Speaker 1: Pushkin. Buffy Saint Marie was never a household name in
Speaker 1: the US, but if you ask her peers, she probably
Speaker 1: should have been. She was a pioneering artist in the
Speaker 1: Greenwich Village folk scene, playing alongside people like Bob Dylan.
Speaker 1: She even helped give Joni Mitchell her start. But in
Speaker 1: the early days of Vietnam, when Buffy was singing protest
Speaker 1: songs about the casualties of war, she was blacklisted by
Speaker 1: the US government. Her music was barely played on radio,
Speaker 1: but she still found an audience. Her classic songs like
Speaker 1: Universal Soldier have been covered by Elvis Presley, Barbara streisand
Speaker 1: Courtney Love Morrissey, and she was the first Native woman
Speaker 1: to win an Academy Award, though she's probably best remembered
Speaker 1: by Americans for her controversial stint on Sesame Street, where
Speaker 1: she taught the cast about her indigenous heritage and Big
Speaker 1: Bird about breastfeeding. Today, at seventy nine year old, Buffy
Speaker 1: still active. She had a robust touring schedule until, of course,
Speaker 1: this year. Now she's just at home in Hawaii, where
Speaker 1: she met up with the Rick Rubin. They talk about
Speaker 1: her blacklisting and why she wrote a song about coding
Speaker 1: long before any Southern rapper ever did. This is broken
Speaker 1: record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond.
Speaker 1: Here's Rick Rubin and Buffy Saint Marie. I want to
Speaker 1: start by talking about what the world was like when
Speaker 1: you started making music. What was the original motivation, what
Speaker 1: maybe you start doing this? What was the culture like?
Speaker 1: I had no choice. I was living in an adoptive
Speaker 1: family in Maine and Massachusetts. You were born in Canada, Yes,
Speaker 1: maybe I think I was, but I was adopted, so
Speaker 1: you don't really know. So you don't you don't think
Speaker 1: of yourself as Canadian. I think of myself as indigenous
Speaker 1: North American, and indigenous people in North we predate those borders.
Speaker 1: Those borders haven't been around very long. And although most
Speaker 1: Americans would not know, probably a lot of Canadians would
Speaker 1: know about the Jay Treaty, for instance, which means that
Speaker 1: you know, we can just go back and forth, that
Speaker 1: we don't need no passport. But most of the guys
Speaker 1: at the porter don't know that. So as as as
Speaker 1: an indigenous person in the Americas, you not only have
Speaker 1: the world be the way that it is, which is
Speaker 1: tough for everybody, but also you get another little set
Speaker 1: of challenges in that most of the other people don't
Speaker 1: know about you yourself. You're such a small minority. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are so few people of Native American background in
Speaker 1: show business. I mean there's you know, like Burt Reynolds is, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I'm one eighth Cherokee, and my you know, some other
Speaker 1: celebrities like oah, my grandmother was a Cherokee princess, blah blah.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to real Native American people who
Speaker 1: have no choice and just there's no alternative to being
Speaker 1: an Indian. However you call us, and by the way,
Speaker 1: we all say Indian, Native American, indigenous week most of
Speaker 1: us use it interchangeably. How old we when you were adopted?
Speaker 1: That baby? They don't tell you. Adoptive children have a
Speaker 1: lot of problems that most people have never thought about.
Speaker 1: You don't get a horoscope, you don't know when you
Speaker 1: were born, you don't know where you were born. You
Speaker 1: have a birthday assigned by the court, so you never
Speaker 1: really know who you are. You know, in the cases
Speaker 1: of most marginalized kids come from a marginalized community, you
Speaker 1: don't really know. So I was about three and my
Speaker 1: family got a piano and a great piano, So that
Speaker 1: became like my toy. That's what I did instead of
Speaker 1: sports and Barbie dolls and things. And what was the
Speaker 1: music going on at that time, Like what were you hearing? Well,
Speaker 1: anything that my parents would have on the radio or
Speaker 1: records that they were had around. So somewhere along the line,
Speaker 1: I discovered Tchaikovsky and I loved that. I used to
Speaker 1: listen to Swan Lake and Nutcracker Swede and this thing
Speaker 1: called in a Persian Market and whenever would come on
Speaker 1: the radio, and I just taught myself how to play
Speaker 1: and just because it was so much fun. And I
Speaker 1: never could learn how to read music. So it's taken
Speaker 1: me all these years. And just a few years ago
Speaker 1: I found out I'm actually dyslexic in music, which I
Speaker 1: had never heard of. Yea, yeah, so there are a
Speaker 1: lot of There are a lot of people who come
Speaker 1: to music not through the path of music teachers. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What's the first time you ever played in front of people?
Speaker 1: In the summertime, I used to go over to a
Speaker 1: state park and I used to sit around a campfire
Speaker 1: with everybody else and play songs that I'd written, and
Speaker 1: you know, Everly Brothers hits and you know, Fast Domino.
Speaker 1: This was in the fifties, so you asked about, you know,
Speaker 1: what kind of music influenced me. That's what it was.
Speaker 1: I heard CLA six as a child or whatever happened
Speaker 1: to be on the radio, which was, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of Frank Sinandre era. And then when I really fell
Speaker 1: in love with music was when I was about I
Speaker 1: must have been eleven or twelve or thirteen, and I
Speaker 1: used to go down in the basement and I was
Speaker 1: supposed to be ironing my school clothes, but I discovered
Speaker 1: I discovered rockabilly music on the radio. So Kyle Perkins,
Speaker 1: Scottie Moore, they were just my heroes. And I was
Speaker 1: also lucky enough. I was living in Maine and Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: and I used to get on a train and go
Speaker 1: to New York. I had a friend that I had
Speaker 1: met in Maine at a state park, and he would
Speaker 1: he invited me to his house, and you know, all
Speaker 1: our mother's in agreement. It was those days, and we
Speaker 1: used to go to Allen Freed rock and Roll Show.
Speaker 1: And then the Allen Freed rock and Roll Show started
Speaker 1: coming to Boston as well, so I went there, so
Speaker 1: I used to see people like Joanne Campbell. Nobody's ever
Speaker 1: heard of Joanne Campbell. Oh, shame on you. Oh man,
Speaker 1: she was hot. I mean she was. She and the
Speaker 1: Platters I think were the only women. You know, the
Speaker 1: Platters there was one woman. Oh and Laverne Baker. They
Speaker 1: were the only women. But it was Jerry Lee Lewis,
Speaker 1: Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers and Frankie Lyman. He just
Speaker 1: play a handful of songs. Yes you got it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they play maybe two or three songs and then next
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it was great. It was just such
Speaker 1: a thrill. I knew that that's where I wanted to
Speaker 1: be in the audience, on the stage, backstage. I didn't
Speaker 1: carry just wanted to be around the music. Would you
Speaker 1: say at that time, we're all kids into it? Or
Speaker 1: was it? No? So what again? Like more like what
Speaker 1: was the world? What was the world like? Then? Like? Um?
