The advanced age ("I do not feel connected to it"), the first anxiety attack in Corona ("I felt I was suffocating"), and the disconnection from Galgalatz ("I distribute songs myself, on the guerrilla") • Jeremy Kaplan rages (on stage)
Kaplan.
"After shows they tell me, 'We did Google on you. The age there - is that real?'"
Photo:
Kfir Ziv, Styling: Michal Ovadia, Makeup: Rose in Dosa Rotro, Jacket: Staff Fashion, Shirt: Castro, Jeans: Staff Fashion
This coming September Jeremy Kaplan will celebrate 60. Looking at his slim and supple body, with which he is still raging on stage even during the Corona period, the chronological age is almost inconceivable.
His response to a question on the subject is to lie down on the floor of his rehearsal room, in a shelter he rents from the Ramat Hasharon municipality, and to lift his legs and arms up while lying down.
"Like when a dog dies," he explains with typical humor.
"This thing, with age, is far above my head. I do not feel anything to do with it. This 60s is in front of my eyes, and the person I feel in the morning and see in the mirror - does not connect me to that number. I feel 40 years old."
Sages said "60 years old." You should not see a shred of it.
"People who hear the age do not believe.
After performances, when I rave for an hour and a half and dismantle the place, they come to me and say 'We did Google on you. The age there - is it real?'
Who knows, maybe they made a mistake that I am not aware of in my birth certificate. "
Still, age has signs.
Kaplan uses a medical cannabis vaporizer, a certificate, designed to reduce the pain he suffers from due to past surgeries: surgery to heal torn cartilage in the shoulder, surgery to remove a marble in the foot and additional surgery, only in the last year.
Another sign of age: Kaplan is toying with the idea of getting involved in politics.
"Someone has to get in there and act for the benefit of the people," he explains.
"In Corona we have seen all the failures, both in management and in the economy. If there had been more empathy for the people affected, many tragedies would have been avoided. To me, all the agendas today, all the old divisions, weigh on us. The classic division between right and left no longer exists. Less interesting is the Greater Land of Israel, so what defines right and left other than Bibi's part yes or no? "
Do you think you have a place in contemporary politics?
"There is a lack of new people who we believe will be in favor of the simple, middle-class man. I would like to believe that Yair Lapid represents them, and that he will have the strength to come in and do. As I believed in Kahlon, he wants to do for the people. The ultra-Orthodox? I am not against them, but against coercion. We have to, or they will use all kinds of leverage to get more money than is needed in the distribution. "
In the last year, the politician who impressed him the most was Naftali Bennett.
"I was not always in favor of him. Suddenly, in the Corona crisis, his speech was not that of a politician. He was the first to come and say, 'I am willing to put aside annexation and Greater Israel and the changes in the Ministry of Justice, because there is something bigger here.'
You have hardly written any political songs.
"I do not feel that politics is something I want to sing about. It does not bring me feelings and emotions that translate into music."
At the height of the corona it seemed that many sectors in the country thought only of themselves, and not of others.
"True. In Corona it rose sharply. The secularists behaved as badly as the religious, only with us the damage was less great. We had the audacity that everyone would do what he thought. There was a problem of trust, of mutual guarantee, a sense that there was a rift between the people who were not harmed. "Those who were badly injured. Those who were not injured wanted to fly straight to Dubai, or attacked the malls that opened. Everyone took care of their own ass."
* * *
And there was another thing that really bothered him: that the artists who could afford it - flew to perform in Dubai.
"I can not understand it. It hurt me and tore me. I am not Omar Adam, who has production capabilities to fly and perform there. They made celebrations there, without masks, and returned to the country with the virus and some other variants. Because of them we had to go into another closure. They "They did it because they allowed it. The heart is heartbroken about it. Now everyone wants to get back to routine, but we have to do some small mental calculation before that."
How did you react to the demonstrations that took place during the closure?
"To me it's terrible. Danger to life. You do not know if you were infected and who you are infecting. The demonstrators did not keep the rules enough, and I know some did exercises and went without phones, that they would not cheat them. Who are you cheating on? It hurt mutual guarantee and gave during quarantine "A feeling of spitting in the face of everyone whose lives have been destroyed and they do not have a job. I also think that the management should be replaced, but when they are at war, they must be mutually responsible, to be for each other."
During the demonstrations, your friend Assaf Amdursky attacked the prime minister in harsh language.
"I felt saddened by his words, and I also told him that. I felt it was more distancing people than a fight."
Have you vaccinated yourself?
"Obviously, as soon as I could. In the corona section I'm a hypochondriac. When a person exhales or speaks in front of me, I imagine the bacteria coming out of his mouth. I do not drink from mouth to mouth in a bottle. If someone coughs, and I remember a few minutes ago he shook my hand, I go Quietly washing hands.
"I know at least three people who have lost a loved one who died of coronary heart disease.
They did not believe it would happen to them.
One family were Corona deniers.
It's a horrible death, out of sight, in some secluded room, connected to the soul machine, when the family can't access.
These stories tore my heart out. "
Did the vaccine opponents upset you?
" Listen, people are vaccinated a lot of times in life, infancy.
When they fly to India they are pushed vaccines which are actually an attenuated virus and they know nothing about it.
The Corona vaccine has a new technology, the most advanced science ever.
So I hear people give all kinds of explanations, and I ask, remind me what you are dealing with and what do you understand about it?
"Not everyone who has read anything or heard a lecture, what a pike, knows what he is talking about. In my opinion, the pike on vaccines connected people in the head with a sense of distrust in the government, and with the general chaos created by the Corona. So it was easier for them to believe Pike."
