Jazz Bassist Ron Carter

DATE August 22, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Ron Carter discusses his musical beginnings and career
as a jazz bassist
DAVE DAVIES, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily
News, sitting in for Terry Gross.

On today's show, Terry's conversation with one of the most prolific and
respected bass players in contemporary jazz, Ron Carter.

(Soundbite of music)

DAVIES: Carter has performed on more than a couple thousand albums with
performers ranging from Eric Dolphy to Aretha Franklin. He was the leader on
about 50 of those recordings. From 1963 to '68, he was part of Miles Davis'
now legendary rhythm section, along with drummer Tony Williams and pianist
Herbie Hancock. Carter played on several Miles Davis albums, including "Seven
Steps To Heaven," "Sorcerer," "Nefertiti," "Filles De Kilimanjaro" and "Miles
Smiles."

Ron Carter's latest recording, "The Golden Striker," on Blue Note Records is
with Mulgrew Miller on piano and Russell Malone on guitar.

(Soundbite of music)

(Soundbite of interview)

TERRY GROSS, host:

Now you play bass and cello. You started with cello, right?

Mr. RON CARTER (Bassist): Yes. I was 10, I think, 10 years old.

GROSS: How did you take it up? Was it through school?

Mr. CARTER: Well, you know, in those days--and I'm going pretty far back, I
guess--the teacher for the district would come by with a carload of
instruments, and she would unload them into the auditorium and have everyone
who was interested in music as a broad category visit. And we would have a
choice of what instruments we thought could produce the sounds we were most
interested in. And my interest happened to be the cello.

GROSS: Did you have teachers or other adults discourage you and tell you
that, well, you could do that technically, but practically, it was going to be
very difficult because you're African-American?

Mr. CARTER: That didn't happen until I got into my later years in high
school. I was 16, 17, I guess. And I looked around and I began to realize
that all the little outside activities that the orchestra participated in that
were of a paying sort--they went to everyone else in the orchestra in the
cello section, and then somehow I never got the invitation to be a part of the
situation. This was way before, really, the civil rights movement took place
in '64. So I'm talking--let's see, in '37--'49--no, '50, '51--1951.

GROSS: And this is in Detroit?

Mr. CARTER: In Detroit, yeah.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. CARTER: So there was only one bass player in the orchestra at the time,
and when he graduated, the logical thing to do would seem to be rather than
become angry, it seemed to me that it put me in the position that they would
have to call me. So I switched to bass my senior year in high school, which
would be January of 1955.

GROSS: So how far did you get in the classical world, and how did you start
playing jazz?

Mr. CARTER: I found I got about eight steps, I think.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: And that's officially not far, right?

Mr. CARTER: Well, it's far enough to have them tell me that, `We love the way
you play, but the orchestra's not ready for African-American players,' which
is actually pretty far.

GROSS: Did people actually tell you that?

Mr. CARTER: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was told that several times.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. CARTER: And at the time I was in school, my friend and I, who was a
saxophone player, started a little jazz posse at the local nightclub called
the Pithot Hall(ph), which was across from the emotional other side of the
tracks. He turned out to be, eventually, the saxophonist who did the
arrangements for James Brown on all those big hit records he had, "Cold Sweat"
and "I Feel Good" and so on. We started a jazz posse there, and so I would
play there during the evenings, during the late nights, actually, and get up
in time for my 8:00 theory class at Eastman School of Music. So I was already
aware of the jazz community and starting to earn money for continuation of
education through my little jazz gigs.

The spring of 1958, Chico Hamilton rolled into town with a jazz packet show
that featured Miles Davis' band, Dave Brubeck Quartet, Lambert, Hendricks and
Ross and the Maynard Ferguson Big Band. And Chico Hamilton's band had at the
time a cello player, Nat Gershman, Eric Dolphy and Dennis Budimir playing
guitar and Chico, and they were looking for a cello player. So I had an
audition for the band, and he told me that since I had a year to go in school,
I should finish school and see him in New York, which would be the following
year, 1959.

