TROJAN HOARSE

THE EARTH TREMBLES WITH THE RUMBLE OF DRUMS. THE BEAT IS WARLIKE, INTENSE AND FORCEFUL. it crescendos. In crisp unison, horns snap into playing position. A blast of brass. The tubas and trombones bellow, ponderous and powerful. The trumpets attack with higher notes, spitting out vicious, biting phrases that scorch the small street in front of the band office at the University of Southern California.

Art Bartner, the man directing it all on this fine spring morning, basks in the muscular energy of “Tribute to Troy,” the signature song of the USC marching band. The Trojan musicians arrayed before him are just warming up, and the players are dressed casually, most in T-shirts and red baseball caps. Their trademark metallic warrior helmets are in storage, along with the band’s cardinal-and-gold uniforms. This is the off-season; their purpose today is simply to spice up a low-key charity event across campus.

But this is “Tribute to Troy.” To Bartner, the school anthem is nothing less than sacred. And from the corner of his right eye, Bartner has spotted sacrilege. He whips his head around and narrows his eyes. His face contorts and reddens. Veins bulge. His arms flail wildly. He screams ferociously at a young man lounging 15 feet away. A few roaring words rise above the drums and brass: “STAND UP, STAND UP!”

Embele Awipi leaps to his feet, rigid and wide-eyed, painfully reminded that, in Bartner’s world, everyone stands at attention during “Tribute to Troy” and those not clutching an instrument must give the two-fingered victory salute. Even when they’re just warming up. Even in the off-season. Even if they’re Embele Awipi, a member of the band’s prop crew.

*

ARTHUR C. BARTNER IS NOW IN THE 30TH YEAR OF HIS REMARKABLE REIGN, WITH HIS screaming-zealot image firmly intact. Since 1970, he has used that persona to impose his immense will on thousands of rambunctious college students, molding a band recognized across the country for its showmanship.

In the process, Bartner has become a legend. He’s aloof. He’s a control freak. He’s a tyrant. He’s a chameleon. And those are just Bartner’s own descriptions. His wife of 38 years calls him “Mr. Mellow” at home, and one of his six much-beloved grandchildren called him “Grampa Band.”

The feel-good nicknames end there. While his students address him as Dr. Bartner to his face, they often use more profane nicknames elsewhere. But those same students voluntarily sweat, strain and strut for him, sacrificing nearly every other aspect of their college lives to play a part in what they call “The Greatest Marching Band in the History of the Universe.”

They both despise and revere the gravelly voiced 60-year-old man who might rage at them from the three-story-high observation platform they call the “God Tower,” and then a moment later wade into their midst to nimbly teach them the Charleston.

Millions have seen Bartner in person in front of his 250 sunglasses-wearing, gold-helmet-topped disciples, and millions more have viewed the band’s performances for Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan and during four Super Bowls. When St. Louis wanted a conductor for a world-record 5,000-member marching band to dedicate its Union Station, Bartner got the call. When 2.5 billion television viewers turned on the opening ceremonies of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, there was Bartner in front of a marching band made up of students from the country’s best ensembles.

His style is unmistakable. The fireworks begin with the first downbeat. He drives the music. He points. Saxophones enter. He jabs. Trumpets blast their phrase. The trombones growl out a line. The music, in turn, drives Bartner. His legs and hips swing in time, and he pulses to the rhythm of the drums. His head bobs with each note.

“You can’t take your eyes off of him,” says 1998 band alum Beth Finsten.

Bartner commands his band through four loudspeakers that face the practice field in the center of campus, bellowing down from his God Tower or from a closer perspective on the portable six-foot “Jesus Tower.” He lashes them three or four times a week with the most recognizable voice on campus, an amplified rasp that carries well beyond the practice field:

“IS THAT THE WAY YOU’RE GOING TO SELL THIS SHOW? GET FIRED UP. COME ON BAND, GET UP FOR THIS GAME! . . . EXCUSE ME. I WILL GET THIS RIGHT EVEN IF YOU DON’T CARE. I CARE. ARE WE TIRED?”

“No!”

“IS IT TOO HOT?”

“No!”

“WHO ARE WE?”

