Read an Excerpt
chapter 1
I March Forth!
Brookline, Massachusetts, 1956, 4:15 p.m.
Merle Ivers finished up some household chores and turned to her real work of the day. Peter would be home from school soon; what music should she play for him today? She flipped through her record collection. A classical symphony, a selection of jazz standards, a Broadway show? Peter seemed to love them all as much as she did—and to appreciate them with an almost uncanny level of sophistication. In addition to music, his interests at this age included soccer and an intense preoccupation with the intricacies and nuances of human relationships. He was a small boy, but naturally active and athletic, charismatic and always well liked. And he liked the girls. It didn't hurt that he had a devastating set of what Merle had always thought of as "bedroom eyes."
Merle was open and encouraging of Peter and her daughter Ricki's interests and quirky turns of mind. She was also disciplined, at times strict, about ensuring that their minds and bodies were consistently stimulated, challenged, and engaged. She believed that children needed structure, but not because she was invested in either of her children conforming to societal norms. In a way, it was just the opposite: from her love of music she knew that structure provided the possibility for creative exploration. She felt that the right musical education would enable her children to learn this, and so she put great care into planning Peter's musical diet, carefully selecting just the right record to feed his mind and soul on any given day.
It was this core set of values, and her close relationships with her children, that had brought Merle'syoung family relatively unscathed through a set of very difficult years. Her first husband, Jordan Rose, was a doctor who had developed a rare cancer two years after Peter was born. They'd lived in Chicago until 1948, when the disease attacked his lungs and forced the family to relocate to Arizona, where his lungs could benefit from the clean dry air. He died a year later, a few months after Ricki's birth.
Ah, Guys and Dolls, Merle thought, sliding the show tune from the stack. Perfect. She held it, reconsidered, and returned it to its sleeve. Maybe today is a better day for jazz.
A widow at twenty-six with two young children in tow, Merle moved back in with her parents in Chicago. But she was an optimist, and she disciplined herself against despair. Only a few months after Jordan's death, she took a trip to Florida, where she met thirty-one-year-old Paul Isenstein, a former Bostonian who had retired to the bachelor's life after some early success in the textile business. Though perhaps not jazz's biggest fan—he played the reserved, conservative straight man to Merle's free spirit—Isenstein was a good man. And, most important, he was instantly and fervently Merle's biggest fan. Paul wanted to marry her immediately. And after getting to know him better, she was crazy for him, too. (The only thing she was not crazy for was his last name, which she found too provincial. She picked "Ivers" out of a phone book, and Paul, in his zealotry to win her over, took it on as his own.)
Nineteen-fifty—a good year for jazz, Merle thought, flipping through her records. She still had not decided what to play for Peter today.
Merle and the kids moved to Paul's apartment in Brookline, a suburb of Boston. A few years after they married, he set up his own successful business and soon moved the family into a proper house. Like his new wife, the children's education was always Paul's topmost concern.
Merle could not have been happier. Within this bubble of upper-middle-class safety and comfort, her maternal instincts took flight. She sent eight-year-old Peter and six-year-old Ricki to sleepaway camp in Maine. When Peter lost interest in recreational camping, Merle insisted he find another productive use of his time. He chose a lab-science camp. Later, when he tired of that, Merle insisted he find a job. That summer, at age fourteen, he worked at the zoo.
Paul Ivers, though by nature less demonstrative than Merle and by necessity less involved in the day-to-day parenting, was nonetheless a loving, attentive, and above all dependable father throughout Peter and Ricki's childhood years. No matter what professional responsibilities vied for his attention, he could be counted on to appear in the cheering section of any soccer game or school play.
Or, Merle mused, maybe today is a classical day? Mendelssohn or Mozart? Symphony or sonata?
