Out of Tune (21 page)

Contrary to what has been stated in hundreds of media reports all around the world about
Shine
, David gave many public performances during his stay at the lodge. In 1978 he appeared as a special guest artist at a concert
to raise money for his old high school, the John Forrest Senior High School. He played piano duets with a local musician,
Helen Dear, including one of his favorites, “Spanish Dance No. 2,” by Moszkowski, a nineteenth-century Polish-German pianist
and composer.

David also appeared many times in public together with Leslie, who was now working as a violin teacher and a musician. These
were very popular affairs. My brothers had been making a name for themselves and the concerts were usually sold out and attracted
press interest. For example, they gave a series of concerts at the Subiaco Theatre Centre about which
Music Maker
magazine ran a two-page article headlined “Ladies and Gentlemen … It’s the Helfgott Brothers.”

David also began playing with the Karrinyup Symphony Orchestra, for which Leslie already played second violin. Dot took David
to rehearsals with the orchestra and for concert appearances. The conductor was none other than Frank Arndt, our first piano
teacher, who once again spent much time encouraging David, as he had done in the past. On one particularly memorable evening
on November 9, 1980, David played the Bach D Minor Concerto with the orchestra. It must have been a nostalgic occasion for
him, because he had first played it when he was only twelve years old. Even then he received excellent reviews, much better
ones than he gets now. “Helfgott’s lyrical style was a pleasure to hear,” wrote music critic Barbara Yates Rothwell. Under
the headline “Tunes of Glory,” Derek Moore Morgan, the music critic of
The West Australian
, wrote: “David Helfgott negotiated the considerable pianistic pitfalls of Balakirev’s ‘Islamey’ with fluency and clarity.”

David’s rehabilitation took a further step forward when Leslie found him a job playing the piano three nights a week at Riccardo’s
Restaurant and Wine Bar in September 1983. Riccardo’s is the bar shown in the opening scene in
Shine
, where it is renamed “Moby’s.”

I was already in Israel at this time, but family and friends kept me informed of David’s popularity and success at Riccardo’s.
They sent me videos of David playing, surrounded by an appreciative and enthusiastic audience. His adoring fans plied him
with cigarettes and drinks, entranced by his music. He had enormous fun, as did the customers, when he played Rimsky-Korsakov’s
“Flight of the Bumble Bee” or one of his other favorites. My family often went to see him play and it warmed their hearts
to see him so happy, and to hear the cheering of the audience. Even Madame Carrard turned up. “I don’t usually go to this
kind of bar at my age,” she told me later, “but I had a marvelous time.”

David received a lot of local press publicity, and was attracting large crowds who came to hear him play. He would often joke
with the customers. When patrons asked David to play Beethoven’s Fifth, David would reply with a grin: “Which one? Symphony
or Concerto?” (Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, and five piano concertos. One of David’s special talents was that he could
also play symphonies that had been transcribed for the piano.) He was described in the press as “leering mischievously through
bottle-lensed spectacles.” David’s appearances at Riccardo’s became such an event that when he finally stopped playing there
in 1986,
Music Maker
magazine ran a cover story entitled “Riccardo’s—The Party’s Over.”

These were not the only concerts David was giving. In July 1984, he played Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with the Nedlands
Symphony Orchestra at Winthrop Hall at the University of Western Australia under the baton of the Polish conductor Henryk
Pisarek. (“Winthrop Hall has seldom seen such a huge crowd. David Helfgott gave it all the lyricism, sensitivity, and passion
we had come to hear and the audience responded with great warmth,” wrote critic Jan Shepherd in
Music Maker
.) David also played with his beloved teacher, Madame Carrard, on May 25, 1985, at a special concert at the Octagon Theatre,
which is situated on the campus of the University of Western Australia. They played both solo and two-piano works to great
acclaim, including Milhaud’s “Scaramouche.” On November 16, 1985, David and Katie Hewgill played the Rachmaninoff Sonata for
Cello and Piano, at the same venue. In 1986, David gave three more concerts at the Octagon Theatre, selling out over 2,000
seats at this octagonal-shaped venue. His program included three preludes by Rachmaninoff and one of his favorites, “Pictures
at an Exhibition,” by Mussorgsky. All the concerts were very well received. One was even broadcast on television.

