Itzhak Perlman interview (1985)

uh having a little bit of light-heartedness around there and of course music has so much humor in it and uh and i think that uh this is one of you know a lot uh one of the main ingredients music is is humor you have to be able to see it and so uh and to also enjoy it so this i just feel that it's a very natural part of things but because of your attitude you've been able to get a lot of people interested in serious music because you've had this wonderful you show this wonderful sense of humor that you possess you've done some programming that a lot of serious musicians would not have done and those people have seen you on television they come into your concerts and for the first time they really are able to hear and listen to serious music well i'm i'm actually glad but the thing is that again you know to be a performer you're in the if you want to call it business of contact with the audience that's what you are doing basically you are performing for an audience so if you're performing for an audience i always feel that for example when i play recitals i always like to talk to the audience you know if there's always a natural barrier when you go out on stage you say my god there is this person going on stage is going to play for us and god that's should we be frightened or not but the minute you talk to the people they relax and then they're able actually able to enjoy the music much more so do you think that enough performers though are able to do that well look it's it's the way you feel you know i mean some performers don't feel that they're comfortable and some performance feel that they are comfortable in communic communicating extra taking that extra uh step by by actually talking and you know maybe telling a story about a piece if you feel the piece is interesting and you say a couple words about the piece you know and so on and makes everybody relax more and then just have better time you know if people aren't familiar with classical music if it's the first time that they're really that they've become aware of it by coming to one of your concerts it would seem to me that that would be very valuable to tell them about the piece because as you said music has a lot of humor in it if you can see it many people can't exactly and and i also say to people if you go to a concert whether it's an orchestral concert or whether it's a recital or opera whatever it is if you can get a hold especially in this day and age where there's so much uh emphasis on recordings and so on if there's a piece you don't know let's say it's a contemporary work or something that's contemporary to you and that you don't know it get a record listen to it a couple of times so that when you go to the concert hall you actually gee i that sounds familiar to me i know this you know i can enjoy it a bit more you know people sometimes are expected to make judgments yay or nay about a work that they've never heard before in one hearing and to me that's kind of unfair you know when you think about what goes on in rock and pop music and when you think how the saturation the recording gets we talk about three or four minutes keeps constantly constantly playing it over and over again and yet somebody going to the continent wants to hear a work that they've never heard before one time and say i like that you know or i hated it you know the judgment is not really accurate because you got to give it a little bit of a chance doesn't that go back to a certain degree to what they say about or used to say anyway about music comedies the ones that were really successful and now i'm going back to like oklahoma and carousel the reason why they were so popular is that people would walk out of the theater whistling the tune and then you knew if you had a hit musical if it was catchy you knew that that it caught your imagination the thing is that the classical music is you know in some ways a very profound uh artistic expression of the composers and it's more difficult it doesn't come as easy you know when you listen to a late beethoven quartet uh you know and if you are not if you're not trained to listen to it the first time you listen to it you're going to have a very hard time appreciating what it is you know you may not appreciate it at all the first time exactly and and the thing is that uh uh i've had the most wonderful experience of actually playing in uh group doing one of the late beethoven quartets i'm just mentioning late beethoven because it's such an esoteric kind of way that he's been writing and at the same time he wasn't able to hear anything and he wrote those incredible works and we worked for three weeks rehearsing until it finally started to make sense to us as a group and then we only gave it a fairly good performance not an ideal one but uh you know if you come to a concert obviously and listen to something like this for the first time and uh you know you can't just ask the music hey come on hit me you know do something for me you know unless you are trained for it you know the interesting thing about that when i went to uh high school and to college in college i ended up majoring in music in voice and did a lot of operatic roles i didn't appreci appreciate opera when i first started working on arias at all uh i what i really wanted to do with my life when i was in high school but oh it would be wonderful to be able to to sing and perform on broadway and that's what i wanted to do musical comedy and then i started learning arias and at first i didn't like them and then i found that not only did i like them but i began to love them because i understood them it does yeah it's a training it takes a it's a takes a training and and the thing is that certain kinds uh certain pieces in in the classical music repertoire are obviously easier to listen to than others and people say to me you know i've just started with this classical music you know and what should i start with and i usually say to them you