“Trojans!”

“WHO’S GOING TO THE ROSE BOWL?”

“Trojans!”

“BAND, I LOVE IT.”

*

SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS LOVE MARCHING BANDS FOR their pageantry, for the alumni-rousing fight songs, for their entertainment and PR value. “It’s an absolute status symbol to a university,” says Al Wright, director of bands emeritus at Purdue University and chairman of the board of the John Philip Sousa Foundation. “It’s like a label on clothing. You go out and buy a dress by Givenchy, it makes the dress that much better.”

This fall, more than 720 NCAA colleges suited up their musicians and sent them out, row after row, to charge up the team, battle rival bands and face their stiffest halftime competition of all: beer and bathroom breaks. But if you listen to any Trojan band member, none do it better than the Spirit of Troy.

“There’s no other band like it,” says Jose Diaz, a fifth-year senior who played trumpet in the band. “What you see is what [Bartner] made. The program is what it is because of him.”

Bartner hurls all 180 pounds of his 6-foot-2 frame at his vocation. It’s a job that has given him a bronze tan, gray tinges in his dark brown hair, nerve damage that has affected his right arm and a voice that has disintegrated during three decades of barking orders. What’s left sounds like “sandpaper on a blackboard,” says one drummer.

“I hope never to hear [his voice] again,” says senior flute player Jaime Fontanoza. “It’s associated with ‘Take it back and do it all over again’ and hoping he’s not calling your name.”

Embarrassment and intimidation are tools of Bartner’s trade. An estimate by his associate director divides Bartner’s roaring at practice into 80% prodding and 20% praising. Bartner hones the band’s distinctive high-stepping, toe-down “Drive it” marching style with exhausting “torture drills” in which students high-step in place while sections compete by loudly blasting conflicting melodies.

When one female band member doesn’t meet his expectations, she hears about it. “Liberty, take a lap. That’s the worst marching in the band. You’re the only one not driving it.”

A Bartner practice is a blur of motion as members run laps for reasons serious and silly. They run to atone for tardiness, wrong notes, lackadaisical marching and other infractions. They run every time Bartner singles them out in any way, even if it’s for praise. Everyone named John runs in solidarity when Bartner asks Jon the lead trumpet to demonstrate a musical phrase. Everyone wearing a red hat runs when Bartner can identify an out-of-step marcher only as “THE GUY WITH THE RED HAT.” Tuba-toting freshmen tag each other to run a nonstop freshman relay. He instructs them to have fun, and they enthusiastically comply. Sophomores charge forward to volunteer for another torture drill. They cheer vigorously when he orders it. Cymbal players show up at rehearsal with large yellow bath towels draped across their backs as capes.

Sections sway and spin in their own synchronized dance routines. Band members may spend part of rehearsal singing mocking versions of opponent’s school songs, including one for archrival UCLA. “High up in the hills of Westwood/Sprawled offensive to the eye/Lies a Cal extension campus/Known as Westwood High. (High, High, High) Home of all the Bruin bear cubs/UGLY is its name/The student body’s vile/The football team’s a pile/And the campus is a shame. U-G-L-Y U-G-L-Y! Eat my shorts!”

Following Bartner’s example, members dedicate their life to the band. In return for travel, the thrill of performance and the great seats at the games, they put up with the polyester-blend uniforms and slave up to 10 hours a week at rehearsals, sacrificing many more hours for personal practice, memorization, games and outside performances. They are also absorbed into an unofficial band fraternity that rivals the campus Greek system.

“My freshman year, I didn’t know anybody if they weren’t in the band,” says Sarah Pizzaruso, a member from 1993 to 1997. They also dedicate their lives to the team. Whenever USC football players pass by the band on the way to the team’s practice field, Bartner stops rehearsal, turns the band toward the athletes and cranks up “Tribute to Troy.” If the team’s practice goes long, he may extend the band’s rehearsal. As the players walk off the field, they are greeted with “Tribute to Troy.”

