Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is guitarist Richard Lloyd. Richard, why do
Speaker 1: you start your live shows with the song respect?
Speaker 2: Well? I was asked to do a Nuggets, a reunion
Speaker 2: or a couple of the songs. I chose where one
Speaker 2: of them was respect But it's not the it's the
Speaker 2: Vagrance version, so to say. The lyrics are a little different,
Speaker 2: and there's no R s P E C T in it,
Speaker 2: and it's not Aretha. It's you know, a modern take
Speaker 2: of it by Moir, but based on the Vagrants. You
Speaker 2: can look it up on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Okay, I've been I will the Vagrants version came before
Speaker 1: or after Wretha's version?
Speaker 2: I have that. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us any of the lyrical changes?
Speaker 2: Just instead of the rspcis there's just hey, hey, hey hey,
Speaker 2: after every verse and you know, no, I can't I
Speaker 2: play it? And what the hell?
Speaker 1: You also do the velvets waiting for my Man?
Speaker 2: Not really. I do two verses of it and embedded
Speaker 2: in another song of mine called the Word.
Speaker 1: Okay, for those who haven't seen you act, tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit more.
Speaker 2: I don't want to really talk about music with you, Bob.
Speaker 2: You gotta have something else. Let's have it.
Speaker 1: Ohkay. Let me be clear, you have something very specific
Speaker 1: you'd like to talk about.
Speaker 2: Uh uh huh, anything you like? Okay, but you don't
Speaker 2: subjects interest you.
Speaker 1: You know, we believe I got a lot of somejects
Speaker 1: interest me. I just want to you would rather not
Speaker 1: talk about music.
Speaker 2: Well, you're asking me pointing questions about my own performance,
Speaker 2: which is my own performance, and I'm not scheduled or
Speaker 2: I'm not able to give a critique of my own
Speaker 2: work in that regard, Okay, And you're asking me to,
Speaker 2: you know, talk about songwriting and the intricacies of putting
Speaker 2: a set together and why I did this and why
Speaker 2: I do that? Is not something that interests me at all.
Speaker 2: I play and people come to see it and they
Speaker 2: enjoy it, and we've been getting a great deal of
Speaker 2: We're playing small places, but we're getting sellouts and people
Speaker 2: are very excited about it and really happy smiles everywhere
Speaker 2: we go. So that's enough for me. Okay.
Speaker 1: Do you enjoy the process of going on the road
Speaker 1: and touring?
Speaker 2: I do. I do. It's interesting to be paid to
Speaker 2: go where tourists pay to go, and when you get there,
Speaker 2: they applaud usually unless they're throwing tomatoes at you, but
Speaker 2: they don't do that for me.
Speaker 1: Okay, are you the type of person who stays in
Speaker 1: the hotel room all day or do you take advantage
Speaker 1: of these places that normal tourists pay to go to.
Speaker 2: You know, I've been to Paris like eleven times, and
Speaker 2: I've never been to the not the Statue of Liberty,
Speaker 2: that other thing.
Speaker 1: The Eiffel Tower.
Speaker 2: Eiffel Tower. And I've walked past the Louver many times,
Speaker 2: going to a restaurant or such, or just taking a walk,
Speaker 2: but I've never been inside the Louver. So it's a
Speaker 2: mixture of I am joy the geography and the people
Speaker 2: and the cuisines, but as to the touristy type of things,
Speaker 2: I really don't partake in that.
Speaker 1: What's the most interesting place you've been to?
Speaker 2: Oh, gosh, everywhere. Athens, Greece, where you can't breathe because
Speaker 2: the pollution is so bad now and the cars are
Speaker 2: crazy and the driving is crazy. Japan, where you look
Speaker 2: out and there's two thousand people and not one of
Speaker 2: them has anything but black hair. That's very interesting and
Speaker 2: just about anywhere in the States is cool? San Francisco,
Speaker 2: you know, La New York.
Speaker 1: Have you been to South America?
Speaker 2: I've been to San Paulo where we played the Rio Festival,
Speaker 2: and San Polo and Rio.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been to Rio. Interesting place. So are you
Speaker 1: the type of person who's deep into your own world
Speaker 1: or do you follow the news.
Speaker 2: I've been following the news now that I get a
Speaker 2: little older, But I don't really talk about politics either.
Speaker 2: Music and politics are kind of they're preculiar tastes that
Speaker 2: people have. I may follow of a man named George
Speaker 2: Ivanovitch Kerdyev. Are you familiar with that?
Speaker 1: I am not. I'm not, I don't think so. Tell me.
Speaker 2: Well, he was a I guess you'd call him a
Speaker 2: mystic or a master of himself. And he tried to
Speaker 2: impart to mankind the possibilities that are open to human
Speaker 2: being who's quote working on themselves end quote. And he
Speaker 2: provided steps to achieve a greater potential for man than
Speaker 2: he usually is. He's sleepwalking. If you look, you can
Speaker 2: practically see people dream daydreaming, and daydreams are nothing. They
Speaker 2: don't exist. When reality hits you, they're gone. And so
Speaker 2: to live one's life in clouds. So to say is
Speaker 2: you know a negative and people are fulled with full
Speaker 2: of negative emotions.
Speaker 1: Let's just talk about you. Have you followed this gentleman's
Speaker 1: precepts and to what degree have they helped or changed you.
Speaker 2: I'm free of most of the former habits that I
Speaker 2: had and negative emotions that I carried with me. There's
Speaker 2: no point to having negative emotions. They don't do anything
Speaker 2: for you except to ruin your health. And I'm talking
Speaker 2: about pride, lust, anger, fear, apathy, grief. They're all useless.
Speaker 2: They don't do anything for you. They don't act in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: Just to get a spectrum here. Let's say you buy
Speaker 1: a pizza, pizza, slice of pizza and it falls on
Speaker 1: the ground. Are we talking about something as minor as that?
Speaker 2: Or could you say, what's the point of crying over
Speaker 2: spilt milk? That's the old saying. So a pizza is
Speaker 2: the same thing. It falls from your hands. You know,
Speaker 2: if you pick it up and it falls again, it
Speaker 2: can get frustrating to some people. But I mean that's physics.
Speaker 2: Now we want to talk about physics.
Speaker 1: No, I'd rather not talk about physics, not an area
Speaker 1: of expertise for me. What about as we get older,
Speaker 1: we have contemporaries who pass away. How does one deal
Speaker 1: with the emotions of that.
Speaker 2: I don't have much emotions around death. It's a natural
Speaker 2: part of life. In fact, it's the goal of life
Speaker 2: is to reach death, but put it off as long
Speaker 2: as it's necessary to gain some kind of spiritual beingness.
Speaker 2: I mean, the point of man is to reflect the
Speaker 2: glory of the creator, if there is such a thing,
Speaker 2: or you could call it out of space, and the
Speaker 2: glory of the Sun and the planets and the Earth
Speaker 2: and the moon and the galaxies. We could talk about
Speaker 2: astrophysics if you like, but you don't deal in physics.
Speaker 1: Whit Wait wait, wait, wait, wait, a couple of things. First, Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you believe in it after life?
Speaker 2: It depends. It depends what you mean by an afterlife,
Speaker 2: and it would take a great deal of discussion, hopefully
Speaker 2: not one sided discussion, to come to any kind of
Speaker 2: uh and understanding. I don't think the physical body reanimates,
Speaker 2: that's certain. The emotions and the kind of cloud of
Speaker 2: consciousness departs, and maybe it goes somewhere and lasts for
Speaker 2: a while in the atmosphere of the Earth. Maybe it's
Speaker 2: drawn towards the moon, where mister Gridjief said that organic
Speaker 2: life on Earth feeds the Moon and that it's a
Speaker 2: young being, not quite the but that we don't look
Speaker 2: at cosmic time the way that archaeologists do. We're talking
Speaker 2: about cycles of Brahma. We could talk about the Indian
Speaker 2: Hindu religion and it's start in the never changing Wisdom.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to astrophysics. If it's something that
Speaker 1: you have expertise in, I'm certainly willing to be edified here.
Speaker 2: Well, expertise is not not what I would claim for myself.
Speaker 2: It's just a strong interest. I have many, many interests.
Speaker 2: I believe. We sent you a copy of my book
Speaker 2: where you yes, look through it? Yes, yes, I was
Speaker 2: through read it from cover to cover. It's yes, full
Speaker 2: of vignettes. Yes, we could talk about any of those
Speaker 2: or the ideas in the book.
Speaker 1: Well, what I find in the book is a strong
Speaker 1: sense of alienation and a strong sense of going down
Speaker 1: your own path.
Speaker 2: Well, those are both true.
Speaker 1: And also finding yourself observing a lot. So yes, as
Speaker 1: you have gone through life, do you find your self
Speaker 1: feeling that you're outside or that you have moments when
Speaker 1: you're feel totally connected, you know, what has been your
Speaker 1: experience on the planet.
