Spike-Haired Pianist Richard Kastle Shows How You Can't Judge an Album by His Jacket

The image of Richard Kastle glaring out from the cover of his new "Streetwise" album, looking tough and anti-Establishment in spiked hair and a sleeveless leather jacket, seems hardly enough to separate him from scores of other leather-clad recording artists, all vying for record buyer attention this year. Except, that is, for a warning label that reads, "Parental Advisory: This album contains classical music, no lyrics whatsoever."

Further investigation shows track titles by the likes of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Liszt and Gershwin among other compositions written by Kastle himself, a classically trained pianist. The Venice musician's debut album is also part of a larger scheme by Virgin Records' new Virgin Variations label to seek out and develop a new and younger audience for classical music.

"I want to break down the barriers that are around classical music, all the snobbery that's associated with it," Kastle said recently at Virgin's Beverly Hills offices, wearing the same leather coat. "I never could accept that. So, I figured if I could break down that barrier, younger people would listen to that kind of music."

Now 32, Kastle began on the piano at age 8, learning to play by ear Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" after watching the cartoon characters Tom and Jerry perform the same piece on television. Later, as a teen-ager, the Miami-born musician studied for more than three years under Ivan Davis, a pupil of Vladimir Horowitz.

But it was Kastle's refusal to dress formally for concerts that ultimately got him expelled from the music program at the University of Texas before graduation, he said. During his first performance there, Kastle appeared in old blue jeans, paint-stained sneakers and a torn Jack Daniels T-shirt. Kastle had merely been following a tradition set by the lives of the composers Beethoven and Mozart, who were "radical guys" in their own time, he said.

The student pianist had also learned to enjoy the controversy that inevitably accompanied his performances on campus, he said. "I'd attract the younger people who wouldn't go, and afterward they'd say, 'Hey, that Beethoven piece wasn't bad.' I kind of broke the barrier.

"So I learned, when I was 17 or 18 in college, that the only way to get my friends to come hear me play was to wear something a little more outrageous," Kastle said. "And, of course, the professors were just appalled."