Out of Tune (30 page)

But in my eyes, this tour was a case of “Exploit You to Bits and Pieces”; and when newspapers are using phrases like “The
David Helfgott Show,” I feel I have to respond. Firstly, my brother is not a freak. He is suffering from a mental illness
from which he has not recovered; indeed, I am gravely concerned that he is being deliberately deprived of the correct doses
of drugs that would help to make him more “normal,” in order to maintain his “freak appeal.” (According to David’s psychiatrist—a
friend of Gillian’s—David’s medication is carefully balanced so as on the one hand not to diminish his creative powers and
on the other hand, not to turn him into a complete “zombie.”)

Secondly, although I was shocked by the unrestrained viciousness of some of the reviews (in Australia one critic said that
the country was known for its unusual creatures—kangaroos, koalas, and so on—and that David fitted into this category), it
is certainly true that David’s playing is not nearly as good as it used to be, which makes me feel very sad. The truth is
that while
Shine
—the fictional story—won praise, David—the real person—is being shredded by the critics precisely because this is today’s
reality. My brother is being paraded as a modern-day “Elephant Man” by a well-oiled publicity machine that has steered everyone
away from the truth. To me it is offensive that when television networks film David, they use close-up shots of him mumbling
away to himself. I feel this is a gross violation of his privacy and demonstrates a lack of respect for other human beings.

While in some ways I am happy that audiences flock to hear David play and that he receives such enthusiastic acclaim, in other
ways, it causes me great distress. I am concerned about the resulting exploitation of his name. On the surface David is obviously
enjoying himself as he basks in audience adulation, while running around hugging and kissing people. But I doubt that my mentally
ill brother is truly aware of what is going on. As newspapers informed us, this was “not your average classical audience.”
People were there as much to participate in David’s “true story” as for the quality of his performance. Perhaps the critic
in New Zealand who wrote that he had the uneasy feeling that he wasn’t so much listening to a piano recital as eavesdropping
on someone’s therapy session was painfully right. “Helfgott was truly once a great pianist. It’s so sad to see him exploited
this way,” said the London
Sunday Times
.

I wonder whether someone as psychologically vulnerable as David should ever have been put in a position where he might be
exposed to such criticism in the first place? I am concerned for David’s well-being. To be suddenly paraded in the world’s
foremost musical venues and to find oneself undertaking an arduous ten-month tour is a risky business for someone with his
precarious health. Even the fittest of pianists would find such a workload extremely punishing. A few of the critics worried
about this, too. For example, Stephen Pettitt of the (London)
Financial Times
called for a stop to “this grotesque circus before any more damage is done to Helfgott.”

For David, a serious musician who has devoted almost his entire life to the piano, to read such terrible and cruel reviews
both of his performance and his personality must be heart-rending. Indeed, the indignity of being described in such destructive
terms causes pain to myself and the whole Helfgott family. The prestigious English magazine
The Gramophone
declined to review David’s recording of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto because it was so “appalling.” That David’s professional
reputation is now in tatters makes me utterly despondent.

The young David was a brilliant musician. It is no accident that Cyril Smith, his professor at the Royal College, said in
a letter that “his talent amounts to genius.” Before he met Gillian, David would never “dangle his arms” or “puff like a steam
train.” He never used to “ramble senselessly” or have “sloppy and undependable fingerwork.” His playing would never have been
described as “an exaggerated clatter” or “a structureless rubble of notes.” On the contrary, he performed consistently for
decades, and always received good reviews. It is only because of Gillian’s interviews with the press—in which she repeats
stories about locked pianos, institutionalization, and David’s first wife allegedly selling his piano—that the idea has been
created that David didn’t perform for years until he met her, his savior. Even when he was already under medication, Claire’s
loving care helped ensure David’s standard of playing was far higher than it is now. In July 1973, for example, he received
glowing reviews for his “dazzling” performance of Shostakovich with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra.

In the 1980s, David was still receiving reviews filled with superlatives. “Excellent,” “breathtaking,” “astonishing skill,”
said a 1987
Music Maker
review. “His talent is unbelievable,” wrote
The Australian
in 1987. But as the years went by and the myths of Shine took hold, the situation deteriorated. If the film had been honest
about David’s illness, I don’t believe the critics would have savaged him so mercilessly. Horowitz and Ogden both suffered
mental problems and, to the best of my knowledge, they were never called “freaks.” The music critics, like the film critics,
have been misled.

Some critics were sharp enough to realize this. As the
New York Times
wrote: “An ideal Hollywood ending it was not… The concert tour disproved
Shine
. David Helfgott did not prove to be the resurrected pianistic genius, however eccentric, portrayed in the movie and in the
surrounding promotional apparatus.” Said another critic: “The real David Helfgott was a sad and disturbing figure, far different
from the one portrayed on screen.”

One of the very few critics who saw exactly what was going on and had the courage to say so, was Terry Teachout, the music
critic for the New York
Daily News
. In his review he said: “Two centuries ago, nice people went to asylums on Sunday and gawked at the inmates. But times have
changed. Today, we let the inmates out of the asylums and encourage them to live ‘normal’ lives. Some preach strange religions
on street corners; others give concerts at Avery Fisher, and nice people pay $50 a head to watch them, and call it progress.”

