An Original, Constantly Surprising Artist.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: FEBRUARY 05, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 020501np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Never Let Me Down
Sect: News; Domestic
Time: 12:06

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

The first thing that interested me about Susan Miller's new family memoir was her portrait of her father, a man who loved jazz and hung out with jazz musicians. But what begins as a portrait of a hipster father turns into an examination of family secrets and how they shape family life.

Her new book, "Never Let Me Down," has been excerpted in Harper's and the literary magazine Granta. We invited Susan Miller to talk about the book and read an excerpt. Here's the opening of Never Let Me Down.

SUSAN MILLER, AUTHOR, "NEVER LET ME DOWN": One night at an hour that was normally my bedtime, I got all dressed up and my mother and father and I drove into New York, down to the Half-Note, the jazz club on Hudson Street. I was 13, maybe 14 -- just beginning teenage-hood, and had never gone anywhere that was nightlife.

I had heard jazz all my life -- on records or on the radio -- my father beating out time on the kitchen table, the steering wheel, letting out a breathy "yeah" when the music soared and flew. When they were cooking -- when they really swung -- it transported him. He was gone inside the music.

I couldn't go on this trip with him, but I could understand it. It seemed to me that anyone could, hearing that music -- Bird, Diz, Prez (ph), Sweets (ph), Lester, Al, Zoot (ph) -- it was my father's music, though he himself never played a note.

I knew the players -- who were about the only friends my parents had -- were musicians and their wives. When I was a little kid, I'd lie in bed listening to them talk their hip talk in the next room. I knew I was the only kid in Washington Heights to be overhearing words like "man" and "cat" and "groove." And jokes that were this irreverent and black. I knew they were cool and I loved it.

At the Half-Note that night, the three of us walked through the door and the owner appeared all excited to see my father and, in the middle of this smoky nightlife room, he kissed my hand. This was real life -- the center of something. We saw down. In front of us on the little stage were Jimmy Rushing (ph), a powerful singer, and two sax players -- Al Conan; Zoot Symms (ph) -- whom I'd known all my life.

And there was a whole room full of people slapping the tables, beating out time, breathing "yeah" at the great moments, shaking their heads, sometimes snapping their fingers, now and then bursting out with "play it man" or "sing it."

When the break came, Zoot sat down with us and ate a plate of lasagna or something and didn't say much except for these dry asides that were so funny I couldn't bear it -- too funny to laugh at. And there was my dad -- these men were his friends, his buddies. They liked the things about my father that I could like -- how funny he was, uncorny; how unsentimental; unafraid to be different from anyone else in the world; how he was unafraid to be on the edge.

As a child, I didn't know that my father and many of the musicians who sat with their wives in our living room eating nuts, and raisins out of cut-glass candy dishes were junkies.

GROSS: That's Susan Miller reading from her new memoir Never Let Me Down.

Susan, how did you find out that your father was a junkie?

MILLER: Well I found out, because when I was 21 years old, a senior in college, my dad and I were out to dinner together. And he was talking about, in the course of a conversation, some friends of his who had been addicts. And I, at that point in my life, knew that a number of his friends had been addicts, but I had never even begun to think that he had been one.

And he -- he was talking about how there aren't many old addicts in the world, and the reason for that, he said, is that they either overdose and die or they get too old to kind of make the scene that's involved in getting the drugs. And then he said, just in the next breath: "and that's what happened to me."

And then, he continues to talk about something else. And I just sat there and didn't really take it in. I sort of put it in the back of my mind, I guess. And as soon as I was back in the place I was living that evening, it just became quite clear to me that this was the truth, although a part of me was questioning: had I misheard him? Sort of deep inside I knew, no, this really was what had happened.

GROSS: I bet that explained a lot of family mysteries, and a lot of mysterious behavior within the family.

MILLER: Well, it did, although at first it was so overwhelming that I -- and I had no information. I had to talk to my mother the next day and try to find out, first of all, was it really true, and to get some sort of a story. Because from what he said, I had no idea what was involved -- how long, what -- you know, anything.

