My Life with the Guitar by Eric Henderson
Posted by admin · Leave a Comment
Eric, Antonia and Segovia
I started playing guitar when I was six years old. As far back as I can remember I loved the sound and the shape of the instrument. I had been playing for three years, thanks to the inspiration of the Beatles, Elvis Presley and Ricky Nelson, when I had my first exposure to the music of Andres Segovia playing as the last act on the Ed Sullivan show. My mother woke me up and excitedly told me “This is the greatest guitarist in the world.” I was truly amazed that one person was making the instrument sound like a small orchestra of players. I guess the timing was fortuitous, because there were numerous things that featured guitar the way I had never noticed before. The release of ‘Classical Gas’ by Mason Williams was making me strongly aware of the nylon string or Spanish sounding guitar. Jimi Hendrix had just burst on the scene and along with Eric Clapton, showed how the guitar could be featured as an important virtuoso instrument and not just an accompaniment for singers.
I wanted more than ever to go to a higher level on the guitar. When I was nine, my father was introduced to Antonia Morales where we lived in Laguna Beach. Antonia was an accomplished flamenco guitarist and dancer. As a choreographer she worked in Hollywood with stars such as Rita Hayworth. Her strongest training was as a Spanish classical guitarist and she had studied with Aureo Herrero, probably the most important protégé of Andres Segovia. Through Herrero she became very close friends with Andres Segovia and it was this connection that was to lead to my opportunity to study privately with Maestro Segovia in Spain. When I was 12 years old, she introduced me to the Maestro after a concert in Los Angeles. I played a Bach prelude and a study by Fernando Sor study for him. I guess he was impressed enough with my technique to take an interest in my training; he invited me to study with him in Madrid if my parents could arrange for me to come to Spain.
My parents were everything an aspiring musician could ask for. Laguna Beach had a wonderful sense of community and a love of art. What my parents lacked in financial resources, the community of Laguna Beach more than made up for in support and a whole network of wonderful people rallied to help me. My supporters included people such as Lila Zali, the founder of Ballet Pacifica who was herself from the Balanchine School, and Barbara Rubinovich, the wife of the late Max Rubinovich who was an internationally renowned musician. Also people like Harriet Hayes of Hayes Jewelers and organizations such as the Seroptomist Club joined forces and created a scholarship fund for me so that I could afford to go to Spain. I would go to Spain, the first time being in 1971, to study for nine or ten months at a time, in the meantime writing letters to let my family and friends know how things were going. My father accompanied me for the first three months of my first trip and then Antonia Morales who was already back in Madrid during this period agreed to be my chaperone. I was, after all, only thirteen and there was neither e-mail or cells phones. The newspapers would relate to the community of Laguna my progress and events as they unfolded in Europe, such as studying with Andres Segovia, playing my first concert in Malaga, Spain at age 15, and signing my first contract with De Koos Concert Management at age 16.
I was to start my first European concert tour in the 1975-76 season and ultimately to do nine European tours in the next nine years. In these years I also did ten domestic tours as well. I had my struggles with loneliness, feeling cut off from family and loved ones as well as from people my own age. In the few months I was able to return to Laguna each year, I wanted to resume surfing, dating girls and hanging out with my peers and just being a normal guy. Sometimes I felt very alienated from family and friends because I became so used to living in Europe which was my real base of operation. I felt that I had less and less in common with old school friends, and as I had to practice at least 5 hours a day I had little time to hang out and socialize. I could go into all kinds of cases and examples of my rebellious acts and the stages I went through. I prefer not to risk sounding like just another child prodigy who couldn’t go home again, so let it suffice for me to say I had my share of wild times and partying, I made more than my share of mistakes, and l was as self-centered as someone who has a taste of money and fame before they are mature enough to handle it. Sometimes I feel like I could look up the word regret and see my photo next to the definition.
As I started to grow older and mature a bit, I realized that I needed to start giving something back in the form of teaching and writing, starting with technical studies and eventually moving into serious compositions to enlarge the repertoire of the guitar. I signed a recording contract with JVC music in 1997 and did a 58 concert tour in the US to support my CD ‘Faces’. I had already previously recorded two solo Spanish guitar albums and I thought that I would be very happy if I could play as part of a band. Laguna Beach has a network of amazing musicians and along with some great LA session players that I met through my bassist Alan Dermot, I was able to form an ensemble from whom I learned quite a bit. After a couple of years I wanted to learn more about composing and arranging and really hone my skills as a composer of classical music.