It was during the period in which he was playing at Riccardo’s that David met Gillian Murray, a divorcee and a professional
astrologer with two grown children. From then on David’s relationship with Dot abruptly ended and she found herself dramatically
shut out of his life. Gillian had been introduced to David by the owner of Riccardo’s, Dr. Chris Reynolds, and several months
later, on August 26, 1984, they married. My family in Perth attended the wedding. (Gillian and Reynolds fell out badly over
the making of
Shine
, so the character in the film who is directly based on Reynolds was changed to an attractive blond woman.)

After they were married, David and Gillian began to make trips abroad. I met them in London in 1986 at Rudolph Steiner House,
and David and I had great fun playing Dvorak’s New World Symphony, a wonderful piece arranged as a piano duet, which we used
to love performing together as children.

David and his new wife traveled all over Europe in the late 1980s. He gave many concerts, performing in, among other locations,
Vienna, Sion (in Switzerland), Budapest, Helsinki, Oslo, Copenhagen, Bonn, and Düsseldorf. In 1988 they came to visit me in
Israel. David gave a private recital in Jerusalem at the house of a friend of mine. My husband and I took Gillian and David
touring. He particularly loved visiting the ancient Jewish mountain fortress of Masada, and the Dead Sea, which is the lowest
point on earth, and we all had a great time.

David also went to London, where he studied with Peter Feuchtwanger, a German music professor from Munich who had lived in
London since the 1970s. Later, in October 1994, David returned to give a concert at the Royal College of Music. I was very
pleased for him and his successes.

David has undoubtedly spent some exciting years with Gillian. She has taught him several new skills, such as yoga, and she
has tried hard to bring his nicotine and caffeine addictions under control. (At one stage David was smoking over 130 cigarettes
a day and drinking about twenty-five cups of coffee.) In many respects, Gillian has made David very happy and for this the
whole Helfgott family is grateful to her. But in other ways, David has changed for the worse. When Gillian met David, he was
well on the way to recovery. He had had the benefit of seven caring years with Reverend Fairman and almost eight with Dorothy
Croft. He was reasonably independent, playing with his brother Leslie, and performing with various orchestras. He could, for
example, catch public transport by himself without difficulties. He had his own bank account. Yet when I saw him in 1988 in
Israel, he was already manifesting some rather peculiar habits. For example, when catching sight of our dog, David exclaimed:
“Is it a cat? Is it a wolf?” and finally, “Is it a dog?”

Later, in 1991, when I saw David in Perth, he spoke in an even more unusual way: He said to me over and over again: “Hello
Margaret, hello Margaret, hello Margaret, hello Margaret, my Santa Margarita.” I was quite mystified, as David had never talked
like that before. And as time went by he became more and more hyperactive, talking rapidly and leaping from one subject to
another.

Another equally serious development was afoot. After marrying Gillian, David started saying things (and more specifically
telling journalists things) that are completely untrue. I don’t believe that David says these statements of his own volition.
I believe Gillian, who has herself said some pretty nasty things, encourages him to talk in this way. Certainly the habit
became more marked after Gillian got together with Scott Hicks in 1986 and they began to plan
Shine
. The derogatory remarks about people who had helped David in the past coincided with the appearance of articles praising
Gillian for “rescuing” David. Thus began Gillian’s myth building.

I was particularly concerned because it was not just my family, but other good people who were being trampled on by Gillian
to promote herself and what she considered was best for David. I met the Reverend Bob Fairman again for a long talk in 1996,
after
Shine
had come out. This kind Christian man, with his ready smile and engaging, gentle manner, poured his heart out to me. He had
looked after David for seven years; now he was on the verge of tears as he outlined the cruel things Gillian Helfgott and
Scott Hicks (and sometimes also David) had been saying about the period when David was with him. Numerous articles and television
and radio programs around the world talked about David “lying and dying on floors of halfway houses,” being denied access
to the piano, and so on.

