DAILY NEWS, New York City, JULY 29TH, 1999 By Jim Dwyer
Directly in front of Jamey Haddad were the boxes of air that he touches into music: 40 drums and shells, hollow sticks and ceramic pots, broomsticks and cymbals.
The percussion tools and Haddad sat on a platform slightly above the rest of the stage.
Just below him were the backs and arms of four horn players and a guitarist from Cameroon. Across the stage were two other drummers, a keyboard player, a bassist, another guitarist. At the front of all the players was Paul Simon. And beyond him were 19,000 people in the arena at Madison Square Garden, screaming their heads off. Paul Simon
On stage, the wash of spotlights fell into Haddad’s eyes, blurring the thousands of people into shapes in the dark.
He peered into that darkness, trying to find one bright face.
This was Tuesday night, when Paul Simon ran a concert for the ages at the Garden. How Jamey Haddad came to back Simon, a New York original, is a story that begins in an uptown playground.
For 30 years, Haddad has been regarded as a percussionist of fierce originality and brilliance, a man who moved in the cloistered world of jazz and world musicians. He lives in Washington Heights with his wife, Mary Gray, an administrator at Juilliard, and their daughter, Georgia,
who is 6.
Down the street is Spencer Corona, also 6, going on 7. Georgia and Spencer hung out at the same playground.
First, the kids found each other. Then the parents did. Spencer’s dad, Jim, also is a musician, and works for Paul Simon as a technical assistant. Every inch of space in the Haddad apartment is occupied by instruments, many of them designed and invented by Haddad, working with
a sculptor.
Last fall, Simon was working on a new album of songs and struggling to make the percussion sound right. Jim Corona happened to be playing a demo CD, made by Haddad, of pure percussion. Simon stopped to listen for a minute.
“What is that?” asked Simon. “That’s my neighbor,” said Corona. “Tell him to come down here,” said Simon.
Haddad does not travel light. At the first rehearsal, he arrived with 17 cases and hundreds of instruments. In time, he pared it down. “What is that thing you just played?” Simon would ask. Haddad would answer with a name that he gave a hybrid invention — the Hadgini. “I don’t think so,” Simon would answer. They would move on until the right tool in the Haddad arsenal was found.
“He is a master, you know,” says Simon. “A very, very, well-schooled drummer. He understands drumming intellectually, rhythmically, emotionally.”
At one of their first meetings, Simon asked Haddad about his roots. “I’m third-generation Lebanese, born in Cleveland, and I’ve lived a lot of places in the world,” said Haddad. “I don’t have a name for the music. It’s just who I am.”
Soon, Haddad had introduced Simon to another percussionist, Steve Shehan, a Cherokee-Irish-American who was reared in Paris. They hooked up with the drummer Steve Gadd, who has played with Simon for years. Simon put aside the album of songs to start the tour, which included a performance last night in Holmdel, N.J., and will go to Jones Beach tonight and tomorrow. “We rehearse every day,” said Haddad. “I heard the last tour was 160 dates or something, and they had rehearsal 160 times, including the last night. He is not complacent.”
They rolled across the country in two big buses, one for nonsmokers, the other for people who stayed up all night and played, most of the drummers. In Simon, the drummer of exotic style found a way into the world of popular music. “I’ve been teaching young people,” said Haddad, “and I know for sure that they can always get next to music that transcends idiom. His music straddles all these worlds. James Brown said, ‘People gotta dance.'”
They had gone through Detroit when the Yankees were playing there, and Simon and David Cone, the pitcher, met and talked about performing with the knowledge that neither man’s game was infinite. And so they ended back in New York on Tuesday night, for the peak concert of the tour, pairing Simon with Bob Dylan. Simon was relaxed, scatting some lines, breaking up words and playing with them as rhythms, singing as well as he ever has. “I have nothing to say other than how much joy there is in life — and to grasp it,” he said. “That’s it. Because there’s JFK Jr.”
The music was triumphant and joyful, the lyricism of Simon’s language sent into the sky with rhythms and horns. Haddad pulled out the Hadgini, a ceramic drum, for “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes,” and then, for “Mrs. Robinson,” a Hadgiri, a tambourine hybrid that Haddad built from instruments used in North Africa and southern India. When they played “Trailways Bus,” from Simon’s musical, “The Capeman,” he took out the large brooms to play the drumheads with “a bright attack, but still let the bass sounds of the drum come through,” said Haddad.
By the time the show was nearing an end, when the band was blowing through “You Can Call Me Al” and “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,” the entire audience was up and dancing. His gaze played along the aisles.
There. She was standing in her mom’s lap. Georgia Haddad knew her dad was hunting for them, and she had been waiting for her dad’s eyes to lock into their seats. It was near midnight, and she was tired and has been a little under the weather. But she found his eyes, and lifted her hands into the sky, blowing double kisses.
And clear across the stage, behind the great Paul Simon and the marvels of musicians playing with him, the double kisses found their mark. Having touched his magical boxes of air all night, Jamey Haddad now lifted his hands over all the clever gadgets, and waved, sending one sound past all the din and excitement of thousands of people, the flutter of wings, landing directly on her seat.
(Original Publication Date: 07/29/1999)