Transcription
Um, this interview, just so you know, is going to primarily be used for a show called "120 Minutes," and um, while a lot of um, the younger um, part of our audience may not be familiar with a lot of your work, I think a lot of the bands that we play that they like really do. I'm wondering what your uh, your reaction to the, the your fan record was.
Well, of course, I was uh, very touched by uh, this uh, tribute, but you know, my daughter, who was let's say 14 at the time, she'd been telling me a lot of garage bands were doing my stuff, uh, which surprised me and surprised her too. Kind of resurrected my uh, uh standing, you know, with her and with the rest of the world. So when that record came down of a lot of these younger bands, I wasn't—I was delighted, but not entirely surprised. I knew that a lot of kids had been turning on to my stuff.
It's probably just the ones that that think a little bit more about what they're listening to.
Well, I don't know about that. It's just—it's just that, you know, if if the radio stations don't play the stuff and MTV doesn't show the videos, then they're not going to get it, you know. But the bands who are, you know, tuned into whatever the the the streams and currents of interesting music, they turn into it, so onto it, so they they know what's happening. Otherwise, I have no other way of getting through, since the institutions generally don't uh, accommodate.
Do you think do the music industry really underestimates the uh, the intelligence of your audience?
No, I think everybody's just trying to make a living and trying to, you know, maximize the profit that they can make on any activity. So there's, you know, it's not without—it's not—it's with—it's with no sense of uh, bitterness or criticism. I just make the observation that uh, you know, without journalists like yourself and the print uh, journalists and without the bands themselves, you know, guys like me would really be out of business, because the radio stations and the television stations are the last to find out about it.
Do you have any any idea why that is, or do you spend that much time thinking about it at all?
I don't spend any time thinking about it, but you know, it's just the way things are. If something works, you do it over and over again, and uh, MTV, you know, which presents itself as a revolutionary medium, is is in the same bag as everybody else, you know. If the thing works, we'll just, you know, do it until it stops working. So there isn't really any commercial institution that has—is really interested in experiment or taking a chance.
Well, that's just the way the marketplace is. It's nothing to lament; it's just the way it is.
Do you think there's any kind of change going on though, at all though?
Like, no, there's no change, you know. I remember a slogan uh, uh, in on one of the walls in Montreal. It was um, "If the vote could change anything, it would be illegal," you know. This is just the way the the beast moves, you know, you know, and uh, we're lucky to have the Beast, 'cause a lot of societies don't even have these slow-moving beasts that we've got, and we should—we should be—we should thank our lucky stars for them.
I just remember reading something that you said once though about how um, as compared to maybe what was going on in the 60s or early 70s, things had changed for a while in the 70s and 80s because people had decided they wanted to dance.
I don't know what I said about the thing, but you know, it's it's a popular for uh, sort of, you know, media analysts to divide life up into decades, uh, but uh, nothing really changes, you know. Sometimes the air clears for 10 or 15 minutes; that was all. I remember about the 60s—the 60s lasted about 15 minutes, you know. There was like uh, uh, uh, you could take a deep breath and find some oxygen, you know, uh, then it swiftly reverted to the uh, business's usual mode, and and you know, and thank God for it, you know. I mean, you really don't want to shake things up too much. One is happy that things just keep sort of fumbling along as they do.
I wonder though if people like—like to think that they're being revolutionary or experimental for time.
Well, I don't know about that. I know that every generation has to feel that it has a particular significance that no other generation has had, you know. Our generation, the 60s generation, felt that this was the freest—I—I—I was talking to somebody of the 80s generation who held a great sense of pride and feeling that his generation was the most corrupt and the most greedy, you know. Each generation has to locate a significance and hold on to it and sell it—sell it to the world and sell it to each other. So that's the—that's the way it seems to work.
It also seems that, I mean, what's—what—what seems experimental in the 60s may be the norm in the 80s, like a lot of things—the public may catch up with a lot of things after a while. What's really experimental is unknown, you know. What's really experimental is really going on in attics and garrets and behind closed doors and in garages, and it—it comes out a lot—lot later.
I wonder what—what your—your musical aspirations were then when you um, left Greece and came back here and and moved to Texas and decided—to—to Nashville.