Speaker 1: Were would you? Would you say you were unusual for
Speaker 1: being in that group of people. I wasn't in a
Speaker 1: group of people, which was pretty standard for me because,
Speaker 1: like I said, I lived in two different places. I
Speaker 1: lived in maineand Massachusetts, so um, I didn't really have
Speaker 1: tight social groups. I had trouble at home. There were
Speaker 1: pedophiles in the neighborhood and in the house. So I
Speaker 1: was kind of a loner kid. And so the music
Speaker 1: that I was hearing, I was I was with that
Speaker 1: Dominomo than I was with the other kids. And in
Speaker 1: high school now I'm maybe fifteen sixteen, yeah, and I'm
Speaker 1: hearing these doo wop and rockabillyum you know, um Buddy Holly,
Speaker 1: Elvis Presley. But it wasn't But just so we understand,
Speaker 1: it wasn't all the kids listening to. It wasn't any
Speaker 1: like subculture music. It was subculture music, but it was
Speaker 1: it was it was described the grown ups would have
Speaker 1: thinked it would have thought, oh, it's just cheap, you know,
Speaker 1: that's um uh. They they either would have associated with
Speaker 1: black people in very ugly terms, or poor people or
Speaker 1: not us anyway, you know, it was. It was something
Speaker 1: that was a little um risque. It's just so interesting
Speaker 1: because looking you know, looking back, we think of both
Speaker 1: the music of the fifties and the sixties as so
Speaker 1: ubiquitous and so mainstream was not so it was the
Speaker 1: underground music of the day, and good girls didn't listen
Speaker 1: to that kind of music interesting. Yeah, bad boys did. Um,
Speaker 1: so I went through different social thing. I think I
Speaker 1: went through social demotion because of the music that I liked.
Speaker 1: I didn't care. Yeah, because that's what I wanted to do. Anywhoys,
Speaker 1: go home and listen to my records and you felt
Speaker 1: it in your heart? It was it was not a
Speaker 1: It made sense to you. It didn't have to make
Speaker 1: sense to everyone else. Do you think the other people
Speaker 1: didn't feel it? Think of my own situation, you know,
Speaker 1: the handful of kids hung out with I think they looked.
Speaker 1: I think they thought it was sinful. They wouldn't have
Speaker 1: used that word, and they weren't really churchy, but they
Speaker 1: were definitely you know, it was just like looked at
Speaker 1: beneath them. They would think it was beneath them, think
Speaker 1: that it would they be ashamed to listen to it.
Speaker 1: Do you think I think they hadn't discovered it. Tell
Speaker 1: me your first experience of folk music. Oh gosh, let's see,
Speaker 1: I guess I was in college. I went to the
Speaker 1: University of Massachusetts and I got a degree in teaching
Speaker 1: and a degree in oriental philosophy. By the way, you
Speaker 1: started out in philosophy, I heard ye see, I've always
Speaker 1: considered myself very fortunate in that I came along into
Speaker 1: show business kind of by accident. I didn't really, you know,
Speaker 1: I just surprising that I was there at all. But
Speaker 1: I was called a folk singer because that's what they
Speaker 1: were trying to sell. So I came to Greenwich Village
Speaker 1: straight from college. But here I was in New York
Speaker 1: City for the first time, and I was a songwriter.
Speaker 1: But you weren't supposed to be one yet, and the
Speaker 1: folk police could get after you, and if it was
Speaker 1: it acknowledged at that time that folk music was really
Speaker 1: an old form being brought back. So it was everyone
Speaker 1: knew that this is old music. I think. So we
Speaker 1: think of the sixties as when folk music started. Really yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so's it's interesting that it actually even then it was
Speaker 1: old music. Yeah, it was just a new wave of
Speaker 1: this old music. It was interesting in these old forms
Speaker 1: of music. And like I said, I felt as though
Speaker 1: I was very fortunate to come along when I did.
Speaker 1: In the first place. The window to show business was
Speaker 1: just the left opened by accident. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: we were coming out of the Eisenhower generation, and it
Speaker 1: was like Frank Sinatra and you know that kind of
Speaker 1: um loungy big bands was still around. But I was
Speaker 1: very lucky because I didn't know any think about folk music.
Speaker 1: I was. I was just giving over my degree in
Speaker 1: orial plosity, and I stepped on stage and I sang
Speaker 1: these songs. Now, I was lucky enough to be around
Speaker 1: real folk singers like Pete Seeger New and McCall jon Bias,
Speaker 1: who sang songs that were four or five hundred years old.
Speaker 1: They were real folk songs. And see that really thrills
Speaker 1: me as a person who doesn't read music. And I
Speaker 1: don't come from any kind of formal music background, including
Speaker 1: the Paul Simon kind of music background where you grow
Speaker 1: up in New York. Your uncle's in the business, your
Speaker 1: other uncle's a lawyer, and somebody else, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. I don't come from that and marginalized people.
Speaker 1: I think would I think it would be very surprising
Speaker 1: to most of you guys who are really solid in
Speaker 1: the record business and have not really experienced what it's
Speaker 1: like to be really marginalized and not know anybody, not
Speaker 1: have a rolodex, not not have an addressed book, not
Speaker 1: know how it's done. Who does it? I mean we
Speaker 1: don't even know where the door is. There's no way
Speaker 1: for Native American people to get into show business. There
Speaker 1: just isn't and it's very rare anyway. I think for
Speaker 1: anybody in show business to hold the door open for
Speaker 1: anyone else, it's just like, I'm here, how do you
Speaker 1: like me? Now? You know? But I didn't feel like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I carried Joni Mitchell's tape around in my
Speaker 1: purse for long time, long months and months, and I
Speaker 1: played it for all kinds of people in the music business.
Speaker 1: How did you first run into Jonie? Well, she was
Speaker 1: a fan of mine, and I don't know where it was.
Speaker 1: It could have been a Saskatchewan and Minneapolis or somewhere.
Speaker 1: We were both on the road and I heard about
Speaker 1: her and I heard her musing. I just thought she
Speaker 1: was just great. I thought, oh, she's great, she's beautiful,
Speaker 1: she's smart, she's got she wants to she wants to
Speaker 1: do this. Nobody wanted to hear it. So finally I
Speaker 1: played her stuff for Elliott Roberts and told him to
Speaker 1: go down to the where, I don't know, the Black
Speaker 1: Cat Cafe or one of those little clubs in the village,
Speaker 1: and they made a great career together, but it was very,
Speaker 1: very hard. People who really are connoisseurs of folk music
Speaker 1: would realize the folk music comes from everywhere. It's just
Speaker 1: music made by folks. It's not just music made by
Speaker 1: the chosen few who are making the music business some money.
Speaker 1: We're going to invest in this, We're going to keep
Speaker 1: the public thinking that it's very folky, but really we're
Speaker 1: pumping dollars out of it. I mean, so many people
Speaker 1: made money on what he got three and well even
Speaker 1: Bob Marley later, right, I mean, you and I are
Speaker 1: in the music business. We know where it's at. There's
Speaker 1: always been people who are in the business to make money,
Speaker 1: and they've always been people in the business to make
Speaker 1: great art. It just there's both paths, Yes, there are.
