Episode 760 - Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain / Andre Royo
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuck Knicks?
Marc:What the fucking East is?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:What the fuck Tuckians?
Marc:Everybody.
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:I'm Mark Marin.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:As we slog through the muddle.
Marc:I'm pretty excited about the show today because it represents a time in music that, unfortunately, I was too much of a, I don't know if I was a square, but it was not pumping into where I grew up.
Marc:My guests today, there's actually two separate sets of guests.
Marc:So that's exciting.
Marc:Today on the show, I'm going to talk to Andre Royo.
Marc:He's an actor, but he was bubbles on the wire.
Marc:But this new movie seems pretty great.
Marc:He's in this new film called Hunter Gatherer.
Marc:He lives not far from me.
Marc:I always love seeing him.
Marc:He's a great guy.
Marc:He's a great actor.
Marc:He's going to be here for a few minutes to talk about this new film.
Marc:And then we have Legs McNeil and Jillian McCain.
Marc:Now, I've talked about this before.
Marc:But Legs McNeil and Jillian McCain put together one of the greatest books ever.
Marc:Please Kill Me, The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Rock.
Marc:And I was excited to talk to them because that book...
Marc:changed my life probably in a bigger way than most books.
Marc:A couple of books, The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker.
Marc:What I was going to say at the beginning is I missed punk rock somehow in a way.
Marc:I remember buying the first Sex Pistols album in New Jersey while I was staying at my grandmother's when it came out in the United States.
Marc:I didn't know what it was.
Marc:I'd seen pictures of Johnny Rotten in the music magazines I was reading, but I was 13 years old or so.
Marc:Punk had not grabbed...
Marc:had not grabbed the culture quite.
Marc:And I was around the age that it should have grabbed me, but I kind of missed it by a few years to when it really took hold.
Marc:But I had the record.
Marc:I still have the record.
Marc:I like the record, but I didn't understand what it represented.
Marc:And then I didn't quite lock into it.
Marc:It was around a little bit towards the end of high school.
Marc:And then when I went to college,
Marc:My first real girlfriend had the side of her head shaved, and that was pretty punk rock.
Marc:But I kind of pushed back against it because I was such an old-timey motherfucker with my music tastes.
Marc:And it was this book...
Marc:please kill me the book that uh that i have the authors on today and that moved me through everything that changed the entire landscape of my musical understanding and and and also just blew my mind with a bunch of new bands about 10 years too late or more but it was fucking great and
Marc:I mean, I was lucky enough to get into the Velvet Underground in college because one of the guys that lived in the house before me, Bob Gaffney, left his brother's records there and Live in 69 was one of them.
Marc:So I had that as a sort of a foundation.
Marc:But Please Kill Me moved me through all of it, through the entire New York punk scene by way of the MC5, the Velvet Underground.
Marc:Iggy and the Stooges and on through the Ramones and everything that happened down there, the New York Dolls, Talking Heads, Tom Verlaine, Johnny Thunders.
Marc:It just moved me through all of it.
Marc:And if you get these books and you listen to the music, which is so fucking easy to do, so you can experience it while you're reading about that.
Marc:I do it with jazz.
Marc:I do it with whatever music I'm reading about.
Marc:It just opened up my brain entirely.
Marc:like just under the wire, because who knows how old you get before your brain just closes up.
Marc:But this punk rock shit from back in the day, and they lived a life, but it was like even New York, New York City in the early 70s was almost like a bombed out mess.
Marc:And, you know, just sort of where it's sprouted out of, you know, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe as well.
Marc:It just sort of grew like like energized, loud fungus out of the Lower East Side there.
Marc:And those days are behind us.
Marc:But the music exists.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Having Twitter off my phone has freed up some space, and time seems to function in its natural unfolding, as opposed to amped up with just a constant onslaught of virtual garbage spinning, fragments of light here and there, me up and down, cortisol, endorphins, sadness, elation, anger, all of it happening in minutes over nothing.
Marc:Felt good.
Marc:I'm really considering taking it off just my computer, too, just life without it.
Marc:I have friends who do it, and I used to think, like, what the fuck are they doing?
Marc:How do they live without it?
Marc:I'll tell you how.
Marc:They live in the fucking world.
Marc:You know, what are you going to get on there?
Marc:As time moves on, it's starting to become apparent that the truth might not be revealed.
Marc:Because it's just a goddamn big media muddle.
Marc:Just a never-ending dodgeball game of bullshit.
Marc:I'll be in Nashville this Saturday at the James K. Polk Theater.
Marc:You can go to WTFPod.com for information on that and some tickets.
Marc:I think there's a few left.
Marc:I'm looking forward to that.
Marc:I have friends down there.
Marc:You can see Nate Bargetzi.
Marc:Maybe I'll see Margo Price.
Marc:Maybe hang out a little bit.
Marc:Hopefully the show will be nice.
Marc:Maybe I'll be able to just jam some hot chicken into my dumb face.
Marc:burn my face and my mouth, and then get on an airplane and have that experience.
Marc:That actually came into consideration for me.
Marc:I was like, am I going to have time to get hot chicken?
Marc:I'm only there for one night.
Marc:And if I do get hot chicken, am I willing to pay the price for that on a fucking airplane?
Marc:I think we know what I'm talking about.
Marc:So right now, I want to talk to my friend Andre Royo.
Marc:Great guy, great actor.
Marc:His new independent film called Hunter Gatherer, which is now playing in New York and Los Angeles.
Marc:This is me and Andre.
Marc:Andre Royo.
Marc:So what happened?
Guest:You were gonna be my neighbor, and then it- Again, reality hit.
Guest:I saw the beautiful house, I was excited, I looked at it, we knew the asking price and all that, and I'm like this, yeah.
Guest:I'm going a couple of shows.
Guest:I should be able to.
Guest:And then the reality hit.
Guest:Then somebody sat me down like this.
Guest:You remember the last time you did moves like this?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You were bloke.
Guest:Don't do it again.
Guest:Don't get it started.
Guest:Don't get it twisted.
Guest:Right now you're a renter.
Guest:That's what you are.
Guest:Accept it.
Guest:Yeah, so I couldn't do it, but it's such a beautiful place.
Marc:It was all right.
Marc:It was, you know, it was a nice location.
Marc:Wouldn't need a little work.
Guest:It needed work, but the space.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like you saw the, you know, like everything else, the opportunity.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:There was a lot of opportunity that you could really, a little party house, a little cool house.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:A little chill.
Guest:All the amenities.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Of being anything you wanted it to be.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:But it couldn't be yours because you can't afford it.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:So this, when was the last time you were back in New York?
Guest:Oh, the last time I was back in New York was for the movie that's coming out November 16th, Hunter Gatherer.
Guest:Hunter Gatherer.
Guest:Hunter Gatherer was in a festival called the Rooftop Series in Brooklyn.
Guest:And I went down there for that.
Guest:How'd it go over?
Guest:It was great.
Guest:It was great, first of all, to be back home.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, the prodigal son has returned.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:With a little indie film.
Guest:Like, I always want to come back home like this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm coming back and here are my, here's my, you know.
Marc:You're hoping to come back.
Guest:Here's my kill.
Guest:Here's my.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:A Superman's outfit.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:A superhero outfit.
Guest:A superhero.
Guest:The big take.
Guest:Everybody knows me.
Guest:A zombie apocalyptic and I'm the savior.
Guest:But I got a little indie film to start off with that.
Guest:And I have to go down and go into that whole concept of, you know me, I'm about to
Guest:I'm about the craft.
Guest:I'm about the artistry.
Guest:I never give up my indie spirit love.
Guest:Until they go, could you sign here?
Marc:You want that house?
Guest:You got a bigger one.
Marc:Can't do it.
Marc:But can I bring my craft to this shit?
Guest:Yes, you can.
Guest:Of course you can.
Guest:You bring it right to the AMB&B.
Guest:That's what you got to go.
Guest:Take that craft and that honesty to the AMB&B.
Marc:But that's the funny thing about those kind of decisions where you don't know how the hell a movie's going to come out when you get into it.
Marc:You don't know.
Marc:You're all acting on good faith.
Marc:I don't know who the director was.
Marc:How did you get the movie?
Marc:How did it happen?
Guest:A friend of mine, Julia Kim, casting director, we kind of met, hung out a little bit, and found out that we kind of like the same kind of quirky films here and there.
Guest:And she said, you know, I got this script that I might be in casting, and it's weird.
Guest:It's a weird type of...
Guest:You know, it has the archetype of a movie that we've seen before.
Guest:You know, a man gets out of jail and tries to, you know, fix his life.
Guest:Like Straight Time.
Guest:Like Straight Time or Scarecrow or Stroject.
Guest:You know, and it just feels like it's the norm.
Guest:And I'm like, all right, let me read it.
Guest:And all of a sudden I'm reading it and I'm like, this tone is different.
Guest:It has a little surreal, simplistic, like, honesty about this film that I kind of dig.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And you want me to be, I might have a chance to be the lead carrier film.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:I said, let me meet the director and just talk about it.
Guest:Let's chop it up and see if I can trust him and he can trust me.
Guest:And then a 6'9", tall, blonde-haired white boy walks up, and I'm like this.
Guest:You gotta be kidding me.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:What do you know?
Guest:Are you the bodyguard?
Guest:You must be the bodyguard.
Guest:Where's the little man?
Guest:Where's the little brother at behind you?
Marc:Yeah, where's the little black dude that wrote this?
Guest:Yeah, and he sat down, and he was really a cool dude.
Guest:And I was like, all right.
Guest:let's see.
Guest:You want to do this?
Guest:Can you trust that I can do this type of role and not have people go, oh my God, look, it's Bubbles.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, which I love, but you want to be able to craft another character.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he was worried about that too.
Guest:He's like, yeah, you know, because this guy, you know, he's down on his luck, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:I don't want people to go, oh, wow, you know, for my first movie, I got Bubbles to play Bubbles.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But is this guy a drug addict?
Guest:No, he's not at all, but you know, I think that in the original script, there was like, you know, pushing a wagon or homeless, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Oh, yeah, right.
Guest:I was like, you know.
Guest:A little close.
Guest:A little close, and he said that.
Marc:Can I do it without a hat?
Guest:Yeah, please.
Guest:Can there be no drugs?
Guest:None.
Guest:I don't want to even have a cigarette in my hand, nothing.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it was fun.
Guest:It was fun to really sit down.
Guest:And I think the difference between an independent film and a blockbuster is that, you know, I think the expectations of everybody on the set is automatically an indie film.
Guest:They're all like this.
Guest:Look, I might not go.
Guest:We're just doing this because we love to do it.
Guest:And it'd be great if it goes, you know, to the upper echelons of the bigness.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it can't really.
Guest:It's a little indie film.
Guest:And we're okay with that.
Guest:Everybody here okay with that?
Guest:You know, it'd be in a festival here and there and then disappear.
Guest:Is everybody okay with that?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we all kind of go like this.
Guest:Well, we're doing it for the love, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:We're doing it for the craft, right?
Marc:Yeah, but we're also doing it for maybe.
