Reflections on my Brother, Doug Raney in 2020

Recently, I received a website email requesting I write about the details of the dark side of my brother’s life.  This person just launched into the letter without preamble, “Hey so why don’t you write about the dark stuff and what happened to his guitars… I’d like to hear it because… blah, blah, etc. “

So aside from tactless manner in which this person wrote to me, I’ve pondered the implication that my website presents an idealized and selective view of my famous jazz family and in particular, Doug. In all honesty, it’s possible.  This is one of the dangers of the social media age. Bill Maher refers to this as creating an “avatar” of yourself – the one you want the world to believe is you rather than the real you.

There is also the fact that burying Doug was so painful and pondering his tragic life is difficult for me to do for any length of time. It hurts me still like it was yesterday, even though its been over four years now. And I feel tremendous guilt about not being there for him. Even though I knew down deep he could not be reached because he couldn’t change the decisions he had made that led to his demise and eventual death at 59 (my current age).

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For those of you who have really ventured into my site, the details of my father’s alcoholism and fall from grace are quite amply presented in the middle biography pages, without filter. But I knew my father well in the 70’s through to the end of his life – the good, the bad and everything in between. And the earlier stuff I knew from my father’s mouth. Doug’s biography however is little more than a slightly more detailed Wikipedia or record liner notes.

OK, so here’s a little background on at least some of that. Back in 2012 I told Doug that I wanted to include some more detailed biography of him. I started a biography and included some stories of us when we were kids; there was nothing really overly revealing or controversial about what I had written.  However, he flat out told me, “Take it down (in that New York tough voice of his that many of you know). You want to write about your life, or Dad’s it’s your business. But my life is my business. And there are enough people gossiping about me and up in my shit already.” So I took it down and never continued it.

In many ways he was right. On a number of occasions while Doug was still alive, I checked out jazz boards where they were discussing Doug’s recordings or playing and eventually some shithead would chime in with his “in-the-know” bullshit about Doug’s drug use or his on/off terrible living situation. I would often login to the board and message the posters to chill out and be respectful and for the most part they would.

So that’s the thing. People like to talk shit about other people.  And on the Internet, it’s like a brush fire. When you have something unsavory about your life, be it drugs or infidelity, suddenly that’s the focus of what’s talked about. You see it all the time. There’s a Bill Evans thread talking about his music. And some wise-ass drops a comment, “Well he was a junkie you know…” with little pertinence to the topic at hand. Yeah, duh. So now what, asshole? What is the point in relation to the discussion? ‘Well I’m just stating a fact’, the poster will say. ‘I’m keeping it real’. Really? Is that what you’re doing? Or are you just demonstrating that you feel insignificant to an unknown group of people and are looking for any opening to gain entry. Standard social anxiety, seems to me. It says more about you than the addict.

I would agree that it’s important to be truthful about one’s life but it’s a very touchy thing because many are irresponsible and tactless with the knowledge they receive about other people’s personal lives. And people will try to cozy up to you with that inside information as if they know you really well. This is what Doug detested and I can’t say I blame him.

Conceivably, given Doug has been gone for over 4 years now, I could endeavor to write his biography. The tug of Doug’s ‘take it down… this is my business not yours’ betrayal pulls less at me. The truth of the matter though is that this is partly a journalistic issue. In many ways I didn’t know him as well as his close friends in Denmark or his ex-wife Hanne. There was huge gap in our relationship between 1979 and 1993 when we reunited. Stuff went on his life that I only heard about from others. And as his younger brother, Doug would tend to shield me from things, especially those things that would tend to lessen him in my eyes. It’s also important, as I’ve done in relation to my father, to give the full arc of a person’s life, to not reduce it to caricature. I’m just not ready to do that just yet.

When I toured with Doug in Denmark in 1994 we both drank a lot and played a lot, hugged a lot and he told me how much he loved his little brother and how proud he was to play with me. He would tell and retell his friends again and again, “I haven’t seen this guy in 15 years”, as he had his big arm draped around me. Eventually even his friends would tire of the same story and go, “Yeah I know you haven’t seen in him in 15 years… “

Doug was joyful during our reuniting between 1993-1994. But part of that lifestyle involved a lot of drinking and eventually he would drink himself into a certain aggressive and ornery head-space that I suddenly didn’t understand. For example I remember we went to see one of his guitarist friends play on an R&B/Blues gig during the ’94 tour and he fucking booed and hissed at him loud enough for him to hear.

That ornery nature reminds me a bit of a story he told me about Freddy Hubbard. One night Doug got super wasted on Freddy’s gig and during the set, Doug yelled out, “Chet Baker, the best fucking trumpet player”. I’m sure Freddy could’ve socked him if he had the notion but instead, Freddy raised his glass in honor of Chet. “He turned the tables on me”, Doug joked.

My brother’s drug and alcohol abuse issue was in a way much more subtle then Dad’s. And the borderline between socially acceptable and stinking drunk took a long time to traverse. He drank a lot but he still could perform. In fact it was prerequisite to have a six pack or two at the ready for either a gig or a recording date. Heck we both did. When we played Birdland in 1996 we went through two six-packs of Heineken pretty quick and did just fine. It was just the thing to do to mellow yourself out but not completely lose control.

My father on the other hand was either on or off the wagon. And there was no performing while drunk (though maybe he managed it somewhat in early years). As far as heroin, methadone and all that, it’s just something that Doug and I didn’t discuss. If I touched on the subject, he just changed it and I really didn’t call him on it; he didn’t want anyone getting into touchy-feely discussions with him about drugs or alcohol, not even his brother. My father on the other hand was pretty open to it, even if he couldn’t ultimately control his addiction.

Drugs are a mystery to me. But I do know one thing, I know enough to be afraid of them. Once you introduce heroin or similar drugs into your life, your mind, your self-control, your understanding of your motivations and goals all change. You are no longer in control of your life. Alcohol abuse takes a little more time and nurturing but the results are the same.

Both Jimmy and Doug were obviously complex artistic people that were suffering inside and they always went back eventually to the thing that could at least for a time make their lives more bearable. But even that is a cliche. Drugs and booze wrecked both their lives, alienated their spouses and their children. They both wanted to change but drugs and booze are beasts that will lie to you. They will push themselves into your consciousness, beckoning you, rationalizing the argument to just give in.

Ultimately they took Doug away from us way too soon, you his fans and me his only brother, still here and pondering what life could’ve been for Doug Raney.