know you don't start with stackhausen and you don't start with uh you know with uh even prokofiev4 or bartok but you start with something that is you know much more direct you were talking about mozart we're talking about bach you know haydn and then you know you can graduate into beethoven and you talked about music having a sense of humor one of the great revelations to me in studying opera and in performing certain offers was the great sense of humor that mozart had talked about for me probably the greatest opera composer i agree i mean i know that verdi heights are going to attack me i mean i'm not thinking big trouble i like myself but you know i mean uh mozart that's that's fantastic i mean that's wonderful music he had a whole sense of um attitude in all of his operas were showing that the the people of nobility in most of his operas the people of nobility were really not very smart and the people who were not of nobility such as the servants were very smart and and he always did that kind of turnaround which gave you a his sense of humor and the way he saw the world yeah and i love i love the way he used the characters with the voices the type of voice used for the kind of character that he has to convey and so on it's fascinating but until someone really spends time on classical music whether it be uh for the voice or whether it be for the orchestra or for an individual instrument i really don't think that you can have instant enjoyment well i think in some some instances you could i i think that that in in in many many ways television has really helped this kind of thing in other words you know i don't want us talking like this and frightening people away from listening to to opera to classical news because oh my god you know i need to spend years to enjoy that's not really entirely it's not years but it is you have to give some time you have to give some time but the thing is that i think that now that offers are being shown all the time on television i think with the translation i personally think it's terrific to to have a little translation as what what they're saying rather than saying somebody saying so what is he saying there at least you can see it on the screen a lot of uh concerts uh are very very good you know people just have it in their house and as you say when you see it on television you're more likely to say hey gee why don't i try a concert and see how it is because you know there is there is nothing like a live concert yes i mean television is terrific and so on but the vibration the atmosphere everything that goes on when you sit in a concert hall and you listen to a to uh to a concert is there's nothing that can replace that it's it's very exciting you knew that you wanted to be a violinist when you were very young um how old about uh i wanted to play look you don't know that you want to be a concert violinist from the very beginning you just know that you want to play the violin all right so i wanted first to play when i was three and a half and when i was a little bit after four i i had polio so the polio uh led me and sort of postponed until i was five and then i started to play when i was five years old with a second-hand fiddle that your parents had bought you on who can afford the first hand actually it was a sort of a first hand the second hands are more expensive i was going to say that because i think you started off with a six dollar fiddle when you were a little guy at that time it was uh let's see the dollar let's see how's the shackle and the dollar now with this yeah that was actually a forty thousand dollar fiddle when i started you know now with all the inflation and now i read that you play a stradivarius that is valued at somewhere around 400 that well you know it's all a question of what what the market will bear you know it's it's uh you know i suppose uh you know those those the prices of these things is it it's almost meaningless you know if you can whatever something fetches you get you know it's it's funny i never i never get to understand this kind of a thing but the making of a violin has always been called an art form because it depends on the kind of wood and how it's put together and which master put it together because some knew how to put one together that produced a much better tone than others it's one of the great mysteries still uh what makes the older violins sound wonderful and and every now and then somebody comes and says you know i have the i have the formula and people have been trying to do it scientifically and and not so scientifically and there's still there's still a problem trying to duplicate really wonderful sound of the old masters when you listen to a violinist when you listen to a concerto and you're listening either over television or radio or from a recording can you possibly have any idea of what kind of instrument they're playing um who the instrument makes a very good question in the recording i'm not so sure i'm not so sure because you see when you play an instrument whether let's let's take two obvious examples a strad stradivarius and agunarius now those are the two top instruments and they are so different in sound from each other it's like apples and oranges it's it's quite fascinating uh the grenare has a much darker tone the strat has much more of a soprano high kind of quality uh obviously as far as playing is concerned they're also very very different you know you can play much rougher on a granary you have to be much more careful to produce a nice sound from the strat because it'll break under yeah i mean the sound will break so yes so you're talking about two different kind of uh instruments however if you were to out of context get violinist a to play uh two instruments the characteristics of the violinist are so strong that the instrument will not sound that much different unless obviously you play them side by side you know and then you say oh let's hear instrument a let's hear instrument b but that's why