Usually, choosing Peter's music was an almost meditative time for Merle. But today her mind was not totally at ease. A few weeks ago his fifth-grade teacher had called her in for a private conference. Swearing Merle to secrecy, the teacher pleaded with her to take Peter out of the public school system. If her advice were discovered it could mean losing her job, but she felt it would be the best thing Merle could ever do for her son. "There is no way I'm going to be able to keep him focused," she had said, "there is just not enough here to satisfy his thirst for knowledge."
Roxbury Latin was the oldest continuously running preparatory school in the country, and one of the most prestigious. The teacher felt certain that it was the only kind of environment in which Peter could truly flourish. Its entrance standards were extremely competitive, and for the last several years Harvard University had been administering aptitude tests that played a key role in the admissions process. Merle had brought both Ricki and Peter in for the test, and the results were supposed to arrive in the mail any day. Merle could frankly care less about the test per se, the status and prestige. She just wanted to provide the optimal educational environment for her kids, and she felt confident that she could get them into a good school irrespective of the results of one test.
Paul, on the other hand, saw performance on a test like this as a barometer for all future performance in life. A good score would reflect that Peter had what it took, for example, to inherit the business Paul had grown from nothing, manage it effectively, make it flourish, and provide for his family even better than Paul had been able to provide for his. Though Merle knew Paul's heart was in the right place, his anxiety over the impending test results had recently brought an edge of tension into their home.
Ah, yes, Merle thought. This is the one. Here we go. She drew the day's album gently out of its sleeve and blew on it lightly, clearing the dust. She fixed it in place on the player, set the needle down gently, and waited for the opening chords.
Moments later she heard Peter's footsteps tracking up the walk, through the door. When he entered the room all her worries evaporated, like ghosts exposed to daylight. His little face was so open yet so certain. Eyes voraciously curious, yet seeming to hold some profound hidden understanding. One look at him and she knew everything would be fine.
Then she realized that Peter himself did not seem totally fine, his mind appeared to be chewing on some concerns of its own. He didn't wait for her to ask what was wrong. He was worried, he told her, because he'd heard that the atomic bomb was coming and they were all going to be killed.
Merle wanted to reassure him but did not want to say something false or pat. It went against her nature and everything she believed about being a good parent. (The first and only time she had ever spanked Ricki was when, at age three, she told a lie. Peter had stood outside the house in protest, wailing, far more upset than Ricki herself.) But more important, he would see right through it. At ten, Peter had an unnervingly sharp eye for discerning falseness and authenticity. Platitudes would do nothing to calm him, but she had an idea of what would.
"Peter," Merle said. "What are you worried about? If the atomic bomb comes, we're all going to go. You won't be alone. If you go, I'm going, too. We'll all be together."
Peter focused his eyes and nodded slowly. Finally his mouth opened into a grin.
Later that afternoon, as mother and son chatted about his day to a soundtrack of jazz standards, Paul burst through the front door waving a piece of mail high in the air, his face lit up by a radiant smile.
"He's a genius!" Paul proclaimed. "Harvard says Peter is a genius!"
HEADLINES:
New York City, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, 1969
Mr. Ivers performed to a well-dressed Lincoln Center audience in what ap-peared to be quite a handsome pair of polka-dot pajamas and bunny-earedslippers.—New York Times, 1969
PETER JOHNSON, friend from Harvard
"He would show up and wear his pajamas and play. He was outside the box. He was very short, five-two maybe, but boy, he was a dynamo. So he would come out on stage looking like a little kid in his pajamas. And he looked like a little kid, too, if you see him in pictures. So he was just working with people's expectations, and showing them life and reality outside those expectations."
MERLE IVERS
"At Lincoln Center he was asked to play the harmonica as an opening act, and it turns out he has the flu, and he's in bed with a temperature, but Stockard was there and held his hand the whole day. She was very pretty. He said, 'Mom, I've got to go, I can't not go, I have to go.' I said, 'Well, I'll make you a deal, Peter. I'll fly you over, but you have to make a deal with me that you'll fly back with me on the last plane out of New York.' He appeared in his pajamas."