Well, I did finish school and graduated from Eastman and went to New York
August of '59. And when I arrived in New York, Chico was working at the
Birdland, which was then on 52nd Street and Broadway. And the bass player in
the band had decided to leave the band. So he asked me would I want to join
the band as a bass player. And, of course, I said yes, and we left the next
week, going on a three-month tour of the States.

GROSS: Well, let me play a recording from early in your career. And we were
talking about how you started with cello before changing to bass as your
primary instrument.

Mr. CARTER: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: This is a 1960 recording that you made with Eric Dolphy, on which you
play cello. Georges Duvivier plays bass. It's a composition called
"Feather," and we're going to hear Eric Dolphy on alto saxophone, you on
cello, Duvivier bass, Roy Haynes on drums. Would you say something about this
recording? It's a classic.

Mr. CARTER: Yeah. Well, Georges Duvivier is one of the two or three people
who I've met who have put the bass performance level on such a high
professional standard. I always call Georges Duvivier and Milt Hinton my
musical uncles because they really opened the door to all that the jazz
players today are privileged to have the chance to do. They played great
notes, they played really well in tune, they were always on time for their
jobs, they always wore suits and ties and they had their instruments in prime
shape to perform whatever music they were being called to play on. And I
think those five items makes a bass player today have a great height to aspire
to. A lovely man, and I'm sorry he's gone.

(Soundbite of "Feather")

GROSS: That's "Feather," recorded in 1960 with Eric Dolphy on alto saxophone,
my guest Ron Carter on cello, Georges Duvivier bass and Roy Haynes drums.

I often think that Dolphy's playing was a little sharp, and it gave him this
literal cutting edge that just kind of cut through anything and then just
stuck out in a real ear-catching way. Was he sharp, and if he was, how did
that affect your intonation?

Mr. CARTER: Well, he always played sharp. I think guys who play the
instrument that hard, physically hard, tend to play sharp because they
overblow the instrument. It used to drive me crazy. I used to tell Eric,
`Eric, man, you're playing it sharp. Can you pull out? Can you do something
else?' You know, when you're playing in orchestras all the time and a lot of
the orchestras generally play a little above the pitch so the violins sound
more brilliant, I guess. You get used to playing above the pitch, but
everyone's playing above the pitch, not just one person. So it made me really
tune in to where the pitch was supposed to be and made me probably more
self-conscious than I should have been how much above the pitch Eric really
was.

There were nights when he would nail intonation. I mean, he'd be perfect, and
then the bass would just do what he could do easier because he wasn't caught
between my pitch and Eric's pitch. And there were other nights when he would
be so sharp that it'd be difficult to make my hands do what my ear was telling
me was correct, but my inner sense was saying, `That can't be OK.'

DAVIES: Ron Carter speaking last year with Terry Gross. Carter's latest
recording, "The Golden Striker," was released this week. We'll hear more of
their conversation in a moment.

This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

DAVIES: Let's get back to Terry's interview with bass player Ron Carter.

(Soundbite of interview)

GROSS: I want to jump to the period of your life in the '60s when you were
playing with Miles Davis. You were with him from '63 to '68?

Mr. CARTER: Mm-hmm. Yes.

GROSS: You were playing with Art Farmer before joining Miles Davis. How did
you end up joining Miles?

Mr. CARTER: Well, as it turned out, the band that he then had was going
through several personnel changes. While this was going on, Miles came into
the Half Note one time one night when I had just--into the second night of my
two-week gig with Art Farmer with Jim Hall. And he called me over and asked
me if I was interested in joining his band. He told me that the band was
breaking up. He was putting together a new group and wanted me to go to
California with him the following week to work at the Black Hawk for the
beginning of a six-week tour. And I said I was very interested; however, I'd
just joined Art for these two weeks here, and if he would ask Art if it was
OK, and if Art said yes, I'd be happy to go with him. If Art said no, then
I'd be happy to stay with Art.

So when the set was over, he called Art over and they had a talk. They had
known each other for years. And he told Art what he had in mind, and Art said
it was OK. And I think that did two things for me. It established with Miles
that I was really my own person, and it showed Art what kind of regard I had
for him.