you know your question about the recording i'm not so sure because in the recording uh you know you hear an artist who has been playing an instrument for years you know so it's part of you already so all the characteristics in your playing you know you know the instrument the instrument knows you you know you don't you know what you can give what you can't get and what you can get out of it yes so you sound like you you know you know that's the instrument if there were 10 people lined up and you were blindfolded and each one of them had a different violin yeah you would probably be able to identify the the strong yeah the strong if there's a real strong difference characters like i described yes i would i would but it would not be easy it wouldn't be so easy you know how does someone this day and age who sees that their child has an interest in music as many children do when they're around six or seven years old they all profess an interest in playing the piano particularly if there's one in the house they will try to compose themselves and then you get them started uh officially on lessons right and even if you have a wonderful teacher there's nobody in the there's no child in the world that's going to want to practice how are you able to encourage them long enough so that they can feel the rewards that come from being able to be accomplished with an instrument that's a good question again first of all you have to see from the child you have to get a vibration does the child like music does the child really want to play now obviously you know when you're five or six you have to sort of uh touch it you know at uh little subtle more subtle things you know i mean but the thing is does a child have an ear or or and and the thing is that sometimes you see kids who are very very interested and if you take into a good teacher you can you can say that okay this child shows promise and it's worth looking into this now the way you look into making a child study music is that music should be for me part of education whether you're going to be a professional musician or not i think that somebody without music really misses a lot so i think that if you if a child wants to study the piano i think it's wonderful i think that piano for me i always recommend the first thing to study in music is the piano rather than than a single so you can learn structures exactly you know the minute you started piano there's a much more complete kind of musical education so uh but should a parent stay i mean say the child shows promise yeah but doesn't want to practice yeah enjoys the lesson each week but doesn't want to do much in between right right i mean a parent has two choices they can either say if they want it bad enough they would practice and if they're not going to practice then i think we better discontinue the lesson yeah well they can stand over them with a whip as you read about certain stories where parents do that you know well there is a happy medium i think that uh you're right nobody wants to practice on their own at least uh most people don't there are some exceptions and uh and the thing is that you can sort of force gently and and see how the child reacts you know sometimes children like to be forced a little bit so they feel that they have a structure in in their life and and and then one while they practice you see if there is an enjoyment or not usually when somebody likes music and when somebody has good results with the instrument they would want to practice they would maybe not go out of their way to practice but they would want to practice because it's a real sense of satisfaction when you accomplish something and something comes out nice you practice a lot even now do you not well uh you have another question for me no actually after all then you're not going to tell me that you don't practice well no i'll tell you practicing uh i'm not trying to evade the question i will get to your to to answer your question no first of all i'd like to say that practicing is an individual thing certain people need a routine every day a certain amount of hours they have to have it certain people don't feel they have to have it and that doesn't mean that one person is better than the other more talented or less talented it's a question of habit it's a question of making what makes you comfortable right now in my case uh up till about the age of 18 or 19 i practiced more or less uh ev you know i had a routine i practiced three or four hours a day but that's all that i did i didn't do i wasn't a crazy eight-hour practicer and so on i never was uh and then afterwards i sort of said okay that's fine you know and i'm now going to practice whenever i feel the need to practice meaning either you're studying a new piece or you are reviewing something that you feel is not quite right that you you feel that you didn't like the way you played and you want to rework it and so on and so forth so i i'm i'm basically as sort of i practice when i feel there is a need so i don't do this routine you don't put away an hour i don't do it every day no i don't you know sometimes uh sometimes i do it it's very funny on vacation i'm more likely to have more of a routine because you know wake up in the morning go to the beach practice an hour go to the beach practice an hour you know but uh i i don't feel the need to you know like oh my god i didn't practice today what's gonna happen to me that's not my kind of situation we have to take a commercial break or something dreadful will happen to me we'll do that right now and we'll come back right after these welcome back my guest this evening it's itzhak perlman we've been speaking about uh oh everything connected with music let's talk more about you you had mentioned that it was about you were about three when you first realized that you wanted to play the violin and uh really about six when you started playing five five sorry sorry after a year and and that at four and a half you uh were stricken