Speaker 1: And I think most most non musicians, just most listeners
Speaker 1: wouldn't realize that. And I think that most new artists
Speaker 1: don't know that. And I think the record business has
Speaker 1: been terribly complicit in keeping try to keep them ignorant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's a business of sharks, yes it is. I
Speaker 1: mean I was so green. I had never met a lawyer,
Speaker 1: I had never had a conversation with the businessman ever,
Speaker 1: I remember when I first went to New York, I
Speaker 1: was running around in my little heels and mini dresses
Speaker 1: and things. And I remember I went into the Musician
Speaker 1: Union for the first time, which is kind of like
Speaker 1: walking into the lobby of the Sopranos. I mean, I
Speaker 1: grew I grew up around Italian American you know, semi
Speaker 1: mafia people you know in Maine, Massachusetts, idea that and
Speaker 1: I look upon it very kindly, like people in the
Speaker 1: Sopranos would, because I was seeing the family side of that,
Speaker 1: but the business side of that, wherever it's coming from,
Speaker 1: whether it's people whose roots are in this part of
Speaker 1: Europe or some other part of Europe. Show business was
Speaker 1: developed in Europe through vaudeville by h by people who
Speaker 1: were not only concerned with the show, they were also
Speaker 1: concerned with sustaining the business. I mean, that's not necessarily
Speaker 1: greed and I'm going to rip off artists, but of
Speaker 1: course the part that we object to is exactly about that,
Speaker 1: and they've been artists ripped off forever and ever. So
Speaker 1: I had never met a lawyer or a businessman. I
Speaker 1: remember when I first went into Vanguard Records and they
Speaker 1: asked me who my lawyer was, and I said I
Speaker 1: didn't want I didn't have one, and they said that's okay,
Speaker 1: you can use ours. So I signed a seven year deal.
Speaker 1: How did you know to go to Vanguard? How did
Speaker 1: you How did you know? I was just stupid? Blue
Speaker 1: Note also wanted to sign me. So Vanguard was very big.
Speaker 1: Yes she was. Yeah, Joan Byers was already on Vanguard
Speaker 1: and having a fantastic career. Yeah, yeah, so she was.
Speaker 1: She was already signed her first album. I guess was
Speaker 1: just about time that I showed up and they wanted
Speaker 1: to sign me, and I said, yeah, I get Depending
Speaker 1: on how you look at it, I kind of either
Speaker 1: fell into or lucked into having a career. My first album,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I was Billboard's Best New Artist.
Speaker 1: What just singing these songs that I'd been writing all
Speaker 1: this time, and they were about everything, and I didn't
Speaker 1: think it was going to do anything because people were
Speaker 1: pretty suspect of songwriters anyway. And my first album is
Speaker 1: called It's My Way. I think they just put it
Speaker 1: into outer space or something, or into the Library of Congress.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It just got some big honor. I
Speaker 1: thought it was awful. But everybody else I thought it
Speaker 1: was awful, oh that it was included, or you thought
Speaker 1: it was awful that the albums oh no, I thought
Speaker 1: the album itself was awful. Oh no, the songs are wonderful,
Speaker 1: but I just think they took the wrong takes. And
Speaker 1: of course an artist had no say in those days,
Speaker 1: like when did you getting into the music business? Just
Speaker 1: to put me in the date song? Um, ninety mid eighties, okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: it was the early days of hip hop music. That's right,
Speaker 1: so nice, so nice. Yeah, so it was. It was.
Speaker 1: It was a scene where at first it was very
Speaker 1: naive and it was like, yes, students are in the streets,
Speaker 1: we have discovered our brains. We're not going to your
Speaker 1: freaking warm And there was a lot of protests bubbling under.
Speaker 1: I had written Universal Soldier, although everybody, you know, everybody
Speaker 1: thought Donovan wrote it. And I still have people come
Speaker 1: up to me today and argue that Donovan wrote Universal
Speaker 1: Soldier in Codine. And see, Donovan was a person of
Speaker 1: conscience who wrote all of his own songs except for
Speaker 1: two songs, and those two songs were Universal Soldier in Codine,
Speaker 1: So he got credit for writing those as well, and
Speaker 1: I don't think he ever took credit for it, but
Speaker 1: his management never pointed out that it hadn't written them. Who,
Speaker 1: how and why did you write codine? Codine? You know,
Speaker 1: for years, until very recently, people wouldn't understand this, but
Speaker 1: now people would. I was addicted to codeine by a
Speaker 1: doctor in Florida. I had been playing at Freddy Neil's
Speaker 1: place in Coconut Grove, you know that little club that
Speaker 1: he used to have. I don't know. I went to
Speaker 1: a doctor who said that I had bronchitis. I've been
Speaker 1: coughing and things. I think I was probably just exhausted
Speaker 1: from being on the road all the time and practically
Speaker 1: lived in a bus. And he addicted me to codine.
Speaker 1: And he apparently had addicted many young ladies to codine
Speaker 1: and turned them out. And so people who are addicted
Speaker 1: through their doctors to an opiate, and codeine seats an opiate,
Speaker 1: I mean codeine. It sounds oh silly, triket tweet kids stuff.
Speaker 1: Codeine is as much of an opiate as heroin is.
Speaker 1: It's an opiate. And just like all the doctor drugs,
Speaker 1: the synthetic drugs now like percocet, and you know all
Speaker 1: of the oxy what's you know oxyconton all of them there, Yes,
Speaker 1: they're all synthetic opiates. If you it's my belief, now
Speaker 1: you might disagreement. It's my belief that if a person
Speaker 1: gets into drugs through social reasons, they're very likely to
Speaker 1: get addicted in a kind of a different, almost more
Speaker 1: difficult way. You know, they're in and it's fun and
Speaker 1: it's wonderful, and you know they haven't fun with their friends.
Speaker 1: But if if a doctor addicts you and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you have to leave town. That's what happened
Speaker 1: to me. I had to leave Florida and we were
Speaker 1: driving through Georgia and I was just feeling horrible, no
Speaker 1: idea what was wrong with me, and went to a
Speaker 1: pharmacist to refill a Florida prescription. I didn't know you
Speaker 1: couldn't do that, and the guys that I can't feel
Speaker 1: that it's from a different state, But how long have
Speaker 1: you've been taking it? And heap the pharmacists pointed out
Speaker 1: to me that I was addicted to an opiate. I
Speaker 1: had no idea. I had just been going to the
Speaker 1: doctor for my shots and for my pills. So I
Speaker 1: went through withdraw cold turkey. But it wasn't like I
Speaker 1: ever had any fun on it. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: a kind of a really interesting that I would have
Speaker 1: I would have guessed had I not known the story
Speaker 1: that there was a long blues tradition of songs about drugs, cocaine, blues, cocaine,
Speaker 1: like those kind of things. Yeah, I would think, Oh,
Speaker 1: you're doing one of those kind of songs. I would
Speaker 1: have never guessed it was a personal issue. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing, Yeah, because you know, I didn't really have
Speaker 1: that personal I will see at the time maybe twenty two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and see, I don't drink. I still don't drink. I
Speaker 1: just zero alcohol all my life, just because I never
Speaker 1: never did. Um. And I I was a girl by myself,
Speaker 1: and I looked a certain way, right, I mean I
Speaker 1: looked a certain way. I didn't run around with some
Speaker 1: granny dress. I was either smart enough or stupid enough
Speaker 1: to get my first show business dress from the Frederick's
Speaker 1: catalog and the Fredericks catalog. You even know what that
Speaker 1: is now, But it used to be this thing. You'd
Speaker 1: see it advertised in the back of movie magazines when
Speaker 1: I was twelve, right, and it was sexy clothes for women,
Speaker 1: and it was drawn. They weren't photos, they were drawn,
Speaker 1: so they were really they were really pretty. And so
Speaker 1: I ordered this dress and I over dubbed Donald. I
Speaker 1: made it ever A ragged him, and I mean like
Speaker 1: a v him. And I showed up in my high
Speaker 1: heels and think you know, there were people people around,
Speaker 1: like Judy Collins and others in not very flamboyant clothes.
