by DAVID LANDER
Do we credit coincidence or some celestial casting agent with the fact that Avery Fisher could play himself on stage? The urbane, handsome hifi patriarch and patron of the arts is the very image of distinction.
In the October 1946 Fortune magazine, a lengthy article explored the hobbyist phenomenon called high fidelity in great detail.
It was the first time many Americans so much as heard the term, and the piece thrust Fisher, the only manufacturer to earn rave reviews, into the spotlight. Products from the era's major console makers comprised a comparatively tuneless chorus, but the two radio-phonographs built by Fisher Radio were virtuoso performers. "Best of the postwar radio combinations in price and performance," the Fortune writer stated unequivocally.
The idea of incorporating high-performance components in a commercially available console was just the first of many remarkably astute moves from this groundbreaking manufacturer. Combining preamp, amp, and tuner on a single chassis to create the first hi-fi receiver (an innovation as important in our field as the sandwich proved to food) ranks as another. By the time Fisher sold his company to Emerson Electric Co. for $31 million in 1969, the list of achievements had lengthened considerably.
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Fisher justifies his grant to Lincoln Center in the simplest of terms: He was merely giving something back to the music world.
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above: In 1973, Fisher donated more than a third of the pretax proceeds from
that sale to New York City's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, which
in return renamed its major concert hall in his honor. The grant, about $12
million, was unusually sophisticated: A portion was set aside for housekeeping,
necessary if mundane, and other monies are held in trust for the benefit of
deserving young performers, 48 of whom have since been award recipients.
Fisher justifies that extremely generous grant in the simplest of terms; he was, he has explained, merely giving something back to the music world. Music, he has stated, is the wellspring, the sine qua non of high-fidelity hardware; without music, Avery Fisher once remarked to me, everything he had manufactured over the years would be piled up in basements.
Avery Robert Fisher was born in Manhattan, New York, on March 4, 906, just three years after his parents had emigrated from the Russian city of Kiev. Educated at the city's public schools and New York University, he grew up in a musical household only blocks from the upper East Side apartment where he now resides. His father, Charles, collected early cylinder recordings, and all six Fisher children were given the chance to learn instruments. Young Avery's choice was the violin, and the boy was instilled with a profound love of chamber music that has remained an important part of his life to this day.
The conversation that follows took place in the apartment the Fishers have occupied for more than 30 years, in the living room where equipment destined to carry his name once underwent listening tests. With a 7'4" Bosendorfer grand piano standing near one wall and a library of string quartet literature shelved against another, it was an ideal setting to discuss a hi-fi legend's long and passionate involvement with music.
D.L.
What did your father do for a living ?
My father was in the clothing business. He had a store-not too far from here, as a matter of fact-for many years. It became very well known. He was a linguist-he could speak German, Russian, English, and French, so new arrivals who had difficulty with the English language enjoyed coming there. They could always make themselves understood.
You've mentioned his avid interest in music and record collecting. Was he also a musician ?
He didn't play an instrument himself, but he saw to it that every one of his children-there were six of us-was given an opportunity to learn to play.
All the rest were pianists; I was the only one who studied violin, which in later years I realized was a very nice thing because that gave me access to string quartet playing. For many years my wife and I had chamber music in our home every Friday night. That, I would say, is the single most significant musical experience for me, that exposure to chamber music. I have a pretty comprehensive chamber music library right up on those shelves. At the time I started playing it in my apartment, if you'd mention the phrase "chamber music" people would ask, "What is that ?" It was a foreign language to them, but for me it's a gold mine.
There's no bottom to this mine. You keep digging for as many years as you want to, and there's always something new or the rediscovery of something.
We're very fortunate that a number of outstanding professional musicians are very good friends of ours, and they love to play in this room. We don't have a mob scene. We just have the musicians and a few friends-their friends, ours-and a nice meal afterwards.
Anything they want to play, I can pull it off the shelves if we have it here. We have a very fine piano here. So that's a very enriching experience for me.
Do you still play ?