Speaker 2: I am connected. I can't say totally because there's a
Speaker 2: degree to it. There's a percentage I'm awake in the
Speaker 2: sense of being vertical, such as the New Testament talks
Speaker 2: about sleep not you never know the time. There are
Speaker 2: all the parables we could talk about that if you like.
Speaker 1: Let's go to some of the specifics of your life.
Speaker 1: You did not finish senior year of high school in
Speaker 1: one year, then you went to another school and didn't
Speaker 1: finish senior year there, can you tell us what happened?
Speaker 2: I was at Stuyvesant High School, which is in all science.
Speaker 2: It was a boys' school at the time. There were
Speaker 2: no women and no girls. And I was to graduate
Speaker 2: in sixty nine. And then when they stopped teaching, I
Speaker 2: quit and I refused to take a diploma because I
Speaker 2: had already in the twelfth grade. I had taken my
Speaker 2: guitar to school and I remember my physics teacher saying,
Speaker 2: where are your books? And I said they're in the case,
Speaker 2: and he says, well, open the case and get out
Speaker 2: the books. So I opened the guitar case and there's
Speaker 2: my electric guitar. And he says, so that doesn't look
Speaker 2: like a physics book to me, And I said, it's
Speaker 2: the physic physics book I'm studying, and it's not going
Speaker 2: to change for me. And I was delighted. I'd be
Speaker 2: delighted if you were to teach, But to ask your
Speaker 2: students to go and teach themselves by reading materials that
Speaker 2: you didn't write and you're not enthusiastic about is not
Speaker 2: the way to teach. I had a math teacher in
Speaker 2: seventh and eighth grade. I was on the math team
Speaker 2: in the algebra competitions in New York City and we
Speaker 2: actually won one year that I was there, that was
Speaker 2: the seventh and the eighth grade. It was a Japanese
Speaker 2: man named Tad Saphora, who then later became the principal
Speaker 2: of the grade school that I was going to, the
Speaker 2: junior high that I went to, and he was a
Speaker 2: remarkable man. He was a fifth degree black belt in
Speaker 2: karate and in ikido, and he would stop. The junior
Speaker 2: high school I went to was rather difficult. There were
Speaker 2: a lot of beatings and robberies, and you had to
Speaker 2: put money in several places when you went to school
Speaker 2: because you were certain to get mugged and someone would
Speaker 2: take your lunch money, so you had to have more
Speaker 2: in your shoe. Anyway, he could stop those just by appearing.
Speaker 2: People would drop their knives and chains upon seeing him,
Speaker 2: because he could dismantle them quite easily. Anyway. He taught
Speaker 2: only four days a week. That we went to school
Speaker 2: five days a week, obviously, and he had us for
Speaker 2: forty five minutes each of those days. And on Fridays
Speaker 2: he would lecture on various subjects, all of which were
Speaker 2: extremely interesting to him and to us. We were a
Speaker 2: group of children who were like sponges ready to absorb,
Speaker 2: and he had a fascinating ability. Six weeks before school
Speaker 2: ended in the eighth grade, he came and he said,
Speaker 2: I have good news, and I have good news. Which
Speaker 2: do you want? And he said, well, we've all passed
Speaker 2: this year, and I've thought you half of next year's curriculum.
Speaker 2: In case you don't have me as a teacher. You
Speaker 2: should not rest on your laurels, but you should continue
Speaker 2: to study anyway. I wasn't so good in trig trigonometry,
Speaker 2: but algebram I was very good at and chess and
Speaker 2: games like that go. He taught us Go. Do you
Speaker 2: know Go?
Speaker 1: I am familiar with the game. I've played it for
Speaker 1: like five minutes, so keep going.
Speaker 2: Oh it's quite terrific. It's a game where you could
Speaker 2: think you're winning and one move will flip everything on
Speaker 2: the board. And these games go on for weeks. In Japan,
Speaker 2: maybe one move a day. People contemplate this. It's a
Speaker 2: game of borders and of surrounding your enemy. It's a
Speaker 2: fascinating game, and it's precedes chess according to you know,
Speaker 2: studies of ancient gamesmanship.
Speaker 1: Okay, since this gentleman taught you half of next year's course, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what happened the following year, Well.
Speaker 2: I didn't have him, and that was very sad to me.
Speaker 2: But I visited him in his office a number of
Speaker 2: times and asked for his direction. He was a as
Speaker 2: I said before, he remarkable man, you know, versed in
Speaker 2: many many subjects, which is something I aspire to, which
Speaker 2: is why I'm not trying to be hostile. I'm trying
Speaker 2: to talk to you in something that will entertain us
Speaker 2: and the audience both. But I do music as a
Speaker 2: it's not a hobby what I do for a living,
Speaker 2: and it's very personal to me. I don't want to
Speaker 2: dismantle and have an autopsy of my performances. So I
Speaker 2: could talk about anything you like. No, No, that's not
Speaker 2: bring me anything to the table.
Speaker 1: Well, if I was going to row Bob, if I
Speaker 1: was going to bring to the table, it sounds like
Speaker 1: you're a person. If you were on the Bath team,
Speaker 1: your person who dedicates yourself and is totally involved in school,
Speaker 1: you will apply and get into Stevenson what happens to
Speaker 1: make you go left as opposed to Stingo left?
Speaker 2: I stayed the course of my own direction.
Speaker 1: Well, that's my question. Why did you do that?
Speaker 2: The world would be a better place? But we all
Speaker 2: succumb to the hypnosis.
Speaker 1: Since most people's coucil. Since most people succumb, how did
Speaker 1: you not succumb?
Speaker 2: I was born this way. I was born awake, and
Speaker 2: I looked around and it grieved to me the way
Speaker 2: human beings, they didn't think and feel the same. They
Speaker 2: would get into the They for instance, they took poisons
Speaker 2: such as alcohol, and then they got into fights. And
Speaker 2: if you took away alcohol, you can't And probition proved
Speaker 2: that you can't really take the pleasure out of ordinary
Speaker 2: people's lives. And so I've been this way since. I
Speaker 2: used to meditate as I'm taught now, sitting on my
Speaker 2: heels in the living room, stopping my breathing and trying
Speaker 2: to stop my heart when I was two and three
Speaker 2: years old. So I've been around the block in terms
Speaker 2: of the human condition and find it mostly lacking. But unfortunately,
Speaker 2: that's not how most people see it. They see their
Speaker 2: lives as full and entertaining. I'm not interested in that.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the fact pattern. When you're
Speaker 1: bring your guitar to school and you don't get your diploma,
Speaker 1: what do your parents say and to what degree were
Speaker 1: your parents in influence in your life.
Speaker 2: Well, at that time, my parents moved from New York,
Speaker 2: from Manhattan, from Greenwich Village to Montclair, New Jersey, and
Speaker 2: they said to me they bought a big house and
Speaker 2: I had I took over the third floor of the house.
Speaker 2: Remarkably affluent, I'll say, where in the village we weren't
Speaker 2: that affluent. So my step dad reached a point of
Speaker 2: affluence and bought himself a Mercedes in this house, huge house,
Speaker 2: and he was a film editor, mostly did TV commercials.
Speaker 2: Once brought me a Mickey Mantle signed baseball to Ricky
Speaker 2: from you know, Mickey Mantle, and I used it in
Speaker 2: a game and somebody hit a home run and the
Speaker 2: ball was lost out in the woods. And it's never
Speaker 2: bothered me. It was a baseball. It was meant to
Speaker 2: be used in a game. And people that collect these things,
Speaker 2: you know, just make me sort of smile.
Speaker 1: What did your stepfather say, if anything, when he found
Speaker 1: out the ball was lost?
Speaker 2: Nothing, No, he was astute. Anyway, They said, listen, you
Speaker 2: could do one of three things. You could get a
Speaker 2: job and pay rent to be here, you could move out,
Speaker 2: or you could go back to high school. And finished
Speaker 2: the twelfth grade. So I went back to high school,
Speaker 2: although I didn't really go to take courses because this
Speaker 2: was an ordinary high school, not a specialized high school.
Speaker 2: And I went and I borrowed a saxophone, and I
Speaker 2: went and sat down on a park bench across the
Speaker 2: street from the steps leading into the registration hall, and
Speaker 2: all the kids would come and laugh at me because
Speaker 2: I really can't play the saxophone. I was honking and bleeding,
Speaker 2: and this young black guy came up to me and
Speaker 2: he said, what are you doing? And I told him
Speaker 2: I'm calling you, And it turned out to be a
Speaker 2: fellow named Albert Anderson who went on to play with
Speaker 2: Bob Marley, mostly because he could smoke pot the way
Speaker 2: they did, and if it weren't for me, you wouldn't
Speaker 2: have smoked pot. I talked him into it after a
Speaker 2: couple of months of pressure, peer pressure. I talked everybody
Speaker 2: into getting high at the time and had a great
Speaker 2: deal of fun.
