Matthew Paris writes:

Los Angeles born, John Cage lived in an apartment filled with ferns and cactus, though an excellent pianist wrote music without a piano, was otherwise a legendary innovator and eccentric. Either he or Virgil Thomson were the two wittiest men in New York. This program offers a chess game played at the studio between the interviewer and Mister Cage, hopefully, an amusing counterpoint to the somewhat comical discussion.

Being in John's house was always a sublime experience. The walls were white; the feel of the home was an eyrie. Ferns and cactus plants grew everywhere; the spareness of the furnishings suggested some of John's mechanical side as well as his subtle and suave monkish air.

I think John was naturally a more nervous man than he let on. His advocacies and his music sometimes had a hard-edged stasis. In the Sonatas and Interludes and the String Quartet he offered a spiritual refuge from a ferocious, nationalistic and motile world within a condition of intense and focused meditation that seemed to stop time altogether.

I always liked talking with John. He had the full range of a great user of our language. He had irony, the elevation of spirit, craft, and lots of strong, passionate opinions. If one initially might have thought John was putting on a performance, they were wrong. That was John.

One time I met John while he had a toothache. "It must hurt a lot," I said. "No, it's just right," he said.

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