Excerpts from the profiles
of the 2016 Honorees:
(Cristiano Siqueira for The
Washington Post)
The Eagles are finished.
Don Henley is direct. The
way he describes it, the group he helped lead since 1971 died with his longtime
musical partner, Glenn Frey.
“I don’t see how we could
go out and play without the guy who started the band,” says Henley.
On this, almost everyone
was agreed: Al Pacino was looking like a disaster as Michael Corleone.
Shooting had begun in early
1971. Pacino recalls the Paramount suits looking at the rushes and saying:
“What the hell is this kid doing? And he’s short to boot.” They thought he was
delivering an “anemic” performance. The studio brass, Pacino says, “tried to
fire me three times.”
There “was a movement not
to have me in the part,” the 76-year-old actor recalls, sitting on the porch of
his rental house in the flats of Beverly Hills. “I didn’t want me in the part.”
Read the full story: “Al
Pacino was nearly fired from ‘The Godfather.’ The rest is history.” by Karen
Heller
His brain was frosted with
morphine, his heart petered, but his lungs remembered to breathe. Simple as
that. He was dying — there were multiple times when he was dying — but his
lungs always kept working, every time. And that’s why he is sitting here in
September, many years later, sober, in a hotel bungalow that costs thousands of
dollars a night. Instead of being dead at 22 or 27 or 33, like many of his
artistic peers who sought solace in drugs, James Taylor, 68, fetches from the
coffee table a crinkled printout of his discography: 18 studio albums and about
200 songs spanning 48 years of platinum-certified celebrity.
He stapled together his
career because he wanted to see which themes kept dogging his music. He made
lists. Keeps them on his iPad.
Read the full story: “James
Taylor’s strength was melancholy. Now he must cope with contentment.” by Dan
Zak
In a nondescript
condominium on the south shore of this hard-nosed city, the elevator opens onto
a bland hallway. Dark carpet, pale walls, closed doors, the vague scent of
someone cooking the midday meal.
At the far end of the hall
— the apartment with the view of Lake Michigan — a diminutive woman opens her
door, smiles and enthusiastically waves.
It’s Mavis Staples!
It really is! It’s sort of
amazing. Staples is one of the iconic figures of American popular music, and
she’s beckoning you inside, no publicist or agent or anything, ready to give
you a hug. If she’s 5 feet tall, she’s not 5-foot-1. Childhood nickname was
“Bubbles,” for her bubbly disposition. Hasn’t changed a lick.
Read the full story: “She’s
still taking us there: Mavis Staples soars again in late career” by Neely
Tucker
There are a few things
everyone in the music world knows, or thinks they know, about Martha Argerich,
the Argentine-born pianist who is getting a Kennedy Center Honor on Sunday.
She’s private, moody and unpredictable. She’s wildly beautiful, with a long,
thick mass of hair — once dark, now gray — and a radiant, quick smile, and at
75, she still wears the peasant blouses and cotton pants of a teenager circa
1968. And she plays the piano brilliantly, ferociously and, perhaps, better
than anyone else on Earth.
Read the full story:
“Martha Argerich is a legend of the classical music world. But she doesn’t act
like one.” by Anne Midgette
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/12/02/2016-kennedy-center-honors-the-eagles-al-pacino-james-taylor-mavis-staples-martha-argerich/?utm_term=.033aba3d86c4
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