite. He and Elvin Jones are very polite about Eric Dolphy's playing, but I sense that there was sort of a relief. I don't want to mischaracterize this at all. There's no hard feelings that I ever read about or heard about.
I guess what I'm saying is Coltrane did kind of go out on a limb and he knew it by getting Dolphy on stage. And note that they never recorded outside of Ole and the Africa Brass sessions. They never went back into the studio. All of those collaborations are live recordings. A lot of them are bootlegs.
Lawrence: Yeah, all the radio transcriptions from Europe.
Jonathon: Exactly. So to circle back to the core of your question about their friendship—it was a serious one. I couldn't help but notice Ben Ratliff's comment about Coltrane keeping Dolphy's photo in his hotel room after Dolphy's death. And keeping in touch with his parents after Dolphy's death. That's just a lifelong bond.
Now musically, I completely respect the jazz historians and critics who, especially the Coltrane fans, who begin to discount Coltrane's latter output. I get it. I like it and respect it, but I understand there's a huge stylistic shift away from Coltrane's most popular sound, most popular recordings.
But there were enough commentators invoking Dolphy's name and suggesting, "Hey, Coltrane started to change. He started to play more out there and he started to experiment with timbre and tonal leaps." All the technical things that Bill Cole and Porter and others—Jerry Allen, I cite them in the book because I think that was an important moment to back up my claim that they both benefited.
This wasn't some sort of weird favor Coltrane was offering to Dolphy for a livelihood, which unfortunately some commentators have suggested. Coltrane had a deep respect and admiration for Dolphy's playing, and he said so, and he backed it up by bringing him into the band for whatever, 16 months or 18 months. And also playing with them sporadically until Dolphy left for Europe for the final time. They were close musical partners, collaborators, and personal friends.
Lawrence: I mean, I'd read a thousand pages just about final third of 1961.
Jonathon: Oh, isn't it? It really is incredible. The buildup to the Vanguard residency and then going to Europe. I don't think it's hyperbole to say it changed jazz. I mean, it certainly opened up possibilities for younger players to hear that kind of playing and go for it.
Part 5: The Village Vanguard Legacy
Lawrence: I would argue it opened the lane in jazz journalism as well, because I can only see it retroactively. The whole—I don't know if we want to call it controversy—whatever, the Down Beat interview that followed that spring. It's so funny, I buy a copy of it every few years on eBay just to read it again. And then I give it away because I think other people should read it who love that music. I suppose I should just let it go and not be mad about it, but... (laughter)
I'm really interested, because I've never really spoken with anyone about it before—the view of Dolphy changed once the expanded editions of the albums came out. For the longest time, we just had Village Vanguard and then whatever they called the other one, I forget what it was—More Village Vanguard or Village Vanguard Again. What kind of reassessment happened for Dolphy, if any? How are Dolphy's impact and contributions looked at differently?
Jonathon: I tried to exploit that in the book by bringing up the fact that so many more complete sessions and re-releases, complete re-releases have been coming out. If we date that Impulse complete Vanguard release back to the late '90s, you know, you talk about 30 years of hearing the real Dolphy because the original releases weren't good. They did not put Dolphy in a good spot. They weren't good takes. They cut some solos. They chose a couple of tracks from the live sets that were not Dolphy at his best.
Lawrence: You could feel the impulse to try to be commercial or to sand off some of the more interesting aspects.
Jonathon: Oh, absolutely. At the same time, you can't blame labels for trying to make something more successful. After all, Coltrane is such a cultural juggernaut on his own—Coltrane doesn't need anybody to help him out. You get that release out there, it's like, "Oh my God, listen to that guy play."
But Dolphy is definitely not in a good light for whatever that is, 30-plus years. The Vanguard heritage did not ring true to what went down those evenings. Then you get the complete sessions and you realize that no, if you were there, you saw an amazing multi-instrumentalist. He didn't bring his flute, but he had his bass clarinet and the alto sax, and he blew his heart out. And they had been doing that for four months. They had been gigging as often as they could, as busy as they were. Dolphy would drive out or fly out wherever, sit in with Coltrane in Philadelphia, Chicago.
