Amarcord Hal Willner

I know because years ago, Hal spent several months rethinking our whole record of arrangements of songs for our album Jazz Passengers in Love. Hal had taken me a year or so before that recording to hear Tim Buckley's son Jeff in a little cafe on St. Marks Place between 1st and 2nd Ave., and I couldn't believe Jeff's voice. I got to know Jeff a bit through Hal and by the time Hal started producing the Jazz Passengers record a year later, no one could believe Jeff's voice either! So Hal insisted we get Jeff to sing "Jolly Street," a song Curtis Fowlkes, Ray Dobbins and I wrote. But by then, Jeff was holed up in a motel somewhere in New Jersey working on his own fancy new album. Hal called around everywhere and found where he was and sent me there in the middle of a blizzard. By then Hal had brought in Debbie Harry, who has become a lifelong friend, to sing "Dog in Sand" and Jimmy Scott to grace us with his floating magic. But how the hell to get Jeff to come out of that Motel 7 hole?

Some kind of how, I found Jeff, and Hal talked him into coming down to that studio. Jeff's energy was all over the place, but Hal had a way of focusing random energy into something so cohesive and other that an incredible thing happened, and it's on that record. Now both Jeff and Hal are gone.

Halvin (as I always called him), you brought that kind of magic into my life as you did to so, so many others on this particular planet and any number of other spheres. We can listen to these incredible recordings you were the maestro of but we will all miss you so much...

Love you.

Janine Nichols

producer

Once I was complaining to Hal about an earworm that had gotten hold of me, the chorus of some ubiquitous pop mega-hit. He said he didn't know it. I said, "How could you not know it? It's playing in every fucking grocery store, I can hear it in the headphones of the person sitting next to me on the subway. It's inescapable!" He said, "I don't remember music I don't like." One of his gifts...

John Patitucci

musician

I am certain that among all the musicians who leaned toward an eclectic mix of musical styles, Hal was regarded as "One of Us." To this day I think the show Night Music with David Sanborn was one of the best music shows ever created!!

I was very fortunate to work with Hal in 1988, on the record Stay Awake, which featured all kinds of great singers, reinterpreting music from Disney films. Because of my dear friends, drummer Jim Keltner and bassist and producer Don Was, I was asked to be part of a wonderful session with Bonnie Raitt and Don Was and his band, Was (Not Was). The song was "Baby Mine" from the film "Dumbo." I was a session musician and jazz musician living in LA in my late 20s, and I was thrilled to be there! I was, and have always been, a great fan of Bonnie's singing and guitar playing, and I had just gotten to work with Don in 1987 on a track called "Wedding Vows in Vegas" for Was (Not Was) on the hit album What Up, Dog?. I think Hal Willner had that perfect combination of gathering the right mix of people together, having the vision to make it creative and special, and giving the musicians the freedom to do their best work.

Shawn Pelton

musician

Hal was one of the most unique spirits to have ever graced the planet. We were all very lucky to be around him and his artistic sensibilities. A man with a huge heart and an incredibly creative sense of vision. Who else could bring together such a wide range of artists from Ringo to Sun Ra to Chuck D.

There will never be anyone like him. He is deeply missed.

Bobby Previte

musician

A memory that immediately jumps out when I think of Hal, is mixing my cut on Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus and Hal just insisting that I get it exactly where I wanted it, no matter how long it took. Usually that interaction is the other way around! Dedication... Goodbye, friend.

Marc Ribot

musician

Thinking about Hal.

Bill Frisell wrote:
I'm very sad about Hal.
Can't imagine this world without him in it.

I replied:

...It's like waking up and finding the Empire State Building gone.
But I guess we in NYC should know by now that this too is possible.
We can't take one minute of time with the people we love for granted.

Love and Acoustics. In the studio, most producers sit in the control room, where the expensive speakers allow them to hear what's being recorded with the highest fidelity. Hal did that sometimes.

