A Heroic Contemporary Musician.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: MARCH 24, 2000
Time: 12:00
Tran: 032401np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Interview With Ted Koppel
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:06

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TERRY GROSS, HOST: From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with FRESH AIR.

GROSS: Today marks the 20th anniversary of "Nightline." On this archive edition of FRESH AIR, we have an interview with Ted Koppel. For 20 years, he's helped us understand the latest issues, crises, and catastrophes and pressed politicians and other newsmakers for the truth. He works in a time slot that virtually no one before considered appropriate for news.

We'll talk with him about the program, his interviewing approach, his career in journalism, and his early years in England after his parents fled Nazi Germany.

Also, classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz discusses the work of Pierre Boulez. He turned 75 on Sunday.

That's all coming up on FRESH AIR.

First, the news.

(BREAK)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Tonight marks the 20th anniversary of "Nightline." On this archive edition, we feature an interview with Ted Koppel. This week he's in Russia hosting a series of special reports on the Russian presidential elections.

"Nightline" has not only helped us make sense of breaking news and world crises, it's changed preconceptions of TV news and the TV audience. The program has been honored with every major broadcast journalism award. Koppel has become a model of how to be fair and respectful when speaking with politicians and world leaders yet not let them get away with anything.

Nightline evolved from "America Held Hostage," ABC's late-night specials during the Iranian hostage crisis, which Koppel anchored. When the crisis began, Koppel was ABC's senior diplomatic correspondent.

I spoke with Koppel in 1996, after he and former "Nightline" producer Kyle Gibson (ph) completed their book, "Nightline." I asked Koppel if he or others at the network had certain preconceptions of viewers who tuned in at 11:35. For example, did he think they might be too tired to follow a complicated story?

TED KOPPEL, "NIGHTLINE": If we had thought that, Terry, then we were disabused of that notion by the extraordinary reaction to "America Held Hostage." I mean, that's what was so interesting about that program. We were doing it as, you know, one special that would always stand on its own, and we didn't realize, when we first began, that we would still be doing it three weeks later, let alone three months later.

But it quickly became apparent as the overnight ratings came in that, you know, America just had a ravenous appetite for this story. And even though, because the program was an instant special, as they were called in those days, late-night special, we did not have any advertising. So ABC was losing an awful lot of money in those days.

Nevertheless, we saw in the ratings that the program was just doing extraordinarily well, and it was the first time that any network, let alone poor old ABC, had beaten the "Tonight Show," and we were beating the "Tonight Show" on a regular basis.

GROSS: How did the rules of the early days compare to the rules of "Nightline" today?

KOPPEL: Rules in what sense?

GROSS: Your ground rules in what -- whether it should be live or taped, whether the person's in the studio or not in the studio, things along those lines.

KOPPEL: Well, actually...

GROSS: Your ground rules for getting the show on the air.

KOPPEL: Yes, I mean, those have changed a little bit probably less than people think. I remember about seven or eight years ago "The New York Times" magazine did a story on "Nightline" in which the writer of that story discovered that my great edge and what gave me this terrific edge on the air was the fact that I never, ever, ever sat down in a studio face to face with someone, and it was always done electronically.

Well, I knew that wasn't so, but I went and had one of our researchers dig out how many face-to-face interviews I had done that year. And as I say, that was at least seven or eight years ago. It turned out to be over 80, I mean, out of 250 shows a year, so it was, like, one out of four -- or one out of three, actually.

And so we'd been doing that for a long time. We tended during the first 10 or 11 years or so, we tended only to do the show live. In the last few years we have made more exceptions to that -- I'd like to say for the convenience of our guests; it's really more for my convenience than anybody else's. I sort of got tired of never seeing my wife, and my wife got tired of never seeing me during the week. And when you have done about 3,000 or 4,000 of these programs, it starts to get a little bit old.

And we found that there were things we could actually do be pretaping that made the show more interesting, more exciting, and improved the quality of it. And so I'd say now probably a couple of shows a week are pretaped.

GROSS: Now, the "New York Times" article that you referred to, the writer made it seem that even if the guest was in Washington, at the ABC headquarters there, you'd put them in a remote studio within the building so that you wouldn't be in the same room eye to eye with them.

KOPPEL: No, he didn't make it seem that way, we do that, and we do that to this day. But that's if we have more than one guest on, usually. And the rationale behind that is, it is as though you had two guests on the program now and the other guest was sitting there in Philadelphia with you, whereas I'm down here in Washington.

Now, the person who is sitting next to you or across the desk from you has a certain advantage over the person who is in the remote location. So the reason that we do that even in Washington is that when we have one or more other guests who may be in a remote location, we're sort of leveling the playing field.