The band is equally devoted to its own wacky traditions. Behind Bartner’s back, they egg on freshmen members to drink “Slicks,” a half root beer, half chili concoction, as a pledge of allegiance. They call each other by campy nicknames--Mr. Giggles, Terminator, Lurp and Flower. They assemble in the predawn hours every game day, well before their mandatory 7 a.m. rehearsal. On the way to the Coliseum, freshmen flute players, male and female, break ranks to kiss police officers. Once the game is underway, Bartner’s band harasses opposing teams by repeating the pompous “Tribute to Troy” 40, 50, 60 times a game.

“Very few [opposing] coaches sit on the fence as it relates to our band,” says USC football coach Paul Hackett. “They all hate them. They hate the band. They hate the horse [mascot]. They hate those songs they play over and over.”

Bartner teaches his band to wear its cardinal-and-gold uniforms with arrogance. During the first game of the 1998 season, with the Coliseum field well over 100 degrees, Bartner ordered the members to take off their uniform jackets. Most refused.

“Why put on a symbol of pride if you’re going to take it off?” asks Brandon Operchuck, now a senior drummer, as he remembers that day. “The team didn’t take their pads off.” The Coliseum ran low on water. “We lost several members of the band,” recalls Operchuck. “The guy in front of me passed out. Then the guy in back of me went down. I got mad and played louder. Next thing I knew, I was in the tunnel.”

Paramedics had to cut Operchuck’s uniform off of him to remove his drum harness and administer five bags of intravenous fluids. Throughout, the band never sat down.

*

THE MAN WHO INSPIRES SUCH FANATICISM GREW UP IN NEW JERSEY, the second of four children in a Jewish family. His father was a full-time liquor salesman who worked part-time as a luggage company accountant. His mother taught high school typing and business courses and raised the kids. He traces his artistic genes to her side. She played piano and her sister was a sculptor.

Bartner and his wife, Barbara--a sports fan who gave up piano and violin long ago--were junior-high sweethearts. Back then he was “Artie,” and she often uses the nickname today. In high school, Bartner earned all-state honors in both basketball and trumpet.

“He is just a highly motivated human,” Barbara says. “He always has been motivated to do the best of anything he attempted.”

Bartner enrolled at the University of Michigan. Band practices conflicted with basketball practices, so Bartner set aside his hoop dreams. Graduation and their wedding made 1962 a milestone year for the couple. Their two children, Debbie and Steven, now 35 and 37, came soon afterward. Barbara did much of the child-rearing, while her husband immersed himself in music, teaching high school band, playing professionally and earning a doctorate in music education at Michigan.

The man who most shaped Bartner’s professional life, Michigan band director William Revelli, was an intense disciplinarian who ruled with an iron baton and established a new level of excellence for college bands. “He was probably the most influential figure in college bands in the 20th century,” says current UCLA marching band director Gordon Henderson. Bartner describes Revelli as “The fear of God.”

USC associate band director Tony Fox studied music while a student at USC, but recalls with awe the few times he met Revelli. “You would genuflect in his presence,” he says. “If he would look at you in the wrong way, it was like laser beams going through your heart.”

Bartner says the explosive man his students now see atop the God Tower is a combination of Revelli and Bess Bartner, his mother. “I have her temperament. I have her personality. I have her energy. But I created this guy [he points at himself] after William D. Revelli. I created this person. If you go down to Disney [where he’s all smiles as he directs Disneyland’s All-American College Marching Show Band every summer] you’ll see a totally different person. I’m kind of a chameleon.”

Bartner’s daughter agrees. “He was the one I would always go to when I was in trouble,” says Debbie. “He was the easy one. He never raised a finger, never raised his voice.”

In 1985, Debbie fulfilled her lifelong dream of becoming a Song Girl, USC’s version of a cheerleader. “I went to games [before becoming a Song Girl], but I never really saw him up close,” she says. “The first game, I was right in front of him cheering. I think my mouth dropped. I was stunned. He was crazy . . . screaming . . . pointing at everything. After the game I told my mother. ‘What is wrong with him? He’s crazy. His veins are popping out his neck. You have to talk to him.’ ”

Bartner sees himself as a more tolerant tyrant than Revelli. “I didn’t want to have anything to do with him,” Bartner says. “I’m tough and I’m demanding, (but) he went a step farther. He would isolate people. He would embarrass people. Now I do some of that. Some of it rubbed off. He would really embarrass people in front of the whole group. Belittle them. ‘How dare you show up and play like that?’ I let a guy know if he can’t play, but I can’t be vindictive.”