But other times, he liked to sit with the musicians, in the middle of the rhythm section, or the string section, or near the bell of a saxophone during a wild solo, with his headphones on like the rest of us, his head down and his eyes closed "feeling the music." What ineffable spirit was Hal chasing there, beyond EQ, balance, and the thousand controllable parameters of the "control room?" Was it some god or essence? Some spiritual core? I don't know. But I know that Hal loved music like few others, and that what he heard in it was something he deeply needed, something transcendent, something miraculous. And I know that we, the musicians, loved Hal.

Time. So many called, and wrote, when they heard. Spent all day on the phone. People spoke/cried at Zoom gatherings, some of us played. But it hurt, almost physically, to be so "close" to other musicians who knew Hal, and not be able to play together, Albert Ayler's "Bells" or "Didn't He Ramble..." or the theme song from the Three Stooges. Whatever.

That's our tradition: when a musician dies, we play our brother or sister home. But there's a time lag in digital communications that makes really playing together impossible: "latency," one of the many snakes in the digital Eden. In music, these details of time matter.

Big "Time" mattered to Hal too. Not so much "history" as memory. Hal and I shared ghosts—Hitler was always in the mix, muted, but still pinging the VU meter; Lenny Bruce and Allen Ginsberg too, and the others who tried to make "poetry possible after..." by laughing, fucking, loving, shooting up—LIVING, as much, if not as long, as they could.

I'm writing code now, but you can read me, can't you Mr. Jones? 'cause that's what "we" do, write code, read it, become it... it's what "our" world is made of, and reading is our life: Downtown no-wavers, post punks, loft jazz geniuses, and occasional lost in the rock stars reading Disney, Monk, Mingus, Weill... etc etc. Hal's genius was to make those readings happen.

Of course, Hal was a hustler too. He had to be, in order to make his crazy projects happen. He knew how to harmonize bios as well as notes, and had a finely calibrated sense of the exact ratio of "rock star to avant" needed to make the powers that be cough up a budget. Sometimes this got Hal into arguments with his Downtown friends, possibly even me. But in the end my sympathies were with Hal. Maybe because I'm a bit of a hustler myself. But what really ends all debate is this: Hal got a show in which Al fuckin' Green and Syd Straw danced in a fuckin' mambo line to Sun Ra's Arkestra playing "Space Is the Place" on national fuckin network TV.

And you didn't..., right?

When Hal passed, everyone knew instantly that a member of the family was gone. Zorn called me first. I knew from the minute I heard the pain in his voice. But precisely who that family is may be hard to define.

Sometimes Hal seemed like my comrade in some crypto commie sect so secret that even its own cadres didn't know it existed. Or maybe we were fellow worshippers in a heretical branch of Judaism whose weird set of sacraments and (Black musical) Saints masked our orthodoxy. But yeah, although inclusive of people from all over the geographical and social map (and a few beyond it), Hal's mysterious project had something to do with the Jew thing.

I remember Hal in his bad old days, in the apartment on the East side of Tompkin's Square Park, literally on "Charlie Parker Place" (too ironic for irony? or too sad?), sleeping literally surrounded by stacks of Lenny Bruce live tapes (yes, literally tapes)... before it literally burnt down. Hal really dug Lenny Bruce, and, through his work, created a tunnel between Bruce's world—its TV shows, jazz, obsessions, Yiddishisms—and our own, locking old Beats and hippies into studios together with young post-punks, jazzers, and aesthetic radicals who hadn't yet figured out who their Lower East Side parents were. What the Cairo Geniza library was for ancient history, Hal was for the history of the '40s through the '70s pop and jazz culture: his archives and memory held details of the past that no one else had (and few would want).

But all together, those details mapped a language.

Lenny Bruce's parents spoke Yiddish. So did Hal's... so did mine (at least, when they didn't want me to understand). But they were the last generation who cursed in Yiddish when they stubbed their toe (or at least, who cursed in Yiddish on the tenor sax). I curse mostly in English, and, beyond a few Yiddish phrases and some broken Italian, speak it. But even if I learned... it would signify "Jew," not "NYC."