I've never had an overall strategy or a plan, you know. I've just always wanted to show off and uh, you know, just try to get ahead like everybody else. Uh, I did have some consuming vision, you know. I do have certain secret chambers of thought, you know, which involved uh, you know, reestablishing a theocracy and being the high priest of a new invisible Temple and dominate the world with a compassionate vision, but outside of that, you know, I've just tried to make a living and support my kids and send them to school and kind of keep out of trouble myself.
Was that uh, your reason for for switching gears from a a non-musical sort of poet—novelist?
Well, actually, the gear switch was from music to writing, because I started off in a in a country band called the Buckskin Boys in Montreal in the early 50s, and um, you know, uh, I kind of got serious for a while. I dropped that—well, I moved to a place where, you know, there was nowhere to perform—Greece—and I wrote a few books and, you know, got into a different kind of uh, operation, but there was always an invisible guitar behind everything I wrote, and I—I—I always feel that I've been doing the same kind of thing. But I mean, I know I guess we're getting into a bit—the past and history here.
Then what was your reason then for—I guess the reason music stopped was because you went to Greece, but what was the reason for going to Greece?
Well, I didn't want to go into university. I didn't know where to go where I could live very—very cheaply, where I could—where I could look back on whatever tiny life I had already lived with a with a clear perspective. I didn't want to start teaching. I didn't want to do the things that writers or musicians had to do to make a living. So I found a place where I could live for $11,000 a year, and uh, I could put that money together and go there and live as long as I could. So I got into that kind of of operation where I put together uh, you know, uh, uh $1,700, you know, three or four to get there, and then $1,000 to live there.
Um, the future uh, the new album—does this have something to do with Nostradamus? I was talking about just some time—I don't know—I, you know, I could never make head or tail of Nostradamus. I've tried a few times to read his books, but uh, that kind of uh, cryptology really evades me. I understand there are great scholars and mystics who can penetrate the code; I'm not one of them.
Never meant anything to me, you know. Just everything I've ever seen has come about, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh—when the Berlin Wall came down, which is what occasioned most of the songs on this album. Everyone was rejoicing. Well, of course, I'm expected to be dismal and gloomy about these matters, but I thought, you know, it's a wonderful thing—the wall is coming down, but a lot of suffering is going to uh, uh, unfold also because of this wall coming down. So I say in the song, you know, "Give me back the Berlin Wall, give me Stalin and St. Paul. I've seen the future, brothers; it is murder." So the thing—the results from something like that's going to happen isn't—aren't going to be nearly as bad as the evils of the past that we dread so much.
Well, I said, you know, like you're going to be happy with Stalin and the wall and their little hole in the ozone layer that you can't repair, you know. These things are going to sound like the golden age compared to what's coming down, and it's starting to come down, you know. The excrement is about to hit the ventilator.
Um, one—one of the biggest differences I think between you and a lot of contemporary artists—um, a lot of popular artists—is that what—the—the things that you write, even if you take away the music—I mean, you just recited some of—some of the lyrics for us here—I mean, they still—they sound good without music too.
They sound better with the music. Now listen, if you just nailed, you know, the lyric of the future to the church door, it'd be a very dismal little document, but you know, this lyric is married to a hot little dance track, and the dance track is married to a, you know, sinister little funny lyric. But the lyric dissolves into the music, and the music dissolves into the lyric, and you're left with fresh air. You're left with a sense of invigoration. It's refreshment; it's a kind of psychic refreshment.
Lot—a lot of uh, many of your songs—I guess the two biggest subjects you tackle are spirituality and then the other one being the male-female relationship, it seems to me anyway. Do you think you write very different songs when you're not in a relationship with a significant other?
I'm always in a relationship with one thing or another. Uh, I don't know what I'm writing about, you know. You just try to uncover the thing; you just try to make it good, you know. Once you get into it, it—it uh, it doesn't—doesn't have any borders; it doesn't have any limits. It's just the—what—what you're doing, you know. It uh, you just keep uncovering your own heart until you can find something in which you can locate your self-respect.
It's just self-respect that you're looking for in your work.
Is—is it easier for you if you have an actual personal relationship going?