No, I don't play anymore. My wife will tell you, if you ask her, that I stopped playing in response to popular demand. [laughter] A string instrument is something you've got to keep at every day, at least a half-hour of exercises, scales or whatever, or you lose it fast.
No, I haven't played for some years.
I'm the librarian now.
I remember running into you at Lincoln Center-perhaps 10 years ago-after [violinist] Ani Kavafian gave her Fisher award-winning performance. I went to the Green Room with a few friends to say hello to her, and you were standing outside holding a violin case in your hand.
It may have been the Strad that I loaned her.
You own a Stradivarius. Do you own other instruments as well ?
No, just that one. It's enough for me.
How old is the violin ? What's its provenance ?
It's from 1692. It was owned by one of the prominent female violinists in England. It was in her family for 75 years, which means it wasn't knocked around on tour and is in excellent condition.
But you loan it out to performers ?
I loan it out for special occasions. Not for long term because it becomes a cruelty. They fall in love with it, and then at some point you have to take it back because you're not going to make them a gift of it.
No. An instrument like that is incredibly valuable today.
I bought it at an auction in London 12 years ago for $60,000, and it was recently reappraised for $500,000. That's what's happened, and that, in a sense, tells you the tragedy of being a string instrument player on his way up who hasn't got the funds to get the best possible instrument to pursue his profession. It's a terrible situation.
These youngsters sign away their income for the next 15 or 20 years just to be able to own a good instrument.
You've helped a number of young performers, and I want to get back to that subject. First, I'd like to ask you about the early days of hi-fi. One of the original breeding grounds for the species was the collection of radio parts stores on Cortlandt Street in downtown Manhattan. You have a favorite Cortlandt Street story about a radio you bought there for your parents. Do you recall how old you were at that time ?
Oh, I guess I was in my late 20s. Cortlandt Street was known as Swindle Street, as you know. I went down to Cortlandt Street, and they had two d.c. models, six tube and eight tube, and I erroneously thought the extra tubes meant extra quality of some sort. So I bought the one with the eight tubes and gave it to mom and dad. They were living in an apartment with direct current; they didn't have a.c. Several years later, that neighborhood was rewired for a.c., and I took their radio down to the service department of Lafayette Radio, which had those facilities, to be rewired for a.c. The man at the counter took the thing apart and took a look and then said, "I'd like to show you something." Those two extra tubes were not even in a circuit; all they did was light up. My other favorite comment on Cortlandt Street: There was a place that sold used tubes, and a slogan in the window said, "Our tubes are guaranteed for life." In other words, the minute they failed, that was the end of the guarantee. [laughter]
You never studied engineering, though I believe your brothers did. Like so many of those instrumental in making hi-fi a business, you started out as a hobbyist.
Yes, my two oldest brothers were engineers, a mechanical engineer and chemical engineer. They were in no way an influence on my activity. I represented the meticulous hobbyist who wanted to get the best possible results.
I started delving into [audio] when sound movies came along. Theaters in the early days of sound movies were playing the sound off a 16-inch disc synchronized with the film in the projection booth. Of course, the movie theaters had terrible problems with lip synchronization. Then along came Western Electric with their system, called Mirraphonic, which recorded the sound track on one edge of the film. [The theaters] went into the Western Electric systems, and they got rid of their amplifiers, which were called Photophones-that was the RCA system. I used to pick those up for a song from the theaters. To them it was junk, but they were very good amplifiers. I think they had a type 50 audio tube that was the size of a pint milk bottle. I used those to build up phonographs, and they were pretty good. I started really as a hobbyist. When I had to get design work done, I had it done by electronic engineers, but I was the guy who stated the features that were wanted by the public I thought was out there-the convenience features and the performance features.
When and why did you decide to make hi-fi your profession ? Prior to starting your first company, Philharmonic Radio, you had been a book designer.