Guest:Maybe.
Marc:I mean, it's hope.
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:But we don't need it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because we're artists.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:Of course we don't need it.
Guest:We don't need it.
Guest:But when you do a blockbuster, you're like this.
Guest:This is going to go big, right?
Guest:Like this is going to be the one that changed my life.
Guest:And when that fails, you go, what happened?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Everybody had different expectations of the movie.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:I'm feeling that now on a country level.
Marc:So, yes.
Marc:But the thing is, is that with that, with the smaller crew, with the indie film, and without the stakes of a blockbuster.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:That, you know, there is a unity to that.
Marc:And there is that feeling of whether it's love or not, you are all working together.
Marc:We're all working together.
Marc:We're all creating together.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:You understand the limitations of the situation.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:18 days and countdown.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:We can't shoot at the airport.
Marc:We got to do it in the living room.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And you feel good.
Guest:And you feel good because somebody's back in the back going.
Guest:And you feel like all the creative juices are flowing at the same time.
Guest:This is art.
Guest:This is what it's about.
Guest:Craft services might be a little disappointing, but that's all right.
Guest:But as long as you let me know.
Guest:I always tell every person that comes at me with an indie film, they wanna know if I'm interested in doing it, will I do it?
Guest:Which is always that wonderful question like, I mean, I don't know, would you do this?
Guest:As long as you let me know.
Guest:If I'm gonna eat the same pizza every day, just let me know up front.
Guest:Just say, look, my mom is cooking, and when that doesn't work, I gotta deal with the pizza shop.
Guest:I'm okay with that.
Guest:If I got an idea that it's going to be a craft service and it's not, I'm a little salty.
Guest:I'm a little bit like this.
Guest:Is this the same pizza, though?
Guest:Did you reheat the pizza?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Don't reheat the pizza, man.
Marc:That's the only thing in the contract, Ryder.
Marc:Can we mix it up on the craft services?
Marc:Not two-day-old pizza.
Guest:No, not two-day.
Guest:One day is good.
Guest:The day after is always good.
Guest:But that next day, no, it's a little hard.
Marc:Done.
Marc:So, now, the guy who directed it wrote it?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:What's his name?
Marc:Josh Losey.
Marc:And this is his, what, third film?
Marc:This is his first.
Marc:First big film.
Marc:First film.
Marc:What?
Marc:First film ever.
Marc:Never did anything?
Marc:Not a short?
Guest:Didn't look at anything on YouTube?
Guest:Not near one.
Guest:Not near a one.
Guest:Never wrote a movie before?
Guest:Nope, not that I, nope.
Guest:This is his first joint.
Guest:This is his first joint that he was working on.
Guest:And that, you know, that's, I guess, was the instant connection of, you know, this guy, he's like, this is my first movie.
Guest:I don't know why I wrote this story, but it spoke to me and blah, blah, blah.
Guest:And he was really passionate about it.
Guest:And then when I sat down with him and I'm like, look, man, I'm looking at my career.
Guest:I don't get to carry a film that often.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, no, it's exciting.
Guest:So if you trust me with your baby and I trust you that you can execute and you won't leave me out there in the wind with your choices.
Guest:In fact, the only thing I could ask... Steer the ship.
Guest:Steer the ship.
Guest:Because you see indie directors with them 18 days and the money's run out and all your extras left because they didn't like the cold weather or that pizza.
Guest:You see indie directors start to break down.
Guest:They buckle.
Guest:They buckle.
Guest:They go, oh my God, I can't do this.
Guest:I'm a guy.
Guest:I can't do it.
Guest:And I'm like...
Guest:That's the worst.
Guest:Don't do that.
Guest:Don't do that.
Guest:If you don't break down, I won't fax it in.
Guest:I won't be like this.
Guest:No one's going to see this movie anyway.
Guest:So it really doesn't matter.
Guest:Fuck it.
Guest:I just want the shoot to be over.
Guest:Let me just do the line over the shoulder.
Guest:I'll just do the line.
Guest:So I think, again, as long as he had the stamina to believe in himself, to trust that he can get it done,
Guest:I was like, I'm here with you and I will give you everything I got and I will listen to you.
Guest:And you know what?
Guest:You can direct me.
Guest:You can come and say, I don't feel it.
Guest:I don't like it.
Guest:Give me a different choice.
Marc:But that's the amazing thing that he's doing his first movie.
Marc:You're doing your first lead in a movie.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So there's a vulnerability there.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:There's a trust that has to happen.
Marc:Has to happen, yes.
Marc:And it's exciting.
Marc:It is.
Marc:And then the weird thing is, in my experience, just being an actor on a show where I'm not being me, is that the first bit, you're like, oh shit.
Marc:Am I going to be able to do this?
Marc:And then about halfway through, you're like, oh, yeah, this isn't as hard as I thought.
Marc:And then you're almost done.
Guest:You're like, I'm about ready for this to be over.
Guest:This is long.
Guest:Why did I do this?
Guest:That's when you know it's really testing you.
Guest:And you're proud of yourself that you still allow yourself to be challenged.
Guest:You still put yourself in these situations where you know the third day you're going to be like,
Guest:I didn't have to do this.
Guest:I could be watching the game.
Guest:Why we shooting on Saturday?
Guest:Oh, we have to shoot on Saturday, okay.
Marc:And that's an interesting thing, too, that you're a lead, so I don't know the situation, is that a lot of times when you're an actor, you're gonna get all this coverage.
Marc:You're gonna do that scene 10 times from every angle.
Marc:And a lot of times, like the ninth time, when the coverage isn't even on you, that's when you finally nail it.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:That was living in oblivion.
Guest:The whole concept.
Guest:You do all your good work off camera.
Guest:Off camera, you're fantastic.
Guest:Can you put it on the camera?
Guest:Because you finally got it.
Marc:That was the last shot.
Marc:You're like, I just found it.
Guest:I just nailed it.
Marc:So that happens to you too?
Guest:All the time.
Guest:All the time.
Guest:Or somebody else's coverage.
Marc:Yeah, that was it.
Guest:Or somebody else.
Guest:Yeah, well, you're over your shoulder.
Guest:Yeah, or somebody else.
Guest:I deliver that line like a master.
Guest:Like, wow.
Guest:So I get what that line really means now.
Guest:Not what I wanted it to mean, but what it organically means.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:You sitting there like this.
Guest:It would be cool if I said this line like,
Guest:Right, you make choices.
Guest:You make choices.
Marc:But you don't necessarily feel it.
Guest:Yes, because you make choices as an outsider, looking in at yourself, directing.
Guest:You direct yourself.
Guest:You make those choices.
Guest:And once you get past that bull crap, you go, you know what?
Guest:Let me start directing myself and trusting what this scene is about.
Guest:But it takes a moment.
Marc:Yeah, because it doesn't happen right away.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because you're hoping the choices will carry you.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And they can.
Marc:But there are those moments where you're like, oh, I finally get what the fuck is happening here.
Marc:Because I can read a script and then by the time it's broken into scenes and it's shot out of order, I don't know what the fuck is happening.
Marc:I gotta refresh myself on what's happening and everything else.
Marc:And you do all this other work.
Marc:But ultimately, and this is what I was gonna get to, was that
Marc:You know, you as an actor, you as a person, you as a creative person, you know, you bring a lot to it, but the story's on the page.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And at some point, you got to trust that.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And people look at you and go, and when they see you work and they see how it looks so effortless.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They don't know the whole behind the scenes thing.
Guest:They think that's what you do automatically.
Guest:They think you don't do all the rebuilding and fixing.
Guest:They think, oh, he comes in and he sees it.
Guest:He sees it on the page.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's what I love about this actor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He sees it on the page.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No.
Guest:Behind closed doors, we tried everything under the sun, and then when we're fully exhausted, we'll read it right before we go to bed and go, well, that's what this scene's about.
Guest:Okay, you know what?
Guest:Shit, I might have missed it.
Guest:Let me try to remember that when I get on set.
Guest:Let me try to remember that.
Guest:I hope I fooled them.
Marc:I hope that the story was strong enough in that scene that they don't know that I didn't know what the fuck was happening.
Guest:Who's the editor?
Guest:Let me know.
Guest:That should be your best friend.
Guest:The editor is your best friend.
Marc:And that's the other thing about people watching like a three minute scene and they're like, that was smooth.
Marc:They don't realize that.
Marc:That took us 19 hours.
Guest:19 hours.
Guest:And any film, arguing, complaining, second guessing, looking at the makeup artist like,
Guest:Somebody tell me.
Guest:I don't want to ask the director because I'm supposed to know.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Somebody tell me.
Guest:The second AD, you're like, that was all right.
Guest:That was all right.
Guest:I loved it, man.
Guest:No, I felt it.
Guest:Okay, thank you.
Guest:Seriously, be honest with me.
Guest:Don't lie.
Marc:Don't lie to me, man.
Marc:What's the character's name?
Guest:Ashley, Ashley Douglas.
Guest:A good dude.
Guest:I put them together, again, in my process now.
Guest:The director, me and the director were talking about this tone.
Guest:It just felt a little off beat.
Guest:And I said, why is it off beat?
Guest:Well, it's offbeat in the idea of perception and how, as a black actor, I have to still say that.
Guest:I'm probably going to say it more now.
Guest:But as a black actor, I take a certain sensibility of how we're seen on screen by watching a lot of movies and watching a lot of TV shows and seeing what surrounds us.
Guest:And now I read a script where there's no cursing, there's no drugs, there's no violence.
Guest:And I'm like, well, that's different.
Guest:And it shouldn't be, but I'm like, wow, that's different.
Guest:There's nothing in here that hits me in the face with, you're a black lead.
Guest:And you're not gonna curse.
Guest:There's no drugs, there's no violence.
Guest:You feel weird.
Guest:And you go, wow, this is interesting.
Guest:Will people get this?
Guest:Will people even want to get this?
Guest:Do people know how to get this?
Guest:And so...
Guest:And I asked him, I said, yo, so, like, what, you know, where'd you get this tone from?
Guest:It was very, you know, it's got this little mystical, the music, everything about it is just a little surreal, a little offbeat.
Guest:And he told me to read a book called Confederacy of Dunces.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:And I read it, first time reading it.
Marc:Tool?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I read this, and I love the lead character.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ignatius, it was something about the way he was just braggadocious and just, like, wanted to be liked, wanted to have a connection, and it was like, come on, you gotta like me.
Guest:Because you made me believe you liked me.
Guest:So you should keep liking me.
Guest:And then I thought about Kanye West and how Kanye West, you know, Kanye West says some stuff.
Guest:And most of the stuff that he says makes sense.
Guest:We just don't like who's saying it.
Guest:The way he says it, we're like, we're not going to tell you you're smart.
Guest:Just shut up.
Guest:Just shut up.
Guest:But then later on, they go, I mean...
Guest:I wish somebody else said it.
Guest:Like if somebody else said it, you know.
Marc:I wouldn't have had this reaction.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:So Ashley Douglas, you know, he has an idea of how, you know, he was perceived.
