On the Road and Off the Record with Leonard Bernstein

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"Leonard Bernstein reeked of cheap cologne and obviously hadn't showered, shaved, or slept in a while. When he greeted his new assistant with, "What are you drinking?" the hapless hireling was certain that the maestro must be drunk as well. Charlie Harmon was hired to manage the day-to-day details of Bernstein's life. There was one additional responsibility: make sure Bernstein met the deadline for an opera commission. But things kept getting in the way: the centenary of Igor Stravinsky, intestinal parasites picked up in Mexico, teaching all summer in Los Angeles, a baker's dozen of young men, plus depression, exhaustion, insomnia, and cutthroat games of anagrams. Was the opera ever written? For four years, Charlie saw Bernstein every day--as his social director, gatekeeper, valet, music copyist, and itinerant orchestra librarian. He packed (and unpacked) Bernstein's umpteen pieces of luggage; got the Maestro to his concerts; kept him occupied while changing planes in Zurich, Anchorage, Tokyo, or Madrid, and learned how to make small talk with mayors, ambassadors, a chancellor, a queen, and a Hollywood legend or two. How could anyone absorb all those people and places? Because there was music: late-night piano duets, or the Maestro's command to accompany an audition, and, by the way, the greatest orchestras in the world. Charlie did it, and this is what it was like, told for the first time."-- Dust jacket