And she -- and then she was able to give me enough information for me to begin a long process of kind of reconstruction of our history.

GROSS: How did your father -- I want to back-track a little bit -- how did you father end up being such good friends with, you know, now famous jazz musicians like Zoot Symms and Al Coombs (ph) -- Stan Getz you mention as one of his friends.

MILLER: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Well, in a way I don't know the answer, of course, but -- in a sort of interpersonal level. But he was a really very funny man in a very kind of caustic way, which a lot of the musicians were. They were very funny guys, and a lot of those showbiz people -- but in -- you know, the jazz musicians especially -- this kind of hard-bitten, very funny humor which my father had.

He was very intelligent and he totally loved the music. And, he was just one of these people who I think people enjoyed being with. He -- so he managed to become real friends with people. I don't think he was just sort of a groupie or a hanger-on. He was really part of the sort of in -- in-ish or in-group, especially with these white musicians who were his real friends -- really good personal friends.

And then I think that because so many of them were junkies, that was also a further bond, shall we say, among them all.

GROSS: Your father loved jazz -- had many jazz musician friends -- but he made his living dressing store windows of ladies shops.

MILLER: Right.

GROSS: And I'm wondering what -- if you had any sense of what it was like for him to, you know, have all these friends who were living the jazz life while he's dressing windows for, you know, ladies dress shops?

MILLER: Well, I don't think it was really frustrating for him because it's -- you know, it's kind of hard. My father is an extremely complicated guy and -- I mean, I think everyone is complicated, but I -- I do find it hard to categorize him.

And I think he did not expect himself to achieve anything, you know, out of a kind of self-image problem. And at -- and so he enjoyed his friends, but he didn't sit there and say: "I wish I were up there playing drums, or --" And I think I would have known if he felt that way because he certainly talked about lots of things very openly.

He -- he kind of hated himself deep down in a lot of ways, and I -- I think that he -- he didn't -- he didn't feel like he wasn't living up to his potential or that sort of thing.

GROSS: Until your father confessed to you that he had been a heroin addict, the family in a way revolved around the secret of his addiction -- the secret which your mother knew, but was kept from you and your brother. What kind of mysterious behavior did -- did the heroin explain when you found out about it?

MILLER: Well, it explained some very basic things like: where was my father? You know -- like when I was a kid, he wasn't home much. And my mother was always saying he was working, but he'd be, you know, working at night. And he didn't work at night -- and where was he? And also, another problem for me was -- had been as a kid -- was, well, why are we so poor if he was working so much? I mean, we were like, you know, on the edge and this guy was out there working.

And so that -- that was one thing that immediately I began to understand. The other thing was just this pervasive depression and anger that was in the house all the time that I think, you know, exists in families anyway, but it -- the proportion of it didn't seem to fit into what was going on in the house. It was too much. And it certainly explained that part of it.

And also my father being kind of out of it quite a bit when I was a kid -- not really seeming tuned in.

GROSS: A lot of people really wish that they had a hipster parent -- an unconventional...

MILLER: Yeah.

GROSS: ... parent. Your father was a hipster. He was very unconventional. What were some of the kind of pain and pleasure of having a hipster father?

MILLER: Yeah, well that's a good question. Well, the pleasure was that I -- I always admired his -- well, he was very intelligent and I always admired his ability. He didn't finish high school, but he read all the time and he really thought for himself about a lot of things. So, even though that's sort of not a hipster quality, it -- his opinions about things were very sort of individualized, and I admired that tremendously.

And, he also made fun of everything in the world. I mean, nothing was sacred to him. And I loved that. You know, there was nobody that I had to respect -- that sort of thing. And that was the good part of it.

The bad part of it was that, you know, we never were part of any community we lived in. My parents had really little or nothing to do with these very kind of ordinary communities that we lived in. We weren't living in Greenwich Village or anything. We were really out there with everyone else, and there was no sense of us being knitted into any of the communities we lived in, or anyone ever understanding anything that was going on in my house. My friends -- I mean, we were just odd.