That's how I started to make a living when I got out of college. I worked with a publishing house, Dodd, Mead and Company-to whom I owe everything when you get right down to it. I worked at Dodd, Mead and Company for the single most cruel person I have ever met in my lifetime-and I'm not exaggerating. This man was only a year older than I. He was the boss's son, and I think he sensed my apprehension about having a job at all. I went to work there in 1933, having been in the advertising agency that handled their account before that. That agency closed when the banks closed in 1933, and I was out of work for about six months. In the fall of that year, I went to Dodd, Mead asking if they could use my services, and they hired me for $18 a week. After about six months, perhaps out of guilt or something, they gave me a two dollar raise. I was doing the same work there that I was doing for them at the agency, and the agency used to charge them $100 to design a [promotional] brochure. I used to turn out two or three of those a week, and I still was getting only $18 or S20.
In 1937, I noticed that the advertising department of Dodd, Mead was buying their photo engravings from one source and their book manufacturing department was buying from another. If they combined both those purchases and bought from one source, their quantity discount would save them just under $10,000 a year. I went to my superior, Ed Dodd, and told him about it. He said, "That's a great idea, Fisher." He never called me by my first name-always by my last, you know, like a deckhand. He said, "I think I'll do something about it." And they did. And I said, "By the way, I'd be very grateful if I could have a five dollar raise." He could have said, "Well, not right now." But instead he said, "Well, no. We probably could get some young Yale boy in here to do your work for less than we're paying you." That day, I said to myself, "I've got to get out of here one way or another," and I started putting [radio-phonograph] sets together for friends. I was moonlighting, and I did that for a number of years before I was in a position to get out and really spend full time on this. By 1943, I'd built up my company, Philharmonic Radio, to the point where I could draw enough money from it to earn a living. By that time I had a wife and child. So I owe them [Dodd, Mead] everything. Because I really loved my work as a book designer, and I turned out some very fine stuff, which won prizes. One of the books I turned out was called Grassroot Jungles, which became one of the 50 best books of the year for graphic design--this is out of 40,000 titles--and Ed Dodd never let me put my name in a book for credit as the designer. Now this is a long answer to your simple question, what got me into hi-fi. It was an act of desperation--and also of love, because I really enjoyed hearing good equipment.
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There's no greater pleasure than hearing chamber music in your own living room. There's an intimacy about it that can't be matched.
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Where was Philharmonic Radio based ?
54 West 21st Street. I shared a loft that had an area of about 750 square feet. Half was a showroom and the other half was the production area. In those days we were assembling a tuned radio-frequency receiver, and the object was to get the best possible reproduction of the local stations and best possible reproduction of recordings. We were not interested in short wave, which was a sort of national craze at the time. Consumer's Union ran a report on what we were doing, and that was the first big boost we had in becoming known.
What did Philharmonic Radio do during the war ?
During the war, we were working on subcontracts for the Navy. We were turning out IFF equipment, which is Identification, Friend or Foe. It was a transponder, so you could tell whether an aircraft was one of ours or one of theirs. You'd send out a beam, and you had to get a signal reply back. We also designed the first instrument landing system used at LaGuardia Airport for the Civil Aeronautics Administration in Washington. In 1943, we didn't have enough money to finance the contract work we were able to get, so the company was sold to American Type--founders, who needed an electronic division.
I stayed on 'til the end of the war, at which time [1945] I resigned and started Fisher Radio. After the war, a lot of GIs came back with some electronic exposure, and they were part of our clientele. We also got a write-up in Fortune magazine in October, 1946. That article was the watershed for our company internationally. We started getting orders-it was amazing who was buying from us; it was literally a Who's Who of American industry, education, and government, top people. And as a result of that, I met some really wonderful people who happened to be interested in music but who also wanted very good equipment to reproduce it in their homes. Some of them became very good friends. These are the wonderful things that happened as offshoots of my basic business, making hi-fi equipment. I met some marvelous human beings.
Well, you were always very attentive to your customers.
That's true, absolutely true. I felt that anybody who bought something from me deserved my attention-if it came to that. I used to go to work on Saturdays at my Long Island facility. The place was closed, but I had the first , line plugged into my office so I answered the phone. It was not atypical for a customer to call up and say he needed some service. I asked what the trouble was and wrote it down and said, "Somebody will call you on Monday to set up an appointment because there's nobody here." [And the customer would say] "By the way, who is this ? I said, "This is Mr. Fisher." And he would say, "You're kidding!" And anybody who called during the week and had a complaint got me. I never ducked anybody. I felt, if they had been disappointed by somebody lower down, they deserved my attention.
