Re: GG "Creative Lying"

[John Hill <jphill@home.com>]

"Anne M. Marble" wrote:

> Have you seen the "Glenn Gould: Shadow Genius" documentary put out by the
> CBC last year? The short answer is... Not yet.

Nope.  I think it was banned here in TN.  (8{0}
Any good?  Is it commercially available?

> Andy made some good points, I supposed. He did add balance. Still, he also
> complained about they always had to do thing Glenn's way.

The producer/artist relationship *is* a special one;  that's for sure.

It's pretty clear that GG demanded complete artistic and creative control
on the projects he did.  The other folks (Kazdin, the CBC engineers, etc.)
were there to provide the equipment, rig it, strike it, do the actual
(physical)
editing and develop the physical master tape.  Kazdin had the advantage
of being able to "bend the rules" at Columbia and get away with things
that wouldn't have been possible in the heavily unionized environment of
the NYC Columbia studios.  Since GG's work demanded such a large ratio
of session minutes to finished product minutes, it only made sense for him
to try to rig up a "home studio" environment (the Eaton Auditorium) where
he could spend as much time as he liked to get his ideas on tape.  Once
Kazdin had purchased the appropriate equipment for him and left instructions
for how to rig everything up, GG's "need" for him obviously became less and
less.  GG was already quite familiar with the process of session work, doing
multiple takes and marking up a score for editing instructions.

When artists and producers part company, it's usually the result of a dispute
or the sense one party has of having been "used" by the other.  Looking at
Gould's career, his own development as a "producer" and the eventual
schism with Kazdin was not really a surprising development.

On the other hand, producers like to feel that they are organically involved
with the creative process of the projects they develop.  Hence, I can
understand
where some of the "sour grapes" were coming from on Kazdin's side.  After a
professional involvement of some 15 yrs. with a great artist, one can be
excused
for hoping that there might be some kind of job security *and* the ability
to have some creative influence over things (other than picking out wrong notes

which the artist turns out not to really care about anyway....).  Ultimately,
they
were Gould's albums and he had pretty strong ideas about how things should go.

And I bet that AK isn't complaining about the royalties, mechanicals, etc.
That
should amount to some very nice "mailbox money" with which to buy houses,
write books, work on projects that don't pay, retire comfortably, etc.

cheers,
jh