With everything—is tricky, you know. If loneliness is tricky, relationship is tricky. Nobody beats the rap.
Can I ask if you—do you think—how do you think the relationships that you have now affected the way "The Future" came out? Would it have been a different album had you—things been different?
Oh, yeah, everything would be different if everything was different. Okay, stupid question.
No, it's not a stupid question, but you know, there are so many—it's not a stupid question, uh, and I—I know what you're getting at, and uh, uh, yes, to have someone in your life that is behind you, that is nourishing, that cares, that helps—someone like that uh, does make things easier. Yeah, no question about it. It's good to have someone you love nearby.
True.
Um, the closing time—I guess you in part explained this uh, before—the interesting juxtaposition of the, you know, the the sort of, I guess, just happy tune that goes along with it and the lyrics that you're actually singing—um, is this—I guess—and again this gets back to your roots, I guess—your—your first musical group that you were in—is sort of—is this the apocalypse sort of set to a country and western tune?
Yeah, you could look at it that way, you know. I—I—I feel the, you know, the tunes are dignified by the by that kind of careful intellectual scrutiny, you know. Uh, for me, they're just tunes that uh, can survive uh, my own uh, critical—um—my own critical examination, you know. My own critical examination is very—very severe, and it has to satisfy the heart and the mind and the gut, you know. And if it can survive those three categories of examination, then I think the song can live for a little while—can live. My songs have lived now for about 30 years. A lot of them, so maybe they can go on a little bit longer—that's all really I hope for. I can just give them the final examination in the factory, you know—really check them out so that they really know how to run. And this last album is like a little, you know, Sherman tank, you know. It's very—very carefully made; it's very—very carefully armored; it's strong, and it can go over most territories—most terrain, you know. It is set to go on for a long time—like those batteries that don't give out, you know. This will just keep on ticking.
Is it a—a lot of artists that we talk to—um, I mean, some get annoyed, some just don't want to talk about lyrics, but I think what's so interesting and what—what's so rewarding about listening to an album like yours is that there is so much to—you know, listening to them—there are so many things about the songs that make me curious.
Well, that's very kind of you—very kind of you to say that. I appreciate it. Does—does—do you mind talking about them or giving your—
I would talk about them endlessly if only more people would invite me into such a conversation. My problem is that very few people want to have this conversation with me, so that the uh, uh, uh, news of the uh, of the songs uh, uh, you know, never gets to anybody. I'm—I'm happy to discuss it at length with you.
Does it worry you that by discussing your interpretation or what the song means to you could take away from a completely different meaning that someone else—
Well, you know, we're—we're participating in a convention, you and I, in the moment—called the interview—and uh, you know, uh, it—it has its limits; it has its strengths; it has its weaknesses. We can discuss things in this mode, and perhaps, you know, some illumination will shine out of the conversation—that's possible. But you know, finally uh, you listen to a song alone, you know. Finally, you listen to it alone or with someone close to you, and uh, it either touches you or it doesn't, and all the analysis in the world is not going to unfold the song for you unless it has something within it that can speak to your heart. But I'm happy to discuss the lyric line by line, and I think I can defend every word in it, because they took a long time to write.
With that—well, in that case then—with "Closing Time," was that—were you thinking about—again, if my understanding of it is correct—and not to say that any of them would—but were you thinking about a number—I mean, a number of different situations or where just this small group of people were in when something like this happens? 'Cause I mean, this—this could theoretically be eight or 10 songs if you wanted to put it.