Speaker 1: Okay, the high school that you went to to repeat
Speaker 1: senior year was that in the suburbs in Montclair?
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, Montclair High School.
Speaker 1: That must have been huge culture shock after being in
Speaker 1: New York.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was. But we Albert and I and a
Speaker 2: guy named Ed Rogers. They were in a band called
Speaker 2: Redbread who won Battle of the Bands in New Jersey. Anyway,
Speaker 2: we used to bring our electric guitars into the senior
Speaker 2: lounge and play during the breaks or when we cut classes,
Speaker 2: and after about three months the place, the senior lounge
Speaker 2: was so full of kids that they shut it down.
Speaker 2: I mean, we've always drawn a crowd people who are
Speaker 2: interested in our interests, and at the time, you know,
Speaker 2: we were playing electric guitars with no amplifiers. Just trading
Speaker 2: licks back and forth, you know, all reaching that unapproachable
Speaker 2: goal of so called making it in the music business.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to Greenwich Village. You know a
Speaker 1: lot of the sixties emanated from Greenwich Village.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: Did you just feel that you were living there or
Speaker 1: were you feeling that something was going on?
Speaker 2: Definitely felt that something was going on. We were at
Speaker 2: the top of the rocket of civilization in New York
Speaker 2: and Greenwich Village specifically in the early and mid sixties.
Speaker 2: I mean it was incredible. And you know, we chased
Speaker 2: Bob Dylan around in coffee shops and Jimmy Hendrix is
Speaker 2: playing the cafe. Wha. I never went down the stairs
Speaker 2: of the cafe why? And I I kind of regret that,
Speaker 2: but I later on met him and many other of
Speaker 2: the so called rock stars. I didn't want to really
Speaker 2: grovel in front of them. I wanted to meet them
Speaker 2: as older peers, older brothers, and I did that and
Speaker 2: hung out with many of the top musicians of the day.
Speaker 2: And the day was pretty bright, you know, sixty four
Speaker 2: to sixty to sixty nine.
Speaker 1: Okay, why do you think society changed and pulled back?
Speaker 1: I mean, the cliche would be the army stole the slogan,
Speaker 1: you know, be all that you can be. That was
Speaker 1: the etho of the teenagers in twenty somethings. What happened
Speaker 1: in society? What do you attribute the change in the
Speaker 1: outlook in people over the ensuing decades.
Speaker 2: Well, we were in a Cold War, and I went
Speaker 2: through the Cuban missile crisis with everybody else, and we were,
Speaker 2: you know, the United States and Russia, we're in a
Speaker 2: real tussle. And then we got into a war in Vietnam,
Speaker 2: and that was ridiculous foreign war where we're killing people
Speaker 2: that do nothing to us, can't do anything to us,
Speaker 2: They couldn't send. The United States has been isolated. Nobody
Speaker 2: can reach us because we have two oceans protecting us.
Speaker 2: And anyway, we get in these ridiculous wars. And I
Speaker 2: was drafted and I got out of it because I
Speaker 2: had had psychiatric problems prior, and I had good documentation
Speaker 2: and a psychiatrist that said, you know, you can't put
Speaker 2: them in the army. He'll shoot officers just that, Would
Speaker 2: you know stop the war?
Speaker 1: Were you afraid that you were going to have to go?
Speaker 2: I was number seventeen in the draft, so I would
Speaker 2: have been cannon fodder for sure, But I wasn't going
Speaker 2: to run. I was going to take whatever came my way.
Speaker 2: And when I went down to the draft board, a
Speaker 2: funny thing happened because during the hearing test, you're wearing
Speaker 2: your headphones and everybody else if you hear something in
Speaker 2: your right or raise your right hand, you know, and
Speaker 2: I'm raising my left and I'm raising my right opposite.
Speaker 2: I'd put the headphones on backwards and the guy says,
Speaker 2: you're going in the army man, you ain't getting out
Speaker 2: of this. But when I saw the psychiatrist, he was
Speaker 2: of a different shade of color.
Speaker 1: What caused you or what motivated you to go to
Speaker 1: the psychiatrist?
Speaker 2: That alter everybody went to the psychiatrist, and people wore dresses,
Speaker 2: you know, boys were outrageous clothing and stuff to try
Speaker 2: to convince the psychiatrists. And they'd come out with their
Speaker 2: head hung low. They were going, and you know, somebody
Speaker 2: come out with their papers and go yeah, and everybody, yeah,
Speaker 2: you got out of it. So it was a thing
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 1: Well. I thought that you said though, that you had
Speaker 1: previous psychiatric history prior to the draft.
Speaker 2: That's right. I'd been in Roosevelt Tower ten, and later
Speaker 2: on I've been in two state mental institutions that make
Speaker 2: one flew over the cuckoos and nest looked like a
Speaker 2: kindergarten party, and I'm serious, tied to a gurney.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the first todd First.
Speaker 2: Well, I was fifteen, and I was sick of my parents,
Speaker 2: and you know, in a rebellious place, and they took
Speaker 2: pills and drank alcohol and it really got to me.
Speaker 2: So I went into the bathroom one day or one evening,
Speaker 2: and I took all the pills out, all the prescriptions out,
Speaker 2: and put them down the toilet, and then told my
Speaker 2: parents that I had taken them all. And they rushed
Speaker 2: me to Roosevelt Hospital, where they pumped my stomach. The
Speaker 2: doctor said, I know you haven't taken your stone sober,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to pump your stomach anyway as a
Speaker 2: lesson to you. And after that they put me in
Speaker 2: the psychiatric unit of Roosevelt Hospital, which was called Tower ten.
Speaker 2: I spent two weeks there and they then they sent
Speaker 2: me on a pass to go home, and I didn't
Speaker 2: want to go home. You know, the hospital was much
Speaker 2: nicer than my home was at the time to me. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I came back from the pass and I was happy
Speaker 2: as a lark in the hospital setting. And the guy
Speaker 2: in charge of me said, you know you're back on drugs.
Speaker 2: We're giving you these passes and you're back on drugs.
Speaker 2: And I was like, no, I'm not, and he said,
Speaker 2: yes you are, and we're transferring you to Creedmore, which
Speaker 2: was the statemental hospital out in Queen's or Long Island somewhere,
Speaker 2: and I was in Building forty and that's the flight deck.
Speaker 2: That's where they assessed you for forty days. So I
Speaker 2: spent three months there. They gave people electroshock therapy, and
Speaker 2: they gave me a chemical shock therapy. It's adrenaline insulin
Speaker 2: shock therapy where they put you to sleep for two
Speaker 2: weeks and then they put you in a literal rubber
Speaker 2: room and you work it out for two three four days.
Speaker 2: But people would come out of the electro shock and
Speaker 2: walk into walls. And my friend Albert Anderson, who had
Speaker 2: been talking about earlier, he came to see me and
Speaker 2: he says he started crying and I said, Albert, why
Speaker 2: are you crying? He said, because you're gone, you're not there,
Speaker 2: and I said, well, I'll come back. Don't worry about it,
Speaker 2: and I did every time. So my head is stronger
Speaker 2: than their medicine.
Speaker 1: Okay, was there any benefit in either of these two
Speaker 1: hospitals to you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a life is an adventure, and no matter
Speaker 2: what happens to you, it's part of a process, and
Speaker 2: it's a magnificent one. Nothing that's ever happened to me
Speaker 2: has stop me from trying to become a better person, trying.
Speaker 2: Although I don't succumb to new age crap. I'm a
Speaker 2: scientist and one of the sciences is the human condition,
Speaker 2: and I've done a lot of studying of it and
Speaker 2: had a mentor you know, or two or three or four.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're in the mental institution. Does anybody connect with you?
Speaker 1: Are there any doctors or anybody there say listen, I
Speaker 1: know who you are, I know what's going on. You're okay,
Speaker 1: let's just kind of get through this. Or you were
Speaker 1: you alone there?
Speaker 2: Oh No, At the time, they weren't like that. Doctors
Speaker 2: lorded it over the patients. They were, you know, God
Speaker 2: in charge and if they wrote something down that was gospel,
Speaker 2: so you know, they would write the worst things about you,
Speaker 2: and then you would suffer the consequences.
Speaker 1: And the other people who were there with you. Were
Speaker 1: they reasonable or were they truly mentally ill?
Speaker 2: Both? There were plenty of truly mentally ill, catatonic people,
Speaker 2: people with the I remember they brought a guy in
Speaker 2: strapped to a gurney and they kept him there for
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks because he was a sex psychotic
Speaker 2: and would grab at people's testicles and that just didn't stop.
Speaker 1: So how did you convince them the second time that
Speaker 1: you were fine and should be let out.