And because we were unhappy, it wasn't like "oh, it's great to be odd -- an odd family." But I did think it was great to be able to look at the world without all these kind of phony expectations and demands that other kids seemed to have.

GROSS: You -- you were pleased that your father, you know, didn't just kind of toe the line when it came to, like, you know, middle class values. On the other hand, there are things that he did that were socially unacceptable and that really troubled you, like, you say, he -- he was a man of socially unacceptable habits. He was fat. He picked his teeth. He burped. He farted. He blew his nose into the sink in the morning.

Phew -- you know, like...

MILLER: Yeah, right. No, he was like disgusting...

GROSS: ... who wants -- who wants this in public, so ...

MILLER: Yeah.

GROSS: ... what did you think -- that here was somebody who could, you know, burp and pass air in public, blow his nose into the sink, and like not think there was anything with wrong with that?

MILLER: Yeah, well -- a bit of a drag, you know. I was pretty interested in -- from the time I was young, I was interested in that world out there and what was real behavior and what wasn't. And he was not interested in that. And I wanted to figure out how to act and to get along in any situation. I didn't have his -- you know, what you could call self-confidence, which in another way, it's being oblivious to other people. I didn't have that.

And I found him, you know, physically repulsive a lot of the time. I mean, not just out of a sort of, you know, prissiness, but I mean he was a disgusting guy in a lot of ways. His habits were disgusting. He would violate your personal space all the time, you know -- come really close to you and poke you in the chest if you -- talking to you. And you couldn't get away. Like, I'd back away from him and he'd follow me until I'd be against the wall, you know.

He was an overwhelming kind of person. And yeah -- so it was -- wasn't like pleasant being in the room with him. In fact, I often hated it.

GROSS: My guest is Susan Miller. Her new family memoir is called Never Let Me Down. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

Back with Susan Miller, author of the new family memoir Never Let Me Down.

Now, you say that your father insisted that his addiction had no serious consequences for anyone.

MILLER: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: Obviously, it did. I mean, your family was poor. Your father wasn't home very much. Your mother was chronically depressed.

MILLER: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: I mean, there were -- there were real serious consequences for the family. How did he manage to miss that, do you think?

MILLER: Well, he was -- self-involved is -- I don't really think that that explains what the sort of psychological mechanism of his mind. But I think he just did not really know -- he had a very good imagination, but he didn't know how to get into the mind of other -- or the feelings of other people. It was like a lack of empathy.

You know, he wasn't like a sadistic monster or something, but he -- he was missing -- well, I think, you know, he was like a character-disorder person versus a neurotic person. I mean, he just -- he just didn't get it -- that what he did affected other people. He did things out of his own motivation for his own comfort.

In other words, he didn't leave our family and go off and live in a hotel room and shoot up all the time, because for him there was something important about staying with us. But I wouldn't say he stayed with us for our sake. He stayed with us for his sake.

GROSS: He died of liver cancer that was related to the heroin habit he used to have. When he was dying, there was a social worker who was asked -- who was working with him. And you say that she asked him -- the social worker asked him what he'd miss most when he died. And he said -- why don't you say what he said.

MILLER: Well, he said he'd miss his wife and kids, but what he'd really miss was the music. And then, he said the music's the only thing that's never let me down. And I -- I really -- at that point in our relationship, I just found that to be such a perfect summation, in a way, of who he was, because I do think that that was true -- that the music was really important to him and in a way saved him.

I mean, anything you love like that can save you. But here he was saying that in front of my mother who had, you know, never let him down in a sense -- had stayed with him all these years. And he -- it was like it didn't connect to him that this could hurt her, that he could say this.

So it wasn't so much what he was feeling that -- it wasn't -- it wasn't an evil thing to feel, but it was a very unfeeling thing to say it to her, in front of her.

GROSS: In a way, it sounds like your father really wasn't cut out to be a family man, although he enjoyed some aspects of it.

