[f_minor] The Spectator, UK/Aus

[Jörgen Lundmark]

I asked the source and found out where the quote is from:

"The Zany Genius of Glenn Gould: A Lively
Portrait of Canada's Cultural One-Man Show," published in the magazine
Holiday, Vol. 35/No. 4 (April 1964), pages 149-54 and 156.

Regards,
Jorgen
>
> Didn't Gould actually say it in traffic court in front of a judge? 
> (Probably not). I'm too lazy to look it up now.
>
> Mary
>
>
>
> Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 10:19:42 +0100
> From: bsi at intranette.de
> To: f_minor at glenngould.org
> Subject: Re: [f_minor] The Spectator, UK/Aus
>
> Hello Tim,
>
> This remark about his "stopping at green lights and never having 
> gotten credit for it" is to be found in Kevin Bazzana's biography 
> "Wondrous Strange. The Life and Art of Glenn Gould" (Oxford University 
> Press 2004, see page 329). Yet, where this information is from, is not 
> mentioned explicitly. On the back cover of the book it says: "Drawing 
> on twenty years of intensive research, including unrestricted access 
> to Gould's private papers and interviews with scores of friends and 
> colleagues, many of them never interviewed before, Bazzana sheds new 
> light on ..." So, one can assume it's part of one of the interviewees' 
> memories, I suppose.
>
> Bruni
> Cologne, Germany
>
>
> Am 01.11.2012 07:00, schrieb Timothy Conway:
>
>     I subscribe to that virulent anti-liberal magazine The Spectator,
>     although living in Australia what I get is The Australian
>     Spectator, but it amounts to the same thing.
>
>     A recent (6th October 2012) 'DIARY' piece by Craig Brown had,
>     inter alia, the following:
>
>     "This week sees the 30th anniversary of the death (or 'untimely
>     death', as death is now invariably known) of Glenn Gould.The fame
>     of most classical musicians tends to wither
>     when they die. But Gould's seems to grow and grow: his grave is
>     the most visited in Canada, he has appeared on /The//Simpsons,
>     /and not long ago in its apparently straight-faced list of The 100
>     Most Important Canadians in History, /Maclean's /magazine ranked
>     him the No. 1 artist in the world. Such posthumous blossoming
>     makes him rather closer to a rock star, which is, in all but the
>     most literal sense, what he was. In fact, he makes most of today's
>     rock stars look doggedly conventional. He hated Mozart, sunshine
>     and Italian opera, and loved tomato ketchup, overcast skies and
>     Petula Clark. He was a rabid hypochondriac, taking a briefcase of
>     pills, a bottle of disinfectant and a blood-pressure kit with him
>     wherever he went: he once hung up the phone when he heard his
>     friend sneeze on the other end of the line.
>
>     When he still performed in public --- he grew to hate audiences,
>     describing them as 'a force for evil' --- Gould refused to wear
>     the customary white tie and tails, preferring to appear in scruffy
>     clothes and mismatched socks, his shoes held together by rubber
>     bands. He would then play his piano from his special low chair,
>     sitting just 14 inches from the ground, so that his knees were a
>     good deal higher than his buttocks. Thirty years on. his fame has
>     increased but for some reason his influence hasn't. Classical
>     musicians remain studiously starchy. One might have expected
>     Gould's influence to have liberated them, but far from it: the
>     pious aura of the Sunday school still hangs over classical
>     concerts. We should be grateful, though, that, in at least one
>     area his influence has been so negligible. He was a rotten driver,
>     generally driving with his legs crossed whilst singing and
>     conducting from a score open on the passenger seat. He couldn't
>     see what was wrong with it. "It's true that I've driven through a
>     number of red lights on occasion," he once protested. "But on
>     the//other hand, I've stopped at a lot of green ones and never
>     been given credit for it."
>
>     That last comment about green lights had me laughing my mismatched
>     socks off, but is it right? Does anyone know where it comes from?
>
>
>     Tim Conway
>     Geraldton, Western Australia
>

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