Speaker 2: I don't know. But the second time I was in Graystone,
Speaker 2: State where they sent me to a drug rehabilitation halfway house,
Speaker 2: one of these you know, tough love places, and they
Speaker 2: were in the middle of a work marathon, and twenty
Speaker 2: four hours of like, they gave me a toothbrush and
Speaker 2: they made me go along the carpeted floor picking up stuff.
Speaker 2: And after about about twenty hours of that, I walked
Speaker 2: out and they couldn't stop me. You know, I wasn't
Speaker 2: in the confines of the mental hospital anymore. It was
Speaker 2: in somewhere near new and I walked home to Montclair.
Speaker 2: You know, many miles till I rest. I've always been
Speaker 2: that way. If I have a determination, I carry through.
Speaker 1: And what'd your parents say when you showed up at
Speaker 1: a house?
Speaker 2: They were actually happy. I was okay. I was straight
Speaker 2: and sober. Not for long, however, But you know, I
Speaker 2: liked intoxicants. Birds like intoxicants, Cows like intoxicants. Deer eat
Speaker 2: rotten fruit and fall down. They love it, and so
Speaker 2: human beings have always sought after intoxicants of various qualities
Speaker 2: and natures. When I first got into the Gurjief work,
Speaker 2: my teacher, a woman named Patty, said to me, what
Speaker 2: have drugs ever done for you? What about? And I said, well,
Speaker 2: I know the difference in quality between materials. A pound
Speaker 2: of flour and a pound of heroin weigh the same,
Speaker 2: but the significant affect and the significant what they can
Speaker 2: do is remarkably different. And there you got LSD, you know,
Speaker 2: which you can't even see, and you can take it
Speaker 2: and have an extraordinary brain trip.
Speaker 1: Anyway, when did you first start, as they used to
Speaker 1: say back in the sixties, experimenting with intoxicants.
Speaker 2: When I was nine and a half, I stole a
Speaker 2: cigarette that was the entrance from my grandmother's pack of cigarettes,
Speaker 2: and I went up the alleyway. It was some summer.
Speaker 2: I was nine and a half and I smoked a
Speaker 2: cigarette and got dizzy and enjoyed it. So there I was.
Speaker 2: Then I snuck into the liquor cabinet because I wondered
Speaker 2: why adults took poison, and alcohol clearly a neurotoxin given
Speaker 2: in sufficient quantities. And I drank a bunch of different
Speaker 2: liquors and made myself. The room spun and I vomited,
Speaker 2: you know, projectile, vomited into the toilet, and as soon
Speaker 2: as I could, I did it again. So there was
Speaker 2: some measure of I guess if a psychologist would say
Speaker 2: self loathing going on, you know in the place that
Speaker 2: I was. And I was given a lot of love
Speaker 2: when I was young, but it wasn't sufficient. I had
Speaker 2: an absent father, and that, really, I would say, it
Speaker 2: numbed me to that side of the emotional part of
Speaker 2: a human being.
Speaker 1: Okay, when you say absent father, do you mean he
Speaker 1: was never there or there irregularly.
Speaker 2: He came to visit two or three times when I
Speaker 2: was really little, you know, in diapers and as a toddler.
Speaker 2: Then he joined the Navy and split and that was that.
Speaker 2: My parents got divorced when I was like six months old,
Speaker 2: and my mother took me to her parents' place and
Speaker 2: that's where I lived for the first six years. So
Speaker 2: my mother went to New York to become an actress
Speaker 2: and met my stepfather, who was a film editor in
Speaker 2: acting school, and then she sent for me and I
Speaker 2: went to New York.
Speaker 1: So the absent father, since you really didn't know you
Speaker 1: never really lived with.
Speaker 2: Your father, that's correct.
Speaker 1: What was the feeling of that, How do the apps
Speaker 1: and how did it manifest itself into what degree does
Speaker 1: it still play into your psychology today?
Speaker 2: Well, I had a terrific stepfather who did everything in
Speaker 2: his power to help me and to support me, and
Speaker 2: but that didn't happen right away. So there was a
Speaker 2: hole in me, a deep hole, you know. My grandfather
Speaker 2: stood in as the male figure and my grandmother, you know,
Speaker 2: was the loving person. And my mother was sort of
Speaker 2: flighty and concerned about her own self, and so she
Speaker 2: moved to New York and then she called me on
Speaker 2: the telephone and said this is I was six, and
Speaker 2: she said, this is your decision. You can come live
Speaker 2: with me or you can stay with your grandparents. And
Speaker 2: I was, and I said, against my own wishes, I said,
Speaker 2: you're my mother, I'll come and live with you. She says,
Speaker 2: oh really, oh great. But I didn't really want to go.
Speaker 2: So there was a hole in me. That's all I
Speaker 2: can say.
Speaker 1: Okay, So it was this hole connected to intoxicants.
Speaker 2: That's not how I see it. How do you see
Speaker 2: the connection.
Speaker 1: Well, a lot of people, a lot of famous people,
Speaker 1: whether they you know, not athletes but artists. They're trying
Speaker 1: to fill a hole that that frequently cannot be filled.
Speaker 1: They didn't get enough love for their father, they need
Speaker 1: certain adulation, etc.
Speaker 2: So everybody has a hole in them, Bob, everybody, and
Speaker 2: they can't be filled even with God. It needs to
Speaker 2: be like a spark plug has to have a gap
Speaker 2: in it. A human being has to have this unconquerable
Speaker 2: sorrow in them. It's a kind of suffering that all
Speaker 2: human beings must face in some way or another, and
Speaker 2: most of them turn to some kind of escape from it,
Speaker 2: which is not how I interpret the taking of intoxicants.
Speaker 2: To me, it was a search, a total search for
Speaker 2: myself within this. I used to take things that would
Speaker 2: make you go to sleep and then stay awake, or
Speaker 2: take things that would send you up and go to
Speaker 2: sleep on them. So I was always headfirst into this
Speaker 2: kind of grand adventure. And when I was fifteen, I
Speaker 2: said to myself, they showed this movie, you know, Reefer Madness,
Speaker 2: and afterwards all those kids talked about how we wanted
Speaker 2: to refer you know, where could we find some? And
Speaker 2: our older brothers were beat nicks, so we got it
Speaker 2: from them and started smoking. When I was fifteen, I
Speaker 2: asked myself, I said, let's sit down, Richard and figure
Speaker 2: this out. I said, out of a thousand people who
Speaker 2: take drugs, none of them recover except maybe one. Because
Speaker 2: what was it? Ulysses had himself strapped to the mast
Speaker 2: so he couldn't hear the sirens, or so he could
Speaker 2: rather hear the sirens but couldn't go to them in
Speaker 2: his doom. And I wondered, so do I have a
Speaker 2: mask such as that that's going to save me in
Speaker 2: the end? And I said my answer back was no.
Speaker 2: And then the question was, well, are you going to
Speaker 2: do them anyway? And the answer came back to me yes.
Speaker 2: I plunged into it. I believe in guardian angels, and
Speaker 2: I have a phlans of them. They're protecting me, They've
Speaker 2: always protected me.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back one chapter. You said everybody's got
Speaker 1: a hole in them.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: So let's say you know, conventional science that we read about.
Speaker 1: If we're not scientists, ourselves say they're spectrums. Okay, there
Speaker 1: are people who are deeply depressed. There are people who
Speaker 1: say they never get depressed. Are they just lying? What
Speaker 1: would the hole be in those who would say, I'm
Speaker 1: well adjusted and I'm happy.
Speaker 2: Ah, they're hypnotized by the society. Oh, hypnotism, that is.
Speaker 2: You know. I looked at my the adults around me
Speaker 2: when I was really little, and I noticed that that
Speaker 2: I could see that their emotions didn't match their speech,
Speaker 2: that they lied, that they simply lied to themselves and
Speaker 2: to others about their own condition and didn't fully embrace
Speaker 2: or accept the fact that they were, you know, and
Speaker 2: harmed by the shocks of life. You can take the
Speaker 2: shocks of life two ways. You can either ride them
Speaker 2: like riding the tiger, or you can get crushed by them,
Speaker 2: eating up alive. I'm not sure that people, I suggest
Speaker 2: that there are a percentage of people who are well
Speaker 2: adjusted to society's norms, and they live a life just
Speaker 2: like an animal. They go through life and then they
Speaker 2: perish and that's the end of them.
Speaker 1: Okay, once you're an adult in society, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people living in denial. How do you find
Speaker 1: your people?
Speaker 2: Ah? Well, that took many years. I didn't have a
Speaker 2: mentor until I found a man who had died in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty nine, mister Gurdjief, who I've spoken about it
Speaker 2: in our talk, and it was a Greek Armenian fellow
Speaker 2: who started teaching in nineteen twelve in Russia in Moscow,
Speaker 2: but ended up in France, you know, because of the
Speaker 2: Russian Revolution and all with a bunch of people, and
Speaker 2: started a school there called the Harmonia the Harmonious in
Speaker 2: the Institute for the Harmonious Evolution of Man. I'm paraphrasing that.