MILLER: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And you reach a certain age, and you understand that not everybody's cut out to have a family, but I'm sure you always regret it when one of those people not cut out for it happens to be your father.

MILLER: Yeah, right.

GROSS: So do you feel that on the one hand you like understand and -- understand what it was like for him? And on the other hand, really resent it?

MILLER: I don't really totally feel like I'll ever understand it. I don't feel like I have a real deep understanding and forgiveness and all of those things. It's more that I just, at this point, accept or try to -- my best to know who he was. And I don't any longer feel threatened by his lack of perception, you know, or his lack -- or my own sense that he -- he didn't see me as a separate person from him. That doesn't -- you know, he's dead and the book -- writing the book really helped with that.

So I don't really understand him, but I sort of know him in a way, and that's the best I can do with that.

GROSS: During your formative years, when your father was addicted and often, you know, lost in another world, your mother was often very depressed and barely able to cope. Your brother, who is a year and a half older than you, used to beat you up pretty badly on a regular basis...

MILLER: Yeah.

GROSS: ... and was -- part of -- part of his fantasy life was a series of, you know, like imaginary skits and sketches which required, you know, really hurting you.

LAUGHTER

MILLER: Yeah, right.

GROSS: And eventually he sexually abused you, too. And your parents, both of them really managed to remain oblivious to this in spite of the fact that you were pretty bruised a good deal of the time. Did you ever think about why you didn't just tell them about it and ask them to intervene?

MILLER: Well yeah, I did think about it. I -- I was absolutely convinced that they knew. I mean, it was impossible in my mind that they couldn't know, because it was the most blatant thing in my life, in my house. I mean, it was just this constant thing.

So, for them to now know was like: "how could you not know that, you know, the sky is blue?" It was that basic to me, that they had to know this. And it was a total shock to me to find out that they didn't.

So my sort of, you know, construction of this as a kid was, well, of course they knew, and that their decision was that my brother had a lot of problems and he wasn't doing well in school. He didn't have friends. I was doing well in school. I had friends. He was very, very angry. I wasn't angry -- a sort of I was well and he was sick. And if he needed to hit me, that I had to allow him to do that, because it might make him feel better.

And I had sort of like extra, you know, good stuff inside me that -- because I was healthy. And so I could sort of put it -- you know, I could take it. And you know, this was completely clear to me -- this was what was going on with everyone. I -- that was my grasp of it.

And in fact, you know, I think it was true. They -- my mother even now says: "well, I must have known." But she, you know, it was a sort of your classic case of incredible denial; that they -- my father was out of it. My mother was afraid of my brother, who could be a bit scary. And she is a pretty, sort of a timid person in a lot of ways.

I think she chose not to see what was going on because she didn't -- couldn't do anything about it. She -- and she couldn't face her own inability to act. So the easiest thing was to kind of say: "well, you know, he hits her some. You know, brothers and sisters fight." And that absolved her of a need to -- to take some action, which she was not capable of taking.

GROSS: Susan Miller's new memoir is called Never Let Me Down. She'll be back in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Back with Susan Miller. Her new book Never Let Me Down is a memoir about family secrets. Her father was a window dresser who loved jazz and hung out with jazz musicians. It wasn't until she was 21 that she learned her father also was addicted to heroin.

While her father was lost in his world and her mother was in denial, Susan's brother beat her up pretty regularly and sexually abused her. It amazed her that her father believed that his addiction had no consequences for the family.

Yeah -- one of the questions you ask in your book, which is I think a question everybody asks, whether they phrase it as succinctly or not: can you blame damaged people for their misdeeds?

MILLER: Yeah.

GROSS: So I mean, how much -- how much -- you've obviously thought about that question a lot. What's your answer to it?

MILLER: Well, I don't think there is a really good answer, although interestingly enough, I -- probably about six months ago, I happened to go to a conference on, I think the subject was domestic violence in Jewish women or in Jewish homes, or something, which isn't the kind of thing I normally go to, but I went with my mother.

