Following his Springtime for Kinky and Go West Young Kinky tours last year plus an appearance at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, songwriter, musician, author, politician, animal lover, cigar entrepreneur and self-proclaimed Governor of the Heart of Texas Kinky Friedman left his Echo Hill Ranch for a Midwest and East Coast dates as part of his Springtime for Friedman Tour of 2011.
The controversial, witty and proudly politically incorrect artist made a lasting impression on the music scene, following a stint as a member of the Peace Corps in Borneo, when he fronted the Texas Jewboys. The name was not only a play on words of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys but a nod to Friedman’s ancestry and years growing up on in Texas. It also prepared listeners for songs of slashing social commentary such as “They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore,” “Sold American,” “People Who Read People Magazine,” and in a response to Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee,” “Asshole from El Paso,”
Since the mid-‘80s he began writing novels and slowly made the transition away from recording new material. The current tour encompasses all aspects of his career. “This is gonna be great. I look forward to it. We’ll have a lot of music, some politics, and readings from the book “Heroes of a Texas Childhood.” He will sign copies of that book, one of 29 he’s published. He’s also been a contributor to “Playboy,” “New York Times” and “Texas Monthly.
“I will sign anything but bad legislation,” is the favorite line from the onetime candidate for governor of Texas.
Besides an upcoming Australian tour with Van Dyke Parks set for June, the Kinkster finds his good friend, Willie Nelson, preparing an album based on his songs, and has become immortalized on stage with the play “Becoming Friedman … The World According to Kinky Friedman,” written and directed by Ted Swindley (“Always … Patsy Cline”) and starring musician Jesse Dayton.
Like his multi-faceted life, the conversation shifts from his songs to his disgust with the current state of politics to good friends such as Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan and Mojo Nixon.
For someone who co-founded the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch near Kerrville, Texas, which primarily rescues dogs as well as other stray, abused and aging animals, it seemed like a good idea to wish him a Happy Earth Day since the scheduled interview took on April 22. The best wishes were sent right back.
*JPG: I was going to ask this later, but since you brought up politics, as the self-proclaimed Governor of the Heart of Texas, would you secede from Texas if Governor Rick Perry secedes from the
United States of America?*
KF: I only have one plan for Rick Perry and that is when I die I’m to be cremated and the ashes are to be thrown in Rick Perry’s hair. Well, Perry’s a good talker, but he doesn’t really, he’s not really a man of the people and that’s the problem, and neither is Obama. I see a lot of similarities between the two, actually. They’re both really good candidates and politicians. Period. We don’t have a Winston Churchill in the bunch. And, of course, that’s a rare bird anyway.
When I had written “Heroes of a Texas Childhood,” I could see what made these people heroes. And it wasn’t winning. It wasn’t Charlie Sheen’s motto. Although, I would vote for Charlie Sheen over Rick Perry or Obama at this point. It wasn’t good luck. It was really the tragedy and failures of their lives and the obstacles they had to overcome, and how they did it that made them heroes. And today, you sitting up there in Ohio probably know who more of these people are than a lot of recent college graduates in Texas. I’m going to quiz you on it. It’s your interview, but let me ask you, do you know who Audie Murphy was?
JPG: Yes, my dad was a fan actually. (The Texas born and raised Murphy was a highly-decorated World War II soldier who then starred in 44 films, many of them Westerns, wrote the autobiography “To Hell and Back” and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.)
KF: Do you know who Barbara Jordan was?
JPG: The African-American politician?
KF: You got it! You’re two for two. Now those two I have not yet found a college graduate in Texas who’s ever heard of either one. Audie Murphy, they don’t know if he’s a basketball player or a singer. Barbara Jordan, they never heard of her. I mean that’s a start. Now, we’ve all heard of Davey Crockett and Sam Houston, but this is kind of the story behind the story because Davey Crockett was as fed up with politicians as the rest of us are now.
JPG: The book itself, was it a result of the realization of people not knowing history or was there some other inspiration that motivated you to put it together?
KF: It was an effort to show Democrats who I was in my mistaken effort to run as a Democrat. I ran as an Independent for Governor [in 2006]. That was an honest good thing that I should’ve been doing, but somebody convinced me that I run as a Democrat. The big problem is the primary system is rigged against any Independent. Unless you got 29 million bucks, you ain’t gonna make it. We haven’t had an Independent since Sam Houston. It’s been 165 years. Even to make the ballot, John, ‘cause that’s very tough. I’m the second one after Sam that made the ballot. So, that’s pathetic. And these big states it’s very hard for an Independent to win apparently. I got 600,000 votes. That would have been enough to win in Kansas or some place. It’s politics. ‘Poli’ means more than one and ‘tics’ means the bloodsucking parasites.