GROSS: Were there things that Miles Davis told you about what he was doing or
what he wanted you to do when you first started playing with him?

Mr. CARTER: No. He would make sure, though, that I stood next to him.
During those days, '63 and on, the bass player didn't have an amplifier and
there were no monitors on the stage, at least for the jazz bands. And
everything was pretty much wide open, literally. So the instrument that had
the lowest power output was the bass. That was the case in any band, so he
would make sure that I stood as close to him as the stage would allow so he
could understand or he could hear what was going on with the bass line.

And occasionally, he would notice that the sound was different because I'd
been off for three weeks, and he would say, `Your hand's a little tender
tonight,' or he would say, `What is that note doing there?' and I'd explain to
him what it was. And he would say, `OK.' But he never once told me I should
do this or I should play this kind of note or I should play on this part of
the instrument. He kind of trusted my sense of judgment.

GROSS: Why don't we play a recording from that early period in which you
worked with Miles Davis?

Mr. CARTER: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: Why don't we hear "My Funny Valentine"? And I think your bass playing
on this is almost like a heartbeat.

(Soundbite of "My Funny Valentine")

GROSS: That's "My Funny Valentine" with Miles Davis, my guest Ron Carter on
bass, and that was Tony Williams on drums, recorded in 1964 live at
Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center in New York.

That's a beautiful recording. Was there something special about playing
ballads with Miles Davis during that period?

Mr. CARTER: Well, you know, the story is still going around that he learned a
lot of space from listening to Ahmad Jamal, and that that story is true.
Listening to him play ballads kind of validates that view. He once said that
he liked the way I played ballads with him because I understood what the
melody would sound like even if he didn't play it. So I enjoyed playing
ballads with him.

GROSS: Oh, you mean so that you can imply the melody even if he was playing
something else.

Mr. CARTER: That's right.

GROSS: Right, right. Miles Davis was not very communicative with his
audience onstage, not verbally communicative. Was he more communicative with
the musicians?

Mr. CARTER: By and large, yes. Again, you know, when we go back to those
early days of clubs and concerts, the setting that is now available with a
separate microphone and great microphones and great microphone stands and
really aware technicians and sound crews--I mean, the whole industry has
changed as far as sonically reproducing a concert for an audience, be it club
or concert. And then the situation was not easy for someone to announce a
tune and then run back to the microphone and play. Then when it's finished,
put your horn down and run back over to the microphone again and announce the
next song. It just wasn't physically convenient. Now why he didn't talk to
the audience, however, is something I can't answer.

GROSS: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mr. CARTER: When we play now, I just segue between tunes not because that's
what he couldn't do, but I just find that if I can play a set and start a
story from the first note and have you turn the page in your mind and let my
conversation not be that page turning for you...

GROSS: Right.

Mr. CARTER: It's like having Call Waiting, you know? And that really annoys
me to have Call Waiting, to have an announcer saying, `Now we're going to
play, ladies and gentlemen'--for me that doesn't work. So I play a set for
however long it lasts straight through with these brief musical interludes to
allow you to turn your own page. And I think that if he had thought of this
during his time, he would have done it as well.

GROSS: Shortly after you joined Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and Tony Williams
joined, forming the classic Miles Davis Quintet over the mid-60s. What
changed musically when you were all together?

Mr. CARTER: Well, I think this was one of the cases where each of
us--Herbie, Wayne, Tony, myself--would have ended up where we are now, but we
ended up where we are now much quicker 'cause we were all in the same pot
then. Wayne was a very quiet person, but he wrote great lines and had a great
sense of harmonic direction.

GROSS: This is Wayne Shorter you're talking about.

Mr. CARTER: Wayne Shorter, yeah.

GROSS: Who I neglected to mention. Thank you.

Mr. CARTER: Yeah. That's OK. And Herbie was starting to explore not so much
new chord voicings, but places to play these new sounds. And Tony, who was at
the time 17, was just opening the drums to sets of rhythms that no one had
contemplated were being possible to be done on the drums. I think my angle,
if I can use that word, would be what note ties all this stuff together.