Lenny Bruce's language was particularly NY, and it signified NY—a particular Black, Latino, Jewish etc. NY in which Yiddish was taken for granted as part of the mix: "If you live in New York or any other big city, you are Jewish... even if you're Catholic... If you live in Butte, Montana, you're going to be goyish even if you're Jewish."

As you can see, Bruce's "Jewish" was also particular: not generic, not sanctioned, inclusive of all NYC, producing Hallelujahs from sex, drugs and post-bop.

Hal dug a time tunnel to Lenny Bruce's world. Maybe he can be accused of loving that world to the point of nostalgia—forgetting its sexism, casual homophobia (even among some of its gay writers), racial codes, and other not so sweet etc's. But I think Hal's real love was for its language—and his deep project was to preserve and translate.

Will people be able to comprehend a Lenny Bruce monologue in 50 years? What will our music mean when they can't?

It's hard not to feel, with Hal's passing, a piece of our own language going with him.

Marcus Rojas

musician

In the very late '80s and early '90s Spanish Fly began playing at the old Knitting Factory on Houston street. We usually played the late set and sometimes there would be as few as six to seven people in the audience. On several of those gigs a bearded, almost homeless-looking guy would sit towards the back and seem to fall asleep during the set.

I don't remember exactly when, but one of my Spanish Fly comrades, David Tronzo or Steven Bernstein, mentioned that Hal Willner wanted to record and produce the band. I honestly didn't know who that was, but after a few meetings with him, I realized he was one of the strangest, most curious New York characters I had ever met and the same bearded cat at our gigs. Being a New Yorker myself, he seemed like so many weirdos I knew growing up, but his obvious love for old schtick and the references that he mumbled incessantly made me realize that there was a lot more to this guy, and that I had no idea what he was actually talking about half the time.

He proposed recording a live Spanish Fly record which seemed crazy because it was a group that seemed like it would not be able to be captured live. We were so about doing whatever occurred to us in the moment. Very "stream-of-consciousness." The recording process was unlike any I had done before.

What I realize is that he saw something in us that I didn't even know was there. The result, Rags to Britches, was a truly unique capturing of the amazing sound world we created with that undeniably Hal thing. The record feels like a psychedelic dream with a pinch of nightmare thrown in there.

Over the years, I'd get to know Hal much better. He'd always show up at Fly gigs, which were very rare, or he'd hire us for different projects, like the Kurt Weil PBS special where Spanish Fly backed up Nick Cave covering "Mack the Knife."

Hal in the studio was a trip, especially in what he called "the dark period." Half the time I thought he wasn't paying attention or was actually just asleep, then he'd "wake up" and say "I think there's something special in the third take." At first I thought he was full of shit but it was uncanny. He was always right. Even when he picked takes when you weren't "playing your best shit." He'd always find the magic and the ugly beauty in a performance. It had a profound impact on me.

I always thought that Hal was a closet performer, and he showed that with gigs like , City Suite, which I saw him do with the Town Hall Ensemble, where he just blew everyone away with his funny, irreverent shocking performance. We recently finally did a project we'd been talking about for a while: Spanish Fly playing while he read Lenny Bruce, William Burroughs and Ginsberg. It felt so good. The packed audience laughed, gasped, was confused and off kilter and they loved it. Another once-in-a-lifetime Hal experience.

The last time I saw him, he was excited in that Hal droll way, about doing some more with Spanish Fly. He even talked about us doing some duo stuff together. His passing leaves a giant hole. His amazing perspective, audaciousness, and love of what could happen live, like old radio, old TV and seat-of-your-pants live performances, is something that is so missing from most pre-packaged stuff that goes on now. I hope that all of us that knew him will double down now and continue this tradition that he so loved.

The essence of live performance, pushing the limits and doing what we're not sure we can pull off, which Hal lived for, has never been more obviously important than now, as I sit here writing this during this Coronavirus horror that has taken away so many of our artistic heroes.