JPG: Yeah. That pretty much sums it up right there.
KF: During the campaign I said that musicians can better run this country than politicians. They won’t get a helluva lot done in the morning, but we’ll work late and we’ll be honest. That would be a refreshing change.
JPG: Maybe even put a tour manager in charge of things. They’d crack the whip.
KF: (laughs) All it requires is a little honesty and a little common sense. Neither of which we have. Those are very lacking qualities in Washington. That’s why I want to limit all these bastards to two terms. One term in office, one in prison.
JPG: (laughs) Well, we strayed far from originally planned but that’s fine…
KF: Wait a minute! You got one of the honest men. Ohio does. Dennis Kucinich. There’s three of them, and they’re widely regarded as wingnuts. Crazies. Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich are the only three men in Washington D.C. who are not corrupt.
JPG: Yeah. Sometimes I think it’s too bad that Ron had offspring. Isn’t that his son Rand Paul?
KF: (laughter) He probably regrets it himself. But you know Texas is a very independent thinking state, but when it comes to politics that is not true. Political parties really are the Crips and the Bloods, the bullies of the playground. They are the same guy admiring themselves in the mirror.
JPG: That brings us back to Rick Perry.
KF: Rick is ineffectual. Traits of Obama, he’s incapable of real leadership and he’s not a man of the people. Obama would be very happy being in Martha’s Vineyard his whole life. He doesn’t really want to go anywhere, if he could. That’s nothing new. Eisenhower was like that as president. He liked to play golf and he liked being president. Those were simpler times in some ways. I mean the Libya policy, really, kinda just shows you what a lack of leadership is. I mean, all the false steps, the stops and the starts. I mean you don’t have a Churchill there and you don’t have a Davy Crockett.
JPG: Libya has me confused though because yes, it’s another war, but the military was stopping anti-government protestors from being slaughtered…
KF: Once you jump into it and once you say, ‘The guy’s gotta go. We’ve got to get rid of Gaddafi.
He must leave. He must go. He’s a dictator. He’s a bad man. He must leave.’ Once you do that, you gotta get rid of him. And if you don’t…and now Obama created a situation where Gaddafi can just hang on and he’s a fucking hero. And every bad person on the planet, every bad government and every dictator is a power by him hanging on.
I think the guy is what he is. He’s a Harvard law instructor and that’s what you get. We saw the BP oil spill and, you guys weren’t close to it, but down here, we saw Obama’s lack of interest in it, lack of ability to…Can you imagine what [former Texas Governor] Anne Richards might have done or even Bill or Hillary Clinton, or again Churchill? I mean, you really needed somebody to take the wheel. And that’s being a man of the people. Somebody who loves the people and the people love them. And that’s just not the case with any of these politicians today. And you know, to be honest, its true in every category — music, Hollywood, wherever you go — the culture is, if you tell the truth, you get in trouble. That’s what mainly happens.
JPG: For someone who has a sense of history and has been around for a bit…I have this theory that, when the history of this time is looked upon, one of the things that will be viewed as a crime against humanity, if you will, is the 24-hour news and cable channels because they contain so much non-news and the things that focus on is a matter of bread and circuses.
KF: I’m working on this book with Billy Bob Thornton right now. He was pointing that out. He said the thing he did that got the most publicity was not proposing to Angelina Jolie and marrying her, I guess, or Sling Blade or winning an Academy Award or none of that, it was this incident with this disc jockey in Canada. And he said, ‘That was a small potatoes thing,’ where the two of them really disagreed, where he thought the guy really sold him down river early in the morning and they jumped down each other’s throats. So, this thing got blown up into some big deal and how much he hates Canada and everything, which is not true at all.