Speaker 1: So I was also making that mistake. So here I
Speaker 1: showed up. I wasn't singing folk songs. I didn't know
Speaker 1: how to read music. I didn't had never met a lawyer.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was really mean, and I was wearing
Speaker 1: the wrong thing. And you know, looking back on it,
Speaker 1: all I can say is, you know, be yourself and
Speaker 1: be who you are, because I had an awful lot
Speaker 1: of fun even though I was doing everything wrong. I
Speaker 1: didn't soar to the top. I didn't become, you know,
Speaker 1: the equivalent of Madonna and Michael Jackson. But there were
Speaker 1: reasons why, and it had nothing to do with lack
Speaker 1: of talent. But those of us, like you and me,
Speaker 1: who are in show business, we know all the things
Speaker 1: that it takes to make an artist and it's not
Speaker 1: all good, and it's very tricky for anyone to negotiate
Speaker 1: as long as it lasts in that kind of center.
Speaker 1: I had no idea that there was anybody standing in
Speaker 1: opposition to me or trying to trip me up. I
Speaker 1: just thought I was lucky to be there and to
Speaker 1: get to make one record, you know, and you were.
Speaker 1: I mean, the other side of it is, we did
Speaker 1: get to do it. I did get to do it,
Speaker 1: and I got to do it for my reasons, not
Speaker 1: so much for show business reasons. And it took I
Speaker 1: didn't find out for twenty years about I didn't know
Speaker 1: that there was any such thing as blacklisting, none of
Speaker 1: us did. I had no idea i'd been taken out.
Speaker 1: I had to find out by accident. We'll be back
Speaker 1: with Rick and Buffy Saint Marie. After a quick break.
Speaker 1: We're back with Buffy Saint Marie, who's explaining why her
Speaker 1: music was blacklisted by the US government in the sixties.
Speaker 1: Do you think the song Universal Soldier is the reason.
Speaker 1: That's what most people say, That's what Wikipedia will say.
Speaker 1: They'll say Buffy Saint Marie was blacklisted by two American
Speaker 1: presidents because they objected to her outspoken stance expressed in
Speaker 1: Universal Soldier. But I don't think it was that. It
Speaker 1: wasn't that. That's what's so fascinating about that song is
Speaker 1: there are lots of anti war songs. There are none
Speaker 1: from that perspective. That's a wild perspective. Have you heard
Speaker 1: the war Racket? You got to hear the war racket? Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean you probably most Americans, even people in the
Speaker 1: business like yourself, lost track of me probably in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy or something. And if they already had children, they
Speaker 1: may have seen me on Sesame Street for five and
Speaker 1: a half years. They may have. But most people think
Speaker 1: that I kind of came and went. And that's what
Speaker 1: I thought. I thought, singers common singers go. But I
Speaker 1: still had a big career in other places, and so
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, you know the US, something else came along.
Speaker 1: I actually, you think that the popularity in Canada versus
Speaker 1: the US had to do with blacklist things? So absolutely,
Speaker 1: so interesting. Absolutely, I was in Canada. I was in
Speaker 1: Toronto one day. Now, this isn't in the eighties. I
Speaker 1: was in Toronto. I showed up for an interview in
Speaker 1: a radio station and the guy said, I'm going to
Speaker 1: start this interview with Opati Marie by apologizing to you
Speaker 1: for having gone along with what I was praised to
Speaker 1: have gone along with on White House stationary. The guy
Speaker 1: had a letter from the Johnson White House commending him
Speaker 1: for having suppressed my music, which deserved to be suppressed.
Speaker 1: And the only person I knew I could talk it
Speaker 1: over with besides my lawyer, which I mentioned it to
Speaker 1: him one day and he suggested, did I get my
Speaker 1: FBI files? And I said, oh, come on, you know
Speaker 1: I've never broken the law. I've never I'm not even
Speaker 1: the one who parades down the street with a sign.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not that kind of protester. I'm a writer, right,
Speaker 1: And the only other person I could tell besides my
Speaker 1: lawyer was my friend taj Mahal and Tyres and I
Speaker 1: were classmates together at the University of Massachusetts, and then
Speaker 1: we both moved to Hawaii, and I had already been
Speaker 1: here for a long time, and our sons wound up
Speaker 1: best friends, and our sons wound up being college roommates
Speaker 1: at Berkeley College and music incredible, I don't know, so anyway,
Speaker 1: we were real good friends, and Tyres pointed out to
Speaker 1: me that Eartha kit Too had been blacklisted, and he
Speaker 1: knew some other people who he thought had. So my
Speaker 1: lawyer said, well, let's get your FBI files. I said, oh,
Speaker 1: there aren't any. Well they were like like thirty one pages.
Speaker 1: I think, wow, it's all redacted. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: they were following me around and making sure that I
Speaker 1: wasn't something that I ravel rousing. Yeah. No, but I
Speaker 1: wasn't much of a rabbel rousing. I was a writer,
Speaker 1: That's who. I'm a writer and a philosopher. I'm not
Speaker 1: a card carrying fist pumper. I'm just not remember the
Speaker 1: original inspiration for Universal Soldier again, just because the perspective
Speaker 1: is tell me the story. I absolutely remember it. Let
Speaker 1: me let me just set it for it. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: in Greenwich fille Is. There's students all over the streets, right.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's about music, and it's about the fact
Speaker 1: that we kind of don't trust mister Man anymore. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like we're coming out of the eyes and our generation.
Speaker 1: It's Kennedy time. Anyway. I was in an airport. I
Speaker 1: was in San Francisco Airport, coming from Mexico on the
Speaker 1: way to Toronto. I had a concent at the Purple
Speaker 1: Onion and in the middle of the night, some medics
Speaker 1: came in. They were wheeling wounded soldiers in kearneys and
Speaker 1: wheelchairs and things, and I got to talk into one
Speaker 1: of the medics, and you know, I asked, I asked him.