with polio confined uh to bed for a long time and then into a wheelchair it must have really taken some great dedication on your part well no actually i'll tell you what exactly happened there was no wheelchair at that time i don't think we could afford a wheelchair what happened was uh i immediately was you know when you were a kid uh you're talking about a four-year-old kid you get used to things very quickly very quickly you know it becomes a way of life you know i had to have leg braces and and crutches basically that's what happened with me and i immediately started to walk with those things and they become second nature to you uh that's number one and of course immediately afterwards i said so you know i wanted to play the fiddle you know and now it's uh it's time i still want to play but what is very important is the attitudes of your parents and people around you in my case uh my parents were absolutely terrific you know they said okay uh you know polio no use of legs use of arms right okay so what they did that we used to live in tel aviv with the in the sort of if you want to call it downtown section where there's a lot of traffic and not that much place to play around you know it was you know cement and traffic so we moved to a slightly to a residential section of tel aviv where there was a school about a block away and i was able to walk to school every day and uh and uh and that's basically the change that they made for my benefit you know because uh you know because i lost or of walking and then i started violin lessons and that was that was it so as far as i'm concerned i didn't feel at that time that i was doing something uh incredible a lot of people said well what a heroic thing you've been doing that's not true i did what i was able to do uh i nobody told me otherwise nobody said well come on you can't play the violin right now now that you you are you know you have polio and then and your your legs are paralyzed you can't play the violin nobody said that to me because it wasn't true and i always say to people whenever you have a problem separate your problem from from your non-problem you know you have to separate the things you know when you have a disability if if if you can't move a certain part of your body you say okay i can't move that part but what part can i move and do something with it if you can't move anything you know you can you can use your brain so it's it's the it's actually having the right perspective as to what is the problem yes and a lot of people tend to put everything in one bunch you know in one grouping and that's the problem that never thinking that uh that anyone would wish for a disability or that a disability could ever be a positive thing but putting it in its perspective the fact that you did have polio and that your arms were very strong and you did like the violin do you think probably because of the after effects of polio that you even became more interested in practicing the violin i mean can a disability i guess change the course of your life and and lead you to a more positive realization well i don't know i i really don't think that i can answer this question you know because in other words i cannot have two kinds of lives i cannot say well what if i was not disabled would i still play the fiddle yes and would would i have practiced as much as a kid or what i've been out playing for exactly well i was out playing anyway and let me tell you something i didn't like to practice i didn't you know i was pushed to practice you know and i was very very happy to play with the kids outside and we had you know other kids and i was always but the thing is my parents said look you got to practice and my teachers told me that i had a certain amount of talent and so they said fine and so the people you know i always say the the the the children my friends and kids around the in the neighborhood felt that the strange thing about me was not that i walked with crutches but the strange thing about me was that i had to practice three hours a day on some silly instrument you know instead of just going outside so but again let me just emphasize that what really helped me was the attitude of people around me and now in retrospect i can see how how important it is you know and as a matter of fact the attitudes around me were so healthy that later on when certain people doubted that i was going to be able to have a career i didn't understand at all what they were doubting i i thought it was for different reasons you know maybe uh people are jealous or this or that or some intrigue but right now in retrospect i can see that the reason that they doubted was that they said my god if he walks like this how can he have a career how can he travel how can he maneuver and so on and so forth i think that was probably the the reason for the doubts people react it seems to me in in two basic ways to anything that happens them in life they either react positively or they react negatively to something that's happened to them and and evidently your parents instilled to you to look for the positive way oh absolutely and they did it without you know they did it it's fascinating you know when you think you see a lot of parents today you know you have a lot of books you know how to handle this situation how to handle that and they did it totally instinctively it was fun they did you know they they managed to do all the right things it's very nice yes it's very nice we have to take another time out but we'll be right back woman is my guest this evening oh come on do it do it on the air every time we go ten seconds five seconds come on let it rip let a wrap he says uh it's so terrific when when you think of the attitude that you were speaking of of your parents and you said that something that you'd like to continue talking about is the attitude and and how kids today are affected by attitudes around them yeah well it's uh attitudes are not just affecting whether what i'm talking about is the