The little things are the things that are really meaningless little things. They get blow up big time, and the big things we just gloss over. They’re not really important. The only two things I care about really are Libya and Charlie Sheen. I just think America is taking a giant step backwards, our culture has. And what has killed us is political correctness. And of all people, Barbara Jordan was the one who warned about political correctness way before all this — decades ago – that political correctness was a devil, was an enemy for free thinking people. So, now we have a situation John, imagine you and I are entertainment managers say, and we get a young Richard Pryor who comes into our office or a young George Carlin or a Lenny Bruce or Mel Brooks, we couldn’t find those people work very easily these days if they were just coming up. You know what? We couldn’t get Blazing Saddles made today. No studio would take it, and nobody would distribute it. So, is that a step forward or not? You’re going to have to decide. And I’m speaking now of a song like “They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore” which uses the word ‘nigger’. Was it a bad song by a racist as politicians will have you think or is it an anthem against bigotry, which anybody who listens to the song knows?
JPG: Well, that’s interesting because a closer look at your songs as well as reading your views on matters, as chronicled on Wikipedia, you could be called a libertarian or even a progressive.
KF: I’m like Texas, I’m schizophrenic.
JPG: Do you think, with the idea of using satire to make your point…
KF: What do you think John, did Wikipedia get it right or wrong? I haven’t seen it.
*JPG: According to Cary (Kinky’s publicist), he thought it was good enough to encourage me to check it out. *
KF: Okay.
JPG: So, I’ll have to go by what he said and, if you check it out, what you say.
KF: I don’t go on the internet.
JPG: Oh, you don’t?
KF: No.
JPG: Why is that?
KF: Well, I think it’s just a million different ways of saying absolutely nothing. We’ve got a lot ways to say things and absolutely nothing to say. And I’m lazy. Not just that. Here’s what I think of the internet. I think the internet is a 57 year old pedophile in New Jersey who is pretending to be a 27 year old surfer from San Diego and is contacting a 14 year old girl in Montana who is really a middle aged vice cop in Miami. And that is the internet.
As much as you may hate pedophiles, at least they always slow down in school zones.
JPG: See, that’s what I was getting to, do you think that making your point with humor and satire, although the point is made, it’s not taken as seriously as if you were sitting there with your grey suit on, and your image like Rick Perry and you act so serious…
KF: That’s what the people want. I mean, I do run into 50 to 100 people at every Texas airport that swear they voted for me, but I think they’re pathological liars like the people that saw the Beatles’ first show in America. They couldn’t have all voted for me or I would have gotten more than 600,000 votes. I mean, I’m sure they don’t come up to Rick Perry and tell him they voted for him. If we had mandatory voting, like they have in Australia, I would have won in a landslide, but we don’t. You know what percentage of people actually voted in our last gubernatorial race?
JPG: I’m afraid.
KF: Twenty-six per cent. And that kills any Independent because the Republicans and Democrats both have their voter rolls and they know what they’re gonna get. So, they try to suppress the vote. They really do, and which is just anti-American. You know how tough it is for a college kid to vote? What won for Jessie Ventura was same day voter registration. And that is a small state, a small crazy state like Minnesota where an independent can win, but you probably couldn’t do it in Ohio.
Republicans and Democrats would make it so hard for kids if they thought that the kids were voting against them, which they were. They were voting for me. And by the time the revolution hit and really caught fire the kids realized they hadn’t registered two months before they were supposed to and they couldn’t vote.
JPG: We’ll I’ve done a couple articles on HeadCount, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it?
KF: No.
JPG: It’s a voter registration organization, which hooks up with bands who allow them to put tables at shows during entire tours in order to get people registered to vote. And they put together information telling people where they are supposed to go to vote. Now, I’ve worked for elections as far as a presiding judge and making sure the machines worked properly. And I may have a view of who or what I’d like to see win but, at the same time, I want everybody of voting age to vote, and then let the chips fall where they may in the end.
KF: Right. That’s the way to do it. Well, you know, having been run in a Democratic primary I’d say, ‘Fuck the Democrats and fuck the Republicans for good measure.’ They truly are the Crips and the Bloods. I mean, they’re the same guys admiring themselves in the mirror. That’s why we’re getting nowhere in education because, it’s a stupid thing. If I go through the slums and the ghettos of Ohio and I see kids that are really talented and I know, this has been shown repeatedly, that if we could get them out of the ghetto into a new environment, they all do well. That’s what, you have to get ‘em out. One thing that might help is vouchers. Anything, anything that get ‘em out of a place where they get shot at on the way to school. That’s all is what we’re trying to do, where they have good teachers and they will make it. So, what do the Democrats do? They’re against vouchers. They’re against that. If you’re a Democrat and if you’re for vouchers you lose. If you’re a Republican and if you’re pro-choice, you lose. What a stupid system. I mean, the only thing that makes any sense is being an Independent and thinking for yourself.