GROSS: Now, in a previous interview, you -- or maybe it was an article you wrote, I don't recall -- you made it seem too as if it's easier -- when you're in the studio with somebody, you have -- you're looking them right in the eye, and you have to just kind of acknowledge their humanity, and it makes it sometimes more difficult to ask a really hard question. It's easier to ask that question if you're not look at them -- looking at them eye to eye.

KOPPEL: No, not for that reason. I have absolutely no -- in fact, ironically, the first great exception to the having someone in another studio rule came about precisely because the guest being interviewed knew that I was going to ask him a very personal question, maybe more than one personal question, and insisted on the right to be able to confront me and look at me eye to eye. And that was Senator Gary Hart, who was running for president. And the question was whether he had been faithful to his wife.

And I absolutely understood why he wanted to do that, and argued passionately with Roone Arledge that we ought to make that exception and do it, and he agreed.

So ironically, when people do have a legitimate reason for saying, Look, you're going to get very personal with me, I had no trouble at all sitting across the table from them, or sitting next to them at the desk. The point is, if I'm -- particularly if I have more than one guest, and I am just a voice appearing electronically in their earpiece, it does give me a greater sense of control over the program than I might have if I'm sitting there with two or three people in the studio.

GROSS: Now, now, what were your interviewing skills like when you first started on "Nightline"? You'd bee chief diplomatic correspondent. You'd certainly done your share of interviewing, but it wasn't real-time live interviewing, which is a different form of interviewing.

KOPPEL: It is. And it's something that you learn over a period of time. I mean, the fact of the matter is -- and I honestly don't know how you do it on FRESH AIR, Terry -- but if you're doing a program live, then that editing process has to go on in your head even as the interview is being done.

GROSS: Precisely.

KOPPEL: You have to keep one eye on the clock, you have to keep one ear on what the person or persons are saying, you have to make sure that you've given everyone on the program a more or less equal chance to express their opinion, you have to remember if someone for one reason or another has evaded a question of yours and to remember to bring it back to that point before the time runs out. And at the same time, you know, you've got to try and make the whole thing interesting and make sure that you are hitting the main points.

That is more difficult when you're doing it live than it is when you can, for the sake of argument, tape a one-hour interview and then cut it down to half an hour.

GROSS: Are there things you feel that you did wrong and learned about the hard way when you first started doing live interviews on TV?

KOPPEL: No, I was perfect from the very beginning.

GROSS: (laughs) Oh, I knew that. I don't know why I bothered to ask.

KOPPEL: I'm sure (laughs), I'm sure that I learned an awful lot, but it's sort of -- you learn it by teeny tiny steps.

GROSS: Right, yes, sure.

KOPPEL: And I'm not sure that I was really aware of it while it was going on, but if someone ever really wanted to punish me, they would sit me down with a pair of headphones on and put me in front of a television set...

GROSS: (laughs)

KOPPEL: ... and just make me watch the first year or two's worth of programs, and I'm sure it would be quite painful.

GROSS: (laughs) Now, you say in your new book, "Nightline," that you don't work with prepared questions...

KOPPEL: Right.

GROSS: ... because you don't want to be stuck asking these prepared questions and not listening and following up on what somebody said. But do you trust your memory? I mean, does your memory work well enough so that you could keep everything that you want to make sure you say in mind?

KOPPEL: Under normal conditions, if you and I were just having a conversation, and I wanted to remind you to do something, I would almost certainly forget. In fact -- I mean, it is one of the great paradoxes of my life that were it not for my wife and my children and my associates at work, I would probably walk around, you know, having forgotten to put my pants on.

But when it comes to doing a program, I use up a lot of intensity on a program like that, which means I'm listening very carefully. I do have a sense, at least, of the areas that I want to cover. And I'm focusing so intently for that half hour that, no, I don't write things down.

GROSS: You know what I would really like your advice on? You do this so exceptionally well. When somebody is gassing on, and they're intentionally evading your answer, you really know how to...

KOPPEL: Shut up, Terry.

GROSS: Yes -- (laughs) You...

KOPPEL: It's easy. You know...

GROSS: Yes, but you really know...

KOPPEL: Knocked you right back on your heels there.

GROSS: You know how to tactfully get them back to the point and not let them get away with that. What -- how would you describe your approach to keeping a person to the point and holding them accountable?

KOPPEL: I have a sort of little alarm that goes off in the back of my head, and I'll try and explain it to you, I'm not sure if it's going to make a whole lot of sense. I think that every interviewer begins -- for example, your listeners begin this program and will probably end this program having you be their surrogate. In other words, they are saying, Go for it, Terry, go after him, don't let him get away with it. These are the questions we really want to have you ask.

And if it sounds as though I'm doing a tap dance and trying to avoid the answer, they will want you to jump in, and they will want you to interrupt me.

But there is a sense of fairness about both a listening audience and a viewing audience, and if you were to jump in after the first 30 seconds of my answer, they would probably say, Terry, you don't have to be rude, give the man a chance to answer.

