Alex and Jamie Bernstein

quality programming and seduced the entire country. No matter how many times people tell you stories about what music means, forget them. Stories aren't what music means about at all. Music is never about anything. Music just is Music is notes, beautiful notes, and songs put together in such a way that we get pleasure out of listening to them. That's all there is too. Bernstein was a masterful teacher, explaining classical music with a passion and clarity that couldn't help

but influence an entire generation of musicians and artists. In those days, there were far fewer celebrities, and Bernstein was one of the biggest. He wore it well, taking his seat at the piano at the center of the party. He really enjoyed the public. Leonard Bernstein he loved and he loved being famous, and he loved meeting everybody in the world and in fancy hotels and flying first class. And he'd take us along and share it with us,

like isn't this cool. Bernstein was a musician, a conductor, a teacher, and a composer of classical music as well as Broadway musicals. He was also a father. I'm the Boss. Bernstein and his wife Felicia had three children, Jamie, Alexander, and Nina, and while they knew him in the tucks and Tales, they also knew him as the dad who loved games. He was a killer at Anagram's the word games you might have no idea, and always up for

tennis or squash or skiing or touch football. Two of Bernstein's children, Jamie and Alexander, spoke with me about their legendary father and what it was like to grow up with people like Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins as regular house guests. When we were really little, Alexander and I used to share a bedroom when we were like, you know,

really little. And we lived in the Osbourne, which is that grand old building, and Alexander and I slept you know, at sort of right angles to each other in this bedroom, and we would go to sleep listening to the grown ups carrying on downstairs. Is what we fell asleep to, the noise of the you know, the laughing and the roaring around the piano, singing, speaking of the glasses, and the smell of the cigarette smoke walking up the stairs. We could not wait to be grown ups because obviously

all grown ups did was have fun. That's interesting, That's how it seemed to us. And it seemed like our dad certainly had fun when he was working too. So we never saw anything that resembled drudgery, which is probably be a thing that most kids perceive in their working parents. You know what about your mother? Was your mother someone who was his companion and she was along for the ride and all of it and loving it. Or was she someone who was sitting in a room going when

is it going to stop? He's the energizer bunny and the Martini in his hand and a pell mell in the other. Scotch not Martin's Balentine's beer, I don't know, and she had a Chesterfield vodka and the other. But your mother was his trusted companion. She was she was in. She was all in. She was all in, and I think it drove her crazy every bit as much as she loved it all. She was very social. Who was from and where did they meet? They met at a party given by Claudio? And who was her teacher? Because

who was studying? She had told her parents that she was coming to New York to study piano, but she really wanted to be an actress, so she came. She's a beautiful woman, and she was beautiful, very beautiful. So she had this understanding with all that she would be sort of studying with him, But meanwhile she was studying with my parents. Now make this sound of the piano in his background were like gotta make parents Now in exact America, I think it was very much like that.

It was and the legend has it that our mothers sat at his feet and fed him shrimps one by one. That was the beginning of the Roman. Yeah, yeah, not around she might have been doing that and they got engaged. But where she added in his career then? So he had already had his big debut with the New York Philharmonic, because that was where he filled in for He filled in the a ling Bruno Valter, as he's always referred

to in that circumstance. I thought his first name was ailing anyway, So this must have been like maybe four or five years later. So he was riding high, but he was not yet. That'll be a name by stay in a hotel in from I love good names for hotels. I'm going to stay in a hotel under the name e h. Naming Bruno is the name Woe, and so

Bruno was that. That was November four, good afternoon, United States Rubber Company again invite you to Carnegie Hall to hear a concert of the New York Philarmonic Symphony Orchestra. Bruno Voter, who was to have conducted this afternoon is ill, and his place will be taken by the young American born assistant conductor of the Philharmonic Symphony, Leonard Bernstein. And he had to get up there on a moment's note.

And he'd been up all night the night before because he had had a premier of a song cycle of his cult I Hate Music, and it had premiered the night before, so of course it was a party with a town hall and and it was very well received. Then of course there was a party afterwards, and they were up all the live long night. And at the time, you know, our dad was living in Carnegie Hall in those little apartments they used to have at the top.