“David was not ‘locked up in mental hospitals.’ This is all a myth,” said the Reverend Fairman. “When he was at the lodge,
which was most of the time, he was free to come and go, visit his family, give concerts, have girlfriends, go on holidays—and
he did all of these things. At the same time, he received proper medical supervision in a caring and professional environment,
which is, of course, what people who have these kinds of mental problems need.”

The Reverend Fairman was distraught about the things that David has said about the lodge since he met Gillian. “Some of the
remarks are just absurd— that we didn’t have any knives and forks, for instance. Can you imagine fifty people eating three
cooked meals every day without cutlery? David did not bury his face in a lady’s crotch, as has been claimed, nor even touch
one in an unseemly way. Nor did he run around naked. During the time he was with us, he was much more coherent than he is
now. In spite of his nervous disposition, he radiated a quiet dignity and was most gentlemanly. Contrary to the numerous newspaper
reports, he was a free agent. I had no authority to tell David what to do, nor did I ever try. He had a very enjoyable time
at the lodge. It was a pressure-free environment and he had plenty of friends.”

My brother’s calm state is confirmed in official reports by his doctors. For example, a report prepared by a consultant physician
in March 1983, just before David met Gillian, states that my brother’s “speech was normal throughout the interview.” It can
also be seen on interviews he gave to Australian TV discussing concerts he was giving during this period, programs such as
the ABC’s
Nationwide
(January 1984), and Nine Network’s
Mike Willesee Show
(July 1984), broadcast a month before he married Gillian. It would not have been difficult for Scott Hicks to obtain videos
of these programs.

David was not “released from dark years in an institution” as one paper put it following an interview with Gillian, describing
life at the lodge as “a nightmare.” The lodge had a reputation for excellence; the Reverend Fairman has even received parliamentary
citations for his work. In March 1984, Barry Hodge, Western Australia’s Minister for Health, wrote a special letter, “commending
the Reverend Fairman for his valuable work on behalf of the state of Western Australia.” And in April 1986, Graham Burkett,
a member of Western Australia’s Legislative Assembly wrote: “The Reverend Fairman is one of the most respected and highly
regarded persons in Western Australia and his hostel is often displayed by the government as an example to persons operating
similar hostels.”

Fairman is not the kind of man to run to his lawyers. Yet in 1987 he became the first of several people involved in this sorry
saga to contemplate legal action against Gillian Helfgott. In July of that year he instructed his lawyer to send a letter
threatening a defamation suit against her for remarks she had made in
The Australian Women’s Weekly
. She had said that David “lived in a room like a cell,’ was “sedated into almost catatonic state” and had been “left to suffer
alone.” The Reverend Fairman warned her not to repeat these allegations.

Gillian also claimed that David “hadn’t played [the music which he then played at Riccardo’s] for almost fifteen years,” which
is simply not true. I myself heard him play when I visited the lodge in 1980. Other residents and staff at the lodge also
protested that this article was “misleading and totally inaccurate.”

The Reverend Fairman told me that after this episode, when he heard that Gillian and Scott Hicks were planning to make a film,
he had telephoned the film company in Adelaide; but no one had got back to him and he was never interviewed for
Shine
or shown a copy of the script. Sometime later, when he heard further rumors of all the untrue things that were to be included,
he rang again and eventually managed to speak to the screenwriter. The Reverend Fairman said he was assured that he had no
need for concern—the film was to be highly dramatized and, he gathered, fictitious. “I was very surprised,” the Reverend Fairman
said to me, “when I saw that
Shine
was being described as a true story. I was shocked to see the character supposedly representing myself locking the piano
away from David—I never did anything like that. The filmmakers’ line of thinking must have been: Why let facts spoil a good
story?

“David was in a far better shape when he was under my care than he is now. He is an intelligent man, and you could then hold
an intelligent conversation with him. He often went home to see his family and they often came to visit. In the whole seven
years, David never said one angry word against his father.”