And I wound up speaking to a rabbi -- a woman rabbi at the end of the conference, and she told me that there's some teaching by Maimonides (ph), I guess, about this whole issue of blame. If someone does you harm, are you required to forgive them? And she said that the -- the theory or the idea of this is: no, you're not.

You're not -- if someone wrongs you, you're not required to forgive them unless they apologize to you and even that is not enough. You still don't have to forgive them. The only time -- when you should forgive them is when they -- after they apologize, they then have to act differently towards you. And then, you can forgive them.

And that was very helpful for me to hear because there -- all of our lives we are kind of bombarded with this idea that, you know, you must forgive everything. And I don't think that's a very helpful idea. I think people become oppressed by that, into feeling, as I often did, that you're doing something wrong, even if you haven't done something wrong, just because you're mad at someone for doing something wrong to you.

But I -- I don't think that there's a -- a clear answer to how much people are to blame for their own limitations and how much they can get out of that.

GROSS: Did you ever get the apology and the change of behavior?

MILLER: No. And that's why that question -- her answer to that question was so important to me, because my problem with my father in the later years of my life was that he could not apologize in any way for what had happened. And he could not say: "what I did hurt you." He -- all he could say is: "this had nothing to do with you. It was my life and I had a really good time at that point in my life and..."

GROSS: He had a good time at that point in his life.

MILLER: Yes.

GROSS: Yeah.

MILLER: Yes -- he did -- you know, I -- that this was a great time in his life and why -- and what he wanted to do was tell me what fun he had had, and tell...

GROSS: Back when he was addicted.

MILLER: ... right -- and tell me all these interesting things that happened to him, which I'm sure were really interesting. But I couldn't listen to those without sort of, you know, obliterating my own self. So, I couldn't hear that, and he couldn't understand that.

So, we were at a real impasse about this.

GROSS: How did you first approach talking to your mother about all the secrets in your family? 'Cause your mother was -- was kind of in denial about it and very depressed during much of your childhood.

MILLER: Well I -- after my father mentioned this to me, I -- about his addiction, when we were out to dinner -- I asked my mother the next day. I said I think Dad just told me last night that he used to be a heroin addict. And my mother broke down and started crying and said "oh, he finally told you."

She -- she had, for reasons that are not really clear to me, had agreed or decided that he should be the one to tell me this, although I was 21 years old and she certainly could have decided to tell me herself, but she didn't. So, you know, sometimes I wonder if he never told me, would she have ever told me? But then she started to talk once it was -- like now it's permissible to speak. And she began to tell me what had happened, which was very sad to listen to because she had had -- she had a very sad story to tell of her own.

GROSS: You know, your mother has emerged from all of this as, you know, a speaker at feminist conferences and someone who helps -- I think leads self-help groups and things like that.

MILLER: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: So, it sounds like if she were in denial, she isn't any longer.

MILLER: Well, she's been in therapy in the last -- she was actually when I wrote the part of this that was published in Granta, she -- I gave it to her to read before it was published and it had an amazing effect on her. She -- she, like my father, is a very interesting person and she's -- in a way, she's a very timid person, but in another way, she's also very unafraid. And she -- it made her face -- I mean, I didn't know it was going to do this, but it -- it wound up causing her to face all these things that she had denied.

And she went off into therapy, which she's still in, and has made remarkable strides in trying to deal with the past, which she was always somebody who was good at pushing it aside. And she's kind of stopped doing it. It's really wonderful -- and she's 78. So.

GROSS: What does this say to you -- that there are so many people who, we're finding out now, because they're writing about it and they're talking about it -- so many people who are incest victims or who someone in their family beat them or psychologically abused them...

MILLER: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ... in some way. I mean, these stories are just so alarmingly common.

MILLER: I know. I know. It's amazing, isn't it? Especially -- what's really amazing is how few of these stories were told until just recently. I mean, it is like the floodgates opened. When I first started writing this, there were almost no memoirs.

I mean, this is all -- I searched for books that talked about really bad things -- memoirs, not novels -- that talked about, you know, all these things that you're saying. And, there really weren't any. There were only a couple of books, and I wound up going to Holocaust memoirs to try to find people writing about these things about guilt and blame and physical pain.