GROSS: Now, you know, Tony Williams was departing from just playing the
rhythm. He was doing all kinds of things.

Mr. CARTER: Yes. Absolutely.

GROSS: And did that make it any more or less necessary for you to be playing
the rhythm?

Mr. CARTER: Well, Tony was very form oriented. Tony knew melodies inside and
out and he was studying composition and arranging. So I think one of my
inputs to the band was to outline the form because we were doing so many
things within the structure, and--because Herbie was playing these new chord
voicings and Wayne was writing these different kind of melodies and Tony was
exploring all these rhythms on different parts of the drum. In addition to
what I was trying to do, I kind of nailed the form down for everybody as best
I could.

GROSS: So you saw yourself as being the kind of harmonic and rhythmic
foundation that enabled everybody else to be more free?

Mr. CARTER: Yes.

DAVIES: Bass player Ron Carter speaking last year with Terry Gross. Carter's
latest recording, "The Golden Striker," was released this week. We'll hear
more of their conversation in the second half of the show. Let's close this
half with "Nefertiti," the 1967 Miles Davis recording with Wayne Shorter on
saxophone, Herbie Hancock on Piano, Tony Williams on drums and Ron Carter on
bass.

I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of "Nefertiti")

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies filling in for Terry Gross.

Let's get back to Terry's interview with bass player Ron Carter. Carter has
a new CD called "The Golden Striker." When we left off Carter was talking
about his work with the Miles Davis Quintet. He played with Miles from 1963
to '68.

GROSS: One other Miles Davis record I want to play here, and this is one of
the first electric recordings that you made with him. And this is--we're
gonna hear "Tout de Suite" from "Filles de Kilimanjaro." Did Miles Davis tell
you that he wanted you to play electric bass? I mean, how did you switch then
from bass to electric bass?

Mr. CARTER: Well, you know, during that time, there used to be these
so-called blue Monday sessions, and these were clubs that had music starting
at 3 AM in the morning and they would go until 7 AM in the morning. And they
were generally organ-led trios--organ, guitar and drums. And in case they'd
have an electrical bass player who would fill in for the organist's left hand
or left foot, and so I got involved in doing that even when I was going to
Eastman. When I came to New York in 1959 and got involved in making a few
commercial recordings, jingles, the electric bass was just now becoming a part
of the recorded sound, and so every upright player had to go out and buy one
to get a better view on how to play this instrument that they were now being
called on to have available should the producer decide that's the sound he
wanted.

So the instrument was not new to me. I'd made records with it before. But I
told Miles that, you know, `This instrument's OK, but it doesn't have the
sounds that I hear; that, and I've been working on for a very long time to get
better every night at, and this just doesn't allow me that growth that I think
I have to have. But it's your band and I'll do the best I can. I think I'll
do a credible job, but this is really not what I want to do.'

GROSS: What was missing in the sound of the electric bass?

Mr. CARTER: Well, for me, just the ability to change the tone quality with my
hands. I mean, bass players do it now with a pick and with their thumb and
the various pedals and stuff, and they do a great job, but the color really
doesn't change that much, and I think the upright player who is really
conscious of the sound choices he has at his command with his hands will miss
those choices playing electric bass.

GROSS: Well, why don't we hear "Filles de Kilimanjaro"?

Mr. CARTER: Mm-hmm. It's a nice track.

GROSS: Yeah. This is "Tout de Suite."

Mr. CARTER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

GROSS: And my guest Ron Carter on electric bass. This is the Miles Davis
Quintet.

(Soundbite of "Tout de Suite")

GROSS: That's the Miles Davis Quintet, with my guest, Ron Carter, on electric
bass, recorded in 1967 from the album "Filles de Kilimanjaro."

You know, we were talking about you playing electric bass on this. Herbie
Hancock is playing electric piano. How did you feel playing with electric
piano?