Speaker 2: And I read a book, you know, it practically fell
Speaker 2: on my head. I was going to spiritual bookstores and
Speaker 2: reading all sorts of stuff, and I found this book.
Speaker 2: It was called In Search of the Miraculous and I
Speaker 2: read it and in it it's the story of a
Speaker 2: student's three year tutorship under mister Kajief, and it's full
Speaker 2: of mister Gajief's lectures at the time in early nineteen fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen,
Speaker 2: those years, and in it I recognized something of extraordinary
Speaker 2: value in what mister Gajief was postulating, that we're not
Speaker 2: reaching our potential, the human potential to be an image
Speaker 2: of the creation. That we live narrow, small lives and
Speaker 2: we're happy with them. If you're happy they are sheep,
Speaker 2: that's okay. But once in a while there's a black
Speaker 2: sheep who gets away from the sheep who knows what
Speaker 2: happens to them when they go into the mountains or
Speaker 2: what have you, when they run away because they've accidentally
Speaker 2: seen the slaughterhouse. And we too, as men, are asked
Speaker 2: for our skins at a certain point and we give them.
Speaker 1: Just understand you say that after reading the book, you
Speaker 1: went to actual classes about this.
Speaker 2: Well, I found I don't know how it happened. I
Speaker 2: found Yeah. I looked up the Gurgief Foundation of New
Speaker 2: York and I wrote them a letter. I spoke to
Speaker 2: a woman who was selling books related to this subject,
Speaker 2: a woman named Elizabeth who ran a bookstore and it's
Speaker 2: still in existence called Well It'll come to me anyway,
Speaker 2: I would get books drop shifted to me on tour
Speaker 2: and spent my time reading things about Gurdjief and his teachings.
Speaker 2: And there's plenty to read if you want to read
Speaker 2: up on it. Any number of his students wrote books
Speaker 2: about life with mister Gurdjieff. Anyway, I wrote this letter
Speaker 2: to the Gurjeef Foundation, and I hand delivered it because
Speaker 2: I was unsure of the address and whether it really
Speaker 2: existed or not. And I went there and I knocked
Speaker 2: on the door and the button of the bell, and
Speaker 2: nobody came for five minutes. So I rang it again,
Speaker 2: and nobody came for five minutes, and I rang it
Speaker 2: and knocked one more time, and I said, if they
Speaker 2: don't come in five minutes, I'm going to leave and
Speaker 2: turn my back on this and find something else. And
Speaker 2: the door opened and a woman who I was later
Speaker 2: in a group with, Patty Hemmainger, she asked me yes,
Speaker 2: and I said, is this address correct on the letter?
Speaker 2: And she said yes, and I said, well, then I've
Speaker 2: delivered it. And the next day I got a call
Speaker 2: from this woman, Patty Yosa, who became my teacher or
Speaker 2: protectress in the Kerchief Foundation. She had met mister er
Speaker 2: Chief when she was seventeen and one Christmas he gave
Speaker 2: out the choice of seven silver dollar or a ten
Speaker 2: dollar bill, and most of the boys took the ten
Speaker 2: dollar bill, and most of the girls took the silver
Speaker 2: seven silver dollars, which she still had. Anyway, she asked
Speaker 2: a fellow named Stafford Ordall to help her run this
Speaker 2: meeting and began to have meetings in doctor Welsh's house.
Speaker 2: Doctor Welsh was the doctor who cared for mister Kjief
Speaker 2: in his last week or so in the hospital before
Speaker 2: he perished of every organ in his body corrupted. That's
Speaker 2: the guy who knew how to live.
Speaker 1: Okay, Why were there so many black sheep in the
Speaker 1: sixties and why do we live in an era of
Speaker 1: conformity today?
Speaker 2: You're right about that. There were a lot of black shoes,
Speaker 2: so to say, not all of them made it, you know,
Speaker 2: some of them expired on the way, on the path,
Speaker 2: and some of us are still on the path. But yes,
Speaker 2: conformity is the name of the game nowadays. And what
Speaker 2: do you conform to? I mean, if it's politics, you've
Speaker 2: only got two choices, and neither of them are very
Speaker 2: up to standards.
Speaker 1: You want to talk politics, No, No, I want to
Speaker 1: talk you know, I think that the world was changed
Speaker 1: when Reagan came in and legitimized greed.
Speaker 2: That's the nineteen eighty we selected first.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I would say that. You know, we had
Speaker 1: the peace and love generation of the sixties. We have
Speaker 1: the back to the land licking our wounds in the seventies,
Speaker 1: and then we had even Jerry Rubin went straight okay,
Speaker 1: and then it became about the money, and of course
Speaker 1: ultimately we have income inequality, which makes the struggle of
Speaker 1: life even harder.
Speaker 2: Right, Reaganomics.
Speaker 1: Right. But where we used to have okay, you we
Speaker 1: have the same frame of reference where it used to
Speaker 1: be that the artist, let's talk musical artists existed outside
Speaker 1: the system. They were beacons. The first, you know, true
Speaker 1: breakthrough was the Beatles. Now the popular I'm talking about
Speaker 1: I don't want to you know, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Him on Sullivan, by the way, of.
Speaker 1: Course, I saw them on at Sullivan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: I saw him on Jack Parr a few months before that.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: But in any event, my point is people looked to
Speaker 1: them for answers. They were influenced, and of course John
Speaker 1: Lennon said, you know, we're bigger than Jesus. They were
Speaker 1: outside the system.
Speaker 2: That ruined them. They couldn't tour after that.
Speaker 1: But today the artists are capitalists. Not that the artists
Speaker 1: of your never cared about money, but they are selling
Speaker 1: out to the band, whether it be you know, doing
Speaker 1: privates and this and that and the other thing and
Speaker 1: having perfumed. So there's a big change in terms of,
Speaker 1: you know, who the heroes are, who to follow, because
Speaker 1: if everybody sold out.
Speaker 2: What do you do? Then well I wouldn't know. Thank god,
Speaker 2: not everyone sells out in the way that you're painting it.
Speaker 2: I agree with you completely in this regard. You know,
Speaker 2: there are conformists and then there are capitalists. And anybody
Speaker 2: can get across the line and get to be a capitalist,
Speaker 2: then they're gonna, I mean, as far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 2: to kind of ruin and buy it money corrupts.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the drugs. You know, people say
Speaker 1: let's use heroin as example. You're always chasing that first high.
Speaker 1: With your experience with drugs, can you say any drug
Speaker 1: you took you say this was a great experience. Glad
Speaker 1: I took it better than regular life.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah. Every drug I took was influential in that regard,
Speaker 2: made it a dent, made a difference, a positive difference,
Speaker 2: as I've said, you know the difference. I remember first
Speaker 2: time we took Riddlin and it was the most marvelous experience.
Speaker 2: It was as though our bodies weighed four hundred pounds,
Speaker 2: but we could talk a mile a minute and my
Speaker 2: friend and I traded stories for hours on end. Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, prompted by this drug. Everything is drug anyway,
Speaker 2: it's all chemicals.
Speaker 1: Have you taken ayahuasca?
Speaker 2: No, I put down that kind of adventure when I
Speaker 2: found what I was looking for, and I found what
Speaker 2: I was looking for, and I'm holding on to it dearly.
Speaker 1: Okay, But you did go to rehab a couple of
Speaker 1: times to stop taking drugs, correct.
Speaker 2: No, that's what they wanted there, they meaning parents and
Speaker 2: police and judges and the rest of society. I mean,
Speaker 2: I was bonkers. I once wore a karate gee out
Speaker 2: into the middle of the street in mark Clair, New Jersey,
Speaker 2: stopping traffic and going beep beep, take me to the aliens,
Speaker 2: went I was one. It's arrested in the one hundred
Speaker 2: and sixth floor of the World Trade Center where they
Speaker 2: actually have jail cells, three of them, and they put
Speaker 2: me in and called the people from Bellevue who came
Speaker 2: and took me away. And it was all very exciting
Speaker 2: to me. You know, I'm excited no matter where I am,
Speaker 2: I can find reason to sort of love the course
Speaker 2: of action my life has taken. Not everybody can say that.
Speaker 1: When you stopped going to school, Yeah, what did you
Speaker 1: think you were going to do going forward?
Speaker 2: Music? That's simple. I was going to play guitar and
Speaker 2: a rock band like the Beatles.
Speaker 1: And how long till you could earn a living doing that?
Speaker 2: Oh? The first time television played CBG's. Television was really
Speaker 2: my first band. I bided my time until something came
Speaker 2: along that made sense to me. Anyway. The first time
Speaker 2: we played a club called CBGB's, we each made a dollar.
Speaker 2: That meant we were professional musicians, and that's all that mattered.
Speaker 1: How did you exist for the years between high school
Speaker 1: and television?
