I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young... he killed himself in the prime of his life.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Both my grandfathers and my mother's brother were musicians.
I had a brother who was my savior, made my childhood bearable.
I had a number of very strong personalities in my family. My father was a concert flutist, the solo flute for Toscanini.
My older brother Joel became an art teacher; my brother Rip ultimately became a television producer and singer and actor himself.
My brother Alan - who was seven years younger than me - died from leukemia when he was 52. He never knew a day's good health - I wish I could have given him some of my good health. But he was always so cheerful and sweet.
The person that was closest to me growing up was my sister, who died at 19. She was an incredibly powerful girl, deeply committed to art and literature.
From early on there were two things that filled my life - music and storytelling, both of them provoked by my father. He was a jazz pianist and also a very good storyteller, an avid reader. He passed both those interests on to me.
Compared with my brother, I always felt like Richard III, some clever humpbacked thing who surpassed him in the end. He was the one who read books, but I became the writer. He painted and drew, but I was the one who got accepted by the High School of Music and Art.
My brother is the lifelong musician; he made the choice to do that when we were very, very young kids. I remember him playing in bands and listening to the music he was writing in the house - he's nine years older than me.
All my siblings became artists. One's a novelist, my brother is a painter, my sister was a costume designer.