But now, for example, I've already been rambling on for a minute and a half, or a minute-forty, and if at this point you were to come in and say, Ted, I don't -- you know, I don't mean to be rude, but I asked you this question, and you're actually answering something totally different. By that time, the audience at home is on your side, and they're saying, Don't let him get away with it, go for it.

GROSS: There are several encounters that are reprinted in the "Nightline" book, and I'd like to read an excerpt of one of them. This was your encounter with Evan Meecham (ph), the governor of Arizona. This was in November of 1987. And you were trying to hold him accountable to a statement that he'd made about homosexuals holding government positions. And he had said that anybody who broke the law shouldn't have a job in government, and a homosexual act is an act against the law.

He says, "Mr. Koppel, we've had a 30-minute program. You spent the first part of it telling all about the thing. Would you allow me just to respond in a positive way?"

And you say, "No, no, governor, I'll tell you what, you can make all the positive announcements that you want to in the state of Arizona. I told you from the beginning, and I've tried to be as candid with you as I can, you're not here to talk about your accomplishments in office. You're here because you've become a national figure of considerable interest, not because you opened a trade office in Taiwan, not because you've been tough on drugs. Try and answer the question.

"Now, let's just for a moment, let's play by my rules for a moment. Let's go back to the question that I asked you initially, and which it seems to me you evaded the first two or three times that I asked you. Were you not calling for the elimination of homosexuals from government office because, in your view, they break the law?"

Then Meecham says, "We've spent so much time on homosexuals."

And then you said, "You've spent so much time evading. If you would just answer the question a little more directly, governor, then we could have gotten through this in about a minute or two."

Boy, I kind of applaud you on that. It's -- that's really hard to do, though, isn't it, to be that blunt with somebody?

KOPPEL: Actually, you did it very well.

GROSS: Oh, thanks. (laughs) No, but isn't that...

KOPPEL: No, because again, there's a sort of invisible line. Governor Meecham was trying to sell the notion that he had been invited on "Nightline" simply because he was the governor of Arizona, and as the governor of Arizona, there are an awful lot of things that he might want to talk about, and indeed I perhaps ought to ask him about.

But he hadn't been invited just as the governor of Arizona. If he had not taken that very controversial stand, and if he had not said some of the very blunt things that he had said, you know, I don't want to be unkind, but we would not have invited Governor Meecham to be on the program. We didn't have any particular interest in him in -- simply in his capacity as governor of Arizona.

So to the degree that he wasn't willing to answer any questions on that, and he wasn't being responsive, I felt I not only had a right but the obligation to get tough with him.

GROSS: Now, if Governor -- if it wasn't the governor but it was, say, the president of the United States who was being that evasive, would you have been as blunt in your challenge to him?

KOPPEL: Little tougher. I mean, quite clearly, the president of the United States holds a unique position, and while I hope I have conducted reasonably tough interviews with a variety of president of the United States, the level of courtesy that you're obliged to show in that kind of an interview, I think, is in a class by itself.

GROSS: We're listening to a 1996 interview with Ted Koppel. We'll hear more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

(BREAK)

GROSS: Tonight is the 20th anniversary of "Nightline." On this archive edition, we're featuring a 1996 interview with Ted Koppel.

You were doing a program on Governor Clinton right before he became President Clinton, it was right before the -- or right before election day. And I think you were on the plane with Clinton, and the mikes were on while Clinton was playing cards. And as he was playing cards, he was dealt a losing hand, and he started cursing. You had that on tape.

And Paul Begala, who was on the plane, begged you to not run any of that on the show. And according to your book, you made a deal with him. You wouldn't run it if they granted you first access to Clinton as an interviewee if he were elected president.

How kind of, like, serious a deal was that, and is that...

KOPPEL: It never -- I mean, the funny thing was, Paul came back, and he was sort of blanching. I had not been up there. My camera crew was up there, and I had not heard it. But, you know, one of the crew had come back and said, Boy, he was really swearing a blue streak.

And so when Paul came back, you know, and told me and sort of put it in terms of, You can't put that on the air, can you? And I said, Oh, sure. We had one -- we had done a program some years ago on ABSCAM in which we had a congressman on the air saying a rather long swear word, the first part of which was "mother." And we put that on the air.

Well, then he really started blanching. And I said, "Well, I'll tell you what, I don't want to be unfair, I'll trade you two of the F-words for one of the S-words." And that didn't help a lot. So that's when I made him that offer.

Now, I had never had any intention, in this case, of using any of the swear words to begin with. You will either believe me or not believe me on that. But truly, when someone grants us the kind of access that Governor Clinton's campaign granted us on this, I do cut him a little bit of slack. I mean, it would be easy enough for them to say, you know, half the time, Well, we got to get the camera out of here now, we got to get the camera out of here -- you know, I mean, they might hear something terrible.