Speaker 1: You know, he assured me that there was a war
Speaker 1: going on in Vietnam and it was horrible. And I
Speaker 1: just got to thinking, well, who is it Who's responsible
Speaker 1: for war? Is it these guys? Is it these poor
Speaker 1: guys lying here? You know, some some private you know,
Speaker 1: he signed up to make the world a better place,
Speaker 1: or a family tradition, or see the world, and now
Speaker 1: he's lying here. Half dad, right, Well, there's a certain
Speaker 1: hot responsibility right then, But you know, the night's going on,
Speaker 1: the flight's going to leave in the morning. I had
Speaker 1: nothing to do. I got a long flight ahead of me,
Speaker 1: and I'm just thinking about this. So the song really
Speaker 1: is about individual responsibility for the world we're living in,
Speaker 1: you know, That's that's the way I put it. And
Speaker 1: it's about alternative conflict resolution. They're all part of the
Speaker 1: same thing. Okay, So nobody knew I wrote it. Everybody
Speaker 1: thought Donovan wrote it, so that wasn't the problem. However,
Speaker 1: a little bit later I had written this other song.
Speaker 1: Was it a big hit for Donovan? It was a
Speaker 1: hit for Donovan. I couldn't tell you how many of
Speaker 1: the soldo were. I think so yeah, I think it
Speaker 1: was yeah. But see I didn't I had. I told
Speaker 1: you I had never met a businessman, and I had
Speaker 1: been in town, and I had been in Greenwich Village,
Speaker 1: I don't know, not very long. And I was singing
Speaker 1: Universal Soldier. I had been singing it in Europe as well.
Speaker 1: That's where Donovan heard it. But I was saying I
Speaker 1: was singing it at the gas like cafe. Did you
Speaker 1: ever see that place? Oh, downstairs plays a real famous
Speaker 1: place for movies to sing past, the hat club, And
Speaker 1: the high women came in and they heard it. And
Speaker 1: the high women were like a preppy group like the
Speaker 1: Kingston Trio, right kind of imagine, you know, for preppy
Speaker 1: guys singing a lot of folk songs. And they heard
Speaker 1: Universal Soldier and they were coming off this huge hit.
Speaker 1: Michael rolled a voter show a Hallelujah right, Oh, it
Speaker 1: was like number one. They were coming off this hit
Speaker 1: and they wanted to record Universal Soldier, and they said
Speaker 1: who's the publisher? And I said, what's that And the
Speaker 1: guy at a guy at another table who was a
Speaker 1: friend of my manager at the time, said oh, I
Speaker 1: can help you with that right, and he made up
Speaker 1: a contract at the table. I signed it. He gave
Speaker 1: me a dollar and he owned the rights to Universal Soldier,
Speaker 1: and Donovan got a hit and he got credit for
Speaker 1: having written it. So you'll find out as you get
Speaker 1: to know me better. I like to turn things positive.
Speaker 1: The positive about this story is that ten years later
Speaker 1: I was able to buy back the rights at least
Speaker 1: part of the rights to Universal Soldier for twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, which is a lot of money at that time.
Speaker 1: So I was doing that well to rescue my own song.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, see, I had written this
Speaker 1: song called until It's Time for You to Go. You're
Speaker 1: not a dream, You're not an angel, You're a man
Speaker 1: writing like you played at a million weddings. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: everybody was recordies. I'd been in the sixties. You wrote
Speaker 1: it in the sixties. Did you ever record it in
Speaker 1: the sixties, sixty three or sixty four? Show? No? Really, Oh,
Speaker 1: maybe sixty four sixty five. Yeah, he said, one of
Speaker 1: your earl. We really Yeah, I didn't know that I
Speaker 1: got my second album. I think incredible. Yeah, but okay,
Speaker 1: so I've written this song. Oh god, Bobby Darren recorded it. Now,
Speaker 1: he recorded it in the first the first person to
Speaker 1: cover it by Bobby Darren was the first person to
Speaker 1: cover it. Yeah, can I use this guitar? Here? Do
Speaker 1: we have time for please? Oh? Please? Okay. So the
Speaker 1: way the way I had written it, da da da,
Speaker 1: You're a man, I'm not a queen. I'm a woman.
Speaker 1: Take my I'm not a queen. I'm a woman. Take
Speaker 1: my hand. We'll make a space in the lines that
Speaker 1: we plan and he will stay until this time. Oh,
Speaker 1: you to go see how it goes, and he will
Speaker 1: stay until this time for you to go. Well, it
Speaker 1: holds what's called a suspension, and most people don't know
Speaker 1: what that is, but it's it's a da here there's
Speaker 1: note in here again. Well, Bobby Darren and his musical director,
Speaker 1: they didn't catch that, and they recorded it really vanilla
Speaker 1: and here's time burned. It dawned on ba ba bam.
Speaker 1: So it's not like every other song right fathered me. Oh,
Speaker 1: it just pissed me off for years. And then many
Speaker 1: other people who recorded it, like Sonny and Share recorded it, ROBERTA.
Speaker 1: Flack recorded it, d Atkins recorded it was How was
Speaker 1: the Roberta version? Oh it's beautiful piano. Yeah, she does
Speaker 1: it on piano, and she gets the chords right. I mean,
Speaker 1: the real musicians got the chords right. But whoever followed
Speaker 1: Bobby Darren's Vegas version did not. And Elvis Pressley recorded that,
Speaker 1: Barbara Streissen recorded at Boston Pops Orchestra. Everybody recorded it, right.
Speaker 1: What's your favorite version? Oh? Gosh, I loved what Chad
Speaker 1: Atkins did. Glencamble did a beautiful version, and it's been
Speaker 1: done in other languages too. But anyway, when I was
Speaker 1: trying to say is that this song kind of brought
Speaker 1: me to television, and they wouldn't let me on television
Speaker 1: with Universal's older, right, so I think. But once I
Speaker 1: got on television, I opened my mouth and I was
Speaker 1: talking about you know, Native American rights, alternative conflict resolution.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's not who they hired. They wanted a
Speaker 1: chick in a short skirt to come on and sing
Speaker 1: the song and talk about how much fun it was
Speaker 1: to you know, celebrity chat, and I didn't do that.
Speaker 1: Harry Bellafardi invited me onto the Tonight Show and I
Speaker 1: sang now that the Buffalo's Gone, which is about the
Speaker 1: breaking of the oldest treaty and congressional archives, which had
Speaker 1: been done in the on the administration of George Washington, right,
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin, those people, right, they unilaterally broke the oldest
Speaker 1: treaty in congres rational archives, and now that the Buffalo's
Speaker 1: Gone tells that story. And it was on my first
Speaker 1: album along with Universal Soldiers. So I did that song
Speaker 1: with Harry Bellafonte when he filled in for Johnny Carson
Speaker 1: on The Tonight Show. And the next time that I
Speaker 1: was invited to come on the Tonight Show to actually
Speaker 1: be with Johnny, I was told in no, on certain
Speaker 1: terms that you know, it was to sing celebrity right,
Speaker 1: just no, no, And it's not going to be Universal Soldier,
Speaker 1: and it's not going to be any kind of song
Speaker 1: of you know, asking for change or pointing things out.
Speaker 1: Wasn't going to be a protest song. So I turned
Speaker 1: it down. The screener, I was talking to the screener,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the producers calls you up and
Speaker 1: talks it over with you. Yeah, we'd love to have
Speaker 1: you back on, but you know times have changed, so
Speaker 1: you don't want to hear it. We don't want to
Speaker 1: hear any of that protest stuff, just singing until it's
Speaker 1: time to go. So I turned it down. So when
Speaker 1: it comes to you round about way to your question
Speaker 1: about was I blacklisted because Universal Soldier? No, I was
Speaker 1: blacklisted because I'm an outspoken person. I was a woman
Speaker 1: on television pointing out the fact that they were stealing
Speaker 1: Indian land, the particular parts of Indian land that contained uranium.