The real word is ‘inspired’. What Obama has failed to do is really disastrously failed to inspire. And all the rest of them, he’s just the top of the ladder, but all of them. Look as this group of governors of our country, are these men who inspire people? Do you want to be like them when you grow up? Hell no. No kid does.
What’s happened here? We don’t have one guy that we respect or admire or that could inspire us. Not one [Fiorello] LaGuardia or Teddy Roosevelt or Huey Long.
JPG: At one time I liked John Edwards…
KF: A lot of people I know did…
JPG: …because he was the candidate that brought about disparity and talked about the poor in this country.
KF: …and he had the ability to inspire. That’s really a tragedy because he really does. If you walked into a rally of his, you’d come away saying, ‘Wow.’ It’s true, and it’s just a shame that the guy is a fraud.
They are all bullshit. One term in office and one term in prison. Two term limit.
JPG: (laughs)
KF: I’m telling you, people laugh but you thought it was a joke when I was talking about how bad politicians…these guys are all former hall monitors. The reason they love smoking bans so much is because they polled this and they see that most people don’t like smoking. So, they do a very un-American thing. They have it that nobody can smoke in anyplace whereas they should have a thing where you could have Kinky’s Bar in Cleveland, smoking allowed. Everybody who works there or comes there knows there’s going to be smoking. You could put your own restaurant up there and, ‘no smoking’ and then they know they could go there. That’s the way it ought to be done. But instead, we’ve got this shit in Texas, which I blame my friend, Lance Armstrong, for starting, smoking bans in Texas. And, of course, they succeeded wildly. So, we now have like a communist watched state where people report me for even having a cigar. It’s an oral fixation. It may not be lit, but they still report me. And Lance says, ‘We’re doing it for your health, Kinky.’ Well, is he really? I mean, maybe he is, but the politicians aren’t. And I always like to point out the countries of Spain and Portugal, Israel and Japan and Greece and Italy and add France to that, seven. Seven countries. And if you check those countries, you’ll see that all of them have a higher smoking per capita than the United States, much higher in fact. And all of them have a longer life expectancy than the United States. So, all we conclude is that speaking English is killing us.
It’s a much higher calling being a musician than a politician.
JPG: As a musician as well as an author, is it easier to deal with the book world than the music world?
KF: Well, the book world has gotten really interesting now with the internet. I have to give this to the internet, despite my own misgivings. We’re doing a David and Goliath kind of thing now where we’re taking the old Kinky books and doing audio books of all of them and ebooks. They’re already, we’re putting them up as we finish them. There’s already a dozen of ‘em or so of them available on KinkyFriedman.com. And that’ll tell you where you can go to Amazon or Apple or Barnes & Noble Download a book or download an audio book read by me. And these are taking off. And it’s kind of David and Goliath deal. Think about it. We’re not using big publishing houses. We’re avoiding the chain book stores pretty much. Power agents and big time publishers, none of them are involved. It’s amazing. Seems to be working because a lot young people are rediscovering the Kinkster and a lot of older people had Kinky books and cats pissed on ‘em over the years. Over the years cats piss on everything. That’s my theory.
JPG: In that same vein, your last studio album was in 2005, do you see yourself going that same route with a new recording where its released independently on your website?
KF: Well, I don’t know. I’m in a Woody Guthrie mood right now where I like to do the songs live. The good thing about my shows, as old as these songs are, which will be older than many of the people in the audience, they’re not nostalgic.
JPG: That’s kind of fortunate and unfortunate if you know what I mean. (The phone line goes dead. A few minutes technology cooperates when I get Kinky back on the line and the conversation continues.) What happened there?
KF: I thought you went into a diabetic coma. (Returning to the subject at hand) I would just say that Barry Manilow is an example of a guy who’s made more money than God and sings songs that make us feel good for a short period of time. Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson or Willie [Nelson] or Bob [Dylan] are people who tend to write songs that make you think, and they might stay with you a lifetime and that’s the kind of songs that I like to write and sing.
JPG: And they do. Before we got cut off, I was saying that it’s fortunate and unfortunate that your songs still have resonance today, that after all these years we still haven’t moved forward.
KF: For instance, I’m doing a tour of Australia after this with Van Dyke Parks. And something like “Sold American” over there has a real different meaning than it did when I wrote it. It has a lot more meaning to people outside the states. And, of course, people outside Texas, I won the race for governor in every place but Texas. So, they tend to get it.