Mr. Teachout expanded on this theme in a much longer piece he wrote for the magazine
Commentary
, in which he made the crucial connection among Shine, Gillian, and David’s concert tour. He wrote that: “Central to the message
of
Shine
[is that] Helfgott, we are to understand, suffers not from a chronic disease of the brain, treatable by drugs, but from a
character disorder, caused by his father’s abuse and curable through love. Revealingly, it is after he sleeps with his wife
for the first time that he is able at long last to play a concert…. [In her book] Gillian Helfgott acknowledges implicitly
that he is not competent in the legal sense of the word … Yet she firmly insists that Helfgott’s inability to function as
a ‘regular member of society’ is not an affliction but a choice—though one, it emerges, which she appears to have made on
his behalf… No one even slightly familiar with the symptoms of schizophrenia could have failed to see that Geoffrey Rush’s
brilliant performance in
Shine
was—to put it bluntly—a lie. The real David Helfgott, it turned out, still wore the mask of insanity … A handful of people
in Avery Fisher Hall realized what was happening: a mentally incompetent man was being paraded before a paying audience for
the financial gain of his managers.”

Teachout continues: “Helfgott is mentally ill, and his physical presence on the stage of a great concert hall was thus utterly
inappropriate…. We should be haunted by the image of that pitiful man at the piano, whose wife has deliberately chosen to
deprive him of the chance to live as others do…. Even now, Gillian Helfgott can still blandly write in her memoir, ‘I will
fight for David’s right to stay extraordinary, and do whatever is necessary to protect him from any pressures to conform.’
The more one ponders these self-righteous words, the clearer it becomes that to speak of the marketing of David Helfgott as
an act of exploitation is to use too weak a word. It is, rather, a sin.”

I
n the wake of the media blitz surrounding
Shine
and David’s concert tour, the world now associates my brother with strange physical behavior and his “trademark babble.”
On television, David’s newly developed habits are there for all to see, as he fidgets and chatters nervously, keeping his
eyes half shut, or eagerly clutches and gropes at people all around him. It is now clear that David has not been “nurtured
to recovery,” as one might expect from the publicity surrounding
Shine
. On the contrary, his speech has deteriorated to that of a child. David, who turned fifty in 1997, repeats words frenetically—“It’s
great. It’s awesome. It’s great. It’s awesome”—and chuckles oddly at words that only he finds amusing, such as “fun pun, what
a game.”

One of the habits David has adopted is to pepper his sentences in a rather pretentious way with French words. He’ll describe
something as “
joyeux
” rather than “joyous.” He’ll talk about placing his “
couteau
” (knife) on his “
assiette
” (plate). And he’ll say “
parce que
” instead of “because” in the middle of an otherwise English sentence. He also likes to use words from Polish, Russian, Italian,
and Yiddish, or to make up words altogether, such as “dentifies” (teeth), “greedos” (greedy), “matinata” (morning), “lazos”
(lazy), and “wishywashy” (dirty laundry). David even jokes around about his beloved composers. He’ll casually refer to “Tchaik”
(Tchaikovsky); the “Rach 3” is now “a whopper”; of Ravel, he’ll say, laughing to himself like a little boy: “Poor old Maurice,
he might unravel.” As Geoffrey Rush told the London
Sunday Times
: “Scott Hicks gave me hours of tapes of interviews with David, and I used them as a kind of Berlitz ‘How to Speak Fluent
David Helfgott.’”

The physical side to David’s behavior is also rather embarrassing. He smothers practically everyone within reach with kisses
on their cheeks and foreheads. Often he misses the mark, but when he does hit the target, he mocks himself, saying: “That
was a good one.” He goes up to virtual strangers and calls them “darling,” before furiously hugging or petting them.

While some people find this side of David’s personality utterly endearing, for me it is the cause of great anguish. His speech
and behavior belie the great intellectual faculties my brother possesses. David remains perfectly capable of holding normal
conversations on complex subjects. Last time we met, he wanted to discuss the way coalition governments are formed in Israel
and the latest developments in the NASA space exploration program. Psychiatrists say that this kind of paradoxical situation,
where a person displays both considerable intellectual powers and jittery, high-speed incoherent speech patterns replete with
rambling word associations, is common with an illness such as David’s.

But while the primary reason for his abnormal behavior is his illness, I believe that the marked downward turn in his condition
of recent years has been exacerbated by outside factors. These strange, negative changes in his behavior and speech really
only began to manifest themselves after he married Gillian in August 1984, gaining ground gradually, as I explained in Chapter
14. Before he met Gillian, he would occasionally murmur, sigh, or rock his piano stool to the music, but he never interrupted
the fluidity of his playing. He never approached hotel porters and babbled in their ear or hugged passersby in the street.
He didn’t stoop and shuffle the way he does now, or call musical compositions “composodilies.”

David used to write to me regularly before he married Gillian, and these letters were articulate, interesting, and lively.
But since they married, Gillian has done all the letter-writing herself, allowing David to only sign his name and add kisses
and occasionally a few words at the bottom.

One of the most marked changes has occurred in the way David talks about his family. Before he came under Gillian’s influence,
David said only positive things. For example, he told one Australian newspaper that “Les has been a tremendous brother to
me through both the good and bad years.” But now David is “quoted” in Gillian’s book as calling Leslie “Barmy on the Army,”
something that neither Leslie nor anybody else has ever heard him say, and which Leslie is quite upset by.

David used to tell everybody how much he loved his family and how much he had missed us when he was in London. For example,
he told The West Australian (December 17, 1983): “I missed my family [in London]” and he told The National Times (January
6, 1984) that his breakdown in London was due to “the lack of a family life in the big city … I missed my family.” In marked
contrast, in 1995 he told his biographer Beverley Eley: “For twenty-five years [until I met Gillian in 1983] no one really
gave a damn whether I lived or died. It was a long, long time in the wilderness.” “Twenty-five years” takes us back to 1958,
when David was eleven, and is an insult not just to my father, mother, myself, and my siblings, but also to Frank Arndt, Madame
Carrard, Claire, the Harrises, the Prices, Dot, the Reverend Fairman, and many others. I simply do not believe these sentiments
represent David’s own thoughts.