Speaker 1: You don't want you don't say that right. So anyway,
Speaker 1: j Edgar Hoover, he was not a fan of mine,
Speaker 1: both apparently both the Johnson and Nixon governments. I didn't
Speaker 1: find out about the Nixon blacklisting until gie a few
Speaker 1: years ago on the Internet a guy from the CIA,
Speaker 1: not the FBI. The CIA also was talking about Cotel
Speaker 1: pro you know, and me and other a few other
Speaker 1: artists being followed, and really it was an attempt to
Speaker 1: shut us up. Now at a certain point, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I couldn't get any airplay. It didn't matter
Speaker 1: what we recorded. I was I was recording in nash
Speaker 1: We're leaving a whole lot out. I was spending time
Speaker 1: with chet Atkins. Chet Atkins fixed me up with Norbert
Speaker 1: Putnam's Eric Code six one five bands, just solid, wonderful band,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, and we were making really good records.
Speaker 1: I mean, I want to give you a list because
Speaker 1: I think probably I've done some I think you've probably
Speaker 1: lost track of me significantly enough so that you've probably
Speaker 1: missed eighty percent of what I've done. That's good, and
Speaker 1: you've probably heard just a few little things. But I'll
Speaker 1: feel ye an after this great and we'll put together
Speaker 1: a playlist based on what you give me, and we'll
Speaker 1: attach it to this, to this interview that everyone could hear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it would be interesting to people because you know,
Speaker 1: you know how it is. You've you've known an lot
Speaker 1: of artists with long careers. Yes, and things change and
Speaker 1: you come and go and you For me, it's always
Speaker 1: been like people think that you're so creative when you're
Speaker 1: out there on the road right, no time to be creative,
Speaker 1: and you barely have a chance to get a nap.
Speaker 1: You're exhausted all the time, and then you take you
Speaker 1: take some time off and they think that you've not
Speaker 1: creative anymore, which is when, at least in my case,
Speaker 1: that's when I'm most creative. Yeah, there were also some
Speaker 1: show business mistakes I think that I made, taking certain
Speaker 1: people off and just not just not being much of us.
Speaker 1: I'm not much of a social networker at all. I
Speaker 1: didn't go to the right party. But what I've had,
Speaker 1: I think has been a different kind of life than
Speaker 1: the lives of my peers in show business. I never
Speaker 1: did drink so and I was afraid of man because,
Speaker 1: like I said, in my childhood, it was Peter. It
Speaker 1: was just it was. There are a lot of pet
Speaker 1: files around, so I was kind of I was afraid
Speaker 1: of men. And I didn't go to bars. And that's
Speaker 1: where all the deals I made after the show. You
Speaker 1: go out with the business people and you make nice
Speaker 1: and everybody has a few drinks and you sit around
Speaker 1: and there's wine and there's livity blind who knows what alice?
Speaker 1: While I wasn't there, I don't even know what there
Speaker 1: was what else because I wasn't there, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: there for good reasons. I was by myself. I wasn't
Speaker 1: a guy, and I wasn't a girl with an entourage
Speaker 1: around her. I didn't have strong management. I was just
Speaker 1: a little piece of something, and I knew how you
Speaker 1: get treated when you show up in the wrong place
Speaker 1: at the wrong hour. So I think I did really
Speaker 1: well in negotiating show business on my own terms to
Speaker 1: the end where I feel very satisfied as a writer
Speaker 1: and an artist and the places that I've been and
Speaker 1: the people that I've met and the things that I've done.
Speaker 1: I took sixteen years off in the middle of my
Speaker 1: career to raise my son, and the first five of
Speaker 1: those we were on Sesame Street. Then when it was
Speaker 1: time for him to go to school, I said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we Reagan had cut the budget to the
Speaker 1: arts for Sesame Street and we had already been on
Speaker 1: five and a half years, and when he did that,
Speaker 1: it would have meant that we would have had to
Speaker 1: move to New York or just not be a part
Speaker 1: of it anymore. So I asked my son, who was
Speaker 1: I guess from five at the time. I said, do
Speaker 1: you want to still live in Hawaii or do you
Speaker 1: want to live in New York? And he said Hawaii,
Speaker 1: And that's what I was hoping. He was a good choice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I took time off. We'll be back with Rick
Speaker 1: and Buffy Saint Marie after a quick break. We're back
Speaker 1: with Buffy Saint Marie. Tell me where a song comes
Speaker 1: from for you? I wish I knew. I just don't know.
Speaker 1: So usually start with an idea or might it start
Speaker 1: with music? It might I might be fooling around with
Speaker 1: my guitar or my piano or you know, any any
Speaker 1: kind of a dram anything. I don't know, what just
Speaker 1: pops into your head. I don't know. Just I think
Speaker 1: I write the same way that I did when I
Speaker 1: was three, which is might be bad news for some people,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of good news for me, and it's
Speaker 1: all I got. Yeah, I think it's only good news
Speaker 1: because it's you were playing. So if you're keeping the
Speaker 1: childlike play, that's it. That's only good thank you. That's
Speaker 1: exactly it for me. The music is playing. And I
Speaker 1: know that there's a lot of work, and like I said,
Speaker 1: this show and you got to show up, and there's business,
Speaker 1: but that that initial thing, the thing that keeps us happening,
Speaker 1: you know, wanting to be musicians every day, is the
Speaker 1: fact that it's fun. What's the story of Little Will
Speaker 1: Spin and Spin? Oh, thank you. It's just talking about
Speaker 1: our kind of like the human condition all the time,
Speaker 1: whether you're talking about the schoolyard or the church, or
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah business or politics. There's this idea
Speaker 1: of this think local, act locally, think globally. It's like
Speaker 1: a gearing the way that you're making things happen in
Speaker 1: your family life at home, in your personal life, inside
Speaker 1: your heart and mind, where you know things are going on.
Speaker 1: It really really does affect the neighborhood, your island, or
Speaker 1: your community, your nation, the world. It really does. So
Speaker 1: it says things like, Merry Christmas, jingle bells, christ is
Speaker 1: born in the Devil's in hell. Hots they shrink, but
Speaker 1: pockets swell. Everybody knows, nobody tell right, it's like Christmas time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it says, blame the Angels, Blame the Fates, Blame the
Speaker 1: Jews or your sister Kate, teach your children how to hate.
Speaker 1: And the big wheels turn around and around. Oh, the
Speaker 1: sins of Caesar's men, cry the pious citizens who petty thieve,
Speaker 1: the five and tens and the big whales turn around
Speaker 1: and around. Turn your back on weeds. You've hold silly,
Speaker 1: sinful seeds, You've sowed at your strata. The camel's load, honey,
Speaker 1: prey like hell, when your world explode. Little wheel spin
Speaker 1: and spend, big wheels turn around, Nan says, swing your
Speaker 1: girl fiddle, or say later on the piper, pay Josie
Speaker 1: do swing and sway dead, will dance on judgment Day.