the attitudes of society when it comes to the disabled starts you know from the childhood attitude towards children if if it's a bad one you know it doesn't change it can have be the same kind of attitude towards grown-ups who have you know disabilities of some sort and i find that uh one of the reasons that the movement whether it's disability rights civil rights or you know attitudinal barriers and so on that we have architectural barriers it all stands for lack of awareness and kind of wrong attitudes you know nobody is you know a lot of people are afraid of people with disabilities and i think in only in recent years have many people been honest enough to admit that absolutely and isn't it important that it's been admitted because once you become aware of something you can change yeah well that's true but some people don't know even that they're afraid they just and as a result the fear is just shows by the way they handle you if you want to don't handle don't handle your own walk away from me walk to the other side of the street or don't want to face this thing you know and and i always say you know people ask me what do you think about attitudes today and i say look things happen to me you know i'm supposed to be quote you know famous or you know i'm supposed to be uh you know fairly known and so on and i still get a lot of uh of situations which i can't believe that people just either afraid to look at me look me in the eye the minute they recognize me then there's no problem because there is the familiarity you know unfamiliar there's no problem but the minute you're and also i i keep plugging at that there's even a difference of people's attitude between somebody standing up and somebody sitting down in a wheelchair yes if i stood up with my crutches people will look at you you know let's say that you have people who don't know who you are right and they will look at you and they will talk to you feel much freer because you're more or less on on their level the minute you're in a wheelchair you stop being able to understand you're not supposed to be able to understand because people don't talk to you they talk at the person who wields you you are maybe slightly you have a problem with the hearing because all of a sudden they talk a little louder and maybe a little slower you think it's a joke but it's not it's so true you know and i have so many people uh sometimes they come to me and say you know this is unbelievable you know i had to spend a couple of weeks in a chair because i broke my ankle skiing or something and boy what what is happening you know the people stop talking to me you know they're they're having problems uh communicating with me and so on and and and you know i i always mention this uh situation because it's very basic but it's it's at the basis of what all the problems are you know of of communicating of society communicating when you say fear where do you think that fear stems from what are they afraid of unknown they're afraid of when they see somebody in a chair or they or they hear somebody let's say talk funny and not quite regular uh not you know not uh like you talk you know but talk with with some a problem or whatever it is my god what's the matter my gut will i offend this person how many times do you see people talk to somebody who has a speech problem whether it's a result of of muscular dystrophy whatever it is and are afraid to say excuse me could you repeat that please i didn't understand you yeah i mean you're afraid to say that a lot of people are afraid i'd rather say aha yes yes and i don't understand anything it's the fear maybe maybe i will offend this person and it's not giving this person a chance you know an equal chance uh you know if and this goes into so many other areas you know that people then are afraid to consider you for a job they're afraid uh then they don't know about what you need you know in my situation uh architectural barriers for example is something that's very important to me in in as far as mobility is concerned as far as your work is concerned i read a story once where you were performing at a concert house in tel aviv i believe it was and you performed there and the dressing room was on the on like four floors uh from where the park where the stage itself was and you finally told them that that's the last time but i that's there's no last time until you get an elevator is the pearlman elevator is now there it wasn't haifa and i'm proud to tell you i also have uh the pearlman toilet which is in buffalo but somebody came to me and said to me listen we won't be able to uh we won't be able to come to your concert anymore he says i have he said uh uh ms and it's progressive and he says all of a sudden he says i'm i'm unable to uh anymore because there are no laboratories on the main floor so can you do something about it so that was a pension fund concert and after the concert they invited me to a party and the first time introduced me to the the chairman of the board of the orchestra says how do you do what about some lavatories on the main floor and he said do me a favor write me a letter and with and i'll send it copies to all the members of the board and by god they put laboratories on the main floor for me something like this it gives me such you know i'm proud of that but the thing is that then on the other hand i said to myself why is it that i have to do that why is it that it's not something logical that architects just do it automatically why is it that it takes me you know you know i'm i've become sort of an amateur blueprint reader you know you know architects just don't have the kind of education you know all they think about is visual thing but they don't think about is something that will be able to be uh useful it's a lack of knowledge and understanding exactly as far as to what the needs are and there is no people who are handicapped that's number one number two there is no education there's no formal education in