I also had the opportunity through a former student to provide curriculum for a guitar academy that he had started. This got me writing repertoire for guitar ensembles and teaching a lot, especially children. I enjoyed this very much and learned a great deal, probably more than my students at times. I started more and more to miss the challenge and edginess of doing concerts and recitals. I was starting to feel that if I didn’t really go for it and try to become the best possible guitarist, I would regret it deeply. So I started preparing my repertoire and began to arrange a network of concerts throughout the country. This was not as easy as I had envisioned because I had been out of the circuit for awhile. But ultimately I was able to arrange a series of recitals and concerts throughout the country, thanks to Jeff Stewart who took it upon himself to create a website for me and to maintain it all these years. Jeff, a longtime friend from Laguna, has also become my business manager.
In 2002 I played a Sunday afternoon recital in Carlsbad, CA and was later on that week to embark on the tour. I was in the best shape that I could have been at the time, my program was ready and I thought, ‘all right, let’s do this’. After the concert, at the reception I started to feel incredible chills. There was a fire in the fireplace and I looked at it and sat so close that it felt as if my shirt would catch on fire, I was that desperate to get warm. My family and friends noted that my coloring was ashen grey. I thought I must be coming down with the flu; by the next evening I was extremely sick. My right arm felt like it had a bad sprain or bruise, so I went to Scripps Hospital where after waiting for a long time to be examined, a doctor came in and told me I probably just had the flu and a sprain from playing too hard. I went home but by the next day I was much worse and I went to another hospital, Tri-city Hospital in San Diego County, in the early evening, this being the third day I had felt bad. A doctor, Dr. Lawrence McCarthy, happened to be walking through the lobby as I entered. For some reason I took him as somebody who might admit me, although he was really just there for a visit. He took one look at me and my arm and immediately knew what the problem was. I had necrotizing fasciitis, or ‘flesh-eating bacteria’.
Thank God Dr. McCarthy had dealt with more than 30 cases of this and was one of the few people in the country familiar with this illness and its progression. Thanks to his care and to Tri-city Hospital as well as people’s prayers I am sure, after about 5 weeks of intensive care and painful skin grafts I was released and miraculously there was no permanent damage to my right arm or hand other than severe scarring and considerable pain. When I was first admitted there was very little hope that I would even survive, since I had gone too long before the bacteria was recognized and my major organs were close to shutting down. At first there was even a question of them amputating my right arm, but my family refused to allow that to occur. I had no say at the time because I was already unconscious and was to remain so for 9 days.
I was initially in denial about having to cancel the whole tour, thinking that maybe I could do the second half of it. After all, I thought, I could wear a bandage and long sleeve shirts. But this wasn’t even remotely possible and I finally had to accept that it might be quite a while, maybe even years, before I could embark upon another tour. I went through all kinds of depression, I was getting older, and I thought that I might never have a chance again. Then a wonderful thing happened. Laguna Beach rallied again to my support and along with numerous people in the community such as Wendy Potter, Barbara Painter, Nick Hernandez, Sr., Mark DePalma, Javier Sosa, and Sheldon Abbott, the two bands, ‘Common Sense’ and ‘Missiles of October’ and guitarist Bob Hawkins organized a fund raiser at Seven Degrees to raise money for my convalescence and rehab. The town came out in force to support me once again, and I was overwhelmed and touched with the graciousness and generosity that Laguna showed to me.
It has been a long road to get back on the stage again, and while I have done a number of isolated appearances and concerts over the past few years, most of my time has been spent seriously practicing, composing and teaching. Along with my best student, Maximilliano Ponzone, I began producing a series of instructional and performance DVD’s. Max and some of my other close friends such as Bob Johnson and Michael Fowler encouraged me to start playing concerts again, starting with a concert at Thatcher School in Ojai, then three concerts in Laguna Beach, one at the University of Tulsa in Tulsa, OK. and several more scheduled for 2010, which I will announce soon. Thanks to Shane Fair who recorded me and to Randy Rusk who did a beautiful job mastering my work, I have just released my 7th recording, ‘Homage’, a collection of Spanish works and three original compositions as well as covers of work by Hendrix and the Rolling Stones. I was also able to produce with Maximilliano Ponzone and Reuben Kustanovich, a brilliant young film editor from South Africa, a performance DVD also called ‘Homage’.
The birth of my son, John, has given me a whole new reason to want to be excellent at this craft and to pass something on to another generation. My wife, Virginia, has shown me what unconditional love is, she has more than anyone given order and sense to my music, by helping me to engrave and print my compositions and studies. She has stuck by me through some pretty trying times. So has my home town, Laguna Beach. My family, friends and community have shown me grace, support and love. These things have inspired me as an artist to become more and more a grateful servant. I know daily that I am the luckiest person alive.
Moonlight Sonata was composed by Ludwig van Beethoven.