Speaker 2: I who took odd jobs. I was a dishwasher for
Speaker 2: a while, and the diners and restaurants, and you know,
Speaker 2: I never graduated to becoming a waiter or anything. There
Speaker 2: were more important things going on and through begging through
Speaker 2: you know, I got stuck in Boston once and had
Speaker 2: to hit the street and for spare change. I'm not
Speaker 2: above that. Old Italian ices from a push cart in
Speaker 2: Boston sold drugs, you know, not hard drugs, but pot
Speaker 2: and stuff that was before it finally became legalized pretty
Speaker 2: much everywhere. And that's a wonderful thing to behold.
Speaker 1: I know, they talked about it for decades. It's amazing,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like having a black president. You can't
Speaker 1: believe it actually happened.
Speaker 2: Right exactly, It's it's something else. Now they've psilocybin, the
Speaker 2: magic mushrooms are becoming derriguur for therapy and pleasure, you know,
Speaker 2: and that's a good thing. They're legal in Oregon, so
Speaker 2: sooner or later they'll be legal most everywhere.
Speaker 1: Tell us about heroin. Did you first start taking heroin?
Speaker 1: What was your experience on heroin?
Speaker 2: Well, the first time I took heroin was in junior
Speaker 2: high school. There. We used to be able to go
Speaker 2: and get dollar or two dollars bags of heroin that
Speaker 2: last you two weeks and sniff it, you know, snorted.
Speaker 2: And when did the dividing line came and I started
Speaker 2: using intervenous. It wasn't that long. I figured, God, for
Speaker 2: God's sakes, you go to a doctor, he sticks a
Speaker 2: needle in you anyway and takes stuff out and put
Speaker 2: stuff in. So why can't I do that? I'll be
Speaker 2: my own doctor. And if I want to take heroin,
Speaker 2: boy did that work in the beginning. In the beginning,
Speaker 2: I have to caution the listener even that it works
Speaker 2: in the beginning, but soon takes over all your interests,
Speaker 2: and so the only thing you can do is like
Speaker 2: a rug rat, you know, find more heroin and suffer
Speaker 2: the consequences when you can't find it. And I've been
Speaker 2: through many withdrawals, super withdrawals, But I like suffering.
Speaker 1: A couple of things. The high, I understand the line
Speaker 1: where it consumes you and you have to get money
Speaker 1: every day to feed the habit. Is the high? Ever?
Speaker 1: Still good?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Period, that's my answer. Yes, it is okay.
Speaker 1: You like suffering, Certainly withdrawal is suffering. Give me another
Speaker 1: example of suffering you like?
Speaker 2: Hmm. I was once and fell over backwards and broke
Speaker 2: my cocksacks, and I woke up having a dream of
Speaker 2: people on the battlefield screaming their heads off, you know,
Speaker 2: for whatever, for morphine or to be saved. And as
Speaker 2: I woke up, I realized that was me screaming, and
Speaker 2: I was screaming at the top of my lungs, and
Speaker 2: you know, had the authorities called because they didn't know
Speaker 2: what was going on anyway, I waited three days before
Speaker 2: I went to the hospital and got some pain relief
Speaker 2: from them, which I then didn't take because I wanted
Speaker 2: to wait until the pain went away, and that took
Speaker 2: a long time. But I was stalwart in my in
Speaker 2: my desire to let it wait until I could use
Speaker 2: it pleasurably instead of as a relief.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to that period between high school and television.
Speaker 1: You're doing odd jobs, you're bigging on the streets of Boston.
Speaker 2: It sounds depressing, sure, yeah to you.
Speaker 1: Well that's my question. Did you always know that you
Speaker 1: were going to play guitar and be successful?
Speaker 2: Yes? You did, Yes, absolutely, I just needed to bide
Speaker 2: my time and practice.
Speaker 1: And you know there are different levels of musicians. How
Speaker 1: much did you practice.
Speaker 2: All the time every day without an amplifier? An electric
Speaker 2: guitar without an amplifier is fine for practicing.
Speaker 1: I see during our talk that you're drinking something. What
Speaker 1: exactly are you drinking?
Speaker 2: Lemonade?
Speaker 1: Lemonade? I see it comes from a bottle. What is
Speaker 1: there specific brand of lemonade you like?
Speaker 2: No, any old lemonade.
Speaker 1: Okay. So when television implodes, how does that affect you emotionally?
Speaker 2: Oh? That was awful? But you know, the game was
Speaker 2: up and Tom wanted to get all the money, and
Speaker 2: so he went solo. And at the time I told him, look,
Speaker 2: I was thinking of leading the band anyway, so let's
Speaker 2: just call it quits. And I went on to make
Speaker 2: my first solo record for Electra called Alchemy.
Speaker 1: Why were you thinking of leaving the band?
Speaker 2: Well, I couldn't get any songwriting in. Tom had a
Speaker 2: lock on that, and he had a lock. He was
Speaker 2: one of the funniest people I've ever met, and I
Speaker 2: love him dearly. But he used to say no to
Speaker 2: everything under the sun. Used to shoot us in the foot.
Speaker 2: He had veto power, and managers came to us and
Speaker 2: wanted to manage us and make us millionaires, and he
Speaker 2: would say no. Scoundrels would come and he would say no,
Speaker 2: and I'd agree with him. But there were legitimate people
Speaker 2: in the industry who would have stood on their heads
Speaker 2: and buckets of sand to help us. And he said no.
Speaker 2: And there's nothing you can do about that when you're
Speaker 2: in a group where one person is the principal singer songwriter,
Speaker 2: and that was Tom, and I lay no claim to
Speaker 2: that property. He was that and he was a genius
Speaker 2: and when we first started, he was a far better
Speaker 2: guitarist than I was. And yeah, so.
Speaker 1: Why was he the type to always say no?
Speaker 2: I think my own take on it is he had
Speaker 2: a fraternal twin and I think there was not enough
Speaker 2: room in the womb for the two of them, and
Speaker 2: I think they had a strange relationship. And because of it,
Speaker 2: Tom was afraid that somebody was going everybody was going
Speaker 2: to rip him off, that everybody was going to tell
Speaker 2: him what to do, and he don't want anybody telling
Speaker 2: him what to do. And I think it goes back
Speaker 2: to the womb. And it was a very deep streak
Speaker 2: in Tom and there was really nothing that could be
Speaker 2: done about it.
Speaker 1: What happened with his brother.
Speaker 2: Well, his brother died of a drug overdose in the eighties,
Speaker 2: I believe, Yeah, that's what happened to him.
Speaker 1: But did that liberate Tom in some way?
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if it did. You know, he was
Speaker 2: caught in a thing that was largely un conscious. His
Speaker 2: habits and drives, you know, precluded him suddenly seeing sunlight.
Speaker 1: You know, the two television albums come out. First, one's
Speaker 1: a classic, second one doesn't get his good reviews, although
Speaker 1: I noticed you play Ain't That Nothing, which is my
Speaker 1: favorite song from that album.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 1: Does Tom ever wake up and realized, helly, maybe I
Speaker 1: made a mistake here.
Speaker 2: Well, we did do a third record, and we got
Speaker 2: back together in ninety and ninety one and made a
Speaker 2: record for Capital, the third television epinonymous record, just called
Speaker 2: television anyway, the eponymous we went. We did a lot
Speaker 2: of touring between ninety one, ninety two and two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven, when I finally left the band.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess you know this is this rock and
Speaker 1: roll one on one. Yeah, where the group came back
Speaker 1: together because that's the way everybody could get paid. Or
Speaker 1: did Tom have any artistic change and realize it'd be
Speaker 1: better to be with the group again.
Speaker 2: The way it happened was both I had a manager
Speaker 2: and he had a manager, and they both ran into
Speaker 2: each other at a party, and at the party, you know,
Speaker 2: what's Tom doing? Not much? What's Richard doing much? Maybe
Speaker 2: we could get them together, and that's what happened. We
Speaker 2: took a year to hammer out a band agreement, you know,
Speaker 2: and one of the things Tom put in it was
Speaker 2: that the performers always needed to wear black shoes, I
Speaker 2: mean and ludicrous. Yeah, what are you going to do
Speaker 2: with that? Anyway? And we but television always in live
Speaker 2: performances and in artists. Royalty split four ways, and that's
Speaker 2: still true even though Tom's no longer with us. We
Speaker 2: split four ways with the income, but he took the publishing,
Speaker 2: which is where the big money is. And you know,
Speaker 2: what can you do about that? I fought him on
Speaker 2: several songs, and I still have misgivings about several songs
Speaker 2: that I provided the essential parts for and didn't get credit.
Speaker 2: What are you gonna do? You know? We got to
Speaker 2: move on.
Speaker 1: Life is short, absolutely, I agree. So subsequent to television
Speaker 1: breaking up the first time?
Speaker 2: The first time?