Guest:Like going back to your high school reunion and you go, you know, before you go, like everybody loved me.
Guest:I was, yo, I was the funniest guy on the planet.
Guest:And then when you go to school and you bump into some people at the back, you know, later on, you're kind of an asshole.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, you was kind of, you know, you was annoying, obnoxious.
Guest:And you're like,
Guest:You kind of caught up like, what do you mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, why are you being so mean?
Guest:Right.
Guest:How are you going?
Guest:And then you go, man, it's your fault.
Guest:You made me believe that you like me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's not my fault.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, you know, so Ashley has a problem.
Guest:Ashley's coming out of jail and saying.
Guest:What was he in the can for?
Guest:It's not revealed in the script.
Guest:I have my backstory.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it's not revealed in the script.
Guest:And I think, you know, it was the director's choice that he didn't want people to define this character by, you know, a specific character.
Guest:past like oh he's a convict right to hang that on so yeah oh yeah convict's enough convict's enough we know why he makes his choices you know right so you know we don't we don't reveal that and we keep it very interesting yeah we keep it very you know very oblique is that the right word yeah i think so yeah
Guest:But we just keep it, you know, the audience knows.
Marc:Because if it was drugs or if he was a killer or a rapist and then all of a sudden, you know, that... You have an idea what the character is.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And that's not what it's about.
Marc:It's about a guy trying to reintegrate himself.
Guest:Reintegrate, find himself and just try to, you know, get the life that he had before he left.
Marc:Well, it sounds like that however humbling prison was for the character, which is obviously going to be somewhat, that the options getting out were, well, I'm just going to go back to being this big guy or whatever I thought I was before.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And then life humbles him.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:You've been through this before, huh?
Guest:We speak of experience, I see.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Guest:You will be humble.
Guest:Yes, you will be.
Marc:There's no way around it.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Unless you get out early.
Guest:Unless you get out.
Guest:Or just move somewhere else.
Guest:See, if you go somewhere else, you can create this.
Guest:Then you got to keep moving.
Guest:You got to keep moving.
Guest:Your carriage stays the same and you have a new set of friends.
Guest:And who are the other actors you work with?
Marc:Anything exciting there?
Guest:Well, we have this guy, George Sample III, new actor.
Guest:I think this is his second movie.
Guest:Found him in Sundance.
Guest:He did a movie called Cronus.
Guest:And he was fresh out of St.
Guest:Louis.
Guest:And he's a first-timer.
Guest:And it was so humbling to sit there in a table read.
Guest:And he was like, last week, I was just hanging out in 7-Eleven.
Guest:And now I'm working with the great Andre Royer.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:I'm just like this.
I can't let him.
Guest:I gotta know all my lines.
Guest:I gotta hit every mark.
Guest:Now I gotta teach.
Guest:Not even teach, but I just gotta be perfect.
Guest:I gotta be perfect.
Guest:You gotta be the great Andre Royale.
Guest:I gotta be the great Andre Royale.
Guest:And then all of a sudden, you learn a lot.
Guest:Because you see a young person, their glee, and they're making choices.
Guest:You're like, wow, he's finding things.
Guest:You remember what it was like when you found things?
Guest:When you just were like, oh my God.
Guest:this is a good choice and we kind of just worked well off each other then there was another woman Calais Stewart a comedic actor who did a lot of things on TBS and you know she's like the I think she just sold the show where she talks about her life in the as an actor where she's always the
Guest:the black female friend.
Guest:And she was just cool.
Guest:And she also said to me, you know, it was just weird.
Guest:Like, I don't know.
Guest:I found a lot of gray hairs after the first day of meeting everybody because they made me feel old.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Because she was just like, you know, I first met you or saw you running around in the Acapulco Black Film Festival back in the day.
Guest:And your energy, I was like, wow, this guy, he's going to make it.
Guest:And then if he can make it, hey, I can make it too.
Guest:So now I'm working with you.
Guest:And my manager and agent said, the only reason they brought me the script because there's no money down script is because Andre Roy was on it.
Guest:Oh, no shit.
Guest:And I'm like this, oh my God, the weight of everybody's.
Guest:Now I got to act and live up to these young people's expectations.
Guest:It was awesome.
Guest:They held me accountable and then I held them accountable like, don't fuck up the great Andre Gordos.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Leading role.
Guest:Hope you said that.
Guest:Well, you know, I implied it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Subtext.
Guest:Subtext.
Guest:Subtext.
Guest:But it was beautiful.
Guest:It was beautiful.
Guest:And I think it's on the screen.
Guest:I hope everybody goes out and understands the simplicity, the humanity that I found that people say I bring to every character where, you know, they just seem real.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, I think we have a, it's one of those comedies where you just, you kind of awkwardly laugh at the idea that this is how people act.
Guest:in real life.
Guest:This is what the internet blew up on when you just caught people in news conference talking and when you hear them talking, you go, that's a real person.
Guest:What was your feeling when you watched it?
Guest:Were you like, all right.
Guest:When I watched it, I told the director the same thing from when I read the script.
Guest:To watching it, I said, you know what, every once in a while, you know, I'm involved in a project that makes me a better artist, that makes me feel like a better person because I make decisions on doing something, not because I think or want or hope, but just because I liked it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and my best compliment today, you know, it premiered in Southwest and I won Best Actor and all this, you know, people were going like, oh, really?
Guest:It was so different.
Guest:It was so unique.
Guest:It was so weird.
Guest:There's stuff that you don't hear that much in acting no more.
Guest:You don't hear unique.
Guest:It was weird.
Guest:I didn't know what I was watching and all of a sudden I didn't know why, but I liked it.
Guest:That's kind of, it feels, you know, it's refreshing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my manager came to me, you know, and was like this.
Guest:Okay, you know what?
Guest:You were right.
Guest:And I loved her.
Guest:But they were waiting for this to be bad.
Guest:Did she be fighting on you?
Guest:Yeah, fighting all day.
Guest:I'm going to make sure I get you to book something that you can never do this movie.
Guest:It was like that kind of energy because they were just scared.
Guest:They were just like, we don't get it.
Guest:I don't get the movie.
Guest:It just seems strange.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:That's why I like it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I want to tell you, I'm doing, you know, and it worked out.
Guest:I don't know if last time we talked about, you know, how it came to pass, but, you know, I'm in the middle of casting for this movie.
Guest:Like, I'm reading with other actors to see who's playing the part.
Guest:We're about to shoot next month.
Guest:Everything is going well.
Guest:I'm kind of excited.
Guest:And then my manager calls and is like, oh, Empire.
Guest:Empire called.
Guest:They got a role for you.
Guest:You got to lead like tomorrow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm like, what are you talking about?
Guest:I'm in the middle of casting.
Guest:No, I told you.
Guest:I told you.
Guest:You can't say no to Empire.
Guest:Empire's too big.
Guest:I'm like, I know it's a big show, but I don't know.
Guest:Well, Danny Strong is calling you.
Guest:Pick up the phone.
Guest:You know, co-creator.
Guest:So he calls me.
Guest:He's like, hey, you know, how you doing?
Guest:Look, I know you might have heard this is a four-episode arc, but no, we want you for the long run.
Guest:Like, if it works out, we love you.
Guest:We've seen it work before.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, we'd love you to come on board.
Guest:And I was like, yeah, you know.
Guest:Listen, I get it.
Guest:You're a big show.
Guest:I love this show.
Guest:You know, I love the impact that it has.
Guest:I'm doing this indie film.
Guest:And he's like this.
Guest:Indie.
Guest:Indie.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:How about this?
Guest:When you want to shoot the movie?
Guest:I said, it's an 18-day shoot.
Guest:Want to shoot next month?
Guest:Okay, that's not going to work.
Guest:But here's what I can do.
Guest:You come start working the empire.
Guest:I'll take two episodes.
Guest:He'll give you two episodes off.
Guest:And then you can go shoot the movie.
Guest:All you gotta do is have those people wait for you.
Guest:And I never heard that.
Guest:And the actor, at my level, the great Andre Roto, never heard that before.
Guest:Like, you want me to go up and tell these guys that are making this movie to wait for me?
Guest:So I'm like...
Guest:That's not, or you know what?
Guest:But I got this guy saying on Empire, he'll give me two episodes off to go do it.
Guest:You know, I was like, okay.
Guest:So he gets it.
Guest:He gets that, you know, I might love this indie, but I also need that money and love, you know, Empire.
Guest:But they want you.
Guest:But they want me.
Guest:And they're willing to go, we'll want you bad enough, they will do you a favor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We'll let you go do your indie film.
Guest:So I go up to the producers and the director and they're casting like, you know, hey, we got another guy coming in.
Guest:I'm like, look, remember when I told you, you know, my man is going to make sure I get a job that won't allow me to do this movie?
Guest:They just called me for Empire, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Do you mind waiting like two more months?
Guest:Can we shoot in a couple of months?
Guest:And the room was silent.
Guest:Director Josh was like, whew.
Guest:Oh, you know, you see his face.
Guest:All of a sudden, that 6'9 white boy started to look mean.
Guest:I'm like, uh-oh.
Guest:And he was like, you know, he was like, well, you know, you're doing Empire.
Guest:That's a lot of, you know, there's gonna be a lot of odds on you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this is an indie film.
Guest:Oh, sink in the head.
Guest:The business, baby.
Guest:The business, baby.
Guest:Show business.
Guest:And then he was like this.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:Yeah, we'll wait.
Guest:We'll wait.
Guest:And it took a hit.
Guest:Like they lost the whole chunk of like the grip.
Guest:Oh, everything was ready to go.
Guest:All the crew, they left and we had to rehire new people.
Guest:But they waited.
Guest:And that was like the first time in my career.
Guest:I had somebody bending, you know, doing me a favor on network and a movie house going, yeah, we'll wait.
Guest:Yeah, you're learning the business.
Guest:I'm learning the business.
Guest:I'm moving on.
Guest:So it was all around.
Guest:Mentally and spiritually and artistically, it was a growth.
Guest:And you can only hope that you keep growing and you keep involving yourself and challenging yourself in new projects that make you grow.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Because you don't want to get bored.
Guest:No, no.
Marc:You don't want to get bored or complacent or feel like you're hiding.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:I'm not worth anything.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:The check clear?
Guest:We're on season 19?
Guest:We do season 19.
Guest:One more.
Guest:One more.
Guest:I'll do that passion project next year.
Guest:How did Empire go?
Guest:Empire's fun.
Guest:It's going well.
Guest:You know, the time that that came on, you know, second season, there was a lot of guest stars.
Guest:You know, the energy of the, you know, expectation because the first season was a monster.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you could feel, you could feel like the second season, everybody wanted to
Guest:you know, hit the same way.
Guest:So you could feel there was a little tension on set, but the actors, Taraji and Terrence, the young kids, they were so fun that they were like, that tension, that's somebody else's problem.
Guest:We just hit the playground.
Guest:We just play.
Guest:And we just played, and it's been a lot of fun.
Guest:It's been a lot of fun, and the, what do you call it, the feedback from my character is dope.