Speaker 1: Little wheel spin and spin, the big wheels turn around
Speaker 1: and around. So I think some of my songs they've
Speaker 1: definitely written by a philosopher. I have two kinds of
Speaker 1: protest songs and then other songs of empowerment. You got
Speaker 1: to Run is one of them, carry it on as another.
Speaker 1: It's the opposite of a protest song. A protest song
Speaker 1: will lay out what the problem is. And this other
Speaker 1: kind of song for which we don't have a name
Speaker 1: for the genre, is like the solution beautiful. Yeah it works,
Speaker 1: but nobody's doing it right now. And you know, I
Speaker 1: do a lot of interviews, and a lot of interviewers
Speaker 1: are asking me, well, where are the great protest songs
Speaker 1: right now? And all I can said is a hip hop,
Speaker 1: you know rap. You know, it's kind of hard to find,
Speaker 1: But I think the sentiment to drive the creature video
Speaker 1: is still there among young people and the rest of us.
Speaker 1: But I don't know what is happening with you know, hello,
Speaker 1: Paul Simon and Sting and you know some of the
Speaker 1: other people who've made a freaking fortune a fortune. How
Speaker 1: can they see these things going down and not respond
Speaker 1: with their just the heart of their talent and brains.
Speaker 1: You know, they're I don't know where their songs are,
Speaker 1: do you know? I don't know. Are you hearing people
Speaker 1: write that kind of songs anymore? I hear I hear
Speaker 1: young artists doing protest songs. I've um they exist. They exist,
Speaker 1: they're not They're clearly not in the mainstream, and they're not.
Speaker 1: They don't seem to have the same impact that they
Speaker 1: once did. And I don't know why that is. In
Speaker 1: the sixties, they were making money off protest music, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I wasn't getting much money out of Universal Soldier,
Speaker 1: but Donovan's people were, And so was the guy who
Speaker 1: had given me one dollar, who stole the right how
Speaker 1: he didn't steal him, he didn't. I was just green.
Speaker 1: I was just dumb. No, I don't. I'm not mad
Speaker 1: at him for that. That was just me. How did
Speaker 1: you end up meeting um? Jack? Nichi? Jack Nichi? Jack,
Speaker 1: you were married yet? Okay, I know very little? Not then, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you. Okay, I told you I was a
Speaker 1: philosophy major, which you can dig because you were philosophy
Speaker 1: major too. Okay. So one of the people I came across,
Speaker 1: of course, with Friedrich Nizzi, and Friedrich Nizi unfortunately was
Speaker 1: totally u misportrayed by the Nazis who just misconstrued a lot. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he was a great philosopher and I really thought he
Speaker 1: was terrific. Um. So I'm already recording for Vanguard. I
Speaker 1: don't know how many albums I've made for them. But
Speaker 1: Jack Nietchi saw cash Box Magazine the picture of he
Speaker 1: said he fell in love with me, but my picture
Speaker 1: in cash Box magazine and got in touch with then
Speaker 1: he my records, right, got in touch with Maynard Solomon
Speaker 1: and just was begging to make a record with me.
Speaker 1: And I guess it was Oh, you know, I was
Speaker 1: already in Nashville working with chedd Atkins, which was a
Speaker 1: dream come true. Oh God, he was wonderful anyway, Jack,
Speaker 1: That's how Jack discovered me and Jack wanted to make
Speaker 1: an already working with Neil. He had already been working
Speaker 1: with Neil. He had already been working with Neil Young. Yes,
Speaker 1: and so Jack wanted desperately to make a record with me.
Speaker 1: And I didn't even know who he was except that
Speaker 1: he was He was the He was the grandson of
Speaker 1: Friedrich Netzi's brother. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: that Nietzi. Those are the Nietzi's we're talking about. So
Speaker 1: really his name, Yes, that's really here. We thought that
Speaker 1: was his stage name. No, oh, no, he come he no.
Speaker 1: You know, people will tell you terrible stories. Jack himself
Speaker 1: would tell you terrible stories about himself. Jack died a
Speaker 1: few years ago, by the way, So we we met.
Speaker 1: We made this album called He Used to Want to
Speaker 1: Be a Ballerine or I think it's the worst record
Speaker 1: either one of us ever made, but some people liked it.
Speaker 1: But it has a few really nice things on it.
Speaker 1: So anyway, every now and then Jack had called me
Speaker 1: up and he'd need something like he needed me. He
Speaker 1: was he was scoring performance Donald Campbell's movie. It was
Speaker 1: Mick Jagger's first acting role performance. It's really good too.
Speaker 1: It's a great movie and great score. I mean Jack
Speaker 1: in case you're in case our listeners don't understand Jack
Speaker 1: nets Is. He's very very well known for movie composer
Speaker 1: and totally original, you know, and he doesn't use ghosts
Speaker 1: to write his music. He was really really unique talent,
Speaker 1: very wonderful talent. God. He wrote beautiful things that most
Speaker 1: people will never hear. And I was scoring my own movies,
Speaker 1: but I was also working with Jack from time to
Speaker 1: time because Jack was all in love see, and I
Speaker 1: didn't see him for years and years and years, and
Speaker 1: then he came back into my life because he said
Speaker 1: that he was scoring a movie and it was a
Speaker 1: real good movie with Richard Kere and Deborah Winger, and
Speaker 1: he couldn't come up with a main theme. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I didn't understand that at all. Jack is, he's just
Speaker 1: a brilliant composer, but he can't improvise. And I've never
Speaker 1: understood that. See. I'm a writer too, but I can't read.
Speaker 1: So there's all kinds of ways to approach music, and
Speaker 1: they're all good. There's no right way, and it's a
Speaker 1: mystery every time. See. So Jack wouldn't go up with
Speaker 1: the melody and he came to visit me, brought the
Speaker 1: director along. I hadn't seen him in a long long time.
Speaker 1: And by that time I was done with Sesame Street.
Speaker 1: I was raising my son by myself here in Hawaii,
Speaker 1: and Jack showed up and I played him love lift
Speaker 1: us up where we belong? Right? And I played the
Speaker 1: whole melody and the bridge and everything, and that became
Speaker 1: the main theme for an Officer and a Gentleman, and
Speaker 1: it became the main theme for the song up will
Speaker 1: We Belong, which was my melody, a little thing that
Speaker 1: Jack wrote, and then words by Will Jennings, genius Will Jennings, Yes,
Speaker 1: oh god, what a writer. But Jack didn't tell the
Speaker 1: movie director that I had written it. He pretended he
Speaker 1: had written it. Yeah, so at some point he had
Speaker 1: to tell Taylor Hackford that he had not written it.
Speaker 1: And so this was not a big deal because movie
Speaker 1: companies would know how to handle that, but it was.
Speaker 1: It was very weird. I wrote a lot of things
Speaker 1: that went into Jack's scores, but he would always tell me, no,
Speaker 1: don't don't tell anybody because and I didn't care anyway.
