Desperado: An Autobiography

Desperado: an Autobiography
Tomasz Stanko
345 Pages
ISBN: # 978 1 80050 222 2
Equinox Publishing Ltd
2010

Tomasz Stanko; let us begin at the end. When Stanko died of lung cancer in 2018 aged 76, he left behind him a discography of forty records as a leader as well as numerous others as a sideman. He was a recording artist of international significance with an established position on the roster of ECM Records, perhaps the most prestigious of the European labels. He was the recipient of numerous awards and honourifics and the organiser of the successful Jazzowa Jesien festival. He was tentatively involved in mainstream Polish politics. All in all, he was an elder statesman of European jazz, as at home in New York as in Warsaw. And he was producing some of the most exquisite music of his career.

The last recording, 2017's December Avenue (ECM Records), contained music of such delicacy that it seems to disappear under scrutiny, like a snowflake melting in your palm. Considering that Stanko had for many years been the primary proponent of free jazz in Poland, we might ask how he had arrived at music of such lucid fragility. Having read this excellent autobiography, the question we are more likely to ask is, how did he arrive in his 70s at all?

If you call an autobiography Desperado, you had better have some good stories to back it up, and boy, does he. Many of them. By the 1980s, Stanko was in the habit of combining alcohol, hashish and amphetamines in absurd quantities. He once walked out into a stream of heavy city centre traffic, wearing a Bolivian hat and carrying a home made spear, and caused a substantial pile-up all because he couldn't get a taxi to stop for him. He was sufficiently well known by the local police that they just picked him up, dusted him off and took him home.

On another occasion, he drank a bottle of methylated spirits (but from a crystal glass, of course, because he maintained some standards) and was inspired to write a track commemorating the event. Called "Fioletowy Liquor" ("Purple Liquor," it was included on his album of "free pop," his new concept. The record is called C.O.C.X. (Poljazz, 1985)—a phonetic representation of the Polish word for cocaine. Incredibly, despite being recorded in utterly unhinged circumstances, the record was well received and for good reason—it is really not bad. As ventures by jazz musicians outside of jazz go, listeners might find it more fun that Keith Jarrett's ill-conceived one-man-band rock record. It is certainly takes itself less seriously. Stanko's talent was, apparently, able to keep pace with his debauchery.

Despite all that, Desperado seems an unnecessarily bleak title for this book. Stanko clearly behaved desperately badly for a long time but throughout his book he remains (mostly) charming. The book is created from a series of very long-form interviews with the journalist and author Rafal Ksiezyk. It could have been disjointed and clumsy, but instead this approach gives the reader an opportunity to really get to know Stanko. The tales of dreadful self abuse are not presented with relish, nor with hand-wringing self-criticism, but with a wry insight and self-awareness born of twenty years of sobriety. We are a long way away from the queasily gleeful tales of rockstar excess we might read in other biographies. He knew how crazy it was to lead a joint existence as a world class musician who spent his mornings drinking under the railway arches with the homeless and the hopeless. His redemption story is told without self pity or fanfare. He needed to clean up, so he cleaned up.

Importantly, the story of Stanko's more self destructive habits never overshadows the story of Stanko the musician. Stanko's first really formative relationship in jazz was when he joined pianist and composer Krzysztof Komeda as his trumpeter of choice. Komeda died tragically young from injuries sustained during a drunken party on a visit to the US. He was working with Roman Polanski writing soundtracks and was very likely at the beginning of a glittering career. Before he died, he recorded a small body of work including an album, Astigmatic (Muza, 1966), with a 23-year-old Stanko on trumpet. That record is still widely regarded as one of the best Polish jazz records ever. It is clear that Stanko adored Komeda and felt his loss very keenly indeed. Until his own death, Stanko was still affectionately performing Komeda compositions.

In the 1970s, Stanko fell in thrall to free jazz, like so many European musicians did, specifically the influence of Cecil Taylor. In the US, that might have limited his opportunities for commercial success, but not so in Poland. Embracing a hippie wardrobe and appearing at hippie festivals, Stanko soon became very well known and embarked upon a lifestyle of hashish smoking, groupies and questionable sheepskin vests. By his late 20s, Stanko was leading a quintet playing across Europe and doing very well indeed. There is an implication that, in a country largely closed to the rest of the world due to its communist regime, homegrown cultural icons were in shorter supply. As musicians feted outside of Poland, home fans developed a pride for the band verging on fervour. One chapter is titled Stankomania and that doesn't appear to be an overstatement.

There are two parallel stories in this book; the story of Stanko's journey from drunkenness to sobriety and the story of his journeys from free jazz to melody. It is hard not to connect the two, though he does not. He does, however, acknowledge the evolution of his music saying that although he started playing free jazz, he "always fancied playing beautiful music." That beauty has become more dominant in his work since his rapprochement with Manfred Eicher of ECM.

Stanko and Eicher had worked together on 1976's Balladyna (ECM Records) but then did nothing together until Matka Joanna (ECM Records, 1995) nearly twenty years later. Stanko is quite candid about the lengths he went to in order to re-attract Eicher's attention and secure a second recording date. That was the beginning of a very fertile partnership. For fans of ECM, there is a treasure trove of illuminating information here on how Eicher works with the musicians he produces and the level of detail he is able to contribute.

The sections of the book about ECM are just some of the many engrossing passages here. We get an insight into what it is like to work as a musician from beyond the iron curtain, and the impact that the fall of communism in Europe has on artists. We get a sense of the European cultural landscape in the 1980s and1990s. Hugely famous names come and go, some with an approving nod, others a dismissive wave. And we get to see Don Cherry dressed in oriental robes, accompanied by his spiritual advisor, buying a scythe in a village in rural Poland (the whole village turned out to watch, presumably somewhat bemused).

To a great extent, the success of this book is down to Ksiezyk's encyclopaedic knowledge. He has an incredible ability to discuss every gig, every collaboration, every festival appearance and every defunct jazz club in an informed way, as if he has been at Stanko's side throughout his career. In fact, he is often better informed that Stanko about Stanko's life, bringing up events and interactions that Stanko has only the vaguest memory of, if any memory at all. It is a scholarly piece of work which deserves serious attention, but which also carries its learning lightly. If you know Stanko's work already, you will likely find this book fascinating. If you do not, it will introduce you to a wealth of new music, much but by no means all of it by Stanko. Reading this book is very like spending a long time in the company of a garrulous and almost, but not completely rehabilitated, rogue, and that makes it an excellent way to pass the time.

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