Mr. CARTER: Well, you know, it was really difficult to get the sounds
separated at that time. I mean, they really hadn't learned how to really
record a jazz band playing these instruments because their touch is so
different, and they're playing a different combination of notes, and a lot
more notes, they weren't being so technically conservative as they were on the
early recordings of Fender Rhodes and electric bass. So it presented to them
a recording problem, and I'm not sure they really solved that problem on that
particular recording. Later on when they were able to re-edit and re-master
and re-mix and with the new formats, they got a much better separation of
instruments than they did on the original vinyl. But, you know, again, you
know, the sounds were so almost indistinct for me it was difficult to feel
apart from everyone else but still a part of it.

GROSS: Did your dissatisfaction with the electric bass and the electric piano
direction that Miles Davis was going in have anything to do with you leaving
the quintet?

Mr. CARTER: No. I just thought it was time to go. I'd been with the band
five years, five fabulous years. I had a son who was going on five years old,
six years old, and another one was going on two or three and I thought that
it's best for me to start spending more time than I was able to do with Miles'
travel schedule. So I left just because of those personal reasons. Also
they were starting to get some more jazz recordings in New York. Man, there
were a lot of companies doing a lot of jazz records. The studio scene, as I
defined it, was really becoming more active and there were more
African-American players being a part of these commercial recordings. And it
seemed like the best time to try to find out what the industry had to offer
was to be a part of it, and you can't do that if you travel six weeks at a
time for months on end.

GROSS: So did your plans succeed? Were you able to stay home more and spend
more time with your family?

Mr. CARTER: Yes. And I'm happy to have done that.

GROSS: Yeah. Well, you've recorded how many CDs as a leader in a side band
over the years?

Mr. CARTER: Well, you know, the last count from a friend of mine in Japan,
who was determined to track them all down--he's found some really that have
completely escaped me. He's got 2,200 and change--something like that.

GROSS: Very impressive. Now I know you were on a recording by the hip-hop
group A Tribe Called Quest.

Mr. CARTER: Oh, yeah.

GROSS: Did they sample you or did you play with them?

Mr. CARTER: No, I went to the studio. As a matter of fact, the guy called
me--Q-tip called me one afternoon and told me who he was, that he was a great
fan of Charlie Mingus, and I said, `Oh, yeah, great, you know. What can I do
for you?' you know. He said, `Well, we're making this record and I want to
know if you want to participate?' And I said, `Well, let me call you back
because I'm busy for the moment.' Actually I was going to call my son, who's
on top of that stuff. So I called him and said, `Hey, man, who's this guy
Q-tip and A Tribe Called Quest, are they musically OK?' He said, `Oh, yeah,
Dad. You got to check them out.' So I called him back and I said, `OK, we
can do this. Just give me a time and a place and we'll work it out.' They're
really lovely young men, and they're really curious about music, and I had a
great time with them.

GROSS: Do you still practice, or is that unnecessary because you already play
so much?

Mr. CARTER: Oh, man, you know, I just retired from City College and that
frees me up to have 20 hours a week more to practice, and I practice every
day.

GROSS: Good. Well, it's a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much, Ron
Carter.

Mr. CARTER: Terry, thanks very much for the invitation. And hello to your
audience and thank them for encouraging this music.

DAVIES: Ron Carter spoke with Terry Gross last year. His new CD as leader is
called "The Golden Striker." He also recorded with the Brazilian singer Rosa
Passos. Here's something from their new CD "Entre Amigos."

(Soundbite of song)

Ms. ROSA PASSOS: (Singing in foreign language)

DAVIES: Coming up, Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway Human Transporter. His
design for an innovative motorized wheelchair has just been approved by the
FDA.

This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Dean Kamen discusses the new high-tech Segway Human
Transporter
DAVE DAVIES, host:

Dean Kamen became famous for inventing the Segway Human Transporter, the
two-wheeled gyroscopically balanced people mover that captured the nation's
attention. But Kamen has been known for years for his medical inventions,
including a portable insulin pump and a kidney dialysis machine for home use.
Now he's back in the medical gadget business. The FDA has just approved the
iBOT, a motorized wheelchair that Kamen has spent 20 years developing. Terry
spoke with Kamen in February after the Segway scooter hit the market. She
asked him to describe what it looks like and how it works.