Love you Hal. I'll miss you...a lot.

David Sanborn

musician

Without a doubt, the strongest memories of Hal are those associated with the first episode of Night Music that he produced, with Leonard Cohen with Sonny Rollins and Was (Not Was). That show to me epitomizes all that was great about Hal. One of those things that didn't seem like it was going to work on paper, but then it came across beautifully. To this day, it remains as one of my favorite episodes of Night Music. After that, I lobbied very hard to get Hal on the second season of the show as the music producer.

Click here for the full interview with David Sanborn concerning his work and friendship with Hal Willner.

Jenny Scheinman

musician

Even though I have been thinking about Hal constantly this past week, it is now hard to put anything into words that capture my memory of Him. It seems that the more I focus on him the blurrier he gets. But when I step back I'm flooded with a collage of memories: his altar of an office stuffed with dolls and records; his marveling at iPod technology when it first came out (he loved making playlists for his friends); he and Lou Reed making a pilgrimage to some predecessor of Grey's Papaya to introduce me to the best hot dogs in NYC; a month with him in LA ostensibly making a Lucinda Williams album but mostly watching Laurel and Hardy movies and shopping for ventriloquy dolls; his twinkling eyes; his muttering rambling hilarious stories; his exasperating creative process which was all now and no plan; how upset he was when critics panned Lulu—the album he produced for Lou and Metallica—as well as his comrade's smile when I said "well fuck 'em all!;" and how we met, he called me up after listening to 12 Songs and said "You make great music Jenny. 'Home on the Range' is my favorite song too." He was funny. And true. He knew us so well. He connected. He was real magic.

There have been so many wonderful quotes about him in the news. Two that went straight to my journal were from Tom Waits, a friend of 45 years, talking about his crowded office—"These were his talismans, his vestments, because his heart was like a reliquary"—and Laurie Anderson: "Hilarious, so tender and compassionate," and "a soulful prince." And Bill Frisell's private letter to those of us who worked with him and Hal in Kaddish started with "This has been so hard. I just can't imagine the world without Hal in it." We were all so deeply connected through him and loved him so dearly.

John Scofield

musician

Hal was a champion of esoteric musics and brought many artists into the public eye through his fascinating compilations.

Syd Straw

musician

Such a psychic tsunami to lose Willner and Prine on the same sorry day.
I loved Hal with all my cranium, and feel with sudden sharp sorrow the awfulness of his demise.
a new blue
would sometimes
listen to the pause between Hal's stories, there was more story in there, lurking with hidden detail, it could spark good ideas, and hal gave us all the room in the room to try them
I raise a glass of gratitude to the powers in the air for the vast, friendly, creative open mindedness of Hal, let's all run wild with it, fast as we can
Love, Syd

Matt Sweeney

musician

Hal Willner shared all of his gifts with the world, and his gift of musical vision gave so many of us musicians the best and most unimaginably wonderful days of our lives. I'm grateful everyday for my time in Hal's world.

Marc Urselli

musician, recording engineer, producer

Hal was one of my mentors and greatest inspirations. If I had to sum up my last 20 years in New York around three or four key figures, Hal would certainly be one of them. I have learned so much from him and he has exposed me to so much great music, changing my life forever. Most importantly, he didn't have a mean bone in his body. He always had, or made, time for everyone, even if he was late, and he maintained the curiosity of a child.

My bond with Hal solidified with every session or project we worked on. I met Hal about 13 years ago on a Courtney Love session, and we started working together on tour productions for Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed. I think I worked on at least three or four Lou Reed tours that Hal was co-producing and I spent over a week in the studio with Hal mixing Lou Reed's last concert video footage. Shortly thereafter, we started doing more sessions in the studio (some large, some small, but mostly all large and with guests thrown at me in the 11th hour) and several of his tribute concerts at Town Hall, Lincoln Center and other places (with guests thrown at me in the 12th hour).