Didn't you in fact take calls from consumers up until the time you sold your company ?
Oh, sure. As long as I was in my company, I was accessible to anybody.
You also had a retail store for a while.
We had a little store at 41 East 47th Street [opened in] September of 1945.
We kept it there for a few years. At that time, we had no dealer distribution. If you wanted Fisher equipment, that's where you went.
When you decided to sell through other dealers, who were they ?
Well, most of them were Capehart dealers. That's where we got our basic start with dealers. Capehart was unable to produce a trouble-free set that could handle LP records. The heavy shellac records gave the machine something to get a grip on, but even those [players] used to break. Then they had trouble with their cabinets; sheets of veneer would fall off. That left it open for somebody to come in with a high-priced radio-phonograph. The dealers turned to us. We were the only ones who could produce what they were looking for.
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One of Fisher's customers was Jack Kennedy. Another was Truman, who gave a Fisher radio-phonograph to the King of Siam.
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You once told me that a number of customers at your 47th Street store paid you in cash.
My favorite cash customer was a dentist who came in on a Saturday afternoon to pay for his set, and he paid me in cash. I didn't want to leave that cash in the store over the weekend so I took it home. My wife said, "What's that funny smell?" I said, "From what?" She said, "Coming from your drawer." It seemed the smell was camphor. The doctor had camphor balls in his cash to make sure the mice didn't eat it.
I believe your customer list also included a couple of U.S. Presidents.
Oh, yes. My favorite, of course, was Jack Kennedy. We not only set up hi-fi equipment in the private quarters of the President in the White House, which he used all the time, but we put together a radio-phonograph in segments that fit into aluminum cases that accompanied the President on Air Force One. We made a special set for him with multi-voltage facilities so, no matter where he was, he could enjoy his equipment. And President Truman-when he wanted to give a gift to some potentate, he would give him a Fisher radio-phonograph. When the King of Siam [now Thailand], Phumiphol Adundet, got married, President Truman had the State Department come to my little shop on 47th Street and order a radio-phonograph to be shipped to Thailand. They brought with them [an inscribed] silver plate, and we were instructed to nail that to the top of the set with silver nails so the King would never forget where it came from. [laughter]
What did the postwar Fisher line consist of ?
We had two basic models as far as receivers were concerned. We had a variety of loudspeaker arrangements--that's where we had our variety. And also tonearms. Some people wanted to go into the very expensive stuff, and we used to supply them with Western Electric tonearms-the Model 9Awhich was what the broadcast stations used. And also Western Electric turntables. That was the top of the line. There were customers for whom price was no object, and we supplied them.
You didn't build your own speakers in those days.
No. We didn't get into making speakers until later years. For the top of the line, we used Western Electric, two of which I have in this room. I used to enjoy impressing people by having a little table radio, which probably had a one or two watt output, and switching it into these speakers. They couldn't believe that much sound was being generated by this $10 piece of junk.
Weren't your prices so high that, in effect, you were competing with the television manufacturers of the day ?
In a sense, I guess we were. People would come in, learn the price and say, "Well, wait a minute. For that kind of money I can get a radio-phonograph and television." I had to point out to them that the audio side of that comprised a six-inch speaker instead of a 15-inch [woofer] and high frequency speaker, and a very small amplifier, perhaps three or four watts, because we were selling them 50-watt amplifiers. I had to educate the public because of that price differential.
How did you see yourself in relation to the major audio companies?
The big companies, in my specialized market, were at a great disadvantage.
Their decisions on what models to bring out were usually created in committees, and the bottom line was that division had to produce a profit. Their decisions were understandably based on what would generate the most volume, not essentially what a few hi-fi bugs would like. So that left that field for me. And conversely, I was not in the position to turn out volume radio-phonographs at a low price. I was just not set up for it. So we were both specialists in a way, they in mass-produced, moderate-priced equipment and I in limited production and high quality.
Did you ever consider moving down-market-lowering the quality and cranking up the volume?