And in exchange for the more or less total access that they gave us during the last 30-some-odd hours of the campaign, I was more than willing to say, you know, I don't think that there is really any reason to put that in there.

GROSS: Now, I -- there was an interview that George Bush did with you in which he kept referring to you as "Dan," as in Dan Rather.

KOPPEL: Right.

GROSS: If I'm not mistaken, Alfonse D'Amato kept calling you Peter or Dan or Tom.

KOPPEL: Yes, he got it -- no, he called me David.

GROSS: David, oh, that's right, yes, and David Brinkley.

KOPPEL: Yes, he kept thinking I was Brinkley.

GROSS: That's what it was, that's right.

KOPPEL: And I finally said that, you know, the three of us would have to go out and hoist a couple of brews to get (inaudible) so that he'd be able to tell us apart.

GROSS: Now, this is a really pretty trivial thing. On the other hand, it really makes the interviewee look foolish, I mean, really foolish. How much do you think it hurts them when they done -- you know, (inaudible) -- when they get -- yes.

KOPPEL: Oh, I frankly don't think the audience really cares at all. And I -- I...

GROSS: It's the thing that I walk away with. (laughs)

KOPPEL: Well, I think in some respects, the audience almost sits there saying, Yes, that's good, you know, guy thinks he's much too important anyway, you know, just show him, call him the wrong name, perfect.

GROSS: Gee, I really took the opposite way, (inaudible)...

KOPPEL: Well, I mean, the funny thing was...

GROSS: ... so disoriented.

KOPPEL: ... Roger Ailes, who had been a campaign adviser to then-Vice President Bush, told me couple of years later, well, what had happened was, they'd gone off to get some barbecue before the program, and they'd had a beer, and then the vice president ordered a second beer. And Roger said, "You know, you're doing `Nightline,' you'd better not, better not have two beers." "Naah," (inaudible) "couple of beers, what's the difference?"

And I often think that second beer is the difference between, you know, Rather and Koppel, Dan and Ted.

GROSS: (laughs) Right, right.

What's a typical day at work for you like now?

KOPPEL: Oh, I usually get up around 8:30 in the morning, and I have four or five newspapers delivered to the house, and since I'm on NPR, I can say I listen to "Morning Edition." And by 11:00, we have our first conference call of the day, and that's when we lock in whatever we're going to be doing that day. When I say lock in, that doesn't mean that if there's a major news story later in the day, we won't change it, we will.

But tentatively we lock it in. And then I usually get into the office around 1 or so in the afternoon, and then it is a day of writing, answering mail, phone calls, meetings. If we're live, I get out of the studio shortly after midnight and get home about 1 in the morning. If we're pretaping, then sometimes I'm home by 8:30 at night.

GROSS: What's the latest in the day you'll change the subject of your show, outside of, like, the breaking, you know, hostage crisis or something?

KOPPEL: Well, I was going to say, when President Carter ordered the rescue mission which went so terribly awry in the desert, I was already on my way home, having done the show, and came back in, and we redid a brand-new broadcast at 2:30 in the morning for all our Pacific Coast stations.

Before the program, we've changed a program as late as 10:00 at night for an 11:30 show.

GROSS: How nervous that must be, how nervous-making that must be.

KOPPEL: Well, actually there's no time to be nervous. You just -- you know, you have to slap something together.

GROSS: Ted Koppel, recorded in 1996 after the publication of the book "Nightline." We'll hear more of the interview in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(BREAK)

GROSS: Conductor and composer Pierre Boulez turns 75 on Sunday. Coming up, our classical music critic, Lloyd Schwartz, reviews the work of this iconoclastic champion of modern music. Also, we continue our conversation with Ted Koppel. Tonight marks the 20th anniversary of "Nightline."

(BREAK)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Tonight is the 20th anniversary of "Nightline." On this archive edition, we're featuring an interview with Ted Koppel recorded in 1996 after the publication of the book, "Nightline."

You were born in England in 1940, and your parents were German refugees. Your father, I believe, owned a tire factory in Germany, was imprisoned in Germany in 1938. What was he imprisoned for?

KOPPEL: Well, actually he was -- I think he was actually imprisoned a little bit earlier. It would have been about '36, maybe early '37. It was very briefly. I mean, my father -- I'm Jewish, my parents were Jewish, and that was all you needed to be for the Gestapo to haul you in in the late 1930s. The miracle is that he got out.

GROSS: Why did he get out?

KOPPEL: It was still early enough, and he was influential enough in those days, and had one very good childhood friend of his who was a prominent judge in Frankfurt, and the judge intervened and got him out and then said, you know, I may not be able to get you out again the next time, you'd better get out of here. And he did.

GROSS: Was it hard for your family to get out of Germany?