Hal thrived on spontaneity and loved to make things happen in the spur of the moment. One day I got a call from him and he told me he wanted me to go record Nick Cave with him in Los Angeles the next day. I booked a flight and flew to LA. I loved and feared every call I'd get from Hal because when he called, usually, something was going to happen in the next 24-48 hours, whether I was already booked or not. But, as Steven Bernstein once told me after he got a traffic ticket for being on the phone with Hal while driving, "when Hal calls, you answer."

In the last four years Hal and I saw each other a lot as we were working on what will be the last record he produced, which should be released this year. I cherish every moment I spent with him on this record, and we loved and trusted each other. That trust and mutual respect was instrumental in building our relationship. We've travelled the world together, spent countless hours in recording studios, drove around in rental cars, shared apartments, had dinners and talked about music for hours sometimes.

His knowledge ran deep and often times he'd reference things I didn't know and I'd secretly scribble down notes so I could research them later... In 2016 I helped Hal with his own residency at John Zorn's venue, The Stone, and night after night after our bond became even stronger.

I have countless anecdotes of rehearsals or sessions with Hal, but one of the things I miss the most is being in his office and listening to records he would play for me... He loved weird, obscure vinyl... When I went on trips to remote countries like China, Russia or India I would always bring him back a few strange, local or hard-to-find records I had found and I had just scored some that were about puppetry, which he loved...

In 2018, we had one such beautiful afternoon. He called me and invited me over to talk about something we were working on and he put on one of his favorite co-star records: they come with a script you follow and so he proceeded to recite his lines to co-star with the speaker on the vinyl... we giggled a lot... as we were doing this, my eye wondered around his amazing shelves filled with incredible records, memorabilia, dolls, tapes, hard drives etc. and I couldn't help but notice that there would be a pile of more recent purchases with names like Scott Walker right next to names like Kendrick Lamar... I was always amazed and in awe of how all-encompassing his taste was and by the fact that he maintained this avid curiosity for all music, which defined or heightened his eclecticism, his versatility and his knowledge of music. That alone is a testament of who Hal was, and that barely even scratches the surface!

I've always aspired to be like Hal, and the only way I know how to pay tribute to his legacy is to attempt to be half the man he was, and in doing so helping as many musicians as I can and supporting the community that Hal helped create. I'll never be able to fill Hal's shoes but but I'll try to walk in them and honor his memory and legacy by continuing to make great music with great humans. As Hal said when one of the greats would pass: "It's Up to Us Now!." I take that to heart!

Suzanne Vega

musician

I have been thinking a lot about Hal Willner since his death. I met him in 1988 when we recorded the title track for Stay Awake, his album of Disney covers. Last time I saw him was last July. I sang "Stay Awake" again, for a film that the poet Bob Holman made for his wife who had a painting with that same name. An acquaintance of 31 years.

I was always honored if he chose me for anything. Sometimes upset if he didn't. He was funny, kind, wildly idiosyncratic. I always thought of him as being in the sky somehow, a bright light in the firmament that would always be there as an inspiration, a reminder to be fearless, to be weird, to laugh and play. When I heard the news I couldn't believe it. It's not that we were close. It is that his vision and generosity were so expansive I thought he would always be around, cackling away with Lou Reed in their boys club in Long Island, or grinning at me from beyond the footlights as I sang Cruella De Ville. "Play it like Bobby Womack!" he shouted to the band that day.

The last time I saw him he reminded me that I sang "Stay Awake" in one take. It had been 30 years and yet he remembered! Afterwards I sat in his office and he showed me his puppet collection and clips of things he found funny. I felt shy and appreciative at this glimpse of his inner world. I still feel stunned that he is gone.

Steve Weisberg

musician

Aside from Hal being my cherished mentor and true friend for the last 35 years, I had the honor and privilege of arranging and musical-directing many Willner productions, both studio and live.

There was always a component of wizardry and alchemy involved.

Arrangements and their execution often involved adding unexpected ingredients, culminating in a musical reaction that resulted in that wonderful outcome uniquely Willner.