So he gets back to Carnegie Hall at you know, five in the morning and passes out, and then like an hour and a half later, the phone rings and it's Bruno Zerato of the New York Philharmonic saying, this is a kid. You have to go on this afternoon. And it was on the radio as a national broadcast, which was why it was such a big deal. Then it burns. Dan has come out on the platform. It was highly covered in the press, probably because it was the middle of the war and everybody needed a feel

good story. American boy makes good kind of thing. So one guy said, it's like a shoe string catch in center field. Make it. You're you're a hero, Muffett and you're a dope. Bernstein made it. Did he ever reflect on that to you, meaning when people have that kind of debut. He came up that night and everything changed. After that he pretty much knew that it was a sort of Cinderella tale and that he just got this

unbelievable lucky break. Yeah, and did he believe was it ever discussed even by your mother or people like that? Did your father realize he must have that his sexuality and that his his his good looks were as much a part of his talent as anything else. I think

there's no doubt of that there. And I he played it probably from high school on, you know, and as soon as he started playing the piano and knew he had this incredible talent and could play at parties and get all his attention and he had a meeting out of his hands, Oh my god, and U of the hand. Yeah, but he was still a little geeky. I mean the pictures of him with the Philharmonic after the debut, where he's all exhausted and tousled and sweaty, he actually looks

like like a bar mitzvah. Boy. It looks a little funny, um and it. And I think he kind of grew into his groovy nous over the subsequent years. So your father he had three children over ten years. Yeah, And and what was that like for him? In terms of were there, did he have certain kind of rules in terms of how he protected you from the public and the schools you went to and the way you lived your life, or was he just very lucy goose. You know, I would say that he was not a mother charge.

He was the one who really designed the way our lives went on a day to day basis. He was busy being the maestro, and then he would come home and play with us and hang out and have fun and have fun. But he was not really the designer of the domestic scene. He was a great time. He was home. He was really home, you know, he didn't have an office to go to. And when aware of who your father was, you know, you when you're growing up,

your family is just your family. You have no no objectivity about it, and your parents are just your parents, and you don't really think about how different they might be from the others until you get older. At some point when we were pretty young, there was an episode of The flint Stones The time is it Betty, It's temis to nine, Betty and Wilma, We're gonna go to the holly Rock Bowl. I love to watch Leonard Burnstone, conductor and The first thing on the program is at

gorgeous Symphony by Rocky Man. Enough, that's when we knew really hit the big time. And how old were your kids, little kids like you know, nine and six even less? Was there a downside to what did you feel like? There were things that were tough for you with him. Looking back on it now or when we got older, probably look back and think about some downsides. But at the time it really didn't seem so bad at all. It were really little. It was just a lark that I I often try to think back to come on,

you know, there must have been some shadows. But but we had a pretty fantastic early childhood. It was. It was kind of wonderful. He's not some tortured introspective. He was a happy guy and he was a celebrity. He was he was. But but back in those early days of our family life, um, that was overshadowed by the joy and the happiness, the business and the family life.

And from any he kept that from you. I'll tell you for in my memory, the moment when it changed was November twenty nine, sixty three, the day JFK was assassinated. That was when the shadow fell over and and life became sort of real. Up until that point, you know, grown ups just had fun as far as we could perceive. And then that day we saw our parents fall apart. They were crying because they were friends of the Kennedys. They had been to the White House, they had had dinner,

just the four of them. Imagine, they had been centerpieces of Kennedy's cultural programming in the White They could not have been more connected to the Kennedy administration and everything that it stood for. So on that day when when he was assassinated, our parents just fell apart, and so did the whole rest of the family and all their friends. And they pulled down the shades and sat around crying

all day and just watch TV. Now we could perceive that there were shadows and that there were ups and downs that wasn't visible to us. The world itself can affect people psychologically. What about your mom in terms of her music appreciation. I mean, she studied the piano, but did she go on to have any kind of a serious career even or in her young years when she was with a raw did she play? Did she study? Once she met in marriage her father, did all that

stop her piano playing stopped. She would play sometimes at home, and quite beautifully, but she wasn't as passionate about it, no passionate about her acting. She kept at that sometimes she would And what were some of the things she was working on during her course? She did a lot of early television Playhouse ninety and Crafts Theater and all those live dramas that they had in early television. She did a lot of that and a lot of stage work.