Mr. DEAN KAMEN (Inventor): The best way to describe how it works or how it
feels is like a pair of magic sneakers. It looks like a low platform, about
six inches high, on which you stand. And there's a small shaft, a handle,
comes up, which ends up looking like the handles of a bicycle, and you have
two wheels. But instead of like a bicycle, where they're one in front and one
in back, each one is just outside your left and right foot. So when you first
look at it, you'd say, `This thing must be unstable. It's missing either its
front or rear axle.' But in the platform that you're standing on, there are a
set of five gyroscopes that are sensing any kind of motion, acceleration, tilt
of the platform, and they feed nine different computers lots of information in
real time. And those computers send signals out to the wheels in such a way
that if the machine were even very slightly tipped forward, the wheels would
run under it forward; if the machine were tilted backward, they would run
backward.

TERRY GROSS, host:

When you were researching the Segway and figuring out what the computer is and
the gyroscopes needed to do...

Mr. KAMEN: Yes.

GROSS: ...did you, like, walk a lot and try to analyze what your body was
doing as you were walking?

Mr. KAMEN: Well, actually, it's even more than that. The Segway really comes
from a medical product that I worked on for more than 10 years. I've spent
30--I have literally spent my entire adult life working on medical products,
and one that we started many, many, many years ago was a product that I
thought would be a way to give the disabled population a capability that
virtually no product addresses. Those people, whether they're in wheelchairs,
because they have no capability to move their legs, or if they're in a
wheelchair or using a walker or any other device because of--whether it's
Parkinson's disease or MS, we find ways to move those people around. But what
they've lost is the ability that we all take for granted to do something
uniquely human called walking.

What they lost was the specific way to move around by standing up and
balancing and having a small footprint and being with their colleagues in
conversation eye-to-eye. And so we said, `You know, let's not improve the
wheelchair, let's figure out how to restore, effectively, human balance.' And
that set me on a 10-year expedition into understanding this very subtle and,
frankly, from an engineering point of view, very difficult process of
understanding balance and walking.

We did it. We built a device called an iBOT, which literally allows a
disabled person to cruise down the hallway at eye level with their peers,
balanced on two wheels, the way their peers are balanced on their feet. It
allows them to go--step up and down curbs and literally walk up and down
stairs. And we spent so much time trying to understand, and finally,
succeeding in understanding how humans ambulate and balance and walk that we
realized we could take the same technology and apply it to the Segway and make
this technology available to the rest of the population.

GROSS: What was your first invention?

Mr. KAMEN: As a little kid, I was always frustrated that my mother, like
everybody's mother, would tell me to make my bed in the morning. And when
you're not much taller than the mattress, it takes a lot of trips running
completely around the bed to get the cover up on one side and then up an even
amount on the other side. And then, at night, you tend to muss it all up. So
it occurred to me that if I attached a pulley to each corner of the blanket
and tied the other two corners at the foot of the bed to the rails, then in
the morning, if the pulleys at the two top corners were properly organized, I
could just take a rope, pull it and the cover would immediately spring to its
normal condition and I, quote, "made the bed." So it dramatically reduced the
trauma of having to do that.

GROSS: Your mother must have thought you were crazy.

Mr. KAMEN: I had very, very understanding parents.

GROSS: So how long did you use this bed-making system?

Mr. KAMEN: Oh, my guess is until the novelty wore off. But I guess
my--the--what was good about that experience to me was the idea that you could
see a problem, think about solutions, some abstract idea, then with a couple
of tools, you could reduce that abstract idea to some physical reality that
solved the problem. It sort of gave me a sense through the rest of my life
that you look at the world, you find things that ought to be done differently
to get a better outcome, and then you use more sophisticated tools than I had
back then, like physics and engineering, and you reduce those abstract ideas
to real products that help real people have a better life.

GROSS: What was the first invention you sold?