They had a little mini tour, and the Village Gate releases from last year are also revelatory because of Ole. And then also, not to go on and on, but the complete Ole session reveals a great Dolphy take that no one had ever heard. That's another thing. There's a conspicuous absence of good to great to excellent Dolphy solos in those early original releases that I think hurt his career.
I think it hurt his career that he's listed in the personnel of Impressions and some of the early Vanguard things, and they weren't optimum. Critics said, "See, the guy is dragging down Coltrane," and only later do we get the big picture. I try to emphasize in the book, and I hope I don't overdo it, but each new release—and then we get to the FM records, the Alan Douglas re-release of Just a Memory just a few years ago, the complete Conversations and Iron Man release that's just amazing, you know, three-record set—those are treasures. They're vital treasures that aren't just valuable to listen to, but they tell a story like, where were these recordings back then? That's not that unusual in the music business.
Lawrence: It also makes me very grateful that especially in the emergence of music resurfacing on the internet, those radio recordings from Europe did resurface and did start to circulate more outside of just sort of the collector's world. And one of the things that is really beautiful about that is in a lot of the recordings, you can hear the enthusiasm of the audiences. It's special to be reminded of that. It's sort of like yet again, the European audiences are a little hipper, but just the amount of music that band expressed over those months is really astounding.
Jonathon: And of course, when they came back in early '62, you have some Birdland recordings of the post-European tour that were fortunately, illicitly bootlegged, and there's some pretty decent quality audio on some of those releases.
Lawrence: It's really funny—every time I go into the Village Vanguard, I'm so distracted by the history there. It's really hard to put out of your head no matter how wonderful the music is you're seeing and hearing in the moment. It's really hard to put out of your head like, "My God, the things that happened here." (laughter) And the room has that sound, that dry sound. It just sounds like the Village Vanguard. It's really a special, special place.
Part 6: Musical Identity and Career Evolution
Lawrence: I wonder if you could talk a little about Dolphy as a sideman and Dolphy as a band leader, especially as a composer. I find myself—I get really wrapped up in it. I find it very difficult to pull the strands apart of his roles and his identities. Was that an aim of this book? I guess it's an obvious question, I suppose it was, but how do you primarily view him now? Was he leader, composer, ultimate sideman, muse and inspiration? How do you think about Dolphy?
Jonathon: That's a good question. I think after completing the book and going through it and hearing other people's comments on it, my view on him has completely changed. Previously, since high school in the '70s, when Frank Zappa released "The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue" track on Weasels Rip My Flesh, I had no idea who Eric Dolphy was.
So in high school, I grabbed one of the Prestige reissues, and I could not believe it—I just fell for that sound. I love his solos, I love his tunes. I think now I realize the whole person, if that's fair to say. His trajectory, his personal trajectory, his struggles, but to circle back—I just no longer see him as the guy who only has a few albums under his own name as a leader.
That might be the case with a lot of Dolphy fans. It's like, "Well, he only released a few albums, then he died." But in tracking his life and his sessions, the sideman stuff is so important to jazz history. He's not the only one—tons of sidemen define the sound or are worthy of discussion, obviously. But in Dolphy's case, in my case of interpreting him, it's just changed to be his world rather than just what albums he led.
Finding so much out there that were one-off sessions on an afternoon 62 years ago—he laid down great solos and packed up his horn and left. That was his life. He was like the gunslinger, but that's woven into his struggle to get a contract after Prestige dumped them.