Did that stop at some point? It kind of receded as she became Mrs Maestro and a mom, which was a double job that could keep anybody, of course, And was she generally happy to do those things or did she have a voice? Because it's interesting to me to have someone who is in the world of music herself. She was a studied with a raw a serious opportunity there. She had aspirations about music and acting. And did she

miss those things? Did she ever say, gosh if I only did she have a little bit of a wistfulness about she was pretty ambivalent about it? Yeah she did, And she didn't really talk a lot about her inner self. When she did talking about a little bit was that she had some stage fright issues, and so when she started performing less in public, she would say that she was relieved and and that being you know this, this Mrs Bernstein persona was a way of not having to

confront her fears about performing. But I think you know anybody who has performed as a part of them that still wants to perform. But she knew that that, like it was just going to be too hard to have these, you know, two rampant egos in the household. Probably a good call coming up more about Bernstein's early years in Massachusetts and his final concert at Tanglewood, which his brother described as Lenny coming home to die. H. This is

Alec Baldwin you're listening to. Here's the thing. I'm talking with two of Leonard Bernstein's children, Jamie and Alexander. I see someone like your dad who sounds very childlike did the Young People's concerts, father faun and joy and family and love bursting with love. Leonard Bernstein is someone to me who when he's on the podium, love is just

shooting out of him like a rainbow. Love of this and love of that, and love of life, and love of sex, and love of sound, and love of women and love of beauty, and I wonder was it because as the result of his classical training, did he not have enough childhood? His childhood was uh, not about music. He was he was. He was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and then shortly thereafter they moved to the Boston area. First they lived in Roxbury, they moved around. He was

a hair product salesman. He was a salesman, and his mom was she musical. How did the music get into his life? Well, here's the thing. There was this aunt Clara, who moved to Florida, and so she sent all her furniture over to her brother Sam's house, and along with all the couches and break fronts arrived this upright piano. Our dad was ten years old. The piano got hauled into the house and as our father told it, he touched the piano and that was it. He knew it's

one of those stories. And he taught himself theory. He just play the piano. He figured he could. He could figure it all out in the modern breup. And the thing about his dad, Sam Bernstein, is that Sam, you know, it was a depression, but Sam was very proud that he was able to tide his family over the depression because he had this very successful beauty supply business to Samuel J. Bernstein Hair Company in Boston. It's Bernstein was the slogan, and he had the New England franchise for

the Frederick's Permanent Wave machine. Even a depression, there's two things you don't let go of, booze and vanity, and all those women would go and be attached to that, that machine that looks like Bride of Frankenstein. Now they were all doing it. So they got through the depression. And Sam was so proud that he was able to pass the Samuel J. Bernstein Hair Company along to his eldest son to run. And of course Lenny had no intention of running the Samuel J. Bernstein Hair Company in Boston.

It's Bernstein. And it was a real problem between had a great hat of hair, yes he did, had of hair. And then what ham Sam was not going to let him be uh kletzmer musician, you know, because he can't get weddings and funerals. And that was it, you know, that's what a musician does. In the old country, that a musician was a beggar, a homeless guy who went from stettle to Stettle playing the fiddle and getting a few copex at the wedding, you call out a living.

So what happened? So little by little it became clear that he was immensely talented at this and it went to the Boston Latin School and then to Harvard. And he gets to Harvard to study what music just no, they had no music department. No music department. You couldn't major in it. So he was he a literature guy. She was born in eighteen. So he's there, you know, class of thirty. No music department at Harvard. There and then just immediately prior to the war not and then

when he leaves Harvard, where does he go. He goes to Curtis Curtis where he goes to the next level. He wasn't. Curtis is where the music at Harvard, he's writing music, he's putting on shows constantly. Curtis is the real temple of musical study that he enters. This is the real formalizing of his music legic. And he studies with Fritz Reiner, you know, studies conducting big level here level. And it was it was tough. He was very lonely. It was it was a tough year or two for him.

