# The day Jazz great Max Roach flipped out: Live full video

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2019/03/10/the-day-jazz-great-max-roach-flipped-out-live-full-video/
- Published: 2019-03-10T11:26:35+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**I used to work at the New York Jazz Museum, just yards from the Old Studio 54.
The museum is long gone, but it had put the teenage me in a place not only to refine
a pre-existing interest in jazz but also to learn how to navigate celebrity. Essentially,
don’t be a pain in the ass, and make yourself useful. Good life lessons that have
withstood the test of time.**

So while meeting a dozen or so members of jazz royalty had prepared me a lot, it
hadn’t prepared me in 1999 when one of my writers called me. Between gigs getting
coffee for Dizzy Gillespie and dodging drunks at Studio 54, I’d moved to California
and become an editor of a men’s fashion magazine.

On the phone was my freelancer, a Rutgers law professor and jazz drummer himself.
He’d been dispatched to Roach’s house for an interview with a man who had not only
pulled down a MacArthur “genius grant” and landed in the DownBeat Hall of Fame but
had also been honored as a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and twice
won the Grand Prix du Disque. This, on top of his eight honorary doctorate degrees,
meant that, despite the fact that most people couldn’t name even three of his songs,
Roach was a giant in the world of music.

“Um, he’s not letting me up,” the freelancer said. Apparently, Roach wouldn’t buzz
open the door to let him upstairs to do the interview. The reason? “He wants to 
talk to you first.”

ON THE ONE HAND, BEING CALLED A MOTHERFUCKER BY A GENIUS WAS KIND OF COOL. ON THE
OTHER HAND, I WAS BEING CALLED A MOTHERFUCKER.

Maybe Roach wanted to chat about getting some friends of his featured in the same
issue. Or maybe the freelancer had irked him and, like Prince had once asked me,
maybe I could send someone whose clothes matched a little bit better.

“OK, I’ll give him a call,” I said.

I hung up and leaned back in my office chair. While it’s something you’re supposed
to be above admitting to, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that there was always a buzz
when touching the hem of greatness. Roach, who got started in life in North Carolina
on the edge of what’s called, no joke, the Great Dismal Swamp, had moved as a young
child with his family to Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. By 1934, when he would 
have been about 10, Roach was already playing drums. Less than 10 years later, he
was drumming with Duke Ellington.

I dialed and heard a phone ringing, then the voice of an older man.

“Mr. Roach? This is Eugene —”

“I WILL KICK YOUR MOTHERFUCKING ASS!”

I sputtered in the face of a fusillade of vituperation. This was a … moment. A Naomi
Campbell moment to be sure but a moment nonetheless where the first thing was to
remember that though no other grown man had ever spoken to me like this without 
sanction, Max Roach was not any other grown man. He was, without a doubt, MAX ROACH.

“LISTEN, WHATEVER THE FUCK YOUR NAME IS —” AND THEN HE DROPPED THE 100-MEGATON HOLLYWOOD
BOMB ON ME — “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”

The problem as he was laying it out for me had everything to do with his realization
that he was not appearing on our cover that month. The hotter-than-hot-at-the-time
Chris Rock was slated for the cover, and while we never promised covers to anyone
since anything could happen to make that a stupid move, there was no way we could
bump a Rock for a Roach.

But how to say that? And how to say it without sounding like a typical Hollywood
cheeseball?

“Mr. Roach, we’ve got a great photo shoot set up for you. I think Hugo Boss is slated
to dress you. And you’ll be in the same issue as the überhot Chris Rock,” I said,
sounding like a typical Hollywood cheeseball. “But we don’t decide on who’s going
to be on our cover until much later in the process.”

“Well, you’re going to _decide_ for me right _here_ and right _now_, you motherfucker.”

On the one hand, being called a motherfucker by a genius was kind of cool. On the
other hand, I was being called a motherfucker. And I was an editor in danger of 
losing an article that was tied into some jazz festival upsell.

“I’ll have to talk to our publisher,” I said, not so much lying but very definitely
saying something that maybe wasn’t true. “I’m sure I can swing it. In the meantime,
would you let my writer come up? I think you’ll dig each other. He’s a drummer as
well and —”

“Listen, whatever the fuck your name is —” and then he dropped the 100-megaton Hollywood
bomb on me — “do you know who I am?”

I was grinning now from ear to ear. It was very possibly the coolest time to ever
have said that and in the most genius way possible.

“Yes, sir, I do, and …” And then a perfect cherry on a perfect cake: The phone line
went dead. I waited a few minutes. I called the writer to update him, and then I
called Roach back. I don’t know why I didn’t just lie to him. Many in my position
would have done exactly that. But I wanted to _persuade_.

“Mr. Roach? Good news,” I said, having no idea what I was going to say. “I talked
to a few people upstairs, and I got your cover.” Letting what was supposed to feel
like triumph hang in the air for a beat, I added the kill stroke: “… I think.”

And not missing a beat, something he was actually famous for, Max Roach growled,“
You … _think _…,” right before the line went dead for the last time.

I never got that piece. In 2007, at age 83, Max Roach died, and not a month goes
by that I don’t think my life would be a lot better lived if I lived it more like
Max Roach. And _that_, for better or worse, is my Max Roach piece.

 

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