During the corona appearance?
“A lot, between three and five times a week, small home shows, in people’s yards, the kind that celebrate 50 or 40th birthdays, men and women who‘ grew up ’with my music, or 30-year-old hitchhikers. I always made sure to take a guitarist and sound technician with me, to give "People have a livelihood. I could perform alone with a guitar, four times more than I performed, but I made sure to help others as much as I could."
Just recently Bnei Gantz's sister appeared at the house.
"Part of the show, for me, is the conversations with people before, during, and even after the show. In big shows I like to talk to the audience. In the small shows you can really have in-depth conversations, about politics and the situation. People are looking for that talk, it excites them. You realize that every group you appear to is interested in how other people, in other places, perceive the situation compared to it. "
Were there any shows that were canceled for you?
"A lot, because when a closure was imposed - everything stopped at once. Every time I felt that here, I have a job, but then they canceled it, it came back - and canceled again. It drove me crazy and crazy. This insecurity causes anxiety."
Anxieties?
"Yes, I had my first anxiety attack in life in the middle of the second closure. One evening I saw too much news, and read and dug too much about the corona. Then, at 2 at night I wake up and feel suffocated, unable to breathe. I went to the living room and watched the news and game replay NBA basketball was the only way I could relax and breathe back, realizing I had an anxiety attack. Before every show I am always anxious, about to poop in my pants, no matter what show it is. Also in front of teachers of a school in Ramat Hasharon, and on a birthday in the yard of A family in a moshav in the south. "
On April 1, Kaplan will perform at the "Mini Israel" complex, in a band show that will include two new songs he has released in the past year: "In the End I Stay With Nothing," which talks about an economic struggle, and "I'll Get You Back in Time."
"Galgalatz plays me, but only songs I've released in the past. They have their own agendas and styles that are now in vogue, so I can not rely on them to play my new material. I distribute the songs on social media and perform them in shows, ie fieldwork and guerrilla methods. I don't have that element, that my new song immediately went into the playlist. "
In performances he performs, of course, his greatest hits of his entire career, including "Already Now," "Looking," "I'll Change," "That Fuck," "Measuring," "Why You Didn't Come," "How Right You Are" and many others.
The soldier, Lenny, will perform on stage with him, as a singer and guitarist.
"I'm not just an '90s artist, but unfortunately, in the media talk, I belong to that decade, where I was 'discovered'. People like to stick me there. For me, there is no reason why young people today should not like my songs and connect with them."
At the same time he is working on new songs with his friends in the band's nineties Ascot mix - Assaf Amdursky and Amir "Django" Rossiano.
The songs are expected to come out ahead of a tour that will unite the trio this coming summer or the following winter.
* * *
He lives with his partner Yael (39), manager of the Carolina Lemke brand in Israel, and their youngest son Max (5 and a half) in an apartment in Ramat Hasharon.
His ex-wife, Revital, lived on a parallel street, from which he divorced in 2009 after 12 years of marriage.
His two eldest sons, Divo (23) and Lenny (21), used to divide their time between the two houses.
Dibo recently left for a partner apartment in Tel Aviv and works for a high-tech company as a programmer.
Lenny serves as a paramedic and counselor at BAD 10.
"It really bothered me that Divo had left home, even though he was already a big boy," Kaplan admits.
"I tell him to come back because we miss him. It's hard for his mother too. We are very proud of him for his success and his role in high-tech."
In the second and third closures, as Yael continued to work, including with Bar Refaeli, Kaplan stayed with little Max at home.
He presents on the phone his regular agenda with the child, by hours: morning gymnastics, yoga for children, art and creation, arithmetic and reading lessons, imagination games, board games, computer games and TV time.
"I taught him English, arithmetic and Hebrew, we built a puppet house and a puppet theater together, we drew animals and cut them. I like to play with him, because I am a bit childish," he admits.
"We had an amazing bonding together. I was a thousand percent in fatherhood. An amazing experience, a real blossom. It kept me young, with good energy. When Max came back to kindergarten, I really missed him. True, it hurt my work in music, but on the other hand I filled in the gaps I felt For years as a divorced father with sight arrangements. "
He was born in 1961 in Chicago, the third of four siblings: Lisa, the eldest, director of a gallery in California;
Aaron, director and TV producer (and a member of the Puncher band from the eighties);
And Gila, a chocolate maker in Colorado.
When he was 7, after the Six Day War, the family immigrated to Israel by ship.
Kaplan's parents, actor-director Irving (87), who is remembered by the children of the 1970s for his many roles in educational television (as were Jeremy himself and his brother Aaron), and Ora (84), recently moved into sheltered housing.
"This is a double difficult moment in my life: my son left home and my parents left home," he sighed.
"I admire my father. To me, he is an important man in Israeli culture, who participated in and created the mythological series for learning English. Everyone remembers him as Sheriff Goodman. At the same time, he directed 'This Is It' and later Gidi Gov's program on the young Channel 2.
" Zionism taught us.
After all, I came from a traditional Jewish family, and my cousins are religious.
If I had grown up in the United States, I would probably be a rabbi in the community. On the day we arrived in Israel, we were on board the ship, and Ruby Rivlin, who is my mother's cousin, picked us up from the port in Haifa. When I was a teenager, Ruby would put me in Betar games "I was a big fan of the Shimon Chernuha era, even before Uri Melmillian."
After 60 years, how will you sum up your life so far?
Did you fall hard?
"I fell well, I fell excellently."
shishabat@israelhayom.co.il