You can’t be a humorist or they call you a comedian and you can’t make it in politics unless you’re that fucker from Minnesota. Al Franken, who was corrupt before he even got started but he also had a lot of money. When you’re dealing with issues like the death penalty…See, that’s a big thing. I could have gotten rid of the death penalty in Texas. A governor could do that if he has any leadership skills or inclinations ‘cause we’re whacking someone every couple of weeks here and getting it wrong on a fairly good basis ‘cause the system is broken. We’ve got a guy that’s been in death row for 23 years and people try to protect the system and not him. We’re loaded with Christians in Texas and I talked to a Christian and I always tell him, ‘I’m sorry you’ve got to hear this from a Jew, but remember folks that’s who you heard it from the first time.’ You’ve got to define what being a Christian means. Is it holding hands around a chicken fried steak and singing a hymn. What is it? It’s more than that.
JPG: I could go into my long diatribe in regards to being pro-life and what that means in regards to the death penalty or poor welfare mothers or adoption or orphanages…
KF: That’s absolutely right. And we ought to be teaching kids to think for themselves and not how to pass a test. We ought to…I think I was the first guy that supported gay marriage in a campaign saying they have every right to be just as miserable as the rest of us.
JPG: (laughs) Imagine the economic boom right there with all the money raised for licenses and receptions and presents. That could help the states budgets right there.
KF: Absolutely. But you know what happens is, my little joke about pedophiles would kill me. ‘Oh, Kinky, you’re supporting pedophiles. That’s nothing to joke about.’
JPG: See, I went to Catholic grade school, so I have a sick mind. (Kinky laughs) and living in this area, too. I remember interviewing one of the members from the heavy metal band Type O Negative and he kept making all these sarcastic, dark comments and I kept laughing. Finally, he said, ‘Where are you from? I say this stuff and everyone else takes me so seriously. No one gets it.’ And I’m like, ‘I grew up Catholic and grew up in the Rust Belt. We’re cynical and sarcasm runs through our blood.’
Back to you, besides going on tour and playing the music, you’re writing and putting out ebooks and you have the play…
KF: The play, I’m telling ya, it’s an out of body experience for me to watch that damn thing. And to see it succeed, to see every woman the place crying at one point and the people laughing their asses off, I think when it gets to New York I think it will be the next “Best Little Whorehouse.”
JPG: Where does the play take you, from childhood to…?
KF: No, no. It’s got three Kinkys – a Peace Corp Kinky, a young, middle age musician Kinky who’s Jesse Dayton is a terrific musician who played with Waylon Jennings for many years, and then an Older Kinky. Then, it’s got Little Jewford, who’s kind of my sidekick, and that’s it. But it really works. The guy who directed it, Ted Swindley out of Nashville, is the one who did Always…Patsy Cline, which is a smash. So, Ted has a real eye for this stuff. Ted pointed out that this is only play he’s ever heard of about a living person ‘cause they always go to Mark Twain or Will Rogers or Patsy Cline or somebody who is dead. It’s an odd kind of misguided tribute or something. I don’t know. We’ll see.
JPG: Is it one of those jukebox musicals where your songs are performed throughout the whole play?
KF: There’s about six or seven songs in it, except it’s surprisingly funny. These guys are real actors. This is not an Elvis impersonator.
JPG: It’s fitting that you mention Will Rogers and Mark Twain. Were they inspirations because I can see a line going from them to yourself and even from you to someone like Mojo Nixon?
KF: (slight laugh) Sure they were. Mojo’s great.
JPG: Even a bit of Todd Snider.
KF: Yes, yes.
JPG: Mojo’s more like the rabid dog version.
KF: Mojo is a truth teller, and a good one. We did a show with Mojo in San Diego about six months ago, and Mojo said, ‘It’s Sunday night. There won’t be anybody here. That’s the way it is.’ Anyway, there were 400 people in a place that holds 300. They were mostly old Jews. There was a lot of blue hairs. So, Mojo opened the show and he starts with “Tie My Pecker to My Leg.” You should have seen the expressions of these people’s faces, even though they’re Kinky Friedman fans or they think they are. And then, of course, it goes downhill from there, if you’ve ever seen a Mojo show where’s he’s shouting, ‘Suck my cock,’ to the audience. But, it was an evening and he joined us afterwards to do “Homo Erectus,” and “Proud to Be an Asshole from El Paso.” I need to give Mojo a call.
