I’ve been reading the new book Sondheim: His Life, His Shows, His Legacy by Stephen M. Silverman, and I’m finding it by turns fun, fascinating, and frustrating.

It has occasional errors, such as referring to Lonny Price, who played Charley in the original cast of Merrily We Roll Along, as Lonny Prince.

It covers mostly well known territory for inveterate Sondheim fans such as I, but it does so on a show-by-show basis as opposed to a full scale biography, and while most of the familiar stories are there, many are not where one would expect them to be and some appear somewhat fragmented. Worse, the author sometimes throws one a curve, and stomps all over a famous anecdote.

For example, the story about Sondheim’s mother telling him that she wished she had never given birth to him is there, and after rehashing it from several different perspectives, the author concludes with an unsourced anonymous collaborator claiming Sondheim telling him that it never happened. Huh? What are we to make of that?

Nevertheless, there are enough new stories, some of them even sourced, to keep me reading.

For example— 

Darrell Brown, a Grammy-winning writer, arranger, and producer of pop and country songs tells the tale of when he was a nineteen year old aspiring songwriter temporarily living in New York City and he met some people from the Norwegian Orchestra who invited him to lunch with them the following Monday as they were going to meet Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince. He leaped at the chance.

Except the Norwegian Orchestra left town unexpectedly.

“Naïve as I was,” Brown remembered, “that Monday morning I called Hal Prince’s office and left a message asking Stephen Sondheim to call me.”

Soon enough, the phone rang. “Is Darrell Brown there? This is Steve Sondheim.”

“I explained about the Norwegian Orchestra,” Brown recalled, “and he said, ‘I don’t know anybody at the Norwegian Orchestra.’ I said, ‘No, really,’ and he said, ‘I have no lunch plans with anybody,’ and he started getting really angry.”

At that point, Brown uttered “I’m so sorry” into the telephone so many times that he lost count. “And, finally, he said, ‘Why did they want you to meet me?’”

“I’m a young songwriter,” Brown answered, and Sondheim’s voice dropped.

“‘Oh,’ he said. Then, silence.”

Somehow, Brown got up the nerve to say, “‘Mr. Sondheim, can I meet you?’ And, to my amazement, he said, ‘What are you doing now?’

“So, I combed my hair, brushed my teeth, put on deodorant,” and Brown raced from where he was staying in Midtown to Sondheim’s Turtle Bay townhouse.

“I walk in, and he introduces me to Betty Comden and Adolph Green. They were judging the Young Playwrights Awards. So, I sat down at the table, and we ended up having dinner. They were all so kind.”

Afterward, Sondheim started to keep track of Brown’s songwriting progress, heard his music, and a friendship developed.

“Every week we had dinner. He was working on Sunday in the Park with George at the time, and, one day, he said to me, ‘Sit down and play me a song.’ I nervously touched his piano. He listened to my song, which I thought was complete, only when I played it for him, I could tell it wasn’t. He didn’t scold me. He didn’t point out where the corners came apart. He asked me where I thought they came apart, and what was my own reaction. He was the first person to tell me how to experience what I was feeling. He was the first, and it was him.”

One particular incident lingers in Brown’s memory. Sondheim played him the score to Merrily We Roll Along, which had been shot down by Broadway critics (and audiences) the year before.

“He said, ‘I don’t understand. They asked me to give this to them, I gave this to them, and then they threw it back at me.’ And as he was saying this, he suddenly looked twenty-five to thirty years younger, like a physical transformation had taken place. He was in his fifties at the time, but the young man in him came out. It was remarkable. He looked young all over again. I didn’t know what to say. All I could think to do was put my arm around his shoulder.”

Brown’s professional songwriting started to take off four years later, and the friendship with Sondheim gradually went from weekly dinners to monthly, tri-monthly, yearly, and then occasional phone conversations.

“He ended up in a very nice personal relationship with someone, and his time became precious. I understand. But his affinity for helping people on their way up—what can I say? He knew everything started in chaos. He knew you had to go into the ether and cross the dream line, and then bring back the chaos. You get to edit it, change things, and move things around. He knew the process and the beautiful turmoil required for that birthing to take place.

“Only as I got older was I able to understand the multiverse dimensions of the gifts he put before me.

“He knew who he was, and the influence he had, the weight he carried, and he also knew that vulnerability is not a weakness, but a superpower.”

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