KOPPEL: No, it was not, it was not hard for them. I mean, clearly it would have been much, much more difficult a couple of years later. They were not married then. My father got out, I think, in late '36, early '37, my mother got out in '38. They married in '39, and -- at least that's the story they tell, and I was born in '40.

GROSS: And I believe your father was interned while in England when the war broke out.

KOPPEL: Well, that was the sort of great paradox that hit a lot of German Jews when they arrived in England. Once the war broke out, they were regarded not as Jews but as Germans. And so they were interned as enemy aliens. And my father was interned literally about a month after I was born, and spent a year on the Isle of Man.

I mean, the conditions were quite good. They were Spartan, but, you know, I mean, there was no danger, and the people were all treated well, and the British government took the position that, Look, we don't know who you are and what your background is, and as soon as they were able to confirm for themselves who he was, they let him out again.

But that was -- you know, my mother, who did not speak very much English at that point, here she was with a 4-week-old baby, and her husband was in the slammer.

GROSS: Did you grow up suspicious of government?

KOPPEL: No. I think that would be pushing things a little bit too far. I'm a naturally skeptical person, and I tend to -- I think that's why I grew up to be a journalist and why that's all I've ever wanted to do, natural skepticism bordering occasionally on cynicism, I think is a useful characteristic of a journalist.

But no, I don't think I'm suspicious of all government.

GROSS: Did you grow up fearful, fearful that there could be another war, fearful that you could never really be secure, because you didn't know who was lock you up or, you know, threaten your country?

KOPPEL: Terry, there's no couch in here, and I'm afraid this chair is not comfortable enough for that kind of question.

GROSS: (laughs) Fair enough.

Your parents returned to Germany after the war to seek restitution. What did they get back?

KOPPEL: Well, a considerable amount of frustration, and then ultimately after...

GROSS: (laughs) Which isn't what they were looking for.

KOPPEL: No, that's not what they were looking for. But after about -- I guess the legal proceedings took in all seven or eight years, in 1953 my father finally got some cash as a settlement for factory, home, everything that he had owned in the late '30s.

And at that time, I think they decided that America was still the land of the free, home of the brave, and a good place for a young man to grow up and make his fortune, and they were certainly right.

GROSS: Well, they were certainly right about you. What about your parents, though? How did they adapt to America?

KOPPEL: Well, they were by then fairly well along. I mean, by the time we arrived in 1953, my father was 58, my mother was 54, and I still remember my father wanted to start a business in the United States, and my mother was really afraid and said, Look, you're too old, you don't know the country, you don't know the customs, you don't know how the labor unions operate in this country, and you could lose everything, and then we'd be in really bad shape.

So in a sense, my father's professional life ended in 1940 when he was 44 years old, and he was never really able to pick it up again. And I think that was a source of enormous pain and frustration to him.

GROSS: Did they ever adapt to America, feel comfortable?

KOPPEL: I think they did, because they really loved how America had treated me and what a wonderful country this was for me, and they -- as older people frequently do, you know, when they are a generation older than normal parents, the level of living vicariously through your children -- and I was their only child -- sometimes gets quite intense.

And I think they lived the lives that they were not able to complete, really, because of what happened in Germany in the 1930s, they lived a lot of that vicariously through me, and saw this as this incredible country where to a considerable extent, not perfectly and certainly not for everyone, particularly if you were a person of color, but, you know, this is still a great land of opportunity, and a land where, you know, it is as close to a meritocracy as I guess exists anywhere in the world.

GROSS: We're listening to a 1996 interview with Ted Koppel. We'll hear more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

(BREAK)

GROSS: Tonight is the 20th anniversary of "Nightline." On this archive edition, we're featuring a 1996 interview with Ted Koppel.

Tell us more about why you wanted to go into journalism.

KOPPEL: As strange as it seems -- and it seems very strange to me too, because I'm thinking now that I was no more than 4 or 5 years old when my father used to listen to Edward R. Murrow's broadcasts, which were played back on the BBC, even though he was working for CBS. I remember feeling a sort of intuition that I didn't know who this guy was or precisely what he was doing, but boy, it sounded like a really interesting way to make a living.

And I can never remember a time in my life when I didn't want to be a broadcast journalist. I mean, it isn't even that I wanted to -- you know, that I wanted to be a journalist, a print journalist. I always wanted to be a radio correspondent, and then when television came along, a television correspondent.

GROSS: Now, your first job was in radio, wasn't it?

KOPPEL: Yes, I -- well, I started in radio when I went to Syracuse, and I was 16 years old, and became an announcer. And one of the reasons that they gave me a job as an announcer was I spoke French and German and therefore was able -- it was a classical music station, FM station, and I was one of the only guys around who could pronounce all the names of the composers.

So I started off as an announcer on a classical music station, then eventually became the news director and then the program director of the station. And then when I came out, I went to work for a radio station in New York, and then in 1963 I auditioned for a job at ABC Radio, and ultimately got it.