At Curtis, he's there for how long? A little over a year? I think, then what happens a long time? And then he came to New York desperate to find work. He was ready to hit New York and do what he started. He wrote arrangements, arrangements and stuff under an assumed name Lenny Amber. He arranged orn at Coleman Charts. He did all sorts of weird things. He did, Uh didn't you do? Like a four hands version of ill slone Michico. For Aaron Copeland was the big thing he

got to know Harriic Copeland. That happen that he was still in college when he met Aaron Harvard or Curtis Harvard. So at Harvard he meets Copeland under what circumstances, Because if he's not in a music program, how does he rub shoulders with? I think he gets invited to. He came to New York for the weekend. He was invited to be seeking out and sniffing out the musical world, even though it's at Harvard next to Aaron, and they

get to know each other. And it turned out to be Aaron's birthday and Aaron invited our dad back to his loft for the party. Clara ships the piano to the house. That's that's O moment number one. He gets seated next to Copeland moment number two, and then goes to the birthday party and plays Copeland's piano variations in front of the whole crowd, which our dad was in the habit of doing and clearing rooms because it's a

very gnarly piece. And so he said, are you sure you want me to play it at this party because it usually clears the room, And Aaron said, not at this party. And he played it and didn't clear the room. He did not clear that runs. Yeah, it's all of Copeland's contemporaries, and he plays, and a friendship and relationship with Copeland commences there. And other than I would say probably as much, if not more than Slatkin, your father was one of the great interpreters of Copeland. I mean

that the two of them are my two favorites. Bernstein and Slatkin are my two favorite Copeland issers. And then what is the quick series of steps that gets them to the associate directorship of the Philharmonic. I think an introduction to Kusowitski going to Tanglewood conducting a tangle She was a guest conductor of Tanglewood. He knows he's a student student conductor. Tang had just been invented by Kusowitski.

And and our dad was in that first class. And and so Kuzowitski is the one who builds tangle would he is? She he's the music directors, the v s O who oversees the construction of that. What are some of your best memories of your dad there? What would you do? Remember? What was this? If you will go ahead, give me give me here you're laughing. Were because our dad loved to go to Tanglewood so much his entire life. Every time he went up there, it was like he

would be rejuvenated, he would turn into a kid. Again. It's a holy place. It's a holy place. And what he really loved was being with all those kids. Say that again, that that the Berkshires is a holy place. Your father loved it there. Time we both worked at Tanglewood, what did you do it over a few more years than we were guides? We were guides, which was it's a fancy name for just doing anything that they need to be done. But um, you know, you manned the

gates and you show people around. That was the guide part. Sometimes there would be tours, but and also you would extend backstage and helped the artists and move them around and picked them up at the airport and stuff like that. And it was just heaven to be up there for a summer. And there was also this sense, I think our dad had it from the very beginning that you know, everybody was sort of out in this beautiful weather, in this beautiful lace with all these fun people, and there

would be Shenanigan's. We just fell right into the Shenanigan's sensibility of the place that you know, it was just fun and everybody was partying all night and and and you having romances and and it's funny you say that, because it is probably one of the two or three most romantic places I've ever been. You mean, you can

go for those people listening who don't know. The Tanglewood is in the Berkshires in Massachusetts and it's the it's the summer residency of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and you go up there to Lennox massive piece of land and it's a massive tract of land and in that way, in a good way that you can talk about going somewhere with someone and driving that decompressing road trip that as you drive and drive and get closer and closer,

you just feel your your body relaxing. And then you get to the excitement of going to Tanglewood and you go and you get your your basket and your food and your wine. That's the real fun is to be out on the law. The star. The lawn is even better in a way if you've got the basket and the girl and the wine or who whatever your preferences there.

And I think I've never seen more people who are getting it right, you know, I mean in terms of having a lovely evening and if they get smashed on top of it, you know, I guess what I'm saying is there's nothing like getting smashed a tangle Wood. The truth, it's it's the best kind of you know. The year that I was a guide, there was no comment, no comment. The year that I was a guide, there was the year the Fillmore East came up there like three different times,

and I saw Who and Jimmy Hendrix. You're saying that Bill Graham had his production company. Fillmore reman as a production company. Yeah, they can the rider with all those the shed. The shed was a bathroom to them. We're not say what pleasure it has to be back and Tangled again. We were on the here last August. They trashed that loan. That's why they were never invited back. You would not have wanted. Isn't it funny how we've changed back then? I would have been there. Who I'm like,

we're not having them here. You can have that the likes here Entangled Wood. Who else did? The grand Mr Kylie, who ran the head of the groundskeepers, was just beside himself. Yeah, coronary, he really it was. It was a disaster. Your father loved it there though, he loved it, and he loved to stay up all night yakking with the students. That was what really did your dad admire in his constellation? Who did he? I heard a story once from someone.