JPG: Speaking of “Homo Erectus,” I was listening to that song on “Last of the Jewish Cowboys: The Best of Kinky Friedman” and wondered why didn’t you sue Billy Ray Cyrus for plagiarizing that song for “Achy Breaky Heart.”
KF: I agree with Willie. If you fail at something long enough you become a legend. See it that way rather than being litigious like most Americans today. But, boy those songs are similar. Melody-wise they’re almost identical. And Billy Ray came to town right about that time when Kinky was buzzing around Nashville with the song. I don’t even know if Billy Ray wrote it, and if he did unconsciously or consciously lifted it. Maybe I should go file the lawsuit.
JPG: At the very least, he owes you a nice dinner.
KF: Yeah, one would think.
JPG: Now, are there new songs from you?
KF: The short answer is no. What I do is I rotate the crop. The audience changes and the songs don’t. On the other hand there’s so many of ‘em that you don’t hear very often. It’s not like they’re mainstream hits or anything. Stuff like “Lady Yesterday” or “Rapid City, South Dakota” or “Silver Eagle Express” always goes over real well.
And right now, in fact I’ve already had two tribute albums and Willie is working on one now. It’s not really a tribute album but an album of my songs that Willy would sing. And also Jesse Dayton is doing one. So, this a lot of tributes for a living person. When Townes [Van Zandt] died he must have had a score of tribute albums but he had to fall through the trapdoor first.
JPG: Is it a matter that you don’t feel you have any songs in you or you’d rather do stuff in prose form?
KF: Yeah, I think it’s prose. I’ve moved on. A little nine year old or seven year old wrote to me and I wrote her back. She writes poems but now she’s moving to short stories and she wants to write books. As part of a school project she contacted me. That’s the way it was with me. I started with poems and moved on to songs and then to prose. And it’s remarkable that so few people in music write prose. There’s just me and Jimmy [Buffett]…and, oh wait, Steve Earle. But Jimmy’s such a mainstream guy that he can say, ‘Hey! I think I’ll write a children’s book.’ An artist is being ahead of your time and behind in your rent. That’s what an artist is. That’s what I try to be.
Most Texans think I’m a multi-zillionaire. They think I must be rich. Of course, they don’t understand that the only currency I value is the coin of the spirit.
JPG: I like that. I want to end with that but I’m very curious about this, for someone who’s been a longtime friend of Bob Dylan. Are you able to remain friends with him for so long because it’s like Fight Club where you just don’t talk about it?
KF: (laughs) I’m pretty outspoken. There are few secrets there. I met Bob on the gangplank of Noah’s Ark. I think it’s important that Bob and Willie stay out there on the road. They keep doing what they’re doing. I think they would die if they stopped. And I also look up to them both for wisdom and advice.
I was reading recently Levon [Helm]’s book, This Wheel’s on Fire. The book is about 15 years old and it’s the most amazing, the inside story on him and Robbie Robertson and how Robbie screwed the other guys…and Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Bob, and about the tour they did with Bob when Bob went electric and the audiences were trying to boo him off the stage. And Bob would not surrender to it. They were screaming, ‘Traitor!’ and ‘Fuck you!’ His old friends would come backstage afterwards and said, ‘Bob, you’re killing your career with these chumps playing with you, man. What are you doing?’ (pause) He wasn’t killing his career. He was making it. Nobody knew it but Bob. Even the band wasn’t sure. First tour they do with this guy they get booed off every stage. (laughs) but he keeps going and going. He’s a spiritual Energizer Bunny. Spiritual. If Bob had gone back to singin’ “Blowin’ in the Wind” the old way, acoustically, because the crowd booed him off the stage he would be just a footnote now. He’d be just an old folksinger.
JPG: I always admired the way that he would reinterpret his material. You could probably fill a bunch of CDs with the same song, just done differently with each one an interesting listen. Same view with the Grateful Dead and the changes from song-to-song and show-to-show. Maybe it’s just my ADD. (slight laugh)
KF: The whole culture is just riddled with ADD or ADHD. That’s why the Libyan policy is a good one. It keeps us all interested. I mean that’s clearly not something we’re doing because we believe in anything.
(laughs) Those days are gone. So, anyway we’ll see what happens…you know, if you don’t love Jesus, go to hell.