And now, there are so many of them. And I'm not really sure what's -- what's happened, but I -- you know, I think feminism has a lot to do with it. And you know, everybody's -- everybody's kind of telling the -- telling this stuff. And I don't know if we can look at that and say that it's rampant, or -- my guess is that it was just so forbidden to be discussed that there is this tremendous need to kind of get it out there now that we can talk about it.

And, you know, that people no longer -- I mean, the -- this kind of parental respect that I think was so powerful through the ages, has eroded, and people are able to tell these stories and not suffer for them the way they would have had to suffer for them, like 100 years ago.

GROSS: And that strikes you as a good thing?

MILLER: Yeah, I guess it does strike me as a good thing, because I feel like kids have suffered a lot, and not that this is the kind of thing that's going to stop kids from suffering, but I -- I think they'll realize that they're not alone.

GROSS: Has it helped you at all to know that you're not alone because there have been so many people confessing to abuse within the family? You know, confessing about how they were abused when they were children. Is that of any use to you in getting over the psychological after-effects of what happened in your family?

MILLER: I think it is, partly because I think that if it hadn't changed -- I mean, even if I'd written this exact book, but during the days of silence, so to speak, I think I would have -- I don't know if I ever would have gotten it published, but also I would have felt much more that I was telling things that people were finding incredibly shocking. You know, to -- to speak against one's family. And I -- there's at least a freedom to do that.

I -- whether it's, you know, in the societal sense, good or bad, I can't really say.

GROSS: My guest is Susan Miller. Her new family memoir is called Never Let Me Down. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

Back with Susan Miller, author of the new family memoir Never Let Me Down.

Your book opens with a quote from William Carlos Williams.

MILLER: Yeah.

GROSS: The quote is: "memory is a kind of accomplishment."

MILLER: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: What's the significance of that quote for you?

MILLER: Well, it's from this poem where he says that the descent back in -- the ascent back into memory is a kind of accomplishment. I think in that poem he's talking about getting older and just having lived is a kind of accomplishment.

But I think for me that that quote really talks about -- speaks to me on the level of making a story for my life, which I didn't have when I -- I was so confused as a kid about what was going on. And it was tremendously important for me always to try to understand what was happening, and I couldn't.

And when I finally found out about my father's addiction, I began to be able to make what I think of as a story of my life that made some sense. And that, to me, is -- is making memories that hang together and that is an accomplishment. It's kind -- I realize now it's sort of the project I was working on from the time I was a little kid, with success and failure.

GROSS: Explain to me more this -- the value for you of having, you know, what you describe as a coherent story of your life.

MILLER: What happened -- as a kid, like, things would just happen. And I suppose it was partly me, being somebody who wanted to understand what was going on between people. But I kept always coming up against these things that would just seem like: "wait," you know -- "I don't -- how can this fit with that?" You know, like: "why are we moving now?" You know, "so and so said such and such, and that doesn't seem to fit into that."

So I was always coming up against these blocks of, like, dead ends. And I think through reading books I also learned that there were ways that things do -- can make sense; that people's reactions to each other can follow a kind of -- not logic, but it's like an internal logic that works. And what was going on in my house never made any sense.

So this -- so to me, making a story meant making a self that I -- that I couldn't feel I was a person in some way without being able to reconstruct the story of myself and the people in my family in a way that -- where that sense became clear to me.

GROSS: You have, what, two children now?

MILLER: Yes, uh-huh.

GROSS: Did feeling like you were, you know, a little neglected when you were young -- that you had a father who was lost in music-land and addicted to heroin, and a mother who was depressed and a brother who beat you up -- did that make you feel like: "maybe I won't start a family." You know?

MILLER: Yeah.

GROSS: Maybe you feel these aren't the best thing.