architecture schools for barrier-free design it's not something that is automatic they got maybe workshops or maybe special things but for me and i've i've written to washington to the accreditation board i think that's the name of it of architects school and i didn't get great results from that but i feel that architects are as far as architectural barriers are concerned if they had awareness and knowledge of the things so that it doesn't have to have a perlman to go someplace and to to say hey uh there are five steps here and you've got plenty room for a ramp why don't you put a ramp you know i was just recently in a place where they were changing the stairs to another kind of stairs so i said to them i said what are you doing so yesterday i got the letter and they said they're going to change it and they're going to build a ramp now why does it have to be me only to say those things why can't it be an automatic thing why did can it can it come from just plain logic and some sort of familiarity with with problems of a very large number of citizens that have a problem you know you know you're not talking about just a glaring kind of a disability whether it's somebody like myself walking with crutches or somebody else who is in a wheelchair you're talking about people who are elderly who are unable to walk upstairs some people who have heart problems uh rheumatoid problems that that are that are not visible and yet so it's not just for the special few people that you're doing these things one of the other things you mentioned was the fact that when they make entrances for people who are disabled don't make them over on the side of the building or right away from the main entrance don't make people leave their friends and to and to show their differences because they have to go in different doorways correct correct it's the it's the main you know it's what i call accessibility with dignity it's that that you you you have an alternate way to go in but it's with everybody else you know and it can be done you know people still think that it's something of a of a pain that it's something of a nuisance that oh you know we have to put the ramp in you know well let's do it on the side here you can go around or you can go through the garage you can take the freight elevator and so on and says that's not access in my in my book yes that's almost that's it's degrading in some ways you know and uh but but i think that the more hopefully the more i talk about it the more we talk about it maybe the awareness kind of creep in there and maybe some of the fear will go away absolutely many times there are people who do not wish to have help and i think a lot of people are afraid that if they offer help they will somehow embarrass or anger the person that they're offering their help to but what's wrong in saying nothing would you like some help i can always say yes or no exactly but some people don't even say that some people just go and help you he said please don't help me are you sure now and you know it's this thing you know they want to grab you and they don't understand i suppose you know with a person such as myself that has a kind of a balance all my own i got my own kind of balance and sometimes when i get out of cars which by the way have been designed for contortionists that were the right words yes that's in any case in any case you know sometimes i look as i'm gonna fall down at any minute but i'm not going to be ashamed saying listen excuse me sir can you sort of just lean around here so in other words i can say it but some people they go to the opposite extreme either you ask either you're afraid to ask or you just go and help without without asking somebody do you need it and that's really the answer to say can i help you exactly the individual can say yes or no exactly but you know you still feel very uncomfortable it's the fear you know still a little uncomfortable yes and that's what needs to be done away with the fear the uncomfortableness we'll be back right after these words [Music] welcome back it's ocroman is my guest this evening i read some place where when you were 17 years old and you gave an award-winning concert that uh toby who is your wife at that time ran backstage she had never met you before and proposed to you yeah it wasn't actually it wasn't a music camp oh yes summer music camera and i played played a piece and she just came back stage and she said will you marry me what did you say to her i was dumbstruck well let me think about it how long did you think about it oh about four years and then you said we figured we figured out that we have actually known each other for more than half our lives really yeah you've been married how many years 18 years 18 years and you were 17. so frightening why well i i used to say how many years have you been oh a couple of years five years six now i've got so many years to talk about 1815 you know that was 20 years ago it makes you look your back all of a sudden and it's many more years behind you yes getting there your wife also trained as a violinist and uh was quoted as saying i was trained as a violinist but yet i really love being in my home spending the time with my children helping them grow well she's well she's the most fabulous mother i mean she is a virtuoso mother i must say he's incredible and you have to be a ritual as a mother in order to have wonderful children i mean this is true it is parenting for me is probably the most important uh element in in in raising kids or in anything only next to teaching for me i mean it is because it is so so many things can go wrong and and then so many things can go right you know and and uh so it's it's a great challenge and she's wonderful at that and uh and she sort of you know she teaches me all the time yeah she teaches me all the time i know that you have to travel a lot but that uh i've also read that uh you still make sure that you have plenty of time to spend oh yes that's that's another one of the