Possibilities

2014 Herbie Hancock with Lisa Dickey

• I remember some different stories from Bryan and Herbie (bad memory)

• p003 45th & King, Chicago South Side

• p005 mother Winnie bipolar?
• born 1940, father Wayman, older brother Wayman, younger sister Jean (p264 died landing Dallas 1985)
• Piano Teacher Mrs Jordan
• Grinnell 1956, engineering, then music
• Manhattan School of Music, 1962
• Met Gigi (from East Germany) 1964, married 1968, Jessica 1969
• p153 1972 Nichiren Buddhism
• p159 1972 NY to LA, Doheny house
• p135 1970 to p234 1982? David Rubinson
• p235 1983 Tony Meilandt (last mention p 276)
• p191 1975? Bryan Bell through p245 1983? Last album Future Shock
• p209 KHL "Computer genius, the kind of guy who builds his own computer chips and rewrites operating systems for fun" - well, sorta ...
  • "got his pilots license at 15" - no, soloed at 30? but decided it was too dangerous
  • 1979? synth keyboard crossbar switch (used CMOS transfer gate SSI)
    • Not mentioned, led to crossbar chips for Icube, used by Cisco for early internet routers
    • Built-in calibration led to analog boundary scan for Icube crossbars, then IEEE 1149.4
  • p215 purchased Apple II from Santa Monica computer store
    • book says Bryan and Herbie, but I remember the dickering at the Byte Shop (a mini-chain of the time), and buying most of what they had.
    • We bought the Apple to control the crossbar switch
• p227 KHL "Universal Patch Cord" - I used that as a pseudonym for credit on "Monster"
  • "helped design software for the Shuttle" - No. I got 4 print press passes "representing" Oregon Museum of Science and Industry via the planetarium director. My contacts told me that NASA was passing out print press passes easily, but was overwhelmed and not checking credentials. So - I scored some passes, and met Bryan and Herbie at the Daytona Beach campus of Embry Riddle University. Many crazy stories there, but if Herbie didn't share them, I won't.
• p228 April 10 1981, two day delay, and Herbie had to go home for the April 12 birthday party Gigi was planning.
• p229 April 14 landing "I'm Herbie Hancock, I'm with Columbia" - Compressed story. Actually, I went home on the 12th-13th (redeye through Atlanta, reporters with lenses taller than them), planning on sleeping for days, when I got a call from Bryan. "A ticket for you at Portland Airport. Fly down to SFO, and find us at the private aviation terminal, we're going to the landing with those passes." Herbie had chartered a small plane, and Herbie, Bryan, Tony Meilandt, and I started for Palmdale. Except Palmdale was closed for the Shuttle landing at Edwards, to we went to Burbank(?) and rented a car, then drove to Edwards. The press passes got us to the press center - with typewriters and a TV. As I recall, it was Tony who showed the guards "CBS" identification, and we went down to the CBS tower (made with scaffolding, a deck for the cameras and a deck for the reporters, with Chuck Yaeger being interviewed. Herbie plugged his video camera power adapter into the CBS generator, and we acted like we belonged there. The landing was a couple of miles away. Herbie and Brian saw it go overhead, but I did not see it until it was down. We would have been able to see it better at the spectator's bleachers, which were a few miles north of the TV camera scaffolds, but we arrived too late to take the bus over there.

The book is interesting - a lot of stories I remember being told differ from what is told here. A lot of stories left out. Books are often more accurate than conversation, and I am glad to be corrected. However, I presume many of the stories were "compressed" to make them more readable - life is messy, and re-arranged and modified details are more readable. But this points out a problem with "authoritative sources" which I presume this will become; no story is perfectly accurate. It makes me more skeptical about all the thousands of histories and biographies I've read - not that they aren't useful stories, but a time machine for viewing the past would change a lot of history.