To fall into this kind of odd situation—we're all grateful for FM Records for letting him record all these tracks for Conversations and Iron Man, the live stuff at the Five Spot, or Debut in Europe, Debut releasing his Copenhagen stuff—it's all magic, it's all treasures. But he was dumped by Prestige. He struggled to get any label. He's kind of mocked in the press. It's hard now for me to separate a lot of those trials and tribulations from the celebration of his music as a leader, as a bandleader, with his Prestige work and of course Out to Lunch. Most people think of him in regards to Out to Lunch, which was thanks to FM Records giving him permission to record on Blue Note—that's a great classic avant-garde collection of recordings.
I think I went from maybe what you could say generally is the "typical" jazz fan who has a player that they listen to, to really trying to appreciate his life work and his routines and struggles. Now it's kind of hard to separate any of that out. I see the whole person based on my coverage and his times.
I'm fascinated with the times, the late '50s, early '60s. Frankly, the revolution in the air, the change, the civil rights movement, the politics, the Kennedy assassination, the Cold War liberation of "developing third world" former colonial countries—all of that is an energy that moves forward. And I just see him as being in the middle of that as well. That's what he lived, flying in for his first European gig as leader a few weeks after the Berlin Wall started to go up—stuff like that just captivates me. I was born in 1961, so I wasn't around consciously in those early years, but I have a strong impression of the time just as a historian.
Part 7: Future Possibilities and Musical Legacy
Lawrence: Do you think he—why wasn't he one of Impulse's flagship artists and if he had survived, would he have been, or was Impulse not big enough for him and Coltrane?
Jonathon: I just don't know the answer to that. I don't know really what would have happened contract-wise, if he had just remained healthy. Theoretically, you know, he could still be alive today in his nineties—that would be remarkable. But I just don't know what the business model was saying to the label at that time.
I know he'd met with ESP—he may have come back and participated in the renaissance of free jazz in the end of '64 into '65. Albert Ayler persevered and struggled with a hard situation there. I don't know what Dolphy would have done, to be honest. He would have composed more. He was trying to broaden as a composer.
I know there are these anecdotes from Han Bennink and Mengelberg regarding his exposure in Holland and Amsterdam to some pretty good classical ensembles that were interested in playing with him. I think he would have broadened that—that would have been hard for a label to say, "Well, what do we do with this guy?" He's playing with the Berlin Philharmonic, not that they would have, but I'm just saying by conjecture. There might have been further collaborations with George Russell. I know there are several references to the fact that he and George Russell stayed in touch. He may have been already contracted or scheduled to play with George Russell for some sort of broadcast event in London later in '64, I believe. But again, hard to say.
Lawrence: It's not an elegant analog, but I think about Joe Henderson, someone who was so deeply rooted in sort of blues and jazz and understood where the music came from, but was also out far on the edge as a frontier for so many years, both musically and then ultimately—it took a long time for him to get reassessed. Made wonderful music, obviously—in fact, some of his late career work is incredible, but they were similar in that way that they incorporated and transcended the whole tradition. We're so forward looking.
As our time together starts to wind down, I'm curious about—do you think his multi-instrumentalism made it hard for people to figure out where to place him? Is he identified as a saxophonist? I feel too close to it to think about it.
Jonathon: Yeah, I think he's thought of as a saxophonist, and of course there are already people doubling on flute. I think the bass clarinet is that sort of third wheel, so to speak, that on one hand is awe-inspiring when you realize the talents and the different challenges to play the way he did on those instruments.
I know that there are some voices that suggest that it held him back or complicated the view of him. I kind of don't ignore that, but there are so many other things to consider with his career and output and discography. I don't think it hurt him at all. It did raise some eyebrows and open some eyes as to what was possible. Certainly bass clarinet—I mean, I was very fortunate to find my way in my research with his relationship with bass clarinet.
I think that's really pioneering to have done what he did in the '50s with Chico Hamilton. And Chico Hamilton—kudos to him for bringing such a wild sound into his otherwise—I'm not putting his music down, but the repertoire is a little stayed. It's a little too cool. I use the term "meandering arrangements" for some of the material from Chico Hamilton albums from that period. They just don't stick with me. And then there's Dolphy soloing on bass clarinet. There's an incongruity, but yet there's also a window that's opened into what this guy's going to do. The other players are great—I'm not putting down the ensemble at all. It's just some of the artistic decisions that were made while Dolphy was part of the group are conflicting.
