Shortly after the beginning of 2005 and my 48th year, Barry Schrader and I had the unexpected pleasure/honor/surprise of being asked to contribute to Susan Stone's National Public Radio biography on our friend and electronic music's first lady, Bebe Barron.

Early proteges of John Cage, Louis and Bebe Barron's influence on the escalation of electronic music is immeasurable. They were the first ever commissioned to write an all-electronic score to a major motion picture. MGM's 1956 release of FORBIDDEN PLANET was, for most of us, the first time we heard this stuff and that may still be true today as the soundtrack to that album is argueably the best selling original electronic music album ever released.

To read (and hear) Susan's expertly directed piece on the Barrons, Go here

"I wonder if she has even the remotest idea as to how much she influenced and just plain blew away a whole generation of grade school science fiction freaks and layed the seeds for quite a few of us who stored those sounds in our memory and waited for when the tools would become available so that we could try to imitate her pioneering work. I am so humbled." - John Duval


Bebe Barron, R.I.P.:

Fast-forwarding to 2008, and the unfortunate events which would be the last days of Bebe's life, Wendy Carlos, who was in the process of making arrangements to meet Bebe on a final trip home which unfortunately was never to occur, took it upon herself to take a series photographs of the Barron's old residence in the East Village, a gesture which touched Bebe deeply. A tasteful and thoughtfully prepared photo montage of a trip which never occured.

"It was a matter of great seredipity that learned the address of the Barron's NYC apartment early this year [2008] from a mutual friend Peter Grenader.....He'd had been a close friend of Bebe's, one of the last people in the EAMusic field to visit her before her untimely death. (Pete's description of the way they sat facing each other, chating away, with her gribbing his hand so earnestly, is an image I'll soon not forget)."

- Wendy Carlos

For Wendy's complete honorarium of Bebe, replete with the photos she took that rainy wintery day in the East Village of the Barron's apartment, go here

The last visit which Wendy speaks of was Valeintine's Day, 2008. She had been in the hospital some three weeks and returned home for what I think we all feared was her last visit. I brought her a stuffed animal, a little white bear holding a big red heart. The symbolism was deep and although it would be a few weeks before she passed away, I never visited her again. Selfishly, I didn't want that memory of her, I preferred to recall the spry woman who never really aged, who could still melt hearts with that smile of hers. But most important, she was lady and I needed to respect her dignity and was sure that she wouldn't have felt comfortable taking visitors as the weeks progressed. I've had a lot of guilt about this, but I feel I did the right thing, the way she would have preferred. We had many great times together and our mutual respect ran deep. Another visit was not required to punctuate that.

It was very early in the morning of April 20, 2008 when I received a call from her husband Leonard, his shaking voice an indication of the news which was to follow. Bebe was gone, dying peacefully in her sleep in the early hours of that morning. On a purely personal note, Bebe had taken the role of mother-elect after mine had passed two years before that and as much as I attempted to delay that void, I realized that morning I was in a large sense, alone. I posted the following on the SEAMUS and Matrixsynth lists:

"We have lost a bright little light and a dear friend. Bebe Barron has passed. She has capitivated us with her charm, her modesty and her enchanting smile and her memory will remain in our hearts, our art and our spirit forever"

I then made two calls - Barry, who had of course heard the news, and Mort Subotnick and Joan LaBarbara, who had not. I want to thank Mort for allowing me to express my emotion when I gave him this news. It was too a tough moment for me and while I held my own, I came real real close to losing it. But with that call I felt I had done my due diligence, yet there was one more call to make...

It was months until I was able to find Susan Stone, who had done that wonderful spot on NPR on Bebe and in return, Bebe had left a a similar spot on Susan. By April of 2008, some three years after her Barron piece, Susan had left her previous position at NPR and as she reported to me on our last conversation, had moved to Berlin. I made an attempt to have my contact information forwarded to her from the NPR national offices, but nothing came of it. Although given her vocation I was pretty confident that Susan had heard the news, I wouldn't rest until I could be sure.

The task at hand of locating her went on for months, but one evening I finally caught a scent I thought could be hopeful. I found a link, an S. Stone listed among a society of journalists on a German website. Taking my chances I sent them a simular request and to my delight received a letter from Susan the following day. We spoke to each other on the phone shortly afterward... another emotional call, but one I think we both wanted to have and if you ever find this page and get this far into it - Susan, thank you (and pardon my horrific writing).

My relationship with Bebe was in my view spectacular, but it would be a disservice when documenting the annals of her later years without mention of her long term friendship with Barry Schrader. Barry was an amazing ally and support to her for onward of 30 years and he made regular visits, about twice a month, for many of those. He was like a son and his commitment was unending to her last day. Befittingly, it was his honorarium which was picked up nationally as her official obit. Go here

On Barry Schrader:

first met Barry Schrader in the fall of 1975. I was a cocky young kid straight out of high school, pretty certain I was going to ball these Cal Arts guys over with my brilliance, much like I had done to the tribes of the Birmingham High School Braves. Needless to say, working with Barry over the next four years was an enlightening experience, not only in terms of music but the size of my shadow - long overdue lessons in both counts.

Shortly after meeting him, I presented the first electro-acoustic piece completed at CIA - a 12 minute hodge-podge of senseless sample and hold motifs inaptly entitled 'Van Dusen Green', which of course I was certain would rocket through the EAM circles like a EMP shockwave. This was the first time (of many) that Barry had to pull me back to terra firma, and in plain Irish rattled off the reasons the music made less sense than the title . I was crushed. He was stern, but never heartless and always quite constructive. Over time however I 'got it' and it was through this maturation that we formed a great respect for one another - a groove that I'm happy to say remains to this day.

Long gone are my college days, but Barry and I still get together about twice a month with the course of the evenings activities usually consisting of dinner, Starbucks, a trip to my flat where we listen to the latest additions to each other's EAM collection, followed by lengthy analysis of what we've just heard (in which we reach the same points of disagreement we did I my school days, every time). This parley's itself to a rather long conversation how the whole genre is going to hell in a hand basket in a hurry and then works its way around to admitting the pieces we had just played each other were nothing short of brilliant.
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