Guest:I'm having a good time.
Guest:And now I go somewhere, like I was doing something for the school, and all the kids run out, oh, that's Thirsty from Empire.
Guest:But all the teachers come out, that's Bubbles.
Guest:And they don't know who's Thirsty, who's Bubbles?
Guest:And I'm just sitting like this, wow, this is kind of cool.
Guest:I'm going to my trailer.
Guest:Well, thank God.
Marc:It's sort of like now your Bubbles and something
Guest:And something else.
Guest:Bubbles will stay in my heart forever, wire for life, but you want people to know that.
Marc:But Thirsty can live there too.
Guest:Thirsty can live there too.
Guest:We have so many personalities in our bodies.
Guest:I got a couple more characters in my body that I hope can come out.
Guest:Well, it's great, man.
Marc:I wish you the best of success with the movie.
Marc:It's always good to see you.
Guest:You too, man.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:And keep your eye out for a couple of houses in the neighborhood.
Guest:I'm looking.
Guest:I'm looking.
Guest:I'll make sure to stack them checks.
Marc:If I go too crazy, you might buy this one.
Guest:Oh, well, you know, just give me a discount, man.
Guest:Just give me a discount.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Good, man.
Guest:Well, good to see you.
Guest:You too, my man.
Guest:Take care.
Marc:Love that guy.
Marc:Movie sounds great.
Marc:It sounds interesting, but it's always good to talk to him.
Marc:He's a real actor and definitely a real dude.
Marc:Sweet guy.
Marc:Legs McNeil and Jillian McCain.
Marc:This is a little chaotic interview, but Legs is a...
Marc:An old cranky punk rock bastard, and Jillian's a little more level-headed, but their book, Please Kill Me, was just re-released in a special 20th anniversary edition.
Marc:You can get it now wherever you get books.
Marc:All right, so this is me and them talking about rock and roll, punk rock pretty specifically.
Marc:.
Marc:I know I had a copy of Please Kill Me, but I've had like four, and I give them away.
Guest:No, you can't.
Guest:You'll never see them.
Marc:No, I know.
Marc:Because the book, the reason I didn't even know you guys were going to be in town, your publicity, whoever was in charge, sent me something, and I'm like, I'd like to talk to them.
Marc:Because the book changed my life, but I imagine you hear that a lot.
Marc:Do you hear that?
Guest:Yes, but I want to hear how it changed your life.
Marc:I kind of missed the whole thing.
Marc:You know, I missed that time.
Marc:I was a little too young.
Marc:So I, you know, whatever I got musically, you know, was already, because I graduated high school in 81.
Marc:So that wave was already crashing and it was all, and I was, you know, in the middle of New Mexico.
Marc:So I had to have one guy.
Guest:What the fuck were you doing in the middle of New Mexico?
Marc:My parents settled there.
Marc:They're from Jersey originally and I somehow ended up growing up in Albuquerque.
Marc:But I had the one record store guy that turned me on to ship.
Marc:I had no sense of that whole time but I liked some of the people involved.
Marc:So when I got it, I'm trying to remember what year it was, just knowing about all of those people and more importantly the evolution
Marc:from psychedelics through Detroit to, the history was compelling to me and it all tied together and made sense.
Marc:So during the time I was reading it, I was listening to all of it.
Marc:So I was able to listen to all these people in context and put them all together.
Marc:And also the book, because it's an oral history, humanized people that I was, that were my heroes, for better or for worse.
Guest:Yeah, that's what we hoped.
Marc:Is it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That was the plan?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, we had to show, because Danny Fields is very early on to Duncan Hanna.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He goes, what's Wayne Kramer like?
Guest:Right.
Guest:He goes, they're assholes.
Guest:And he goes, but they're great.
Guest:And he goes, yeah, they're all great, but they're all assholes too.
Guest:And that's kind of the, we took that to show everyone as heroic as possible and also as disgusting as possible.
Marc:Well, yeah, I had Wayne in here.
Marc:I had Iggy in here.
Marc:Wayne's better now.
Marc:He's a pop.
Marc:He just became a dad.
Marc:He's so articulate, too.
Marc:Yeah, he's a sweet guy.
Marc:He's got purpose in his life.
Marc:But yeah, I mean, most dramatically, the one that took a fall for me was Lou Reed, really.
Marc:And also, Nico became this fucking person.
Marc:Like, it blew my mind in not just the music, but just in the sense of realizing these people are people.
Marc:And it's not that they're not good people, but they're just sort of like, no, they're just fucking, she's just a pig.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Yeah.
Marc:Like, you know, I don't know what I was thinking.
Marc:I think he's just a bunch of dirty, drug-addled fuck monsters.
Marc:Who isn't, though, Mark?
Marc:No, I know.
Marc:No, I know.
Marc:But, like, there's some weird cutoff in the brain when you want someone to be this rock god.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it happens in here all the time when I talk to people.
Marc:I mean, that's the best thing that can happen is you're like, these are just people.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you don't want to believe it.
Marc:Some part of you doesn't.
Marc:You want whatever the persona is.
Marc:But a lot of times, if they're not monsters, they're just bores.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:That's worse.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:I think so, too.
Guest:For an oral history, definitely.
Guest:No, for life.
Guest:No, but I think you're right.
Guest:For life.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You're like, oh.
Marc:Oh, God.
Marc:Like, actors are tricky.
Marc:Like, some of them have a deep kind of personality, but a lot of them, you want so much for them to be who they are acting as, and they're not.
Marc:And you gotta forget, we always forget that somebody wrote those lines for you.
Marc:sure you know yeah they didn't just come yeah actors are a little tricky but you can find them in there sometimes but now when you guys what year did it come out so it's the 20th anniversary so that means it was 1996 so that was way after the fact yeah let's go back to the history a little bit legs you you're sort of a seminal figure yeah in punk rock yeah well because i named punk magazine which named the movement
Guest:Yeah, how old were you?
Guest:I was 19.
Guest:So you were 19, running around New York.
Guest:Did you grow up in New York?
Guest:No, I grew up in Connecticut, which was the worst state in the Union.
Guest:Sure, I understand Connecticut.
Marc:It's just a fucking nightmare.
Guest:What part of Connecticut?
Guest:Cheshire.
Guest:Cheshire, Connecticut.
Guest:What's that near?
Guest:Actually, it's a bedroom community, two towns north of New Haven.
Marc:So what was happening?
Marc:So you were 19 in what year?
Guest:I just wanted to get out of Connecticut.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Any way possible.
Guest:What year was it?
Guest:That we moved to New York.
Guest:I moved to New York in 74.
Guest:John Holmstrom had already moved there, and he was writing letters to me saying, I'm going to be a millionaire before you.
Guest:He was always very competitive.
Marc:From what I understand, New York in that time was devastated.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:It was beautiful.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's the other word for it.
Guest:It was gorgeous.
Guest:It was like Dresden after the firestorm.
Guest:It really was, right?
Guest:I mean, there were really like burnt out buildings.
Guest:I mean, it was like this giant movie set.
Guest:See, White Flight had happened.
Guest:It had been happening through the 50s, and it was the very end of White Flight.
Guest:So everybody in New York who grew up there had moved to the suburbs.
Guest:So downtown New York was like deserted.
Guest:It was like this giant movie set.
Guest:It was so great.
Guest:It was so much fun.
Guest:And you guys, were you living for like a nickel?
Guest:Yes, yeah.
Guest:I got paid, in the beginning, I got paid $30 a week at Punk Magazine, and that salary was cut to $15.
Guest:So I was living on $15.
Guest:I mean, we had to take showers at Nancy Spongeon's house.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:She was actually, you know, everybody says, I mean, and Chloe Webb did a great job of her.
Guest:But, you know, I like Nancy.
Guest:Nancy was fine, you know?
Marc:Well, who else was hanging around?
Marc:So you were sort of defining this.
Marc:You were not a musician, but you were seeing what was going on downtown.
Guest:No, I never wanted to be a musician.
Guest:I didn't want, you know, have to wait for my drummer to go to the methadone clinic in the morning.
Guest:Or die.
Guest:Or carry that equipment.
Guest:You know, they were always carrying these giant amps.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Lazy.
Guest:I'm lazy.
Guest:Plus, I have no musical ability whatsoever.
Guest:Yeah, that's part of it.
Marc:But I didn't want to carry anything.
Marc:Yeah, but you tapped in somehow.
Marc:When you got to New York, was the plan to write about the music scene or to just... I wanted to make movies.
Guest:I thought being a movie director, I'd get laid faster.
Guest:I thought the magazine was a stupid idea.
Guest:John kept saying, I want to do this magazine about rock and roll and
Marc:Because comics.
Marc:Well, what was out there at that point was just Cream and Crawdaddy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Rock scene.
Marc:Rock scene.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Circus.
Marc:Circus.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you guys were kind of going to go anti that.
Marc:Those were rock and roll mags and Cream was sort of the rock and roll mag.
Marc:So you were going to fight that.
Guest:They were writing about rock and roll in such intellectual terms.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Not Lester Banks.
Guest:Yes, he was.
Guest:He was pretty... It wasn't quite intellectual, but it was... I mean, it was like writing... I mean, he writes a 10,000-word review of raw power.
Guest:Why don't you just fucking put on the record, Lester?
Marc:You know?
Marc:But he defined his sort of rock voice for criticism.
Guest:But like Richard Meltzer was hilarious.
Marc:And he's a smarty fan.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, but what band was he working with?
Marc:Was it Blue Waster Cult?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:The first time I met Richard, I said, you don't look so tough, and he punched me right in the stomach.
Guest:Did he really?
Guest:I am.
Guest:At the Ocean Club.
Marc:But you came to New York later, right?
Guest:Yeah, I came to New York in 87.
Marc:So it was gone.
Marc:It was gone.
Marc:What was happening in 87?
Marc:Was that like Fiorucci's?
Marc:No, Fiorucci was already done.
Guest:No, it had just closed down, much to my disappointment.
Marc:But where did you come from?
Guest:I came from New Brunswick, Canada.
Marc:Wow.
Guest:So I had older brothers and sisters who brought the records home.
Marc:So you grew up with the records?
Guest:Yeah, I was like in my Star Wars pajamas with the headphones on, ignoring mom and dad.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And what compelled you to go to New York?
Marc:Because you, like he said, you write poetry.
Marc:That must be part of it.
Guest:No, just the first time I went there, I was like, this is home.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I was like 10.
Marc:You were 10?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's when you moved to the Lower East Side?
Guest:You were 10?
Marc:No.
Guest:I went to stay with my uncle, George, when I was 11, and I thought, I'm gonna move here, too.
Guest:You just hit it.
Marc:You just know.
Marc:No, no, I felt that, because my family was in Jersey, and we'd go visit them.
Marc:I would take the bus in,
Marc:I was a 14-year-old, right?
Marc:In 1977.
Marc:Cool.
Marc:And I would just walk around.
Guest:Wasn't it glorious?
Marc:Yeah, it was.
Marc:Because you'd go to look at all the music stores.