Lawrence: It's like Sonny Rollins playing with Herbie Mann. (laughter)
Part 8: Final Days and Lasting Legacy
Lawrence: Can you tell me a little about choices you had to make or feelings you had around talking about his dietary habits, his diabetes, sort of the personal details that are obviously important to how the story ends, while also trying to maintain a focus on Eric Dolphy, the artist? How did you navigate that internally? And are you good with how it manifested in the book?
Jonathon: I am comfortable with it because I caught myself. Jeff Schwartz, who wrote the forward—we're friends and musicians together—pointed out in an earlier version that I allude to his death too often. For whatever reason, a literary device or something I felt at the time in writing a passage. What I did is I ended up recognizing that that was overboard. I went back through that and a number of other issues with previous versions.
I cut that back just because it's so obvious. It's pretty clearly understood for most readers that he died young. It's stated clearly early in the book. And as far as the diabetes, the diet—I really did look for sources. I wanted to understand how this was manifesting and any kind of inkling or hint of health issues.
I tried to understand that, and it's really obviously the core of the tragedy of this early death is this undiagnosed diabetes that just whittled his body away. I looked into what were some of the inevitable symptoms he was experiencing, and it's pretty awful. It wasn't just in his last days—it would have been for months that he was suffering from the symptoms: maybe some confusion, pain, slow to heal.
He had oral thrush, he had a mouth infection in early '64 that kept him out of the workshop. Mingus had to find some replacements—he couldn't play. That healed up and he just continued on because he had to, that was his livelihood. So he's probably had some pain, which is remarkable when you hear the Mingus live in Europe stuff from '64, and the U.S. concerts—the Cornell and Town Hall, the big Mingus stuff from April of '64. He's just magnificent. I mean, great playing—some of his best work, I think, is that stint with Mingus in '64.
Any anecdote from Schuller, from Buddy Collette, from Juanita Smith—Hale Smith and Juanita Smith were very good friends. There are little anecdotes about, "Oh yeah, he only ate white beans" or "He and Coltrane had honey at every gig." And he would literally eat honey. He didn't look great.
Of course, his fiancée Joyce Mordecai in Paris states on film in Last Date—she's interviewed and it's just heartbreaking. No one really knew what was going on. And she, years later in the film, is recounting that horrible moment when he was hallucinating and he had to go off and play in Berlin.
I later found a reference—I forget from whom—one of his Dutch colleagues commented that he had already postponed the Berlin gig. I didn't get that from any other source, so I didn't really include it. To me, it's hearsay, but it could be the case that he was sick enough in Paris before going to Berlin that he actually cancelled some gigs. Yet he also had a contract, supposedly, to go to Japan and Australia. But again, I've never seen the contract, it doesn't exist anymore, but his mother Sadie had commented on that.
The sort of whittling away of his body and his mind leading to a coma and then the insulin shock—supposedly it was probably insulin shock that he died from in the hospital. But they were trying to save his life. And I think that's kind of natural for people to be suspicious about what happened. He went into a coma—you have to understand he was going to die. He was either going to die or he was going to suffer serious brain damage from a diabetic coma. The insulin shock—I'm not a medical expert, but it does appear that he must have been injected with either too much or too strong insulin, or it was a typical risk that doctors took in those moments to try to save someone, and that's what resulted.
Lawrence: Well Jonathon, thank you so much for making time and for the book. What an incredible work—so necessary. So thank you.
Jonathon: Yeah. Thank you, Lawrence. I really appreciate the opportunity. I'm grateful to be able to share these tidbits and to answer questions, and I'm glad you liked the book. I appreciate it very much.