Yeah, that's a very good point, and you know, most of my songs are eight or 10 songs. In other words, they—there exist in my drawer, you know, eight versions of "Closing Time." I recorded two different versions of the song; this is the final one, and—and the one that passed those examinations that I spoke of. You—I can locate my self-respect in this song, but what it's about exactly is hard to say, because it—it depends on harmonics, you know. Well, you know, there's this bar, you know. There's this woman that is rubbing half the world against her thigh. We've all felt this way about the people we're with, you know, that in some way they're turning on the world, and you can't stand it, you know, uh, and uh, and yet you're ready to go with it and affirm it because it's beautiful and it's young and it embraces everything. Uh, you know, the song is carefully built, you know. The first verse is about that first fine careless frenzy of romantic love. The second verse is a—a different kind of intoxication. I even mention acid—"We're lonely, we're romantic, and the ciders laced with acid, and the Holy Spirit's crying, 'Where is the beef?' and the Moon is swimming naked, and the summer night is fragrant with a mighty expectation of relief." Well, it's hard to say exactly what that means, you know, unless you've been on some kind of trip. I don't necessarily mean acid or mescaline. I mean, unless you've gone on a trip with your own mind or your own heart—unless you've been swimming out there among the clouds with the moon, you know, dislocated, lost, and hungry for companionship. And unless you've done that, of course, you know, the verse is meaningless, but everyone has done that, so the verse can speak to everyone. The last verse is again, you know, uh, the breakdown, you know. My very close companion gets me fumbling, gets me laughing—"She's a hundred, but she's wearing something tight," you know. Finally, you're left with yourself, with your friends, and uh, with your knowledge, and the verse goes on to say, "So I lift my glass to the Awful Truth, which you can't reveal to the years of Youth, except to say it isn't worth a dime, and the whole damn place goes crazy twice, and it's once for the devil, and it's once for Christ, but the boss don't like these dizzy Heights—we're busted in the blinding lights of closing time." So there is a kind of wisdom you acquire with the scars, but it's nothing you can tell anybody about, and all you do is just lift your glass to those who've gone before, to those who are with you, and those who come after you, and that's really what the song is about.
Yeah. Do you think it's arrogant for man to think that—that he could do more than that—than just let the world be what it is? People want to change—do you want to change things? You mean—
Uh, I don't—I mean, I don't—I don't mean to say that people should be apathetic. I just mean—a lot of—you know—for man to think that he's that significant and that he can change things—can be a bit arrogant. I think everybody's got to pitch in, and uh, that's why I'm kind of against this uh, uh, contemporary investment in the notion of attitude. I think that everybody should pitch in, and attitude is the refusal to pitch in at any given moment. In other words, we should help each other out in this conversation, and we should help each other out when we buy a pack of cigarettes over the counter, and we should help each other out at every poss—possible moment. That's the very opposite of attitude. Attitude is putting somebody in a position where they can't penetrate your position. Helping somebody out, pitching in, is I think the obvious and urgent remedy to the kind of psychic predicament we're in right now.
Um, you always have a lot of creative input into your videos, or so I—I would assume that means just about—everything that—that has a name—letter going on.
Well, I—I uh, you know, if I can trust the directors, I'll uh, I'll—I'll let them do it. Dominique Isserman, who produced a number of them—directed a number of them—you know, the imagery is hers. Of course, there's a collaboration there, and same with the last one. Yeah, I mean, I'm in on it, but I—I don't want to in any way suggest that it's all mine. There's a director and a—and a director of photography, so you know, much of the credit goes to them.
Sorry. Do you always have some kind of concept that you want to do for a video? Does that—always have an idea of a tone, but the actual uh—
Yes, sometimes—come up with the thing—I find uh, you know, mostly it's trial and error.
Um, I wanted to ask you about acting too. I mean, you had the—the part on "Miami Vice"—is there—are there other things that you've done that—
Well, you know, "Miami Vice" had been uh, asking me to come down and do a cameo for them for some time, and I'd—I'd routinely refused. They had no interest in playing—in acting. But when my children, who were, you know, eight and 10 at the time, found out that I'd, you know, refused to appear on the most popular television show in America, they uh, suggested to me the uh, social opportunities that I was denying them. So the next time they asked me—Miami Vice—I went down without telling my kids, and I did this role. It was a much bigger role, incidentally. I was only on the screen for about a minute and a half. Finally, the one they offered me was really quite a long part, and after the first day shooting, the assistant director phoned up and said, "You are really great; we're really—really pleased." And then someone from New York called me up and said, "You're really great in this thing." I said, "You mean I'm fired?" They said, "Yes, uh—uh, we're giving the rest of the lines to—um, you know, we're rewriting it." So I—I—I—I don't have any skill as an actor, but even for that one and a half minutes, it was worth it, because you know, I was sitting there with my kids, and I came on, and they were surprised and delighted, so it was a success from that point of view—you didn't—but from no other point of view.