BUELL NEIDLINGER, close friend, collaborator, bass player
"All the antics grew once he got to LA, from drawing circles on his nipples to opening for the New York Dolls in Hollywood with Paul Lenart."
Hollywood, The Palladium, 1974
Peter Ivers made his concert debut opening the show [for the New York Dolls]. This physically small man with a lot of energy gave an amusing performance of lighthearted comedic tunes. Gyrating up and down, he pacified an expectant audience waiting for the headliners.—Billboard, 1976
PAUL LENART, musician, friend, and bandmate
"He played in diapers at this show, and he had a squirt gun in his diaper that he had gotten at a novelty shop, and it had a rubber penis on it that he put milk in, and he would shoot it. This was in LA. This was the Terminal Love band, and we opened for the New York Dolls. Iggy Pop was there, others were there, we were all hanging out backstage. I was like, What am I gonna wear, if he's wearing a diaper?!"
Los Angeles, Universal Amphitheatre, 1976
STOCKARD CHANNING, college girlfriend, actress
"He went out in his diaper opening for Fleetwood Mac. I was, like, what the fuck! I didn't have any idea what to do with it, but he was like an atom, he couldn't be broken down."
Peter Ivers filled the opening slot with a short set of hard rock plus harmonica. Ivers's stage manner was exaggerated but entertaining, the songs were distinctive and bright. "Weird" describes his effect best, probably too esoteric for the Fleetwood Mac crowd, which responded impolitely.—Variety, August 30, 1976
JELLO BIAFRA, musician, spoken-word artist, frontman for the Dead Kennedys
"Ha-Ha! [Playing in a diaper] is the kind of thing you would expect from a punk band. But number one, this was prepunk, and number two, when punk hit, his music was very different from that as well."
Los Angeles, New Wave Theatre, 1980
DURRIE PARKS, close friend, music producer
"One of my very favorite Peter Ivers memories was sitting with William Burroughs and Peter Ivers's cable show came on, the one he did in diapers. It was just a great moment. I was like, 'So, Bill, what do you think?' And he smiled."
NANCY DREW, close friend, early video/performance art patron
"Next to Andy Warhol's show, it was the most popular cable show. He and Peter were two of the most popular people."
HAROLD RAMIS, friend, comic, actor: National Lampoon, SNL, Stripes, Ghostbusters
"You could see it in his face, he had this kind of ironic but not hostile look. There was a lot of hostile irony at the time, especially coming from the National Lampoon and from New York, this kind of edgy irony. Peter was ironic without being cruel or critical, so you sort of felt kind of embraced by him."
DINAH CANCER, musician, frontwoman for 45 Grave
"Peter always asked, 'What is the meaning of life?' Asking a bunch of punk bands what the meaning of life is when they don't give a fuck about anything. I always tried to hide from him. I would get off the stage and he would run up and say, 'Hey, I want to ask you a question. What's the meaning of life?' I would say, 'I don't know! You tell me what the meaning of life is.' "
SPIT STIX, bassist for Fear
"Apparently John Belushi saw the episode where Peter comes up to Lee [Ving, Fear's frontman] and asks him what the meaning of life was. And then Lee says, 'To stay gay.' That's when John went, 'I want to meet these guys.' "
PETER IVERS INTERVIEWING LEE VING OF FREA ON NEW WAVE THEATRE:
Peter: What is the meaning of life?
Ving: The meaning of life is...the meaning of life is...to stay gay all the way.
Peter: Well, then, you have succeeded. Lee, what do you hate least in the world?
Ving: Not you.
STEVE MARTIN close friend (not to be confused with the famous actor and comedian)
"It's a fascinating detective story. Not Peter's death, but figuring out his life."
Ivers: Anyone else wanna take a crack at it...The meaning of life? Anyone?
Copyright © 2008 by Josh Frank