Speaker 1: All was, as you know, a little bit here, a
Speaker 1: little bit there, and so eventually we got married. That's
Speaker 1: a big jump, though, from a terrible jump to leave me.
Speaker 1: It was a leap of stupidity. How did that happen? Happen? Oh? God,
Speaker 1: I had lost track of Jack, So there was an
Speaker 1: awful lot that I didn't know. Yes, I was raising
Speaker 1: my son in Hawaii and doing education and concerts in
Speaker 1: foreign countries. But the US didn't love me anymore, so
Speaker 1: I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know
Speaker 1: about Jack's police record. I didn't know about anything. And
Speaker 1: he came along and he was so nice to my
Speaker 1: little boy and carrying him around in his shoulders, and
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be wonderful and blahity blah and I've been
Speaker 1: out shopping for the ring and this is what he
Speaker 1: told me. Oh, anyway, I kind of just I just said, yes,
Speaker 1: I liked him. We had been friends. We were musical
Speaker 1: at this point. Well, yeah, I had known him for
Speaker 1: a long length of time, but there were many years
Speaker 1: where there was no calendar at all. It was him
Speaker 1: for years. Yes, yeah, and I had known in the sixties.
Speaker 1: When I knew him, he's kind of cuckoo, but he
Speaker 1: was on best behavior when he came back into my life,
Speaker 1: and we were married for just a short time when
Speaker 1: I realized I was in deep trouble. And you know,
Speaker 1: I say this in all Calvin d Did he have
Speaker 1: a drug problem? I don't know much at all. Oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know there's a filmmaker named Christians Saint Clair I
Speaker 1: believe his name is, who's making a movie about Jack.
Speaker 1: And he asked me to speak out because I don't
Speaker 1: talk about Jack, and I said, only if Jack's son,
Speaker 1: Jack Junr, is part of this, which he was. So
Speaker 1: I saw a little bit of about I saw a
Speaker 1: little bit of what Keith Richards did because he and
Speaker 1: Keith were very good friends, and what Jack and Willie
Speaker 1: Deville had done together lots and lots of clips. And
Speaker 1: I did my peace too. But I don't think it's
Speaker 1: come out yet. And I really don't feel comfortable in
Speaker 1: describing Jack in any way except to tell you that
Speaker 1: he was super brilliant, I mean genius brilliant, you know,
Speaker 1: seems a very unique intelligence. He was brutal. He would
Speaker 1: tell you that everybody in Hollywood thinks he's an asshole,
Speaker 1: and that they he was right. He would do terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible things because of his he had. He had a
Speaker 1: mental problem exacerbated like you know, an awful lot of
Speaker 1: people exacerbated by alcohol. So he was an alcoholic and
Speaker 1: drugs exacerbated, but his real problem was a mental problem.
Speaker 1: Friedrich Nietzi died in a mental institution. So did his father,
Speaker 1: the father of Friedrich Nietzchi, and you know, so it's
Speaker 1: something that runs in the family. And all I can
Speaker 1: tell you is in defense of Jack, who was no
Speaker 1: day at the beach. Yes, and the first to admit
Speaker 1: it was that, you know, he would get a score
Speaker 1: of brain chemicals that was just Tara, and he'd lay
Speaker 1: it on whoever was there, and most of the time
Speaker 1: that was me. So I hung in there for about
Speaker 1: eight years and finally finally I had to. I won't
Speaker 1: I'll spare you the details, but they were pretty dramatic.
Speaker 1: You know. Andrea Warner's book, she wrote an autobiography, She
Speaker 1: wrote a biography of me. She just called it Buffy
Speaker 1: Saint Mary the Autobiography, and she goes into some of
Speaker 1: the details. But musicians sometimes, I guess, I guess the
Speaker 1: reason why I'm willing to talk about it a little
Speaker 1: bit is to share with you Jack's probably going to
Speaker 1: go down in history unless you talked to Keith Richards
Speaker 1: as being a real jerk, And why would I brought
Speaker 1: up with that for so long? Neil Young also loved Jack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Leslie Morris too, just loves Jack. A few people, just
Speaker 1: a few. Jack has a few people, and I'm one
Speaker 1: of them. Who um who even though he was crazy
Speaker 1: and we know he was crazy and we know he
Speaker 1: was an asshole, and would agree with all of that,
Speaker 1: but the most honest person I ever met. So many times,
Speaker 1: the brilliance comes with other things. It's like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's I do. I think sometimes it does, but I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily think it has to. And I don't know.
Speaker 1: It doesn't excuse either. It doesn't have to and it's
Speaker 1: not an excuse. But it's true that they come together
Speaker 1: sometimes it's not. It's like the same that break from
Speaker 1: reality allows innovation. I think you're right. I think you're right,
Speaker 1: and even less severe breaks with reality, like me wanting
Speaker 1: to live in Hawaii. You know, I live in the
Speaker 1: mountains over here, not because I'm Barbie wants to go
Speaker 1: to the beach. No, it's not that I live here
Speaker 1: because it is an it's an aberration for a person
Speaker 1: in show business to hide away in a place nobody
Speaker 1: can find you. It's an aberration, but it's my aberrations.
Speaker 1: Sounds really healthy to me. It is healthy, and it
Speaker 1: has been, and it has been for me. So it's
Speaker 1: always a it's always a balance because you know, people
Speaker 1: in the US don't understand that I have a big career.
Speaker 1: They don't know because they think, oh, that was the
Speaker 1: little Indian girl that would make you cry, you know,
Speaker 1: or and I you know, to address that further. You know,
Speaker 1: people people would just think the little Indian girl is
Speaker 1: mistaken because I wrote a song called My Country chis
Speaker 1: of Thy People You're Dying, which is Indian one on
Speaker 1: one in six minutes, and it's heavy. But I tried
Speaker 1: when I put this album together, of it's a retrospective
Speaker 1: of all the strong songs, whether they're strongly positive or protest.
Speaker 1: There's not one of them that's pap you know, it's
Speaker 1: all pretty strong stuff. And when you look back on it,
Speaker 1: you know, how are you going to do that? My
Speaker 1: Country tis of Thy People You're Dying, Universal soldier now
Speaker 1: the buffalo is gone. I did them exactly the way
Speaker 1: that I did then, only I'm a better guitar player
Speaker 1: and a better singer, and we have better recording now.
Speaker 1: My latest album is Power is Medicine Songs, but the
Speaker 1: one before that, Power in the Blood, is what I
Speaker 1: would advise first time listeners to hear. I think they
Speaker 1: I think they'd like that album. It's very diverse, has
Speaker 1: a lot of different kinds of music in it. Great.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, my pleasure. Thanks to Buffy Saint
Speaker 1: Marie for sharing her story and inspiration with Rick. Be
Speaker 1: sure to check out the playlist Buffy created for us
Speaker 1: at Broken Record podcast dot com, and also subscribe to
Speaker 1: our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast,
Speaker 1: where we'll be putting up our old interviews and also
Speaker 1: new ones, sometimes with some extra content. Broken Record is
Speaker 1: produced with help from Jason Gambrell, me Belle, Leah Rose,
Speaker 1: and Martin Gonzalez for pushing industries. Our theme music's by
Speaker 1: Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond. Thanks for listening.