I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t have survived success. Fame and fortune seems to have a terrible effect on some people, and I surely would have been one of them.

This may surprise some, but I was not a temperate person when I was younger. I had the restraint and judgment of a rabid cat. If there was any single thing that I did not do, it was because it was not offered. This was not a good attribute for a young musician in the sixties, a time when moderation was defined as maintaining consciousness.

I have known some very famous people, most of whom I met in the sixties when we were all young musicians. Some of them didn’t survive it. I wouldn’t say I have had any brushes with fame. Aside from a brief note in Downbeat magazine, a jazz periodical, I have managed to remain nearly invisible. I now find that it is my preferred state.

Why so many people are destroyed by fame is a difficult thing to puzzle out. Fame is probably what they had been striving for all along. I suppose that once having achieved it, the pressure to maintain it must be immense. I am not good with pressure. I freeze when asked if I want paper or plastic. Being required to produce an album every year would drive me right off the cliff.

It always feels like a judgment has been made when some poor person fails at success. I will read that they destroyed themselves or maybe that their demons ate them alive. I think that at each step, they took the only path open until there are finally no paths left. I don’t think we should be so hard on them when it was we who loved them to death. If you are ever momentarily stymied by the question, “paper of plastic?”, think what it would be like to try and hit a C6 every night. It is no wonder it killed her.