Speaker 1: Yeah, the first time? And today, have you been able
Speaker 1: to make your living in music or did you ever
Speaker 1: have to have a street job?
Speaker 2: No? I make my living through music. I still get
Speaker 2: paid for Marquee Moon of all things, and it's wonderful.
Speaker 2: It's coming up on our fiftieth.
Speaker 1: The ear Okay, Marquis Moon, there's two albums for Elektra.
Speaker 1: And you know, usually everybody's in a negative position, so
Speaker 1: if you're making money, they're royalties from them, and not
Speaker 1: to match fact that that's right, they're split four ways.
Speaker 2: That's right. And it took us eight years of legal
Speaker 2: maneuvering to get Electra to acknowledge that we were not
Speaker 2: in the red, but we were in the black, and
Speaker 2: they owed us a lot of money. And after, like
Speaker 2: I said, eight years of wrangling, we finally got them
Speaker 2: to acknowledge that, in fact, they owed us quite a
Speaker 2: bit of money, and so we got paid then and
Speaker 2: henceforth we get monies every three months or four months
Speaker 2: or whatever it is. I don't even pay attention.
Speaker 1: But are they significant amounts?
Speaker 2: Yeah? They're enough to live on. Okay, barely, barely barely
Speaker 2: if you're not not eating food. Food costs so much nowadays,
Speaker 2: there's you know, you better get skinny because it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Okay, So how many times been married twice? So what
Speaker 1: can you tell us about marriage? Having been married twice?
Speaker 2: Well, it's a wonderful institution. I'm a serial monogamist. I'm
Speaker 2: with one woman for four years and another woman with
Speaker 2: it for eight and then I was my first wife
Speaker 2: for twenty two years and we have a son that's
Speaker 2: now in his thirties. And my second wife, we've been
Speaker 2: together for sixteen years and she's just terrific, supports me
Speaker 2: in every way, and I go on tour, so you know,
Speaker 2: there's a certain amount of loneliness that occurs naturally, and
Speaker 2: I'm not the one that goes skirt chasing anymore. It's
Speaker 2: a long time since that, so you know, marriage is great.
Speaker 1: So how'd you meet your second wife?
Speaker 2: She was at an AA I was at when she
Speaker 2: was like sixteen, and she looked at me, and I
Speaker 2: looked at her and sparks flew, but she was too
Speaker 2: young and nothing happened of it. Then when Facebook exploded,
Speaker 2: she got in touch with me and we began her
Speaker 2: correspondence and then we went on a date and then
Speaker 2: we got together. And that's the way it's been.
Speaker 1: Okay, in between singer at the AA meeting and connecting
Speaker 1: on Facebook. How many years was that.
Speaker 2: Ooh, twenty twenty five something like that, And.
Speaker 1: When she reached out. Did you say to yourself, this
Speaker 1: woman is interested, maybe something's going on here, and say, oh,
Speaker 1: this is just somebody from my past.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I knew right away. Oh that's that girl.
Speaker 2: There she is.
Speaker 1: And had she been married before?
Speaker 2: No, so it's our first marriage.
Speaker 1: Okay. And what does she do all day when you're
Speaker 1: not talking to me and playing music?
Speaker 2: Oh? Nothing much. Deals with her family. She took care
Speaker 2: of her aging parents till they passed away, the mother
Speaker 2: just recently and the father five years ago. She took
Speaker 2: care of them a great deal and that was kind
Speaker 2: of her job. So she's in a space now where
Speaker 2: she's not sure you know, what's supposed to be next.
Speaker 2: But we're making it. We're making it. We're doing all right.
Speaker 1: Okay. So the kind of discussion we're having now, are
Speaker 1: these the kinds of discussions you have with your wife?
Speaker 2: Sure? Yeah, we could we talk every day.
Speaker 1: And what does your son do all day?
Speaker 2: Uh? He's a computer whiz. Obviously, he's at that age
Speaker 2: where you know, computers were going up. And he does
Speaker 2: something for some financial organization that makes him loads of money.
Speaker 2: And so that's what he does. And he goes to
Speaker 2: visit his friends in India and here and there. You know,
Speaker 2: he's got friends and a good gig. I'm happy for him.
Speaker 1: And how's your relationship with him?
Speaker 2: Oh wonderful. He comes to my shows when I'm in
Speaker 2: New York City. He lives in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: And what caused the breakup of your first marriage?
Speaker 2: Oh? I don't know. It just ran its course, I suppose.
Speaker 2: And after all this said and done, and she couldn't
Speaker 2: deal with me whatever.
Speaker 1: Me is, Well, do you find that a lot of
Speaker 1: people can't deal with you?
Speaker 2: No, not at this time. Maybe in the past. I
Speaker 2: can be snarky, and in the beginning of our interview
Speaker 2: I was rather.
Speaker 1: Like that, why do you think you're like that?
Speaker 2: I don't suffer foolishness as much as some people. But
Speaker 2: who determines what's foolishness or not? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Well you get to determine, yeah, for myself. But the
Speaker 1: question would be when you first start to interact with people.
Speaker 2: I try to be as graceful as as humanly possible,
Speaker 2: but people have their own level of understanding, and obviously
Speaker 2: they're going to come at you with that. I get
Speaker 2: a lot of hero worship lately, and sometimes it's difficult
Speaker 2: because people want to say hello and shake your hand,
Speaker 2: and then they don't want to let go. Literally, you've
Speaker 2: got people glimbing onto you. And you know, I've often thought, well,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna eventually I'm gonna need a bodyguard because some
Speaker 2: people are absolutely out of their minds about it. And
Speaker 2: then they get a bit of alcohol in them and
Speaker 2: that's so and they approach you and they you know,
Speaker 2: as soon as you say, oh, I've got to go
Speaker 2: do this, or you know, we've had enough time together,
Speaker 2: and then they go, oh, you're a wash up and
Speaker 2: spit on you. You know, they can turn into like turn
Speaker 2: on a dime, But lately I haven't gotten any of
Speaker 2: that that type. Just the hero worship, guitar hero so.
Speaker 1: To say, Okay, you know, it's like they say, you
Speaker 1: win an oscar and it feels great, but then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you wake up a couple of days later,
Speaker 1: it's like nothing happened exactly. So does this hero worship
Speaker 1: do anything for you? And emotionally, well.
Speaker 2: It's gratifying. I suppose that people are involved and interested
Speaker 2: in still in the things that I've done in my
Speaker 2: twenties with the CBGB's and television and like that. They're
Speaker 2: very obsessed with that period of time. And that's okay.
Speaker 2: I'm not the kind of person who doesn't want to
Speaker 2: talk about the past at all. I'm willing to talk
Speaker 2: about any part of my life. I'm proud of my life.
Speaker 2: I'm still here.
Speaker 1: But does it bother you that some people are stuck
Speaker 1: in the past and you want.
Speaker 2: People that's their problem or difficulty or maybe not, maybe
Speaker 2: they're just enjoying themselves.
Speaker 1: Does your music mean as much to you today and
Speaker 1: is as fulfilling as it was back then?
Speaker 2: It does? Yeah, I'm having a great time. We've just
Speaker 2: been on tour for a month and I loved it.
Speaker 2: Most of the shows sold. You know out, okay? And
Speaker 2: where do you live now? I live in Chattanooga, Tennessee,
Speaker 2: where my wife, my current wife's parents were and she
Speaker 2: wanted to be able to be with them at the
Speaker 2: end of their lives, and so we came down here
Speaker 2: because the New York that I knew is gone and
Speaker 2: the New York that we were in we had a
Speaker 2: dispute with our landlord and he eventually had to buy
Speaker 2: us out of the apartment that paid for our move
Speaker 2: and where we were we going to go since she
Speaker 2: had contacts in Chattanooga who went there. I hardly go out.
Speaker 2: I don't see many people. But I'm perfectly content being
Speaker 2: I've always been content being alone. In fact, I need
Speaker 2: a loneeness. I need not loneliness, the opposite a loneness,
Speaker 2: perfect a loneness.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, there's a vibration between this a loneness and
Speaker 1: being lonely on the road. Tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't get lonely on the road. I'm talking
Speaker 2: to my wife every day, and I have my bandmates
Speaker 2: with me and there's no re And then I got
Speaker 2: the fans and people that come to the show, so
Speaker 2: there's no reason for me to get upset whatsoever. It's
Speaker 2: all good, at least in today's running.
Speaker 1: Is this a loneness because you have so much you
Speaker 1: want to do alone or is it a socially aandwing anxiety.
Speaker 2: Neither. It's really my content with myself, my ability to
Speaker 2: be with myself and enjoy my time with me with Richard.
Speaker 2: I don't need another person to authorize me to exist.
Speaker 2: And in yoga, yoga the ultimate goal is called kaivalia,
Speaker 2: which means perfect loneliness, not the opposite of loneliness. It's
Speaker 2: all grace.
Speaker 1: And when you are alone, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: How's that for an answer.