Marc:That was my thing.
Marc:I'd go look at guitars.
Marc:Then I'd go to Colony Records.
Marc:And then I'd go down to the village to Bleecker Bob's.
Marc:But for some reason, the punk thing was happening then.
Guest:But it didn't penetrate.
Marc:It didn't catch me.
Marc:I don't know what it was.
Marc:That was the other thing, as I'm talking to you, that I realized that I got emotionally invested
Marc:in the lives of these people that you guys talk to.
Marc:I didn't know much about those guys.
Marc:I had the Dead Boys.
Marc:I knew Blondie.
Marc:I knew the Ramones a bit.
Marc:I knew the New York Dolls.
Marc:I had those records.
Marc:Again, they didn't register with me, but there was something about the Heartbreakers that just fucking killed me.
Marc:It's like you guys, you must have gone to a lot of funerals in the last decade.
Guest:There's been 42 people who've died.
Marc:From the book?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Holy shit.
Guest:Mostly of cancer.
Guest:You'd think it would have been drugs, but it was mostly cancer.
Guest:Cancer, a few, hep C. Oh, God, they missed the cure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because they handled that thing.
Marc:It took a while, but I know cats with the hep and they got the cure, and it's sort of like, what?
Marc:Yeah, cool.
Marc:Years of sweaty and tired and dying, just boom.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But what was your, in New York when you got there, because I know you write poetry, but did you already feel like, you must be closer to my age probably.
Guest:Yeah, I'm 50.
Marc:Yeah, I'm 52.
Marc:Did you already feel like you, like it felt to me when I got to New York, even in the late 80s, which I guess would be, is that when you went?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:so I got there the first time I was there was in 89 that you wanted all that shit to be in place that was in the book and it was really on its way out like there was still dope on the streets in 89 crack files right and I was on second between A and B so there's heroin but that all started to go away and whatever was left of these guys that you talked to they were just kind of drooping around with their you know old leather pants you know and people going like that's the guy I'm like that's the guy yeah yeah
Marc:So the romance of it was sort of gone.
Guest:Well, that's why we did the book when we did it, because for me, it was evaporate.
Guest:This whole scene that I had been involved in was really kind of wonderful and great.
Guest:And the challenge for us was, can we recreate it in just words?
Guest:That really was the challenge.
Marc:Whose idea was it to do an oral history?
Marc:I mean, what was it based on?
Marc:Well, Jillian and I became friends through Maggie Estep.
Marc:Oh, sad.
Marc:She died, too.
Marc:I love her.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, okay.
Guest:And we were always talking about writing and doing stuff.
Guest:And Jillian and I really loved Edie, the Edie book.
Guest:Which changed my life.
Guest:Yeah, it changed mine, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was doing this book supposedly with Deity Ramon.
Guest:He came to me.
Guest:Did he want cash up front?
Guest:No.
Guest:He would just go, legs, legs, I've got to talk to you.
Guest:Legs, you know, that Deity voice.
Guest:But I started interviewing Danny Fields, which was just amazing.
Guest:It was like therapy because I was really depressed when I started the book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I would have to go to Danny's.
Guest:And it was in this moment.
Guest:Why were you depressed?
Guest:Because the wave had crashed.
Guest:No, I had, yeah, I had done this magazine that failed and I lost a lot of money going through a divorce.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You know, just a lot of.
Guest:Midlife stuff.
Guest:Well, also writing.
Guest:I had been working at Spin.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it had become like pornography.
Guest:Okay, Madonna on the cover this month.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know, this, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just, you know, just, oh, it's, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Endless, you know.
Guest:And it's like I wanted to fall in love with writing again.
Guest:I wanted to get away from the business a little bit.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Guest:So Jillian and I were, and she was at the St.
Guest:Mark's Poetry Project.
Marc:You were part of that?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, I worked there for years.
Marc:Yeah, that's sort of another sort of nostalgic kind of mainstay.
Guest:Well, that was great, because when I got to New York, it was...
Guest:I mean, the New York School poets were all alive.
Guest:You know, there was this rare bookstore we'd go hang out with Hunky and Corso.
Guest:So I still got some dreams to come true.
Marc:It's so wild that the people that define this whole trajectory historically, they're so fucking specific.
Marc:They were sort of available for a long time.
Guest:If you had money to give Corso.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was such a hustler.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And hunky, but hunky was more elegant about it.
Marc:Oh, they were always broke?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Because I had a romance about that, like those guys, the beats.
Marc:And when I grew up in Albuquerque, there was a cat who wanted to use bookstore.
Marc:His name was Gus.
Marc:He was real important in my life.
Marc:And I remember there was a poster in there.
Marc:I used to have it framed.
Marc:It was like maybe the first or second year of the Naropa Institute.
Marc:And all of them were going.
Marc:Like Burroughs was alive and Snyder, or maybe not Snyder, but Corso and all of them.
Marc:And Waldman.
Marc:Waldman, yeah.
Marc:So there's a big list at Ginsburg.
Marc:They're all going to go for this conference.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I'm like, you know, I'm like 20.
Marc:And I say to Gus, like, I got to get up there.
Marc:He's like, what do you want to hang out with those geriatrics for?
Marc:I never really thought about it like that.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:It's just like a bunch of old cranky poets.
Yeah.
Guest:But that's funny because I went to Naropa for a summer.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:How was it?
Guest:So much fun.
Guest:It was?
Guest:Yeah, it was Ginsburg, Burroughs, Ann Waldman, you know, lesser known, Alice Notley, Bernadette Mayer.
Guest:It was just fun meeting those people.
Guest:It's like meeting Jim Carroll.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:So we're talking about the beginning of the book.
Marc:So you're depressed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're excited.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I was depressed.
Marc:You were depressed too?
Guest:Yeah, my mom had just died and it was time to fold up the poetry project and needed something else to do.
Guest:And we were so, New York, I mean, when you look back, New York was still great compared to what it is now.
Guest:But we were seeing it begin to change.
Guest:I mean, I love when we're shocked because there's a Barnes and Noble opening.
Guest:It's like, New York is changing.
Guest:And there was a gap on St.
Guest:Mark's.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, I remember when all that happened.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Wait, what?
Marc:But I got great shirts there, I must say.
Marc:Sure, they had cheap t-shirts.
Marc:It was pretty practical, nondescript shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was easy to shop there.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:It was cheap.
Guest:But that was also when Burroughs was on Gap commercials.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, that was weird when people were so easily co-opted.
Marc:But it also was, there was something about that, as much as you may have liked Bill, that there was something kind of like impenetrable about his image.
Marc:So it wasn't going to really make him look bad.
Marc:No.
Marc:And you spent time with him?
Guest:A little.
Guest:Legs more so.
Guest:I used to go out to Kansas for a week to basically see my friend James Growerholz, who was William's assistant.
Guest:And we'd hang out with Bill.
Marc:I love that over time, I somehow finally got a copy of that documentary, the Burroughs documentary, which I love.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it was hard to find for a while.
Marc:Maybe Criterion put it out or something.
Marc:But just how you imagine those guys.
Marc:And then just to see the dude that wrote Junkie and Naked Lunch just sort of doddering around with cats.
Marc:Like, yeah, this one's really nice.
Guest:That's all he talked about were cats.
Guest:And feeding goldfish.
Guest:Come here, little fishy, fishy, fishy.
Marc:But he was like, and that's like when you realize that so many of these people that the life of the mind and the literary life is completely not necessarily the life they're living.
Marc:No, no, no, no.
Marc:And it's a little bit disappointing sometimes, even with songwriters, you know, where you're like, this about you.
Marc:Like, no, it's the right song.
Marc:It made up a guy.
Marc:Like, what the fuck?
I know.
Marc:I learned that lesson with Nick Lowe.
Marc:He was in here and he played the beast in me.
Marc:Oh, I love that.
Marc:Right, but I'm like, this has got to be his life.
Marc:And he's like, I didn't know.
Guest:But Nick Lowe is the coolest guy in the world.
Guest:He's a sweet guy, too.
Guest:I was with him and Elvis in the 70s.
Guest:Costello, I assume.
Guest:Elvis Costello.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We were doing lines of cocaine the entire length of the pinball machine.
Guest:And you had to do the whole line or your beat.
Guest:an asshole.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I had the worst hangover of many, many, many bad hangovers and that was probably the worst.
Guest:Two days later you had it.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Guest:When he finally slept.
Guest:But you hated coke.
Guest:Yes, but I hated cocaine.
Guest:That's why everyone says I hated coke but I did it.
Guest:I loved it.
Guest:Me too, man.
Marc:i loved it didn't last long enough yeah but once it was gone i it wasn't like i was craving it no i was never one of those people too often where you know we got to go out and get you know where it's four in the morning and you finished an eight ball and it's like is the guy still up like i was always sort of like why why i've listened to you talk enough yeah
Marc:What else could you possibly have to say about nothing?
Marc:I can't imagine Elvis Costello on blow, because he was here on an espresso and I couldn't fucking keep up with him.
Marc:All right, so you decide that this is the way to do it, so what leads to the oral history concept?
Marc:I was interviewing Danny Fields.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Jillian was reading the transcripts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In the morning before she went to work.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she always says with a yellow highlighter.
Guest:I remember it was with a purple fucking highlighter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she would circle and you go, you got to put this in.
Guest:You got to.
Guest:All the stories that are in the book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they didn't fit in with the remotes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I was the first.
Guest:The concept was to do a Dee Dee book.
Guest:Jillian kept saying, it's much bigger than that.
Guest:And it's, you know, so I just said, fuck it.
Guest:Why don't you just do it with me?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, so that's how it came.
Marc:And you guys were friends.
Marc:Were you romantically involved?
Marc:Are you romantic?
Marc:What's going on?
Guest:For five minutes.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And then you just sort of like.
Guest:As Danny says, you have to get that out of the way.
Yeah.
Marc:good good good you got it out of the way obviously you're not crazy in the way that that would become a liability no no good no but uh all right so that's how the oral history is born but you still had to go out and and track all these people down and talk to them i mean and this was pre-internet yeah right well if you look at our day books from that for this four-year period yeah we were doing interviews around the clock
Guest:And we had to adjust everybody's schedule.
Guest:I remember Penny Arcade was flying to Italy in the morning, so we started at midnight.
Guest:I mean, I was collapsing at the end of the interview.
Guest:So we really did a lot.
Marc:It's funny, though, because she's a good example of someone that if you're not...
Marc:No one would necessarily know Penny Arcade and her place in that whole thing if you guys hadn't pulled a lot of these people out of the shadows.
Marc:I mean, that was the amazing thing about the book for me was that how much of a community, despite whatever they may have thought it was, just out of necessity.
Marc:And that punk rock, and I learned this again from Mike Watt, that punk was not what the style of music that is now associated with punk became.
Marc:It wasn't that.
Marc:It was just a bunch of very creative people doing whatever the fuck they wanted to do.
Marc:Busting it open.
Marc:And that it all happened in the wake of... I thought it was very... Again, I'm jumping all over the place.
Marc:That you tracked...