MILLER: Right. Well I -- as a kid, I had this, you know, total -- I really decided I would never have children. I -- I don't even know how old I was when I thought that. I mean, I was pretty little, like six or seven. I said, you know, this is so -- being a kid is so hard and so horrible. And people are always saying how they love children. Well, you know, what kind of a joke is that? People, if they loved children, they wouldn't have them. This being a kid is a nightmare.

And you know, of course, I didn't realize that not all kids felt that way. I assumed everybody was walking around feeling this. And they just didn't talk about it. Then, I figured out later that maybe that wasn't true, and as I got older and older, I began to realize that. But it was a big decision for me to have a family. I didn't -- I didn't think I'd be capable of it. I was afraid to do it. I didn't want to -- do -- make the same mistakes.

And the way that I was able to do it was partly through my relationship with my husband, who's somebody who I really love a lot and think is really great. I could tell he would be a great parent. And also, as I got more confident in myself, I realized that maybe I could do it too. So, I took the chance and did it. And it's worked out quite well.

GROSS: Do you want your children to read your memoir?

MILLER: No, they're not allowed to. They're -- my son is almost 12. My daughter's almost 15. And they're -- they've both agreed not to read it. They know -- I've told -- what I've done is I've told them a lot of the things in it, so it's not like a big mystery. But that they can just read it when they're older. There are certainly things in it I'd rather they didn't read now.

GROSS: Think they'll try to sneak a copy -- read it in the bookstore? Read the reviews? I mean, you really can't prevent them from reading it.

MILLER: Well, I can't, although my daughter is less curious than my son. And she's the older one -- and my son, who's incredibly curious -- has heard me read part of it and I -- he's very sensitive. I think he doesn't want to sort of find out sad things about me right now. So, he even said: "Mom, I don't -- I don't really want to read this now." You know, now, maybe they will, but I -- I actually have a feeling that they'll put it off for a while.

GROSS: Susan Miller, I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

MILLER: Oh, my pleasure.

GROSS: Susan Miller's new memoir is called Never Let Me Down.

We're going to hear music by the late tenor saxophonist Zoot Symms, who was a friend of her father's and a favorite of hers. We'll hear Zoot Symms' composition "Hawthorne Nights." This may be his only recorded vocal.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "HAWTHORNE NIGHTS")

ZOOT SYMMS, SINGER/TENOR SAXOPHONIST, SINGING:
Way down inside
I heard there's laughin' and livin'
I'd like for once
To get as much as I'm givin'

When am I going to meet
Somebody sweet
Who could give me all the love
I want to give

And never stray
Make each day
Bright and gay
For as long as I live

And I'll be proud
To come from under that dark cloud

GROSS: Music from Zoot Symms' CD Hawthorne Nights. Coming up, a new CD featuring music from Ted Hawkins' final tour.

This is FRESH AIR.

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: Susan J. Miller
High: Writer Susan J. Miller talks about her new book "Never Let Me Down: A Memoir." Her story recounts how at the age of 21 years old, her whole sense of self was changed when her father revealed he had been a heroin addict for 15 years. Miller lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Excerpts from her memoir have appeared in Harper's and Granta. This is her first book.
Spec: Books; Authors; Women; Family; Drugs; Never Let Me Down
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 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: Never Let Me Down
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: FEBRUARY 05, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 020502NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Ted Hawkins Collections
Sect: News; Domestic
Time: 12:55

TERRY GROSS, HOST: Two new releases remind us of the immense talent of Ted Hawkins, who died three years ago of a stroke at the age of 59. The first is Rhino Records' "The Ted Hawkins Story: Suffer No More" -- a collection of home-made singles, previously-unreleased music, and a survey of songs Hawkins put on major labels.

The second new CD is "Ted Hawkins: The Final Tour" on Evidence Records. Our rock critic Ken Tucker has a review of this live album, recorded in Los Angeles in 1994.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "LADDER OF SUCCESS" FROM "TED HAWKINS: THE FINAL TOUR")

TED HAWKINS, SINGER, SINGING: This is a message
To all those
Who've been trying
To reach the top
Of the hill
On that ladder
Of success

You've got to know somebody
You've got to know somebody
You've got to find somebody
To take the wheel

KEN TUCKER, FRESH AIR COMMENTATOR: Ted Hawkins' song Ladder of Success is a perfect example of what an original, constantly surprising artist he was. Most folkie performers promote a quaint, insular idealism that has little connection with reality. Skepticism is seen as a form of cynicism that goes against the acoustic grain.