You didn't even tell them that it was you; you just happened to be sitting watching, as far as they were concerned, right?
That's great.
Um, another song I was curious about was uh, "Democracy," and uh, the line at the end, and I guess what—um—is—is it a good thing that—that—that democracy is coming, or is this sort of—or you just sort of saying that it's actually never going—
I think this song transcends the irony of the hook—"Democracy is coming to you"—as, you know, might suggest that uh, it hasn't—it's not here, and it will never come here. But I think that the conviction and passion of the song and of the lyric transcends the irony of the hook. Uh, I do believe that America is the place where democracy is unfolding. I believe it is the last best hope, uh, and um, this is the real laboratory, uh, and democracy is the real religion of the West, and like a great religion, it affirms other religions; like a great culture, it affirms other cultures. And uh, the rest of the world is just beginning to confront the problems that uh, America has been confronting for a long time. It isn't coming from Russia; it isn't coming from Eastern Europe. One of the verses I wrote that I didn't put in there was, "It ain't coming to us European-style concentration camp behind the smile; it ain't coming from the East with its temporary Feast as Count Dracula comes strolling down the aisle." Now this was written a long time before Yugoslavia or all the—the breakup of the Soviet Union. So yes, I think democracy is coming to the USA. I think it is coming not from legislation, not from above, but from uh, from the bottom—through a crack in the wall, through a hole in the air—imperial, mysterious, in amorous array—democracy is coming to the USA.
Do you think—do you think most people love it and cherish it but hate it at the same time? What you speak about the song—I tried to put it all in the song—it has about 60 verses. I've only recorded six, but it says—it says there, you know—"I'm neither left or right"—no, it starts off—"I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean. I love the country, but I can't stand the scene. I'm neither left or right—just staying home tonight, getting lost in that hopeless little screen."
Do you think a lot of that has to do with the fact that this is where—I mean, Americans were brought up in America and with this, and it's—it's what they know, and it's—and it's their life, and I mean, with—even with—
Its imperfections—it's just accepted because it's our way of life. It is. It is the great gift of the Americans to this, you know, veil of Tears in which we live. This, this suggestion that there might be a kind of life that is not brutal and meaningless and insignificant; a world in which there really is a sense of fraternity, equality, and justice. Now, as far as we are—as we are from those ideals—there is something in the American psyche that holds on to this and that comes up with glimpses, glimpses of that kind of illumination.
I—that I was curious about musically. I—I would assume you started as a guitar player in the country western field. Is that true?
Yeah. Yeah.
What makes you—you mean you write most on keyboard?
Yeah. I'm getting back to the guitar again, but this last record was uh written mostly on keyboards and, you know, fed into a Mac performer program and altered in the computer, replayed back onto the uh keyboard, and then, you know, dumped onto a 24-track and then overdubbed when it was necessary.
It just seemed that that—that suited the songs better, or was just an easier way?
Well, you know, it's just with the—with the—the computer, with the uh the kind of keyboards that are available to you now, I can set up rhythms that I—I just wasn't good enough to play on my guitar. Just uh—uh things that I—I just—I just couldn't base some of the complexities of the song on my own chops. They just weren't accomplished enough on the guitar.
But you are—you said you are going to get back to writing?
Yeah. Well, I got a guitar uh that was um—I play an electric acoustic guitar. You know, the one I used to play was a Gibson. It's a heavy guitar and it's not that pleasant just to hang out on your shoulder. But uh a guitar maker in Quebec, by name of Godin, has developed an electric acoustic guitar that is very light, and it's made it a great pleasure now again to—to uh to play with the instrument.
Is it—what is—is it a hollow body acoustic with pickups or what?
It's a hollow-bodied acoustic, uh very light and uh very true. It's a nice axe.
Okay. Can you tell us about um the tour you're on? Is it a tour or is it just a number of some dates?
We're doing about 100 concerts, and we've done about 40 so far, and uh we've done every European city from Helsinki to Barcelona and um a lot of Canada, and now we're starting the American section uh tonight. I don't know what tonight means in this broadcast, but um wherever we are uh we'll be playing at the Paramount tonight in a couple of hours.
Let you go then. Thank you for coming.
Thanks a lot.
[Music]