Marc:In my recollection of the book, that you were able to sort of do what Thomas Wolfe did.
Marc:Is it Thomas Wolfe?
Marc:Tom Wolfe.
Marc:Tom Wolfe did with the acid test in the meeting of the psychedelics of California and the psychedelic community of New York, that there was a difference.
Marc:And you guys were able to track through Warhol into Lou Reed and then into, if I'm remembering correctly, like Bowie's first tour and how that impacted the- No, you know what the connection is there?
Guest:John Cale produces the first Stooges record and Nico moves into the funhouse in Detroit.
Marc:And gives everyone VD.
Marc:That was the thing.
Marc:I was like, Nico did that?
Marc:How could that lady from the record, like it was one of those moments where like, oh, she was just full of VD and fucked all the Stooges?
Marc:Nico's down marking her.
Marc:She's down a notch.
Guest:I don't think she fucked all the Stooges.
Guest:No, she was just with Iggy.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Guest:Well, I guess who didn't fuck Iggy, right?
Guest:I was with Howie Pyro the other night, the famous DJ, and he's in Degeneration.
Guest:He was in the Misfits and Danzig.
Guest:I said, oh, I took a cab with Nico once.
Guest:And he said, I shot dope with her.
Guest:And he was always one-upping me.
Guest:Yeah, totally, Howie.
Guest:Howie, Howie.
Guest:Because Howie was on the scene at age 14.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I just, like, to me, it's very odd, and I still can't, you know, wrap my brain around it, because as much drugs as I did, like, I never, like, I wasn't part of the culture of shooting dope.
Guest:Neither was I. I was just a drunk.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I smoked heroin.
Marc:I snorted it when it was good.
Marc:And like, what was it in the late eighties when it was in New York where they realized that they could open up a market of kids if they just made it really good and snortable.
Marc:And I guess it's time to try it.
Yeah.
Marc:Finally a nice way that I can do it without blood.
Marc:Didn't like it.
Marc:Didn't take, thank God.
Marc:You hate needles, right?
Marc:Well, it's not that I hate them.
Marc:It's just like I didn't want to develop that relationship.
Marc:It seems so sordid and so private and so weird.
Marc:And so medical.
Marc:medical but like but like anything else like you figure it out if that's what you need yeah and and like i used to see needles all over the place in my neighborhood but i get the time of the punk thing is like it must have just been like smoking in some level there were people that did it and they do it together and they didn't mind watching other people do it and it's a it's a pretty horrible thing to watch yeah but it seemed like it was everywhere and it just leveled that whole fucking community
Guest:Richard Hell was the first one who shot a dope in front of me.
Guest:And it was like, oh, wait a minute.
Guest:And he pulled out a drawer and I was just like, oh, God.
Guest:You gotta do this before you leave the house.
Marc:Well, they did.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:That's the weird thing.
Marc:But I know that it must have been everywhere.
Marc:But it sort of leveled that whole fucking world, didn't it?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Most people got sober.
Marc:Yeah, and then they got cancer.
Marc:They did.
Marc:A lot of people do get sober.
Marc:I'm real close with Jerry Stahl, and he's been sober a long time.
Marc:But when you really think about that life that those guys lived, it's like, holy fuck.
Marc:that was crazy man so all right so how do you track all these cats down in in what is it 87 you wrote the book i mean no no 91 to we started yeah oh you got there in 87 so like you did you have to sort of do the thing were you still in touch with everybody or were you like i don't even know where that guy is yeah i was actually you know and and people would help out oh i have his number and they'd give it to you and you'd call them and
Marc:And out of those people, who was your greatest resource, really?
Marc:I mean, who was the thread?
Marc:Danny.
Marc:Danny Fields.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he was what?
Guest:He was a producer, right?
Guest:No, he was the editor of 16 Magazine.
Guest:He worked for the record company.
Guest:He signed the Stooges and the MC5 on the same day.
Marc:Was he involved with Jim Morrison?
Marc:Wasn't he old school?
Guest:Yes, he was the first publicist for The Doors.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:I mean, Danny has had the most remarkable career in the history of career.
Marc:Yeah, he's like the dark zealot of modern rock.
Guest:He got Nico album deals after she left the Velvet Underground.
Guest:Danny has been so influential.
Guest:He actually put together The Modern Lovers with Jonathan Richman.
Marc:He's a hard guy to figure out.
Marc:Jonathan.
Guest:Oh, Jonathan Richmond.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I want to talk to him, but I think he's sort of locked in a thing.
Guest:He's a bricklayer or something.
Marc:I don't know what he's doing, but it's completely fitting, however he handles his life.
Marc:But there's a little bit of sadness.
Marc:Yeah, a disconnect.
Marc:But that first record was good.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So Danny Fields, is he still alive?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And there's a new movie about him by Brendan Toler called Danny Says.
Guest:Is it a doc?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was just in London with him, and he spoke at the British Library.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was a punk exhibition.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:At the British Library.
Marc:But all that punk happened after the fucking New York punk, didn't it?
Guest:Yeah, but at least, well, the Ramones came to England on July 4th, 1976.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And launched punk in England.
Marc:It wasn't the Heartbreakers?
Marc:No.
Guest:The Heartbreakers got, Malcolm thought the Heartbreakers needed, I mean, Malcolm thought the Sex Pistols needed the Heartbreakers' credibility.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:That's why they, that's because he had managed the dolls for a moment there.
Guest:So he called up the Heartbreakers and said, come tour on the Anarchy in the UK tour.
Guest:And most of the tour got canceled.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:But I talked to, I'm trying to think who it was, maybe Chrissy Hine or maybe Lemmy before he died about that tour of the Heartbreakers in England and people realizing like, oh fuck, there's a whole nother world now.
Marc:Like in terms of how to handle rock music.
Guest:But the reason why we were so pissed off in New York at the English scene is they stole our scene and the music was also really good.
Guest:So the Sex Pistols really didn't need the heartbreak.
Guest:It was just a great... Right, you know.
Guest:So you liked it?
Guest:Yes, but grudgingly.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Grudgingly, you know.
Marc:But it seemed like the New York scene was able to, like, there was more variety.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Like, you know, out of, I guess, the British punk scene, you know, comes the ska revival and some other stuff and some of the more kind of gothy, lyrical bands, you know, like, I guess, like... Joy Division.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:The New York scene was really about art.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And we thought punk was a funny...
Guest:you know, we thought it was humorous, like, ha-ha, punk.
Guest:Yeah, unlike British punk, it's not fun.
Guest:When they saw the Ramones and read Punk Magazine, they took it seriously.
Guest:It was like, you're kidding me.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:This is a religion.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:But, you know, that makes sense because of the social structure there.
Marc:That when you actually have a dialogue about class, if you're given a manifesto that you push up against it, even the old fucking aristocratic rock scene, they were like, no, it's a big fuck you to everybody.
Marc:Oh, that's cool.
Marc:But when I think about David Byrne and Tom Verlaine, the other thing about your book that really got me was like...
Marc:It's tricky, man.
Marc:It's tricky when you get older and you're sort of like... You missed a chunk of time.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So it's hard for it not to be some sort of... Not a nostalgia act, but a kind of... I don't know what it is, but that's what surprised me about that D-Generation record.
Marc:They're not as old as the Stooges, but I'm like, man, they still...
Marc:They seem to mean it like they're not.
Marc:Something's not resolved yet.
Marc:I like that.
Guest:Something's not resolved yet.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because with most grownups, if they've had some success and they're known for something, they have a certain amount of self-worth.
Marc:They're like, you don't feel the urgency anymore.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But then there are cats that are like, nah, still not good.
Marc:I'm with that.
Guest:I'm with them.
Guest:I'm unresolved.
Guest:I'm still unresolved.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's weird, because it's not like we're searching for anything.
Marc:It's just sort of like, you know, something.
Marc:Still have issues.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:Well, you realized a big ripoff.
Marc:Like, you know, you...
Marc:you know what i mean yes i mean yes we do either you're gonna be sort of like all right i'm a grown-up i'm gonna enjoy grown-up things or else you get to a certain age you're like this is fucking it yeah i know what the fuck really we gotta make it what we want to make it
Marc:Anyway, so that's punk rock.
Guest:President Obama talked about that articulately on this show.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:When he was like smoking with a leather jacket.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's like sort of like I got to decide what I can do and who I am and what my limitations.
Marc:Yeah, I know there's an immaturity to it.
Guest:Well, we're immature too.
Guest:So with Lou Reed, Lou hated me.
Guest:Lou hated me.
Guest:Lou hated me.
Guest:Why?
Guest:You don't have to answer that.
Guest:Because we walked in to see the Ramones for the first time and Lou Reed was sitting there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I went up to him and said, hey, we got to interview you.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Holmstrom was playing fucking metal machine music and the punk dump all the, you know, that two album noise driving every, take that shit off.
Guest:You know, put on Vicious, the live version.
Guest:You know, put on heroin, put on sweet, you know, anything but fucking Metal Machines.
Guest:Play the hits.
Guest:Yeah, you know.
Guest:So John said, yeah, we went up to him too.
Guest:I said, John, there's that guy you're always playing.
Guest:You know, it was Lou.
Guest:And I said, yeah, we gotta interview you.
Guest:You know, I just assumed like he,
Guest:We didn't know what we were doing.
Guest:And John went up to him and said, yeah, we'll even put you on the cover.
Guest:And Lou Reed deadpanned, your circulation must be fabulous.
Guest:What was great about that is Holmstrom turned it into a cartoon because he asked, you know, John was a big
Marc:This is for Punk Magi.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he asked him what his favorite, you know, cartoonists were.
Guest:And he said, Wally Wood and stuff like that.
Guest:And he would draw them in the style of Wally Wood.
Guest:It was very cool.
Guest:It was very funny.
Guest:And Lou loved the magazine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And started hanging out with John.
Guest:And I remember I came out of a blackout.
Guest:It was Clive Davis's birthday, and we were sitting there with Kiss, Diana Ross, and all these.
Guest:And Lou was sitting there talking to Holmstrom, and I'm pulling on Holmstrom's sleeve going, let's go downtown.
Guest:Let's stop hanging out with these old people.
Guest:Let's go pick up chicks, man.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:Lou was boring.
Marc:And he got to feel that.
Guest:He wouldn't even look at me.
Guest:And I'd be sitting right next to Holmstrom.
Guest:I just got used to it.
Marc:oh yeah you were the you were the nuisance yes exactly i was the kid the attitude kid who the fuck's that kid yeah yeah exactly so when you look at the book now i mean like what do you guys feel about it i mean in terms of do you feel like uh like something's been lost do you think like in terms of what that all meant you know how do you frame it for yourselves um intellectually or emotionally now as grown-ups
Guest:The book?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, just in terms of being part of it.
Marc:He lived it.
Marc:And you were part of the documenting of it.
Marc:But is part of your lack of resolution the fact that as we move further away from the birth of rock and roll, everything is kind of fragmenting into content and garbage?
Marc:No, I think we're both very proud of it because...