Yet here was Hawkins building a warm folk song around the cold idea that to make it, you "got to know somebody" -- that you have to have connections. This was, to say the least, inspiringly hard-headed, coming from a man who made most of his living sitting on a milk crate in Venice Beach, California, strumming solo while wearing a glove on his left hand so it wouldn't bleed, and hoping passers-by would fill up his guitar case with change.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, TED HAWKINS PERFORMING)

HAWKINS, SINGING: I had a strange conversation
My baby called me on the phone
She said that your next lover's lover's gonna be
The blues
Cause Daddy, I'm gonna be gone

They's gonna be
Dark as the night
And things just won't be
Going just right

TUCKER: The Rhino Records collection Suffer No More is a good survey of Hawkins' career, but it's the Evidence Records release, The Final Tour, that conveys the full range and soulfulness of Ted Hawkins. Profiles of Hawkins often alluded to a variety of problems, from mental breakdowns to a history of petty crime, and a stint on a chain gang.

Hawkins said his mother was an alcoholic, and I think that's a key to his personality one way or another. Certainly, I think his most powerful performance was of country music's greatest song about the lure of the bottle: Red Pierce's (ph) 1953 masterpiece "There Stands the Glass" -- a song that Hawkins invariably commenced with a mighty bellow that instantly got to the heart of alcoholic agony.

I think it should be played at the start of every meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, as a kind of admonitory anthem.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "THERE STANDS THE GLASS")

HAWKINS, SINGING: There stands the glass
That will ease all my pain
That will settle my brain
It's my first one today

There stands the glass
That will hide all my tears
That will drown all my fears
Brother, I'm on my way

I'm wondering where you are tonight
I'm wondering if you are all right
I'm wondering do you think of me
In my misery

There stands the glass...

TUCKER: Ted Hawkins was open to all sorts of music -- folk, country, the blues -- and in his vocal phrasing, the gospel soul of Sam Cook (ph) and Otis Redding. His lyrics had a simplicity that occasionally didn't transcend cliches, but he often put those cliches across as drama in performance, which is why I think this live album is his best showcase.

It was unemcumbered by the studio musicians that got in the way of a well-intentioned studio album like "The Next Hundred Years," put out by Geffen Records the year before he died.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "THE NEXT HUNDRED YEARS")

HAWKINS, SINGING: Good morning my darlin'
I'm telling you this
To let you know that I'm sorry you're sick

The tears of sorrow
Won't do you no good
I'd be your doctor
If only I could

What do you want from the liquor store?
Something sour or something sweet?
I'll buy you all that your belly can hold
You can be sure you won't suffer no more

I'll swim the ocean
Or the deepest canal
To get to you darlin'
Just to make well

There's no place on Earth
I wouldn't hasten to go
To cool the fever
This I want you to know

What do you want from the liquor store?

TUCKER: In the years before he died, Hawkins had achieved a measure of success. L.A. musicians like Michael Penn and John Doe (ph) had helped bring him to the attention to the big labels. But there was really no way to market an assiduously eclectic artist like this.

In the end, he was back on Venice Beach, singing in an increasingly ragged voice to pay the rent before his body gave out. What's left in his recordings is a fierce spirit that never gave out, whose bottomless passion already seems timeless and eternal.

GROSS: Ken Tucker is critic-at-large for Entertainment Weekly. He reviewed Ted Hawkins: The Final Tour on Evidence Records.

Dateline: Ken Tucker; Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest:
High: Rock Critic Ken Tucker reviews two new collections of singer Ted Hawkins, who died three years ago at the age of 59.
Spec: Music Industry; Ted Hawkins
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 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: Ted Hawkins Collections
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.