do you know anything about
your
ancestry?
yes, i had a relative named peter
van
vliet
who was a dutch painter that went around with rembrandt. but
he was too
hot to handle and had a lot of trouble with the kings and
queens. and
richard
halliburton, the man who wrote 'golden voyage' [should be
'the
royal
road to romance', as corrected in the book version - t.t.],
was
related
to me. halliburton was a daredevil - he dove into the
sun-worshippers
pit. (glancing
at a cover of wet:) can i turn that over, please?
why? do you find it unappealing?
yes, it's horrible. who'd want to
see
something
like that. a little too slick for me. (flipping through
wet:)
you
know, if you want to do something on me it's gonna' have to be
better
than
this. hmmm. james brown in the same magazine as shakespeare?
do you think that's fair?
no. james brown is important because
he
decorates
the clock correctly and he's good with lower mathematics.
don't get me
wrong - he's good. i like james brown - even like 'the
goodfoot'. (looking
at poster on wall:) that's disgusting! what sort of
abnormal person
put that up? girls scratching each other's backs - yeecchh!!
there are
wonderful things about scratching - i do it all the time
because i like
the feeling, but i certainly don't think there should be a
poster made
like that. a lot of people can't handle those kinds of things.
somebody
could come up and scratch you for no other reason than he saw
a poster
and was too stupid to comprehend how lame it was. i don't like
that
s&m
stuff. it's exploited for no reason other than to make money,
and
mostly
at the expense of women.
why does the public consume it?
they're too dumb to do otherwise. i
think
if it happened in their faces they wouldn't like it.
people seem to be intimidated by
the
media
into wanting to do things 'right' to the point that they'll
follow any
and all instructions.
i'm afraid that's true - that's what
happened
in nazi germany, and much as i hope it never does, that kind
of thing
could
happen again. posters like the one on the wall at wet sure
aren't a
good
sign. on the other hand, i really don't believe we're headed
for an
apocalypse.
whenever it's election time we're led to believe there's one
just
around
the corner, but i don't believe it. you know, i can always
tell when
we're
due for an election because the road crews are always in front
of my
house!
the ants get upset and come in, so i give them a little sugar.
you feed your ants?
sure. i would never kill a living
thing,
although i probably have inadvertently while driving
automobiles. and i
hate seeing those moths on the windshield.
but isn't that part of the
natural
order?
yes, but i've never been able to
deal
with
that part of nature. it's so violent - god, is it violent.
when viewed in the overall
scheme,
then,
human beings manage to control themselves fairly well.
not bad. not bad at all really. but
still,
most dangers are man-made. man has done a lot to make himself
dangerous
and animals get the worst of all of it. but then, man too is
an animal.
would we be better off if we were
more
in touch with that fact?
oh yeah, definitely. but people use
funny
toilet paper because it means their rich if it's perfumed -
and i think
perfumed toilet paper causes rectal cancer. you can almost
judge how
screwed
up somebody is by the kind of toilet paper they use. go in any
rich
house
and it's some weird colored embossed stuff.
what sort of music do you listen
to
these
days?
i don't listen to nothing - i don't
need
to. bob dylan impresses me about as much as..., well, i was
gonna say a
slug but i like slugs. 'you gotta serve somebody' - shit,
trash poetry.
too much lsd. you know they usually do that - they go right up
to
jesus.
what about buddha? he seems like a lot more fun.
johnny rotten.
he's a big fan of mine. i used to
see
him
out in the audience in england and he'd stand up and holler.
he's
funny.
smart too, and a nice guy. don't think he's a jerk because he
isn't.
too
bad he had that sid vicious thing happen around him. that sid
vicious
was
obviously a schizophrenic, kind of a mean one too.
what do you think of [modern]
composers like phil
glass and steve reich?
i think it's bullshit. i just don't
think
they're very creative. there was a girl named pauline oliveros
who did
a piece i like. and a lot of good electronic music comes out
of
germany,
stockhausen for example.
have you listened to much music
of
other
cultures?
a little, but i've always found it
to
be
somehow lacking. i think shakespeare is really the one. words
as music
and music as words. everything he wrote was good, which is
really
frightening.
shakespeare. under the skies of fiction comes a lot of
reality.
is it hard for you to get people
to
play
things the way you hear them in your head?
very difficult. i've been pretty
fortunate,
though, in that i seem to be able to bring things out of
people the way
i want them. it's very selfish, but to play with me you have
to be able
to forget what you've learned before. but then, the human mind
does
that
automatically.
are there some things that have
been
in
your head for a long time that you've never been able to get
on record?
oh yeah, many. the wind is a very
difficult
sound to get. it's always changing.
do you think you hear differently
than
other people?
hmmm. i know i'm here differently
than
other
people, but i don't know if i hear differently. i think that
people cut
off their hearing ability and why they do that is something i
wonder
about
a lot. what do you think the largest living animal is? well,
i'll tell
you: it's the absent human mind.
what is sound for?
i don't even know what sound is,
much
less
what it's for. it isn't to make money that's for sure. i've
never made
any.
are you more attracted to the
system
of
natural sounds, or musical sounds?
natural sounds, other than
stravinsky.
stravinsky
was brilliant in all ways. he invited me to come and visit him
before
he
died but i was in the middle of doing 'trout mask replica' and
i missed
the chance. if i had it to do again i'd have met stravinsky
and not
have
had 'trout mask replica' come out.
who's working now that's of
comparable
talent?
me. me. me.
who else in the past?
who in the past? who in the hell. i
think
painting's gone further than music. i brought along some books
by some
painters that i like. franz kline - oh wow. yeah.
do you think we're going through
a
sparse
period right now as far as great thinkers?
seems like it doesn't it. they seem
to
be
dormant at the moment.
how have you dealt with fame?
with kid gloves. and i've spent a
lot
of
time signing [record
sleeves and
such with the dedication:] 'love over
gold' hoping that people would realize. i've gotten a few
autographs
myself.
lenny bruce, jimmy durante, mort sahl, dick gregory, john
coltrane. and
roland kirk. he was wonderful. he had a great facility on his
instrument
but he never let it overpower him - he always got out the true
feeling.
anyhow, i've got my autographs in a book and i look at them
occasionally
and it reminds me of the people.
you seem to have an unusually
intense
bond with nature. do you think that's because you grew up in
the desert?
no, i think it's because i've always
known
i'm an animal.
most people struggle to block
that
knowledge
out - how have you kept those channels open?
tenacity. and the truth is so
obvious -
it's
impossible to be cut off from dirt because gravity keeps us in
and of
it.
you can't escape gravity.