They said that they were at your family's home and your father standing there with a cigarette in his hand and a drink in the other, and someone says, I just came from seeing the Beatles and then and the quote was a very simple one. They said that Bernstein said turned to my friend and said, you came and sold the Beatles. I can't wait to see them myself. He said, I'm mad for them. And he just had a passion for all desperate forms of music. He did,

and he really did love the Beatles a lot. And we were so lucky as we were growing up because I was a complete beatlemaniac and my dad loved their music too, So together we would discover the Beatles, and when they had a new album, I would run out and get it and go straight to my father's studio and say, look, look I've got Rubbers Old, and he'd said, great, let's put it on right now, and we stick the record on. And I learned more about music by listening to the Beatles with my dad, and I think I

did any other way. You know, my dad passed away. He was very young. My dad was only fifty five. He was a year older than I am now. He had a very rare form of cancer and he died of lung cancer when he was fifty. And your dad didn't live in a a very long life either. How old were both of you when your dad passed away, Well, he died at seventy two, which is not five you were, and I was thirty nine, so you were so you

were grown adult people. But like you, our mother died when she was fifty six, and we were much younger when that happened. She died in night, so we were in our early twenties and he died in so by then we were you know, adults more or less. But when when our mother died, we were still a very young family. Nina was only fifteen or something. But did your mother die from lung cancer? A smoker? My point is that your dad didn't live a very long life.

Did he die suddenly or did he get sick and he knew he was in trouble he got he was sick for like six months of being released. She was diagnosed with Uh. He had all sorts of chess problems, sure, you know, through his life, but it was it was not cigarette related, which was probably an asbestos thing when he was a kid. Who knows. I mean, it didn't help it. He smoked obviously, but um, but you know, just having the oxygen and stuff. That was the last, you know, a month or so. He died in October,

and his last concert was at Tanglewood in August. Okay, so you could barely get through. The last thing your father conducted was a public performance seven. He did the Beethoven seven at Tanglewood in August of nineteen and died that October. I think about your dad and did he just when he knew he was sick and he knew it was in trouble healthful Because my dad knew he

was in trouble. I mean, there was a moment I had with my dad where he like, he looked at me with this look in his eye, like he knew it was over, and he and he just I mean, he had a tear one down his face. And my father said, I'll never know my grandchildren. And when I when I when I think about this with your dad, a guy like that, who had so much more he wanted to do, did he ever express that too? Did

he ever talk about that he wasn't done? Yeah, he did, you know, And I think you know he had this fantastic climactic moment at the very end of nine, the year before he died, when he conducted at the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and he did the ode to Joy and instead of singing Floyd which means joy, they sang fly Height, which means freedom. It was such a big deal for him to be there when the Berlin Wall came down, and it was such a momentous occasion.

Where were you when that happened? I wish I had been there, And in retrospect, I regret that I wasn't there. But I had just given birth to my son, Evan, like less than eight weeks earlier. That was my excuse. So I watched it on the couch on Christmas Day while I was nursing my infant son. I watched it on TV because they showed the whole thing live broadcasting about you. I don't even have an excuse, and I can't remember why I didn't go. I can't believe that

I wasn't there. It's just unbelievable. You know, we didn't know he was going to be gone within the year, so you know, he was always there, and there were always these occasions where you could go and meet him on the road, and there were hundreds of them, and it was kind of a pain to go get in with that whole retinue and the whole madness of being of the tour thing, and but did become entourage city. You know, right after that, he got really sick with

the flu and it was like Christmas. And I remember visiting him about a month later, less than a month later in Key West, and he was just not feeling right and he told me so, he said, I just I'm not I don't feel right. That was the beginning of the slow decline. And then things got a lot worse in May, and then he just kind of struggled through all his gigs over the summer and then barely

made it through that Beethoven seven. We were all in the audience clutching each other's hands, like, is he gonna make it? Is he going to make it? Because he was What was his life like after your mom passed away?

The d didn't remarry, did he? Uh No, he did not, And he it was why do you think he was so miserable for a long time after she needed her, He needed her, and he was just he wasn't for a long long time until we went on vacation probably I don't know, eight months later or something like that, and we sort of saw started seeing signs of of a person again. Tell about what happened in Jamaica. After the Christmas dinner and then we went to the bar

Oh my god. This was the vacation in Jamaica. A bunch of our family and a couple of friends, and we went down to the bar. They were probably a couple of people in there. And he sits down at the piano in the bar. And this was after dinner, after you know, a lot of Scotch whatever, a lot of wine, and he plays Rhapsody in Blue from beginning to end. It was the most amazing performance you could possibly imagine. I mean, you just ripped it. It was unforgettable.