Maybe it was the addition of a musician working in a genre completely foreign to them; or a vocalist bringing newfound meaning to a song that went against his/her type; or finding just the right combination of musical personalities.

He steered the sessions with his trademark understated hand, finding ways to nudge us into a place that more often than not would culminate in something that was truly magical! Something that would be impossible to create with any other producer at the helm.

There are so many memorable moments... Like the marathon Sun Ra session to record "Pink Elephants on Parade" for the Stay Awake album, when the band arrived at midnight for a 7pm call! Operating from scribblings on a single sheet of notation paper, Sunny brought the musicians to the piano, one by one, to show them their parts for each section of this very long suite, threatening to play their part on his synthesizer if they didn't get it right. After 10 hours of recording each segment of that epic track, and lots of editing, the result is, in my humble opinion, inarguably a masterpiece!

So much of Hal's work remains undiscovered for many. Few know about the amazing Stormy Weather tribute to Harold Arlen, which we recorded in 2001. It was made into a Canadian film by Rhombus Media, who also did Hal's better-known Kurt Weill film production.

Live shows operated in the realm of controlled chaos. Hal was so used to the Saturday Night Live turnaround schedules, that he treated his live shows in a similar way. Usually minimally rehearsed and with everyone knowing that they had to be at the top of their game to avoid a train wreck!

Sometimes programming order would change on the fly in the middle of a show, sending everyone into wild panic, contributing to the electricity that would create those moments of transcendence. Mixed in was the occasional fumble, to which Hal would respond: "It's only music, it's not like we're doing brain surgery here." These shows were nothing short of thrilling, and the atmosphere off stage was equally exciting for musicians and audience alike!

Few are aware that Willner created many large shows that were performed once, and never captured, celebrating artists like Randy Newman, Bill Withers, Neil Young, Shel Silverstein, Doc Pomus, Edgar Allan Poe, and Firesign Theater to name just a few.

Hal's process sometimes pissed off the people trying to oversee these shows. But for him it was always about the music, the creation and the art, foremost. Most of these spectaculars went overtime and many over-budget... but to him it was worth every penny, which he would end up paying out his own pocket. And certainly, worth it to those who had the good fortune to attend one of these incredible events!

It was always the journey that mattered to Hal.
It was always musical integrity first.
It was always about compromising polish for baring the soul...
And much is out there for everyone to hear in its uniquely Willner genius!

I live in eternal gratitude for the roads we travelled together.

Doug Wieselman

musician

I'm at Manhattan Center conducting a 30-piece orchestra for a recording.

This was for a piece that Robert Wilson was putting together for the 2005 Expo in Nagoya, Japan where Hal had me co-ordinate many strands and layers of music. This is after staying up for a week straight, working with Eyvind Kang on arranging his orchestral pieces and ideas for this project. They were based on improvisations that Eyvind, myself and Bill Frisell had recorded a few weeks before. We'd done a couple of takes on this one piece and it wasn't quite working.

Hal walks up to me and mumbles something about taking it slower. It was the perfect suggestion as it then all came together. He would often make these mumbled suggestions that would make all the difference. So many things—listening back to takes of Martha Wainwright's Piaf record that I was involved with while watching Georges Méliès silent movies... and having some image sync perfectly with what we were listening to...

Robert Wilson

theater director

Caption: My deAr ANd cLoSE FrIeNd ANd COLLABORATOR HAS PASSEd AWAy 4.7.20. HAL WAS AN ORigiNAL HiS MuSiC KNOwLEdge ANd LiBraRy WENT FroM disNey CARtooNS tO BeetHoVEN. 4.9.20 RoberRt WiLSON berLIN

Note: The author would like to express gratitude to Jennifer DeMeritt for the invaluable editorial work and to Steven Bernstein, Jill Sternheimer and Marc Urselli for helping him to connect to some of those parts of the world wide Willner web that he didn't know already, as well as to all those who enthusiastically contributed to the article with their heartfelt remembrances.

Photo credit: Lovis Dengler Ostenrik

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