Mr. KAMEN: The first invention I sold were--I guess today you'd call them
light organs or it was--as I was in high school, the world of semiconductors
was exploding. And instead of transistors being able only to produce small
amounts of power, for instance, to move the speakers in your headset, they
made huge advances to where they could control thousands of watts. I think,
personally, that was the birth of the disco as the result of the world of
semiconductors. But you could take the output of that little amplifier that
was running your speakers, run it through some of these kinds of new
transistors called Triax and SCRs and you could literally have the whole room,
all the power, lights in the room respond like music.

I recognized that kids would like to do that in bands in these early days, and
I started building equipment that would let them build light shows. I then
started using the same equipment to run much more sophisticated light shows
and, in fact, built the equipment that ran the Museum of Natural History
Hayden Planetarium light show pretty much when I was in high school and going
into college, and then started building boxes like that to run other museum
shows and industrial shows. And I would take the money that I got from
building these control boxes and just buy equipment with it, more electronic
equipment, oscilloscopes, etc., until I finally filled up my parents' basement
with a whole electronics shop.

GROSS: Hm.

Mr. KAMEN: And then my--at the time, my older brother was in medical school.
And he would come home on the weekends and he would start to complain about
his problems, like he was studying--he's an MD, PhD, and he was studying
pediatric--very serious pediatric problems, like leukemia in babies. And he'd
come home and he'd say, `You know, they make all this great equipment to
deliver drugs to patients in the hospital, but all these patients are, you
know, adults.' And suddenly, he had these great ideas on how to use new kinds
of drugs to treat these preemies or pediatric patients. But none of the
equipment could scale down to deliver these small volumes, and they couldn't
fit in Isolettes. And I suddenly started thinking that I was, you know,
wasting my time building what were then silly devices when I could think about
how to help him or make devices that might help these babies live.

GROSS: So why don't you just list some the things--some of the medical
inventions that you've come up with?

Mr. KAMEN: So in those early days, I started building very small pumps to
deliver drugs to babies. My brother used them while he was in medical school.
We got exposed to a great community of research hospitals--Harvard, Yale--and
as a result of getting feedback from different fields of medicine--hematology,
oncology--I started building a whole line of miniature wearable pumps,
eventually ending up building a wearable pump for diabetics to deliver their
insulin a number of years later. And that whole medical company we then sold.
We then went on to build other kinds of medical equipment, still in some ways,
for delivering or measuring fluid. We started building home portable
dialysis equipment, so people wouldn't have to spend two or three nights a
week in a hospital being dialyzed. And we build things like stents, these
devices made famous by the fact that Vice President Cheney has one of ours in
him, but a small device that goes into the artery that you can get there via a
catheter instead of by open heart surgery. And we built the iBOT. We've
already spoken about that, but that was a device to help the disabled
community regain essentially the same capability that people have if they can
balance and walk.

GROSS: Dean Kamen, thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. KAMEN: Thank you.

DAVIES: Dean Kamen spoke with Terry Gross in February. At that time, some
pedestrian and senior citizen groups expressed worry that the Segway scooter
could collide with walkers and cause injuries. The vehicles have been banned
on the sidewalks of San Francisco and La Miranda, a suburb of Los Angeles.
Thirty-six states have passed legislation to allow them. Other states are
leaving the decision up to individual cities and towns.

Coming up, "Thirteen." This is FRESH AIR.

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Review: New film "Thirteen"
DAVE DAVIES, host:

The new film "Thirteen" was co-written by 13-year-old Nikki Reed and
first-time director Catherine Hardwicke. It stars Reed, now 15, and Evan
Rachel Wood as two LA teens succumbing to peer pressure and bad influences.
Film critic David Edelstein has this review.

DAVID EDELSTEIN:

You wouldn't guess that "Thirteen" was an emotional workout just from its
plot. The film is a cautionary bad girl picture, a genre that's been around
since before the movies could talk. It's the stuff of laughable '50s juvenile
delinquent films and after-school specials. But this one has a way of
smashing through your defenses. Consider the opening: two girls sit on the
bed. They've both ingested drugs. One tells the other to hit her, hard.
Five or six blows later, both girls are bleeding and laughing hysterically,
and one, the blonde, Tracy, played by Evan Rachel Wood, is on the brink of
passing out. It's so horrible it's mesmerizing. It's one of the most bizarre
and original ways of dramatizing desensitization and self-abuse I've ever seen
and it's, like, minute one.