Guest:even if we didn't get everything emotionally it feels accurate to me right you know and i think the great thing about the book that everyone has overlooked thank god yeah and i'll mention it now and then we'll forget about it is that um for the first time history was taken out of the hands of the elite academics and people with a panasonic tape recorder
Guest:Yeah, and did it so well that it's undeniably well.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And in terms of the structure of the book, which, like I said before, resonated with me, I mean, how did you track that?
Marc:How did you decide to involve the MC5?
Marc:Legs.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I just, it was, you know, it was, this happened.
Guest:It makes sense.
Guest:It's cause and effect, basically.
Guest:You just follow the trail.
Guest:And that's what you did.
Guest:Yeah, but when you put the queer theater in, theater of the ridiculous, that was pretty remarkable.
Guest:That wasn't obvious.
Guest:That was, yeah, but they hated it.
Guest:We got that handed to us.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:What was that?
Guest:Like, I'm blanking.
Guest:In the book, everybody becomes sort of a... The underground art scene was cooler than being a rock star.
Guest:Right.
Guest:For a minute.
Guest:Yeah, being in Andy Warhol's Pork and John Vaccaro and Charles Ludlam that had the theater of the ridiculous.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And everybody had kind of, Patti Smith had done stuff with Sam Shepard.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And David Johansson and Jane County.
Marc:So it was a crossover.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So we had also the whole idea of where does glitter come from?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So we had to track physically.
Guest:Literally.
Guest:Literally, where does glitter come from?
Guest:And it started at the Theater of the Ridiculous.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And there was this girl, Gina Bone, who was doing something
Guest:on theater and she had all these transcripts and she gave them to me.
Guest:She said, I don't know if these won't help you out, Legs.
Guest:I was like, yeah.
Marc:So that was just from you being there and connecting the dots around that scene and how they were all feeding each other.
Marc:I didn't know most of the stuff.
Marc:We didn't know most of the stuff.
Guest:We didn't know what we were doing, did we?
Guest:No, we just kind of made it up as we went along.
Guest:Well, you learn.
Guest:Our only agenda or mission statement was to prove that punk had starred in New York and not London.
Guest:But other than that, we got the story from the participants.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that was the genius of it.
Marc:It was some weird mixture of whatever created the Warhol scene and then this infusion of Detroit.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:Through the MC5.
Guest:And then Bowie coming in and producing both Lou and Iggy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And saving Iggy's lives.
Guest:Yeah, over and over again.
Marc:Yeah, the guy's pretty sturdy.
Marc:I didn't know what the fuck to expect when he came over here.
Marc:Who, Iggy?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:How was he?
Marc:Great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was very funny because I don't know him.
Marc:I don't know any of these people, really.
Marc:And I was excited.
Marc:We had a tight time for some reason, but one limo comes up.
Marc:His publicist gets out, and she's like, he's in the car behind me.
Marc:And I'm like, well, how is he?
Marc:Where's he at?
Marc:Is he lucid?
Marc:What?
Marc:Because I don't know.
Marc:And even though Rollins had told me that there's a difference between Jim and Iggy.
Marc:And when you talk to Jim, you're talking to a very... Well, his parents were...
Marc:college yeah you know no yeah you know but i didn't know what kind of damage he'd done i think in your book was the first time i read about him rolling around in glass and everybody going what the fuck that was the other thing that is really i just now it's all coming back to me too is that i had not put the stooges into perspective i didn't know their story until i read your book you know what either did i yeah
Guest:We kept having to go back to Ann Arbor.
Guest:The Ashtons were great.
Guest:Kathy, Ron, and Scotty.
Guest:Ron and Scotty, of course, were in the Stooges.
Guest:But we kept having to go back to Ann Arbor over and over again because it was like, wait a minute, there's a disconnect here.
Guest:We need to get this.
Guest:It was very frustrating.
Guest:But also the thread was Danny Fields because he signed MC5 and Stooges and went on to the Ramones.
Guest:I don't know if the book would have worked without Danny.
Guest:Yeah, I don't think so.
Marc:Yeah, but like that whole, the connection between the MC5 and the Stooges, but also when you really think about, you know, the attitude of New York punk rock, it sort of happens at that Iggy show in a way.
Guest:Yes, yes, definitely, yeah.
Guest:That's the moment.
Marc:Birth of it.
Guest:That's the moment punk becomes punk.
Guest:Right.
Guest:When he cuts the glass.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Alice Cooper took him to the hospital, you know.
Guest:I didn't know that.
Guest:Yeah, it was like, hey, Jim, I think, you know.
Guest:When I first met Alice, he invited me in.
Guest:I came out to L.A.
Guest:and I interviewed him.
Guest:I was like Wayne and Wayne's world.
Guest:I am not worthy.
Guest:I was at some party and I turned around and said, Legs, do you know Alice Coop?
Guest:And he said, of course I know Legs.
Guest:And I was just like... But he said to me...
Guest:We were kind of faking it.
Guest:We were teasing our hair and putting on our eye makeup.
Guest:The two just were really it.
Guest:And he kept saying, how's Jim, how's Iggy?
Marc:He really loved Iggy.
Marc:Well, Alice is another guy with the connection of through Zappa and through whatever, however he came to be.
Marc:I just listened to one of the old records today, because I was supposed to interview him, it didn't happen.
Marc:But he was a real deal art rock guy.
Guest:If you listen to his radio show, he knows everything about rock and roll.
Marc:Right, but he's a real fucking artist.
Guest:Those early records are fucking out there.
Guest:I know.
Guest:They're great.
Guest:They're great.
Guest:But so is Love It to Death and Killer and School's Out and Billion Dollar Babies.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Okay, you know?
Marc:No, it's not just the Zappa stuff, you snob.
Marc:Marc Maron, you snob.
Marc:Well, I just associate him as sort of a theatrical hit maker, you know?
Marc:And I didn't really know the old records.
Marc:So like, you know, because those records- Well, go back and listen to your Love It to Death, your Killer, and your School Sound.
Marc:I will.
Marc:I'm not being a snob.
Marc:I just, I wasn't an Alice Cooper fan.
Marc:Oh.
Guest:There you go.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:That was, like, because I come, I'm late to the party with everything.
Marc:I mean, I grew up, the only access I had to weird music was this guy who worked at the record store next to the bagel place I worked at in high school.
Marc:It's always a guy at the record store.
Guest:Of course he is.
Guest:And we've gotten so many people, like, he wrote down
Guest:the woman who wrote something in Bust, she said, the guy wrote down, please kill me on a piece of paper and gave it to her and said, go get this.
Marc:Well, I do that to people all the time.
Marc:That's why I don't have my fucking copy.
Marc:But he turned me on to fucking art music like Eno, The Residents, Fred Frith, John Hassel.
Marc:So like I took, you know, Robert Fripp, I jumped a step.
Marc:Like I missed, I don't, like I still can't listen to King Crimson, but I knew who Fripp was.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:Right, exactly, yeah.
Marc:So I missed the punk part of it, but I was off into this other fucking world.
Marc:But anyway, so Iggy, so the publicist comes up, then Iggy comes up and he gets out of the car, and then he's got this tall woman with him, very tall.
Marc:And I walk up to him, I'm nervous.
Marc:He's one of the guys that makes me nervous.
Marc:And I'm like, you need anything?
Marc:I meet him at the bottom of the driveway, do you need water or something?
Marc:He's like, he goes, I need to refresh.
Marc:And I'm like, I don't know what that implies, what that entails.
Marc:So then he comes up and there's a bunch of them, people with him, and they're out there on the deck.
Marc:And I'm like, well, we're gonna go in there.
Marc:He's like, all right.
Marc:And then he just takes his shirt off.
Marc:And starts doing some weird Tai Chi-ish looking things.
Marc:He goes, let's go.
Marc:So he sat there shirtless and did the Iggy thing.
Marc:But he was so fucking, his memory's tight, man.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He knows everything.
Marc:Some dudes are just genetically able to.
Marc:He's so articulate.
Marc:But he didn't shatter the shit.
Marc:Like there's so many brain dead motherfuckers around.
Marc:And you're just like, his is not.
Marc:It's not.
Marc:It's almost like when he's.
Marc:Like the difference between Iggy and Jim is like two different bodies.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:If you want to talk about being nervous during the Iggy interview, you should talk to Jillian.
Guest:Oh, I would have.
Guest:Oh, we just met at D. Roberti's.
Guest:He suggested it.
Guest:When was this?
Guest:Well, 94.
Guest:On First Avenue, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And he came in with this celery green shirt, kind of unbuttoned to his belly button.
Guest:And you could see the scars.
Guest:You could see the Max's scars.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:From the glass.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'd never had a crush on Iggy, but in person it was like, I just didn't, it hadn't registered how good looking he is.
Guest:It was like, whoa.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then Legs keeps leaving to have a cigarette and I'm like, no, stay.
Guest:She was tongue tied.
Guest:I'm going to undress.
Marc:If you leave, I'm going to do something weird.
Yeah.
Marc:Well, I think that like that Iggy thing is like, you know, when you talk to these old British cats about, you know, like I just realized it in talking to you that like I've talked to, who have I talked to?
Marc:Like Terry Reid, Richard Thompson, Lemmy.
Marc:Is there anyone who was like, I don't know if Lemmy was there, but.
Marc:John Cale.
Marc:Well, no, I talked to John Cale, but I'm talking about that night that Jimi Hendrix played that show in England because of, what's his name, his manager, the keyboarder from The Animals, had set up that show and invited all those motherfuckers.
Marc:And it just, it changed music.
Marc:Because all those cats, all those blues dudes and all, you clapped in The Who, Zeppelin, they were all part of, they're all sort of around.
Marc:So now they got to go see the new guy and it was just sort of like, what the fuck just happened?
Marc:And music changed forever.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Terry Reed told the best story.
Marc:He's at that gig, and he said he always went to that pub anyway, so he's in the back, and so everyone's there.
Marc:Everyone, Paige, Clapp, they're all there.
Marc:And he said the music, he opened with Wild Thing and just turned it inside out.
Marc:And then out of the crowd, Brian Jones...
Marc:He's sweating and he's coming out of the crowd and he walks up to Terry Reid and he says, it's horrible up there, the flooding.
Marc:And Terry Reid's like, what are you talking about?
Marc:It's like the water, it's horrible.
Marc:And Terry Reid's like, what are you talking about?
Marc:It's like, all the guitar players are crying.
Marc:because like ryan ryan is one of those guys brian jones where you don't you don't really have a sense of a personality no you don't because you just know that he was just like you know maybe a genius druggie you know guy who whatever but like to to know that he was that witty made me very happy yeah who'd you find when you guys were who was like the funniest most kind of like uh provocative you know raconteur of the of the crew that you dealt with lee childers was one of them
Marc:Who's he?
Guest:He was a photographer.
Guest:He lived with Iggy in the Hollywood Hills.
Marc:Remember him?
Marc:Yes, but you know what?
Marc:I forget that's from your book where Larry the Stooge from the Three Stooges is.
Marc:Yes, right, yes.
Marc:Which Stooge went over to visit Larry?