GROSS: When you started to make your way through television, was looks ever an issue for you one way or another?

KOPPEL: Well, I -- yes, I thought it was. I mean, I -- (laughs) It's not that anyone told me, Hey, Ted, let me give you a good career tip, try not to appear on camera.

GROSS: (laughs)

KOPPEL: But I sort of assumed that I had not been hired because of my dazzling good looks. And when I first went to Vietnam in 1966-67, I would send pieces back without doing what's called a stand-upper in our business, in other words, the on-camera piece at the top or the on-camera piece at the bottom.

And I did it more than anything else because I thought -- I was then 26, just turned 27 -- I looked about 18 at the time, and I thought I looked so young that if they see how young I looked, and I don't quite know whom I meant by "they," probably the audience, and also my bosses, to a certain extent, that they would say, This guy's much too young to be a television correspondent.

So I tried to get away for a while just sending pieces back without the on-camera top or the on-camera bottom, and then I started getting cables from New York saying, you know, Where are the stand-uppers? You know, we need you to do stand-uppers. So I'd try to make them as short as possible.

GROSS: Do you think that television is getting any more self-conscious with men about good looks? I mean, do you think it's becoming more important than ever for reporters and anchors to look the part?

KOPPEL: I hope not. I -- you know, I think to a certain degree, particularly on local stations around the country, that tends to happen. And I can't deny that for the most part, the people that the networks put on the air as anchors are pretty nice-looking people. But, you know, when I think of my friends Peter Jennings and Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw, I mean, they are all people who have spent many, many years in the trenches, and they're just first-class reporters too.

And the fact of the matter is, they also look good. You know, Barbara Walters looks good, Diane Sawyer looks good. But, you know, thank God there's Sam Donaldson and me.

GROSS: (laughs) Now, I have to ask you this. I know you hate it when people ask you about your hair, but I feel like I'm duty...

KOPPEL: No, I don't, I'd be sort of disappointed if you didn't.

GROSS: If I didn't ask, (inaudible)...

KOPPEL: And I know (inaudible)...

GROSS: I hate to let you down, yes.

KOPPEL: And I know very well this is one part of the interview you're not going to edit.

GROSS: (laughs)

KOPPEL: So go for it, Terry.

GROSS: OK. Now, people always comment about your hair. Have you ever asked yourself, What is it about my hair that makes people focus on it so much?

KOPPEL: No, I know what it is about my hair, and every once in a while -- I mean, you know, have you ever wondered about going through life, you know, with 360 bad hair days out of every year? I just -- you know, I have very unruly hair, and I also have a sort of strange-shaped head, and the combination of the unruly hair and the strange-shaped head means that it is very rare that my hair does not in some fashion or another stand out and draw attention to itself.

But for all that, it is my hair, and I have learned to love my hair, and I'm not going to shave my hair and put on a stupid-looking wig for anybody. There it is, that's my hair.

GROSS: Have you ever said to yourself, I bet if I shortened the wave in front, that my hair would be less of conversation piece?

KOPPEL: Oh, I've tried that. And as a matter of fact -- it was very funny, many years ago, (laughs) many years ago, I was picked to be the co-anchor of the conventions with Frank Reynolds. I guess that would have had to be back in about 1980, '80 -- yes, '80.

And for the first -- I had fairly recently just -- no, actually it wasn't that recently. But ever since I had come back from Southeast Asia, I had bought myself one of those plastic combs that's sort of like two plastic combs that are bolted together with a razor blade in the middle, and I would just sort of run that through my hair whenever my hair needed thinning out.

And then my wife would trim the back with a razor, and that's all I did.

Well, I get this message, "You're going to be doing the conventions, and have you ever thought about going to a decent hair stylist?" Well, no, was the answer, I had never thought about it. But the suggestion, you know, just kept coming more and more often and with greater and greater insistency, until finally it was clear that Roone Arledge himself thought that I should go to a hair stylist.

So I went to a hair stylist, got my hair cut, and he cut it so damn short that people said, This is dreadful, you know, you've got to do something about your hair. And I said, Well, you know, time will take care of that, but that's about the only thing I know how to do.

No, no, no, no, they -- We've got to send you to another hair stylist. So they made an appointment for me at Bergdorf Goodman's in New York, and I remember walking in, and here was this guy, I don't remember his name, but he alleged to be one of the truly great hair stylists in New York. (laughs) And he took one look at me and he said, "What do you expect me to do?"

And I said, "I don't know." He said, "It's too short. I mean, come back when it grows in." (laughs)

So if you can ever find pictures of Frank Reynolds and me in 1980 in Detroit at that convention, you will see what I look like when the hair is really trimmed back. It's no improvement, Terry, trust me.