"Thirteen" jumps back in time four months to show us Tracy when she was still
a good girl, when she listened to her mom and didn't pierce herself or do
drugs or steal or have sex with boys. The instrument of change is Evie, the
other girl on the bed, the girl who people can't take their eyes off in the
school yard. Early in the film, Tracy and Evie size each other up and the
director, Catherine Hardwicke, gives us quick cuts of Evie's chains and studs
and Melrose Avenue adornments.

This LA temptress is played by Nikki Reed, who co-wrote "Thirteen" with
Hardwicke. The movie is based on Reed's own life, but the producers liked
Evan Rachel Wood for the good girl. They liked her willowy body and flawless
skin and cool blue eyes. And she does look more conventionally defilable.

"Thirteen" is the place where old melodramatic formulas and neorealist
techniques and up-to-the minute cultural details combine to make something
brutally effective. Tracy's divorced mom, Melanie, is played by Holly Hunter,
who turns helplessness into something so active she breaks your heart just by
looking at her daughter. She and Tracy just naturally hug and touch each
other, and it's when Tracy pulls back and wants a zone of privacy and starts
doing things to her body that her mom can't see, that's when the trouble
starts.

It sounds crudely melodramatic, but it's more complicated than good girl led
astray by bad girl. Evie's guardian, played by Deborah Kara Unger, is an
alcoholic who mutilates herself with plastic surgery. Evie seems to want a
real mom, maybe even Tracy's mom, to whom she reaches out while she's busy
driving a wedge between them. In this scene, Evie gets a ride with Tracy and
her mom to a hip LA boutique, and you can hear Tracy's overwhelming need to
peel away from her mother in every word.

(Soundbite of "Thirteen")

EVAN RACHEL WOOD: (As Tracy) Can you take us to Melrose?

Ms. HOLLY HUNTER: (As Melanie) Let's go.

(Soundbite of footsteps; car door opening; traffic)

Ms. HUNTER: Find some really cute platforms or maybe some of that body
glitter.

WOOD: No, no, Mom, it's OK. You can just drop us off and then go run and
errand or something.

Ms. HUNTER: Oh. OK. I guess that'll be all right. Maybe for an hour. I
have to talk to Evie's mom, though.

NIKKI REED: (As Evie) Brooke is just my guardian.

(Soundbite of traffic)

Ms. HUNTER: Great. Thank you.

(Soundbite of car door shutting)

Ms. HUNTER: Hey, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I haven't talked to Brooke
yet.

(Soundbite of car door shutting)

WOOD: Mom, please don't do this to me. This is the best day of my life.
I'll kill you if you embarrass me.

EDELSTEIN: The stakes here are insanely high for something so mundane. And
the director gives us quick cuts of billboards for clothes and accessories to
drive home the magnetic pull of all this teen-age girl stuff; stuff to buy or
shoplift, but mostly stuff to want.

The images, meanwhile, have their own truth. When Tracy and Evie and another
friend walk across the school grounds in their tight jeans with their hard
expressions that say, `We're so hot,' they're so buoyed up by the power of
their new bodies that they're practically weightless. Later, when Melanie
seizes her daughter and uncovers her self-inflicted razor cuts and lets out a
howl, "Thirteen" rises to the level of a primal scream. By then, the color
has leached out of the image and the camera is on top of the actors. You feel
you're down with them, fighting for breath.

What "Thirteen" doesn't show is how it can be important for kids to reject
their parents' values and find their own. On the other hand, Tracy is 13, too
young to be left to the mercy of the market. This isn't a great drama, but
it's a great piece of agitprop. Not lock up your daughters, exactly, but do
spot-checks for piercing.

DAVIES: David Edelstein is film critic for the online magazine Slate.

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

DAVIES: For Terry Gross, I'm Dave Davies.
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.