great challenges as to how to look in the schedule and to see what you're gonna what you're gonna do two years from now and somehow picture it and feel it and know that you don't want to play that wednesday but you don't want to play that thursday i bet you've been wrong a lot of times oh boy but i'm beginning to be terrific i'm really good oh listen i'm i'm now this year i'm seeing the fruit of my labor of pouring into the into the schedule and making sure that those spaces are all there in those empty spaces between the between the concerts how many concerts a year do you do now right now i do about 90 95 concerts which is which seems a lot but you know i used to do like 125 130 and you know after a while you know when you do these concerts and you're away from home your kids don't know who you are anymore you know you come back from tour and they say that who who's that who's that man coming in you know so and i feel that's very very important so i just try right now to not to go on tours long tours i don't go on long tours just do three days four days a week you know i even went to japan the other day for eight days imagine going to japan from new york for eight days how many days does it take to get there uh 13 hours you know i took the non-stop flight i think it was there a total of nine days and i had eight concerts and that was the end of that i had eight concerts let's see i had sushi chinese food tampering i had i read some place that you say you're on a seafood diet yeah well that's that's a lot of people i know are unseafood that you know when you see the food and then you just eat it [Laughter] i've been on that diet myself at one time or another and what about the future what is it you know you said you've gotten very good at filling out the spaces and blocking out those spaces and knowing what you'll want to be doing two years from now yeah what do you want to fill into some of those spaces for the future well i tell you uh as you can probably see from what we've been talking you know musically speaking musically speaking i'm not going to go to any different direction i'm going to go straight in the same direction that i've been going and hope that i grow more as i get older and that my music grows with me you know you know that in music there is no such thing as staying in one place if you stay in one place you get you get worse you go backwards so you hope that you keep growing and uh and that you keep finding new things that your x-ray vision if you want to call it it becomes more refined that when you play you can see more of what's in the music and express it in a different way and in a better way and so on and so that's you know i'm not very uh i don't ask for much i just ask for that and uh on the other hand you know i just hope that all of the things that i've been talking about when it comes to people with disabilities that hopefully that the goals that we are set for better life you know more equal life more mainstreaming you know more equal opportunities you know easier way to live i hope that this continues to make progress you know i i think progress has been very slow i'm not very happy with you know i'm happy with the direction but i'm just not happy with the speed so i hope that uh whatever i do in the future that would in some small way help uh make this a little speedier all of the problems that we have and you'll be watching some baseball games and some basketball games listen baseball basketball i'm telling you right now if you're a new yorker you're not in very good shape you are so i so at least you can look on the bright side it says it can't get much worse it can only get better i read that you are a knickerbocker fan and that you watch all of the games and and that you live in in an apartment that was once owned or lived in by babe ruth that's right that's right did that sell you on the apartment well absolutely i mean i saw the two little marks on the wall where he used to take batting practice and i said i'll take it actually it's not true but we do have an apartment you know we have a shower that we call it the babe ruth shower you know because it has all sorts of i don't know what that's bats or something no actually yes but no it's uh it's it's interesting that he used to live there is your wife toby as much a fan as you are uh well she was an original brooklyn dodger fan and i don't think she has recovered yet that they left back yesterday absolutely a lot of friends were broke she's a real baseball fan sure and your children children sure we got well we got so many so each one is a different so many four five five did i miss one sure did i miss the baby how old is the baby now one year i did yeah cause i thought you were younger that's right wait a minute do i have a picture here no i don't oh what a shame i don't have a picture i should have come with a picture well everyone uh you know well the baby she's a uh she's a soccer fan you know she's a fan of the actual soccer ball no i'm just kidding we have tennis in our house tennis fans football fans baseball fans that's about it i think basketball we have to take this last time out okay we'll be back right after this welcome back i just have enough time to thank my guests it's uh perlman for being with us this evening i've really enjoyed talking with you too it was a great pleasure for me thank you and since we only have 20 seconds i'll just tell everyone that we were talking during the commercial message and he said that for the birth of his daughter he had to come all the way from los angeles back to new york he you arrived in new york half a minute they made it half a minute before she was born perfect timing thanks so much for thank you and thank you for being with us this evening we'll see you on the next program good night

Channel: caramelorb

Views: 388

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 2SDnySHVqXA

Length: 43min 36sec (2616 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021