*

WHEN BARTNER INTERVIEWED IN 1969, USC’S STELLAR FOOTBALL TRADITION was more attractive to him than its demoralized all-male marching band, a group so quiet some called it the “Library Band.” Bartner describes himself at that time as “a 30-year-old kid.”

Ken Dye was a trombone-playing sophomore when Bartner arrived. “He was so enthusiastic about the band and what the band was going to be that everybody got wrapped up in the excitement,” says Dye, who helped build the first God Tower. He found Bartner so inspiring that he switched majors from engineering to music education, and today is the marching band director at USC-rival Notre Dame University. “I wouldn’t have thought as seriously of being a band director until he showed up.”

Bartner gave students a strong say in matters of discipline and spirit, and also instilled in band members his own no-excuses warrior mentality. On the nearby football practice field, coach Hackett hears Bartner exhorting his band almost daily during the season. “I always say to myself, ‘God, would he make a great emotional coach. Football would be a perfect avenue for him.’ ”

“To me,” Bartner says, “there’s no difference between a practice and a game. In rehearsal, every time out, you’re there doing your best. I set unbelievable standards. I want every guy out there with the same intensity. I want them to have the same drive I have.”

Bartner begins hammering his attitude into new band members during a weeklong band camp before the season starts. Stunned freshmen find themselves at the bottom of the band hierarchy, yelled at for every misstep, running laps and trying to march 22 1/2-inch steps for nine hours a day. Those who stick with it are infused with a Trojan spirit that Bartner adopted from an animated, speech-giving assistant football coach named Marv Goux, a notoriously zealous figure in USC football lore.

“He was the guy who taught me to be a Trojan,” says Bartner. Goux helped create a bond between band and team. Every Friday before a game, he invited the band to play in the team’s downstairs locker room.

“There was no room for them, there was no room for us,” says Fox, the associate band director whom Bartner hired 29 years ago to arrange pop songs for the band. “I always thought we were going to start an earthquake or something. The building was going to tumble down because of the vibration. No wonder we used to win almost every game those days. It was awe-inspiring. I was ready to go back to war myself.”

“We tried to experience it like we were part of the team,” says Notre Dame’s Dye, admitting that his band doesn’t have the same band-team connection. “I think that’s unique to USC.”

At the 1973 Rose Bowl, Diana Ross became the first of a slew of celebrity performers to share the stage with USC’s marching band. While shows include plenty of spit-and-polish precision, the band’s less-traditional fare often generates the biggest crowd reaction. Students cheer the mandatory pelvic thrust that shows up in every dance routine. They laugh when the band members perform a portion of their postgame concerts while lying flat on their backs, legs kicking in the air.

A performance at the 1976 Academy Awards sparked a series of film appearances, including “Fame,” “Grease 2,” and “The Naked Gun.” When Tom Hanks ran through the Alabama band in “Forrest Gump,” he actually was surrounded by crimson-clad Trojans.

*

EARLY IN HIS USC CAREER, Bartner found himself engaged in a power struggle with an unruly band. Steve New was a tuba player in the 1970s, “back when Bartner actually had a voice.” New recalls rehearsals when errors appeared in the show plans and the tubas protested by burning their music and drill charts in a mini-bonfire. “Art went ballistic,” he recalls.

“The greatest fear for any band director or teacher is that you lose control,” Bartner says. After an incident in the late ‘70s, when some in the band showed up drunk for an alumni New Year’s Eve performance, Bartner began to question himself. “I thought, ‘I built this monster. Maybe I’m not mature enough to run it the way it should be.’ ”

Fox remembers Bartner was depressed during that period. “Art felt, ‘Hell, either they’re going to fire me or I’m going to turn this program around.’ ”

Bartner says James Appleton, then USC’s vice president of student affairs, talked him out of resigning. “He wanted the band to always represent the highest standards and quality,” says Appleton, now president of the University of Redlands. “When the band didn’t meet those standards, it was as if his own kids had let him down. I told him it was important for him to continue [and] to think a bit about setting clearer guidelines for the representation of the University of Southern California.”

