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 "Afraid of what?" I said to the phone under
my ear, letting it sink in as I wrapped a customer's purchase.
"We all think you're the best person to do
it."
"Come on, Bob. I'm not even a professional. (Thank
you, sir. Enjoy your purchase.) I've never done an interview in my life
before." I temporized.
"It doesn't matter, Martin" he countered, a
little too patiently, I thought. "I'll be your engineer. You just talk
to the Maestro."
"About music? What? Records?"
"It's the first local Philharmonic appearance
since 1920 or something." The appearance in Cleveland of the legendary
composer of "West Side Story", conducting the same New York
Philharmonic he led on his famous "Young People's Concerts" on
television, was the media event of the season - at the very least.
"So I-what? -hype the concert?"
"Martin, he's Leonard Bernstein. Anything he says
will hype the concert." Luckily (and atypically for me in those days) I
had the sense to shut my youthful mouth and accept the assignment he was
offering me, despite my lack of experience, my twenty-something insecurities,
and mountainous post- adolescent self-doubt.
In the year that I'd been doing my show, WCLV and I
developed little more than the usual sponsor/broadcaster relationship. Though
I'd gotten some fan mail and decent feedback from station professionals, I
figured when they told me I was good, it was because my boss was helping to
pay their rent. But from the second Conrad challenged me ("Everyone . .
. is scared"), I somehow knew I would do it. Ready when you are, L.B.
The day of the interview I arrived at Cleveland Hopkins
Airport to greet "Lenny," as he would insist that I (and everyone
else) call him, with a total absence of butterflies. I couldn't know that the
visiting maestro's contract specifically prohibited interviews of any kind. I
just sat down happily in a convenient conference room behind the microphone
that Conrad had set up, and waited for Bernstein's plane to arrive from La
Guardia. When he strode through the door at the head of a pack of camel's
hair coats, I greeted the charmingissimo cultural cyclone, then in his mid
forties, and invited him to sit down. Remarkably, forty-five minutes flew by
as we chatted amiably about music, love and life, and his entourage cooled
their heels.
Not anyone could have done what I did, I confess. And
not everyone who could would have been in a position to be asked. A few, in
fear, might have turned it down, as the entire staff of WCLV had done.
Nevertheless, the Bernstein interview was a success for two inextricably
related reasons:
1) I was prepared; though I'd never
hosted an interview before, I knew my subject'swork, had often featured his
newest LPs on my radio show over the past year. And I'd cared enough to
listen to most of his own serious symphonic compositions, as well as his
older recordings of other classical composers; and
2) I had the right attitude. Because I was prepared (SEE: 1) and
therefore confident, I couldn't wait to 'get at' the most brilliant man in
classical music. Let others stay frozen in fear, I realized as he started to
answer my first question,
"I can do this. . . ."
The resulting interview would gain me the job of
Intermission Host on the startup Cleveland Orchestra Concerts series (soon to
be syndicated internationally), and a life in media and the arts, including,
ten years later, a job offer from . . . Leonard Bernstein.
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