It never even entered my mind because I had no personal interest in it.
No model we ever turned out was even brought anywhere near production before prototypes were brought into this home, this room as a matter of fact, and lived with for a while. That was true also of loudspeakers; I always matched prospective speaker systems against my Western Electrics, which were my standard.
A distinction I often make between art and business is that the former is driven by love and the latter money. Were your contemporaries in the early days of hi-fi more interested in the art of music reproduction than they were in making a lot of money ?
They were dedicated people. I'm sure they wanted to make money, but their primary motivation was to turn out a quality product. There's no question about it-and, where possible, I used that quality product.
You had some Fisher products built in Japan.
Later on, yes. But we were not one of the first to rush over.
When did you first come into contact with the Japanese ?
When I first took notice of what was going on, I decided to go over and see for myself. In the early '60s, I went to Japan. That first trip was an eye-opener for me. I was going over to buy material-loudspeakers. We were also interested in tuning meters for our receivers, center-of-channel and signal strength meters. I took my chief engineer over with me. Now as far as the speakers were concerned, I was shown through these assembly line [areas]. The first thing that struck me was that, here I was, a strange person in this environment, a lot of young people on an assembly line, and I never once caught them looking at me. I'm sure they saw me. They were all busy with whatever it was they were doing.
One of the companies we visited was a meter manufacturer. My chief engineer gave them samples of what we were looking for-we were buying perhaps five or ten thousand at a time-and he gave them to the manager, who was taking us on a tour of that facility. I don't think we were there more than an hour and a quarter, maybe an hour and 20 minutes. When we were saying goodbye, his aide came over. They had already fabricated samples of the meters that we were interested in. That's the Japanese.
Did you participate in the first public hi-fi shows, the ones run by Harry Reizes ?
Yes, we were in every one of them. As a matter of fact, I was one of the instigators of the Institute of High Fidelity Manufacturers [a trade association later renamed Institute of High Fidelity; it has since been absorbed by the Electronic Industries Association]. We felt that the industry was important enough in and of itself to be able to run its own shows.
The early shows introduced a lot of people to the phenomenon known as high fidelity. They were important to you and your colleagues in other ways as well, weren't they ?
above: Guitarist David Starobin and Fisher. Starobin is the only guitarist
to be honored with a Fisher Career Grant.
Sure. We wanted to be in touch with our clientele. We learned a great deal from them. We didn't have to send out a bunch of college boys with questionnaires to find out what we should be making. I was able to speak to the actual consumers, or potential consumers, to find out what they liked about our present products and what they would like to see in our future products. And conversely, for them to be able to come into our rooms and talk to the man whose name was on the product meant a great deal to them.
They felt they were talking to headquarters, and they were. I enjoyed meeting these people. They were not only helping me make a living, but they were great people. They were interested in music, and I've found over the years that people who love music are special somehow. They're usually very decent people. I'm not saying there aren't some devils among them but, generally speaking, the nicest people I've met in my lifetime are music lovers and musicians. They are very special.
Well, in the light of your exceptionally generous donation to LincolnCenter, your feelings about musicians are a matter of record.
Let's talk a bit about that. Why did you decide to make the grant to that particular organization? I wanted an organization that could also administer the Avery Fisher Artist Program, and Lincoln Center had the personnel to do exactly that. I don't know where else I could have gone to have that set up on a permanent basis, with the right people running it. That's been one of the most enriching experiences of my life, that program.
How are the monies allocated? At the time you made the grant, the press noted that the program you set up was very sophisticated in that it helps cover such unglamorous but essential things as housekeeping.
The basic endowment goes to the operation and maintenance of Avery Fisher Hall-20 percent of that goes to the support of the Avery Fisher Artist Program. That additional income means that they don't have to raise ticket prices as much as they would have to if they didn't have the income from that endowment. That helps the New York Philharmonic, Which pays part of the operation and maintenance of the hall.
And, of course, some of the money was used to redo the hall acoustically in the mid-'70s. But explain the Avery Fisher Artist Program.