And then that's kind of when I knew he was back, just through the music he was. He tell you where through the music? Oh my god. So um, obviously you never married again. But why do you think you never married again? You see a guy like that, You mean, my god, he could have had any woman in New York. He didn't have room in his life for that anymore. No, And there was some men that he was very close to.

And uh, and would you say that once your mother passed away, was your father's life as a bisexual man that he just lived more vividly once your mother was gone was much more, much, much more living color about it. His his mother was still alive, and I think that played a great role, and that was kind of a governor there. That was kind of a governor. Yeah. And then when she he still had a public it was

a different time. She outlived him. She was ninety two when he died, and she said memorably, this will shorten my life. Wow. And so he and so he. Do you think that he kept that quiet and kept that private not only because it was that that his nature private nature. He sort of out sort of a few times. Uh, And I think he was once he was hoping people would take more notice of it than they did, I think, but um, he didn't want his mother to have to

deal with it with her friends. And you know, people talking about if he was alive now, how old diould that be? If he was alive now, yes, centennial will be. Who was someone? I mean, I'm sure that we're boundless people because your father was very generous of heart. It seems very passionate. But who were some of the people other than Kuzowitski and Coping that we've covered before, Who were some of the people that were contemporaries of your

father that you remember him speaking very glowingly about. Who did he admire Lucas Foss would be one. They were at Curtis together, that's where they met, and they stayed friends and colleagues their entire lives. And Lucas was a stupendous pianist in addition to being an excellent composer. So um, he played our Dad's Age of Anxiety, which is a sort of like a piano concerto, although it's called a symphony, and and Lucas could just played a hell out of it.

And and our dad premiered many of Lucas's pieces with the Philharmonic, and so that was he was one of them. Michael Tilson Thomas was someone that our dad kind of nurtured along when he was to Kuzsky to a degree, Yes, to a degree. Whose who else did here? Who else did he? Mentor? Well? He was Mr Mentor to a great degree. I think, Yeah, another guy with great hair, great conduct nothing like that hair flying through the air looks great. It's amazing how many great hair conductors there are.

So Ozawa right well, when he was conducting at the Philharmonic, it was his relationship with Sondheim. Oh, that was a big, big relationship, big friendship and colleague ship. You know, west Side Story. All of them had this phenomenal success. Yeah. Initially west Side Story was supposed to be if I'm if I'm an Irish Jewish gang, Yeah, a low rest side. It was going to the east Side. It was going

to rest side. Tempers would flare over the Eastern passover holidays right right right les versus the yeah yeah, something like that. And then apparently Jerry rob And saw some article about gang wars with Puerto Ricans in on the Upper West Side, and he went, ding, you know the bulls, Jerry it was I think it was Jerry or was

it always so? I don't know, Maybe it was. Arthur's probably the most romantic line in the movie I've ever heard, and it always brings me to tears when he turns to where they have the moment of the dance, and he turns to her and says, you're not lying to me, are you? And she says, I have not yet learned to lie about such things. That's right, I have not yet learned to joke that way. I think now you're not king. She says, you're not joking. I have not

yet given to me again, you say it? Here we go a live performance go, you're not joking with me. I have not yet learned to joke that way, I think now. I never really there. And the reason we're laughing is because there's a recording of our dad conducting West Side Story for in the recording session, and he got Alexander and my sister Nina to do that dialogue so much to believe you're not joking me, I have not yet learned how to joke that way. I think. No,