Speaker 1: That I understood would be the answer that fits with
Speaker 1: your personality. But theoretically, you know, there are people who
Speaker 1: take drugs and just zone out. There are people who meditator,
Speaker 1: do yoga. There are people who read, people listen to music,
Speaker 1: people watch television.
Speaker 2: I'd come into two and three of what you said,
Speaker 2: you listen to music and you read? Was that it?
Speaker 2: I don't listen to music.
Speaker 1: You read and you watch television.
Speaker 2: No, you read? You read this the first thing I mentioned.
Speaker 1: Okay, the first thing. The first thing was meditating and yoga. Yes,
Speaker 1: I do that, And you also read? Do you read?
Speaker 1: I understand there's this gentleman who's informed your life. But
Speaker 1: do you read fiction and nonfiction too?
Speaker 2: No? I read nonfiction science books mostly?
Speaker 1: And what science books might they be?
Speaker 2: Oh? Anything about physics, modern physics, historical physics, anything about chemistry,
Speaker 2: anything about astrobiology, anything about biology. Anything anything that is
Speaker 2: non fictional interests me. So I scurry along reading everything
Speaker 2: I can get my hands on in that area of expertise.
Speaker 1: So let's assume you want to call somebody and your
Speaker 1: wife is predisposed you have like a close friend or
Speaker 1: close friends that you stay in regular contact with.
Speaker 2: I have close friends, yeah, best friends, Yeah, I've always
Speaker 2: had best friends. A few of them, not too many.
Speaker 1: And are they from what era in your life? Do
Speaker 1: you go through different ones or these the same ones
Speaker 1: for decades?
Speaker 2: The same ones for decades? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What is the commonality that makes them friends with you?
Speaker 2: I wish I knew I could conjure up a few
Speaker 2: to my liking.
Speaker 1: Okay, so if we will look at the world at large,
Speaker 1: what do you see down the pike?
Speaker 2: I don't look down the pike.
Speaker 1: Well, we've said here that there are a lot of
Speaker 1: somnambulent people who are just, you know, doing what they're
Speaker 1: supposed to do.
Speaker 2: Who says they're supposed to do?
Speaker 1: No, No, that's what they believe they're supposed to do.
Speaker 2: Oh buy that.
Speaker 1: So there's there's the climate crisis. Never mind political unrest.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking just about an election, but Ukraine, Israel,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. So did you think this is
Speaker 1: deregur or word a point of a it's derregar.
Speaker 2: Mankind has always been at war since we were apes.
Speaker 2: We were being at odds with each other. And I
Speaker 2: don't really understand it fully, but people suddenly feel like
Speaker 2: they're not secure, that they're threatened, and this evokes an
Speaker 2: action from their instinctual and moving centers that turns into wars,
Speaker 2: and there's conflict all over the globe at the moment,
Speaker 2: genocides and pitched battles.
Speaker 1: When we were growing up in the sixties, everybody was
Speaker 1: our age was a liberal. That's no longer the case,
Speaker 1: that's right. Why do you think that changed?
Speaker 2: Well, you mentioned it before that as Reagan came in.
Speaker 2: Things changed with Reaganomics and the this split between the
Speaker 2: haves and the haves nots, and I think the have
Speaker 2: nots kind of woke up a little bit to their
Speaker 2: dismay at this situation, and it's only getting worse. So
Speaker 2: some of them cross over and pretend that they're on
Speaker 2: the other side. And you know, politically, it's a war
Speaker 2: going on, and hopefully it will resolve in November, but
Speaker 2: I have no illusions about it. We will continue on
Speaker 2: a course of action determined by propaganda and more illusion.
Speaker 2: It was a genius thing that the friends of mister
Speaker 2: Trump suggested that he learned chaos theory and this chaos
Speaker 2: theory has permeated his politics to the point that he
Speaker 2: has infatuated hundreds of thousands and millions of people that
Speaker 2: don't know how else to respond to this chaos, and
Speaker 2: he introduces more and more chaos, and he's been it's
Speaker 2: been suggested to him that he continue in this path
Speaker 2: of lying and people will eventually believe it because he
Speaker 2: repeats it enough. This is true from Goebbels on and
Speaker 2: perhaps earlier. There was a guy who was a nephew
Speaker 2: of Sigmund Freud, and during World War two he was
Speaker 2: active in persuasion, and the cigarette companies came to him
Speaker 2: and said, we would like to introduce smoking to more women.
Speaker 2: And so he rounded up a bunch of women, and
Speaker 2: when the war was won, they were on parade and
Speaker 2: he gave all cigarettes and said, at my waving through
Speaker 2: the window or whatever my mark, you'll all light these cigarettes.
Speaker 2: And they all lit the cigarettes, and he said, gentlemen.
Speaker 2: He had all the publicity people with him, and he said, gentlemen,
Speaker 2: I want you to observe the women. These are the
Speaker 2: flames of freedom. And from that moment on, nobody could
Speaker 2: complain about a woman smoking the same thing with the
Speaker 2: aspirin is somebody. You can't this is hard to believe,
Speaker 2: but somebody came up with the grand idea of tell
Speaker 2: of advertise not to the patient, but to the doctors
Speaker 2: and tell them to send them away, stating take two
Speaker 2: and call me in the morning. That was the go
Speaker 2: to phrase. Take two meant that you used up your
Speaker 2: bottle of aspirin twice as fast. Why not take one?
Speaker 2: Why take two? Because it was a scam and it
Speaker 2: worked the same with the salmon industry got decimated by
Speaker 2: the tuna industry when they came out with the slogan
Speaker 2: Tuna Guaranteed not to turn pink in the can. I
Speaker 2: mean these kind of things. The toothpaste people were like,
Speaker 2: how can we increase our sales of toothpaste? Well, get
Speaker 2: into the toothbrush business and make bigger brushes. Then people
Speaker 2: will naturally put on more toothpaste and they'll run out
Speaker 2: sooner and have to buy more. So we've been driven
Speaker 2: by this kind of insanity for as long as I
Speaker 2: can remember. You know, I'm born aways back, but not
Speaker 2: that far. And it's been going on ever since.
Speaker 1: So this chaos theory is there? Any is there any anthidotes?
Speaker 1: Is there any fight it.
Speaker 2: Nope, just to be vertical, to really understand what I'll say,
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ, for want of a stronger personality, what he
Speaker 2: actually said and taught to be vertical, to be sober,
Speaker 2: and not in the sense of alcohol, in the sense
Speaker 2: of being upright, being vertical. You know, we spend half
Speaker 2: our lives horizontally asleep. Then most people their bodies get up,
Speaker 2: but they don't. They continue dreaming through the day and
Speaker 2: through the night. And that's the shame that human beings
Speaker 2: refuse to feel. So they invent.
Speaker 1: A little bit slower. When you say that you're dreaming,
Speaker 1: what are they actually dreaming about?
Speaker 2: Take a look. They're dreaming of their fantasies. They're dreaming
Speaker 2: of their future, they're dreaming of their past. You ever
Speaker 2: get into an argument with somebody and you know you're wrong,
Speaker 2: Then the next three days you have that same dialogue
Speaker 2: in your head, but you keep changing your response so
Speaker 2: that you'll be upright and right. That's how we lose
Speaker 2: touch with ourselves, this kind of self inaugurated correctness, to
Speaker 2: be brutally upright all the time without concern for anybody else.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's bad, you're saying that's bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, whatever bad is okay?
Speaker 1: And do you care about legacy at all?
Speaker 2: Sure I do.
Speaker 1: I already have one, but it's important to you to
Speaker 1: be remembered.
Speaker 2: Well, I've made name Gladiators. Spartacus has a name. He's
Speaker 2: immortal through his name. Kennedy has name and more. And
Speaker 2: that's one way to become immortal is to make a
Speaker 2: name for oneself. I'm not that immortal. Let me tell you.
Speaker 2: I die, and the physical body dies, and the rest
Speaker 2: of me dies after some time, I'm sure, and I'll
Speaker 2: just go on. But the name won't last somewhere, you know,
Speaker 2: fifty to one hundred years from now, television as a
Speaker 2: band won't exist maybe two hundred years. We're not Benjamin Franklin.
Speaker 2: We didn't invent anything.
Speaker 1: Although it's interesting what is remembered in the future is
Speaker 1: not always what was big in its era.
Speaker 2: That's absolutely correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Richard, I want to thank you so much
Speaker 1: for taking time to speak with my audience and let
Speaker 1: them in on some of your philosophy and feelings and beliefs.
Speaker 1: So thanks so much.
Speaker 2: All right, thank you very much for talking with me.
Speaker 2: I hope I wasn't too antagonistic at the beginning, and
Speaker 2: I hope that we've helped some of your audience members
Speaker 2: come to a better state inside themselves.
Speaker 1: Let's hope. Until next time, this is Bob Left SAIDs