GROSS: (laughs) All right.

You end your book by talking about the difficulty of having a journalism career and a home life at the same time. I wonder if you wish you had more of a home life, or if there's anything about that life that you've -- you're almost -- that you find less interesting, and if it's -- if you found it fulfilling to have things that seem to have this kind of high calling and are so important and urgent, and get you off the hook on some details of daily life.

KOPPEL: Well, the fact of the matter is, Terry, that I've had the best of both worlds. I have a wonderful home life and a terrific marriage and -- Grace Hahn (ph) and I have been married for over 33 years now and have known each other since 1960, so we've known each other for 36 years, and have four wonderful kids and a terrific son-in-law, and love them all, and have spent most of my life basking in their love.

The point was, I have only been able to do what I've been able to do, and enjoy that kind of home life, because of the dedication of this extraordinary woman that I married. And it has been at her expense that much of this has taken place.

I was writing that, certainly, about my life and about my wife, but I truly did mean it for all the men and women and lovers of people who have worked for "Nightline," because it just -- it demands so much. We -- I mean, the public tends to focus, understandably, only on the fact that we enjoy a lot of fame and we enjoy huge salaries that are sometimes obscenely huge.

And what they don't see is the price that has to be paid. And understandably, they would say, Hey, I would be more than happy to pay that price. Easy for them to say. The people I would like to turn to would be the husbands and wives and significant others of those who go off to lead these enormously interesting lives. It's not that tough for us, it is very tough for the people who are left behind, because we always have these excuses that sound so great, Gotta go and cover the president, Gotta go and cover the revolution, Gotta go and cover the war.

And meanwhile, you know, you put that up against, you know, Gotta take the kid to the dentist, or Gotta do the car pool, or Gotta take the kid to swimming practice, and, you know, the car pool and the dentist and swimming practice don't sound that important by contrast. But they are.

And I've seen all too many relationships break up in this industry because people were not as strong, or their husbands and wives were not as strong as my wife has been over the years.

But I never could have done, never would have had the chance to do, all the things I've done and have a family if I had not been married to someone who bore a disproportionate share of the burden.

GROSS: My guess would be that in some ways, you're just a tad ambivalent about "Nightline." On the one hand, it's one of the most extraordinary jobs in America. On the other hand, it's probably one of the most time-consuming, exhausting jobs. (laughs) It must be too good to even consider giving up, but really difficult to keep at.

KOPPEL: I think you're right on both counts. I have said many times, and people misunderstand it when I say it, they always think that it's sort of the prelude to a contract negotiation...

GROSS: (laughs)

KOPPEL: ... no one, no one should ever, ever want a job so badly that they can't, if the occasion calls for it, just sort of pack up and say, It's been terrific, but I'm moving on to something else. And I have always felt that about every job I have, and you are absolutely right, I love "Nightline," I love the people I work with, it's a truly extraordinary opportunity, and I have enjoyed almost every minute of it.

If I had to, could I get up and leave it tomorrow? You bet.

GROSS: Ted Koppel, thank you so much for talking with us.

KOPPEL: Enjoyed it.

GROSS: Ted Koppel, recorded in 1996. Tonight marks the 20th anniversary of "Nightline." On this evening's edition, "Nightline"'s series of programs from Russia concludes with a profile of acting President Vladimir Putin, who is expected to be elected president on Sunday.

Coming up, classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz on composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, who turns 75 on Sunday.

This is FRESH AIR.

(BREAK)

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 877-21FRESH
Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia, PA
Guest: Ted Koppel
High: Today is the 20th anniversary of the "Nightline," which first aired March 24th, 1980. Host Ted Koppel has won every major broadcasting award, including 30 Emmys and interviewed over 10,000 people. Koppel was born in Lancashire, England, and started his career as a desk assistant and reporter for WMCA Radio in New York City. Terry originally talked to him when his memoir was published. It's called "Nightline: History in the Making and the Making of Television."
Spec: Ted Koppel; Media; "Nightline"

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 2000 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 2000 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Interview With Ted Koppel

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: MARCH 24, 2000
Time: 12:00
Tran: 032402NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Music Critic Lloyd Schwartz Profiles the Work of Pierre Boulez
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:48

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TERRY GROSS, HOST: Pierre Boulez is not only a conductor, a composer, and a theorist, but perhaps the greatest living spokesperson for modernism in music. For classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz, Boulez has been a hero for more than 30 years. When Boulez played a four-concert series of 20th century music at Carnegie Hall earlier this month, Lloyd had to be there.

LLOYD SCHWARTZ, MUSIC CRITIC: When I was a graduate student, my music-loving classmates were particularly excited about a handful of contemporary musicians, Pierre Boulez, Maria Callas, and the Beatles. We would gather at someone's dorm room to listen to and argue about their latest recordings.