It operates on two levels. One is the Avery Fisher Prize, which carries with it a $25,000 stipend. It goes to an established musician who has made an important contribution to music. To give you an idea of who the recipients of the prize have been: In 1975, [cellist] Lynn Harrell and [pianist] Murray Perahia, in 1978, Yo-Yo Ma, cellist, 1979, Emanuel Ax, pianist, in 1980 [pianist] Richard Goode, 1982, Horacio Gutiérrez, pianist, and in 1983, Elmar Oliveira, violinist. These are the established people.
In addition to that, on another level, we have the Avery Fisher Career Grant, which has a $10,000 stipend.
There have been over 40 beneficiaries of that. These are talented musicians who are ready for a major career and who need a break of some sort. I've been told by a number of them that, although the money is very good and they appreciate it, what meant even more to them was the fact of being chosen for this program. Now mind you, the way it works is we have about 120 members of a recommendation board that includes educators, musicians, managers--people in a position to spot the talent. They send in their nominations to Lincoln Center, where we have an executive committee, and that executive committee makes the final choice. These musicians have told us that the imprimatur of that committee meant more to them by way of bookings than anything we could possibly have done for them. Their careers usually took off at that point. So it's become a very important endorsement. Now each year, we award only one prize, if there is somebody suitable for it. But we also award up to five Career Grants of $10,000 each, depending on eligibility of musicians.
Now they can use that $10,000 for any purpose that furthers their careers; it could be for a recital, it could be to put a deposit down on an instrument.
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The Avery Fisher Prize of $25,000 has gone to such musicians as Murray Perahia, Richard Goode, Lynn Harrell, Emanual Ax, and Yo-Yo Ma.
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At the time your donation was announced, Lincoln Center's major concert hall was renamed Avery Fisher Hall. You've always maintained that was not your idea.
It was not my idea-it was mind-boggling when it happened. It was uncomfortable in the beginning. I try to think of myself as a low-key person. But they felt I had done enough for them to warrant that sort of thank you. It's been a very amusing experience in ways, you know. People who have their names on concert halls are supposed to be dead. But today there are two concert halls in New York--Alice Tully Hall and Avery Fisher Hall--where the people involved are still around. It's not unusual for me to go to a department store and want to charge something; I'll put down my name, Avery Fisher, and the clerk will look at me and say, "Are you the hall ?"
I see some LPs on your shelves. Do you have a very extensive collection of records ?
The major part of my record collection is not here, but up in [a weekend residence in] Connecticut, where I have facilities that are really something to see. In Connecticut, I have a bass speaker cabinet with two 15-inch woofers. These are horn-loaded, Lansing.
And on top of that, I have two 594A Western Electric drivers with four-inch voice coils. The voice coil assembly and magnet weighs something like 31 pounds, so you can be sure there's plenty of gauss in there. These feed into a model 26A Western Electric multi-cellular horn, the kind used in theaters. It's 37 inches wide and 26 inches high and has 15 cells. That's mounted on top of these two 15-inch woofers. The whole assembly stands 7 feet tall, and it fits right into a closet in our hall, which is just ideal. I like to tell my friends that, when I brought this monster into the building, I first arranged with one of the local doctors to give my wife general anesthesia so she wouldn't throw me out of the house with the speakers.
It really is amazing how far the art of music reproduction has advanced in your lifetime.
Don't forget I started my career in hi-fi by being the youngest member of my family. We had a hand-crank phonograph. It was spring wound, and I was the one who had to crank it up after every record. You know, it only ran four minutes.
If you had it all to do over again, what would you change ?
Well, I wouldn't go to work for Ed Dodd, but that would be the only thing I would change. For me it's been a very enriching life, not only in the area of fine reproduction equipment, which brought happiness to a lot of people, but being able to listen to great music by fine musicians-some of whom are very dear friends who have honored this house by coming here to play. No matter how great the concert, there's no greater pleasure than hearing chamber music in your own living room. There's an intimacy about it that can't be matched in a concert hall.
(source: Audio magazine, Sept. 1990)
Also see:
The Audio Interview: George Martin (June 1987)
Engineering the Boston (Aug. 1990)
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