I never read. Now, speaking of films, your father only composed I mean, other than them transferring The West Side to a film, your father only composed one film score and it was a hell of a film score? Esque And why do you think he only did? Your father is someone I mean I see people. This is interesting because I see so many people Billy Joe Sting. I mean,

you see Elton John make his foray into that. But I see so many people who I think to myself, Billy, especially who's a friend, I say, my god, you could be doing so much music a movie score if you wanted to, and they just don't. They don't have a passion for why did your father just do the one? Do you think, well, because he really did not enjoy the experience. Why because he was being bossed around. Because yeah,

well what happened. For the example he gave was that he wrote, you know, the soaring music, that the dynamics that he composed were all in his head and all recorded a certain way, and then when they're mixing, they just dunk the fader on it so that, as our dad put it, so that you could hear Marlon Brando's grunt and and and so just at the climactic moment of his love music, you know, in the in the

final mix, they just dunked the fader. They would say, okay, we need fifteen bars of passion and then you know, thirty seconds of you know quick. And he just couldn't write that that way. It was impossible. He and a specific talent, but he just hated doing the work. You have children. I have a daughter. If you have a daughter, who's how old? She'll be fourteen in two weeks. You have a daughter, it's fourteen, and what is she into? What does she do? She's into her first year of

high school and uh, loving it. And she's into the theater in a big way. She loves to Um. You're raising your kids in the in the city or outside the city. In the city, you're raising your daughter inside the city. And she likes acting. She likes acting, but she's also you know, she loves her English class and history class, and her school and her friends and her what about you have to have a daughter. Now they're in their twenties, now they're in their My daughter, Frankie

lives in Brooklyn, she's a writer. And my son is uh still in school up in the Berkshires. As a matter of fact, he's up and he lives in Lee, Massachusetts. And well, you know, for both of you, your children, I mean, obviously they know they didn't have to watch. In their case, they weren't watching Leonard Burnstone. That wasn't the cartoon, wasn't the gateway into an understanding of who their grandfather was. But they know who he is, and

have you had and do they do? They have an appetite and a passion to understand who he is and see who he is. My kids don't. They're very careful about sort of keeping their distance from that whole connection. I think it makes them a little shy, a little a little anxious, and so they don't they don't embrace without getting too personal, because I have an opinion about that because of my daughter. Well, what they want is that they sense that celebrity has become so exponentially out

of control now and they prefer their privacy. If knowing that I was related directly to Leonard Bernstein was going to lead to something appropriate or comfortable or right, there would be one thing. But nowadays everybody's after the wrong thing, and that's really interesting. I mean I think about that a lot because our father really loved being famous, and we had fun with it, and it was just a different type of thing in those days. It was different.

It's more of an industry now, and he started seeing that more and more starting in the eighties, and you talked about it a lot, and he once said to me, I'm so sick of Leonard Bernstein. I've had it with him. I've always had a problem about time. But when I had a problem about time at the age of five or thirty, when you're still, at least in part, thinking you're immortal and nothing's every good to change the way

you are, or abbreviated everything's all right. I mean, I would go on concert tours and composed in the airport or on the plane or on the train, or I wrote half of the Age of Anxiety and airports and trains and hotels. I can't do that anymore, and it's been sometime since I could. One of the reasons is one, standards get higher and higher. Self identification with the composer whose works you are performing become closer and closer. To

the point, are there our performances? Which are the ones I call good performances, But I know it's been a really good performance. It's one in which I have the feeling I've written the piece standing there, and and when it's over, I don't know where I'm standing. As he grew older, Bernstein's connection to the music of Gustav Mahler, whom he had championed throughout his career, became even stronger.

I think he felt a deep association, I mean, apart from the music itself, obviously, an association with Mahler as a conflicted musician mother being Jewish and in a Jewish world, and being a tonal composer in an atonal more atonal world, becoming so being a European man who came to America. You know that somebody from the classical tradition coming to America and suddenly finding themselves in this crazy world. So

I think there was an affinity there. Plus, he was the combination of composer and conductor, which there aren't that many of. I would love to have known your father. Your father is was so singular and remains so singular because number one, whenever he came on, I was happy, And whenever he came on, I was excited, and he never disappointed me. And when I would see him, I'd say, what you get from Bernstein, you can only get from Bernstein.

He was the original in his field. Leonard Bernstein's children, Jamie and Alexander, say their father was so original in part because he just never stopped celebrating music, celebrating live. He was a terrible insomniac. I think that's probably why I managed to squeeze in so much action. He was always at it. You know. I wish she was around here and I could have hung out together. Oh I'm

an insomniac. And could you imagine watching YouTube together? Could have come over at four am and you could have hung out. God, but you could have been watching old movies together, and you would have gone to the piano and played all the old Bernard Hermann scores. Yes, everything. This is Alec Baldwin. To learn more about Leonard Bernstein and Artful Learning, an educational organization that his son Alex spearheads, go to Here's the Thing dot org