Under pressure from the administration, Bartner cracked down on profanity, alcohol, hazing and general anarchy. Perhaps the greatest proof of the change is the Web page maintained by band alumni who, in a posting titled “Top 34 Reasons the New Band Sucks,” lament the passing of those grand traditions.

Bartner rebounded from that troubled period when Fleetwood Mac invited the Spirit of Troy to give a big-band sound to the rock group’s eventual 1979 top-10 hit “Tusk.” Bartner and staff arranged the band instrumentals for the song, which was recorded in Dodger Stadium. The album went platinum.

At the apex of his career, Bartner was asked to interview for Revelli’s old job at Michigan and also considered a “very tempting” full-time position with Disney. He passed on both. “You fall in love with a place,” he says of USC.

*

MANY CURRENT STUDENTS and alumni view Bartner as ageless. In three decades, the only game he’s missed was when he worked the opening of Disney World’s EPCOT Center. He can’t remember ever missing a rehearsal unless he’d scheduled a conflicting performance. “I don’t believe in it,” he says. “It’s a mental thing.”

However, after 37 years in the profession, he admits he’s “nicked up.” He was in physical therapy for the nerve pain in his arm, the wear and tear of four decades of repetitive motion. Or could it be from the 1992 opener at San Diego State University, when he made headlines with an open-field tackle of a fan who ran on the field and blindsided his 6-foot-6 drum major? The Times called Bartner’s takedown “one of the most impressive hits” of the game.

Bartner’s greatest fear now, says his wife, is probably “getting old and having to retire. We don’t view ourselves as being as old as we are.”

Retirement or not, Bartner’s legacy will remain. He lists a few of his major accomplishments, then talks about the 3,000 or so students who’ve played under his direction. “What have you done for these kids? Are they better players? Are they better prepared to face life ahead of them? . . . Whether they’ve personally liked me or not, it really doesn’t matter. The bottom line is most of them loved this program.”

Bartner will leave more of a legacy than that. Through fund-raising, he has already created a $1.5-million endowment for scholarships and hopes to amass another $5 million to pay for scholarships, uniforms, equipment and travel. At a pre-concert dinner for big donors last spring, he put on his tuxedo and his charm, working the room, kissing cheeks, shaking hands, joking and telling stories to the donors who help pay for the band to take “Tribute to Troy” and “Fight On” on the road. The school pays for short-range trips to such places as Stanford and UC Berkeley, but the band’s donors and outside gigs contribute significantly to funding trips to faraway games such as Notre Dame, which costs about $150,000. The team hasn’t left home without the band since former USC football coach Larry Smith--after a 1987 road loss at Michigan State University--declared he wanted the band at every game.

Bartner and his staff have coordinated hundreds of small ensemble performances that have added to the band coffers--everything from weddings to Laker games to a diplomatic visit by Chinese leader Jiang Zemin. They make up to $90,000 per year from these gigs. The resulting paperwork blankets nearly every part of Bartner’s mammoth desk not covered by more than a dozen photos of his family.

Bartner says he doesn’t plan to step off the God Tower anytime soon. “We always say we’re going to slow down,” says wife Barbara, “but it seems like it’s getting busier.”

Daughter Debbie agrees, wondering if, perhaps, her father might breathe his last while conducting from the God Tower. “There’s no way he’s coming down.”

*

IT’S DUSK AND THE PRACTICE FIELD FLOODLIGHTS ARE BRIGHT. The upcoming halftime show has been rehearsed again and again. Bartner stands atop his tower as the band lines up before him. Trombones echo a trumpet fanfare as they begin USC’s majestic school song “Conquest.” Section by section, 250 musicians march forward and surround their ascended leader. They lift victory salutes and their instruments, offering both a tribute to Bartner as well as a defiant blast of sound.

The band repeats the ritual at the end of every practice--even when their director is away at another performance. On those rare days, the band marches past the substitute director on the Jesus Tower and circles the empty God Tower. They look skyward. They play for Bartner.