Boulez was the most outspoken, iconoclastic champion of the music of our own time, the musical equivalent of Rimbaud's dictum, One must be absolutely modern. At one point, he even considered Stravinsky out of date.

Over the years, he recorded not only the 20th century masters but also the earlier composers, Berlioz, Wagner, Mahler, who influenced them. These recordings were profound considerations of a crucial historical continuity. They were also the most extraordinary performances. Yet Boulez was not embraced by the American press. He was regarded as a cold fish, analytic, mathematical, precise. But these adjectives didn't seem to fit the tenderness and passion of his performances.

Now, in his 70s, Boulez has become a star. He's been making wonderful new recordings. He even wins Grammys. So when I was invited to a publicity lunch for Boulez in New York, preceding a remarkable weekend of concerts he was giving at Carnegie Hall with the London Symphony Orchestra, how could I not go? I even got to sit next to him at lunch.

He was surprisingly relaxed, unintimidating, and charming. After a Q&A, when dessert was announced, the maestro quipped, "I thought I was the dessert."

More seriously, he talked about the horrible bind that Austrian artists are now finding themselves in. The West wants to boycott the very figures the new right wing would love to keep quiet. Wouldn't such silencing be giving the neo-Nazis exactly what they want?

This series of concerts was part of an international tour, including Vienna, organized to celebrate Boulez's 75th birthday, March 26. Carnegie Hall, one of the tour's sponsors, was the only American venue, and some members of the orchestra told me they were especially excited to be playing there.

Each of the four different programs juxtaposed an early 20th century masterwork with an American premiere. The most beautiful new piece was "Palimpsest," by George Benjamin, the 40-year-old British composer who'll be directing the Contemporary Music concerts at Tanglewood this summer. The superstar soloists included pianists Maurizio Pollini, who played a brand-new piece by the Italian composer Salvatore Chardino (ph), and Daniel Barenboim, who gave an absolutely riveting account of the Schoenberg Piano Concerto.

The performances were mind-boggling. Even the most familiar works sounded like you were hearing them for the first time. How could anyone who heard Schoenberg's erotic, almost lurid early tone poem, "Pelleas and Melisande," think Boulez was chilly?

In Stravinsky's "Petrouchka," he was like a great director filming a kaleidoscopic montage of a Russian Mardi Gras fair, with a puppet -- or is he the artist? -- as the tragicomic hero. Was music ever more exhilarating or enchanting or poignant?

I've thought for years that Boulez was our greatest living Mahler conductor, and now I was finally getting to hear him do a Mahler symphony, the tragic Sixth, live. Every note seemed completely felt, as intense as any music I've ever heard. I don't cry easily, but suddenly tears were streaming down my face.

The evening after the luncheon, I ran into a friend from "The New York Times," who had just come from a rehearsal. "They let you into a rehearsal?" I asked. It hadn't occurred to me. The next afternoon, I started going to rehearsals, and they were fascinating. After performances in London, Vienna, and Paris, the orchestra was in terrific shape.

Boulez has one of the great ears in music, so he was asking the musicians in the most straightforward way for only the subtlest readjustments. He was also quite playful. "Do you know what we're playing?" he asked Barenboim at the beginning of the Schoenberg rehearsal. Barenboim responded by playing the opening bars of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto.

"What is that?" Boulez asked.

Later in, Boulez missed a beat and stopped. "My mistake," he apologized. "Thank God!" Barenboim exclaimed. "I've been waiting all my life to hear you make a mistake."

During the ovation at the end of the last performance, the concertmaster suddenly raised his bow, and the orchestra burst into "Happy Birthday." Isaac Stern, Mr. Carnegie Hall, emerged from the wings with a huge bouquet. The audience went wild. It was such a rare opportunity for everyone who loves Boulez to convey not only their admiration but their affection, and maybe an even rarer occasion for him to accept it.

GROSS: Lloyd Schwartz is classical music editor of "The Boston Phoenix."

(AUDIO CLIP, EXCERPT, STRAVINSKY'S "PETROUCHKA," PIERRE BOULEZ AND THE LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA)

GROSS: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today was Roberta Shorrock. Our engineer is Audrey Bentham. Dorothy Ferebee is our administrative assistant. Sue Spolen (ph) directed the show. Our theme music was composed by Joel Forrester (ph) and performed by the Microscopic Septet.

I'm Terry Gross.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 877-21FRESH
Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia, PA
Guest: Lloyd Schwartz
High: Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz profiles the work of Pierre Boulez. Boulez recently played a four-concert series of 20th century music at Carnegie Hall. Lloyd, who attended the shows, says Boulez is not only a conductor, a composer and a theorist, but a cultural icon as well.
Spec: Music Industry; Pierre Boulez; Entertainment

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 2000 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 2000 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Music Critic Lloyd Schwartz Profiles the Work of Pierre Boulez
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.