Marc:Ron Ashton.
Marc:Ron Ashton would go visit Larry.
Guest:Isn't that the sweetest story?
Marc:It's the greatest story because it's so odd.
Guest:I know, I know.
Guest:And he was writing and the doctor said to Ronnie, we're so glad you come to visit.
Guest:It was Larry, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It was Larry from the three, Larry Fine from the Three Stooges.
Marc:He'd go to the old folks, the celebrity old folks home and visit him regularly.
Guest:But he had had a stroke and before Ronnie started visiting him, he couldn't really speak.
Guest:And then
Marc:um ronnie through talking to ronnie he he started talking yeah so this is yeah isn't that amazing it's amazing what is that 71 69 which was 71 they were in the house somewhere in there 73 74 so they're running this house they're partying yeah and what compels ron ashton to go over to to see larry fan well because he would he would say obsessed with the street is that why they named it yes yes oh yeah
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:He was the one who was obsessed with it.
Marc:Probably, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, he was.
Marc:It's so beautiful that they're leaving this party mansion where they're just squandering their record deal money or whatever the fuck is happening, and he's going over there.
Marc:It was so sweet.
Guest:But that's Ronnie's whole thing, such degradation.
Guest:Remember?
Guest:He says that over and over.
Guest:We used to call each other.
Guest:We would talk in the language of the book, so I would just call Jillian up and she'd go, hello, and I'd go, such degradation.
Yeah.
Marc:so who are the bands like you know obviously this whole scene you know you know kind of spawned you know modern rock and roll in a lot of ways you know this and yeah whatever the british the british scene was doing but but the bands that really that that still exist out of it or that really became huge were who like when you think about like we're talking no no no one no one in the book no one in the that's why jillian
Guest:I kept saying, she kept saying, this book's gonna sell.
Guest:I said, no, it's not.
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:I thought people would like it.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:The great thing about the book is you don't have to give a shit about any of it.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And that, like, you know, when you get into it, you're like, what?
Marc:There's always these guys, you know, that, like, are, like, standing behind any genius going, like, that motherfucker stole my shit.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Like, you know.
Marc:If there's a genius, there's a bitter guy.
Marc:Like Ramblin' Jack and Bob Dylan and Joe Antis and Lenny Bruce.
Marc:But I always felt like there's no David Byrne without Tom Verlaine, like guitar-wise.
Marc:For some reason, I thought that.
Marc:You don't have to confirm it or not.
Guest:That Verlaine was the bitter guy?
Marc:Not the bitter guy, but clearly David took it in.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Because I don't know what the timeline is, but, you know, if you listen to Marky Moon, like, and you listen to his guitar playing.
Guest:It's amazing.
Marc:I mean, it's, like, fucking astounding.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, like, there were guys that, like, came out of that, and obviously they're geniuses and were able to move into other worlds.
Marc:You know, no one gets stuck.
Marc:The guys who really make an imprint a lot of times are the ones that can evolve.
Marc:But it seemed to me that David was, and I talked to him, was a bit of a sponge and absorbed a lot of stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:but like obviously a real fucking genius but were you there for their you saw them early on I saw them the second I went to see the Ramones we interviewed Lou Reed I went back to CBS I said this place is great I'm going back I went back by myself and saw the Talking Heads the next night as a three piece and they were great like 76 77 75 really yeah when there were three pieces
Marc:I can't even imagine that fucking place because I was in CB.
Guest:High with the talking heads and the next one's called 123 Red Light.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was so different, right?
Guest:Everything was so fucking different.
Guest:Well, it was so accessible.
Guest:That's what was... There was no velvet ropes.
Guest:There was no bodyguards.
Guest:There was no security.
Guest:There was none of this crap that there is today.
Guest:But you mean all the music was so different.
Guest:Yeah, it's incredible that it'd be all paired together in one.
Guest:Well, that's why we thought punk because...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was just wacky.
Marc:An attitude.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I didn't realize that the New York Dolls were really before everybody on that scene.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:The Dolls were already rock stars.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know.
Guest:In that scene.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:David Johanson and Johnny Thunders, they were already, you know.
Guest:They figured it out.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They figured out how to hot rod what was left of the 60s into something fucking new and wild.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they were fun.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Hanging out with David Johanson.
Marc:It's like a burlesque show almost.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, he seems like a fun guy.
Marc:Do you still talk to him, Johansson, or what?
Marc:No.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:I've only met him once.
Guest:I don't know him.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:No, David kind of turned bitter after he got sober.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Which happens to a lot of people, as you know.
Guest:Really?
Guest:It's supposed to go the other way.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:If you work it right.
Guest:Yes, if you work it right.
Marc:You do the work.
Marc:You do the work.
Marc:You're supposed to be happy, joyous, and free, they say.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:I think we have a girlfriend, his wife I used to date.
Guest:Oh, that doesn't.
Guest:You don't want to have that stuff going on.
Marc:Well, you know, as you get older and, you know, if you're untethered for long enough, you've got a lot of Eskimo brothers out there.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Eskimo brothers.
Marc:I love that.
Marc:I have many Eskimo brothers.
Marc:We rub noses.
Marc:It's kind of surprising.
Guest:It's kind of surprising.
Marc:You're like, oh, you did?
Marc:Oh, shit.
Marc:So I guess we're attached somehow.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:I have to say something.
Guest:My best friend who runs our website, Tom Hearn, goes, you know, Marc Maron's always referencing Please Kill Me.
Guest:I said, we were on this tour.
Guest:And I said, well, call the office.
Guest:We have this publicity guy, Jonathan Marder.
Guest:I said, call the office.
Guest:You suggest it.
Guest:I'm tired of this bullshit.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So he did, and then you said yes.
Marc:So it was kind of like, oh, that'll be fun.
Marc:I tell you, I mean, I'm glad that I got the email.
Marc:So thank him for me.
Marc:I will.
Marc:Thanks for talking to me.
Marc:That was fun.
Marc:Thanks, Tommy.
Marc:And like, yeah, I love the book, and I hope it'll live forever.
Marc:It's an important book.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And a fun book.
Marc:And it's a brain blower.
Marc:you know, historically and just musically, because there's so many people that, there's so much stuff out there that, you know, no one can put anything into context and a lot of things get missed.
Marc:And it's one of those books where, not unlike any book on music of the past, that if it's not mainstream,
Marc:And this is what happened to me is that there's no late to the party with music because it exists forever.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:So when you enter the world, it's all new.
Marc:And that's the experience I had with it.
Marc:I'm like, I didn't know any of this.
Marc:Neither did we.
Marc:And it's fucking, it changed everything.
Marc:And now there's a lot of stuff I listen to and there's a lot of stuff I can source and reference now.
Marc:And also just the experience of listening to that music.
Marc:Did you get that fucking Ork record set from Numero?
Marc:No, not yet.
Guest:Is it good?
Guest:Fuck.
Guest:Really?
Guest:It's so good.
Guest:I gave him our Terry Ork interview for that.
Guest:You did what?
Guest:Oh, you did it for the box?
Guest:We had the only Terry.
Guest:That's when Jillian came up with the title.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Because we went to San Diego.
Guest:Terry had been.
Guest:Just gotten out of jail.
Guest:He had just gotten out of jail.
Guest:He's the guy from Work Records?
Marc:Yes.
Guest:He was Terry Ork.
Marc:He's not alive anymore?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:And he died very soon after that.
Guest:Well, what was the story with that label?
Guest:Well, he put out Piss Factory.
Guest:Patti Smith.
Guest:Patti Smith.
Guest:He put out Blank Generation, which is the best version of the Blank Generation.
Guest:I have it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he put out tons of stuff.
Guest:You know, he was a little gay guy who, you know, you knew Terry.
Guest:Yeah, he was around.
Guest:Terry was great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he'd always buy a beer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Come on, Terry.
Guest:You got it.
Guest:Oh, go away, Lex.
Guest:He was great.
Guest:And these guys in Chicago, who were they?
Guest:I don't know, nice guys.
Guest:I can't remember their names.
Guest:They told me, and we have the only Terry Ork interview.
Guest:We did them for a few hours.
Guest:A few hours, yeah.
Guest:It was interesting because he'd also been involved.
Guest:He was older, so he'd been involved in the Southern California LSD scene.
Guest:And then came to New York for the Warhol scene, too.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he was a zealot, too.
Marc:Well, because I think there's some Alex Chilton on there, and that period of Chilton is sort of an interesting period.
Marc:And there's a lot of Richard Howell and some Verlaine, and I think Cheetah Chrome maybe is on there a bit.
Marc:Yes, yes, yes.
Marc:But it's like the...
Marc:The sound of it, I think, was very important.
Marc:That it was clean.
Marc:It was, you know, the production was like really let the music be.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And it was really, it's a great fucking box, dude.
Marc:And you can get it on vinyl.
Marc:Also, there's, for some reason, I associate you not necessarily in friendship, but, you know, I interviewed Toshis.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He introduced me and my husband.
Marc:Nick did?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, he's something.
Marc:He's something.
Marc:He is great.
Guest:He is so smart.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Marc:yeah he's mind-blowing yeah and i he was one he i was nervous about that yeah i would be too because he's hard he's not an easy access no and he's hard to find yeah like i was in new york and i had you know you got to track him down through this email address you don't know if he's going to show up and then he comes it's like this little guy and you get him going if you get him if you get him worked up which doesn't take much he'll go yeah i got to read that there's a new book i want to read about the jesus book i got to read
Guest:Yeah, I haven't read that yet.
Marc:Well, that's another, like, between Please Kill Me and fucking Dino.
Guest:Oh, Dino, what a great book.
Guest:It's a fucking great book.
Guest:Yeah, great book.
Marc:Well, I read the Jerry Lee Lewis, the Hellfire book.
Marc:Oh, yeah, it's great.
Marc:The Sonny Liston book is great.
Guest:I think Hellfire is the best rock and roll book ever written.
Guest:I think you might be right.
Guest:It's almost like this prayer.
Marc:Yeah, it's a prayer.
Marc:And also there's a battle between good and evil.
Marc:He's first cousin of Jerry Falwell.
Marc:I know.
Guest:Yeah, but he also shows up at Elvis Presley's and is drunk and smashes into the front gate and goes, you're not the king.
Guest:I'm the king.
Marc:Fuck you.
Marc:Now I got to reread that.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:All right, well, good luck with the resurrection.
Marc:Oh, thank you.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:I want a copy.
Marc:Oh, yeah, we'll send you one.
Marc:All right, deal.
Marc:All right.
Marc:All right.
Marc:You can go listen to some punk rock records.
Marc:Get energized.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, thanks for listening.
Marc:I enjoy talking to them.
Marc:I like old guys that still smoke.
Marc:I don't know why.
Marc:It's not smart, but I do.
Marc:It's not smart to do it, but if that's the way you want to go out, do it, I guess.
Marc:Anyway, go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:I will play guitar for those of you who are horribly disappointed.
Marc:Next time, I gotta go act.
Marc:As we all do.
Marc:Boomer lives!
you