I saw this interview on the morning of 11/13 in Stereo Embers magazine but by the evening it had disappeared without a trace. I tried to contact the magazine to ask why but got no response. So, fuck it, I got a copy and am posting it here until they tell me to take it down, or until a week passes. All apologies to Michael Mitchell, but I was saddened to see that an interview motivated by censorship fell victim to...censorship. I have no rights to this and hope not to stir too much shite, just want to make it available while I can....copy it if you want, it's got some good new anecdotes and I think it's a decent interview....I really hope I don't get burned for this but I just can't stand censorship. I figure if they don't want it, the cause of artistic freedom almost obliges me to take matters into my own hands and go for it. Sorry Michael, I hope you're cool with this.
Written by: Michael Mitchell
Photo Credits: Karen Buchbinder
Living Room photo by Boyd Rice
Written by: Michael Mitchell
Photo Credits: Karen Buchbinder
Living Room photo by Boyd Rice
There comes a time when you can see a
man get kicked so many times until you have to say something. On
September 5 it was announced that a joint exhibition at New York
City's Greenspon gallery for the artwork (not music or spoken word)
of Darja Bajagi and Boyd Rice was to be cancelled because Boyd Rice
is an 'alleged' Neo -Nazi. Gallery owner Amy Greenspon was being
threatened with her livelihood being boycotted and shut down.
Controversy is nothing new for Rice who
has had the nazi, fascist, misogynist, racist labels and more thrown
at him for the past 40 years. Bill Maher says something under the
guise of comedy and everyone laughs and says, "It's ok. He's
just joking!" However, when Rice says anything he's labeled
everything in the book without so much as a shred of evidence. In
fact, at one time he was one of the biggest practical jokers out
there. Google it and you'll see. I suppose a man that doesn't smile
in photographs can't have a sense of humor though, right?
I've been in music journalism a short
time compared to my aging frame. Once I caught wind of this, as a fan
and as a journalist, I had to do something. No one would actually go
to HIM and do an interview to get his side of the story. So fuck it,
here I am. The air gets cleared about this and a host of other
things. Fix yourself a martini and enjoy. We cover a lot of ground
and he even laughs.
Stereo Embers: Your wife did mention
that you've done quite a few interviews about this already.
Boyd Rice: No, not really. A guy from
Art News actually gave me his phone number and he contacted me and I
spoke with him for five minutes maybe. Everybody else sent me three
or four questions over the internet and I sent back answers and they
didn't even use all of them. They just selectively chose what they
needed for their bit and didn't explain anything that I said really.
SEM: Wow, so I guess I'm the only one
pissed off enough to really want to do a good write up on this? The
whole thing really made me mad.
BR: I had warned them this might happen
in no uncertain terms. I said, "Listen, I only do a few things a
year and don't want to spend a great deal of time working on
something and traveling to New York and have you cancel the show
because you get a couple of angry emails or phone calls". I
tried to scare Amy Greespon straight. She said, "Oh, controversy
is great. I love controversy". Controversy is romantic at a
distance but when you have people calling you up threatening to
destroy your existence or putting death threats on your phone, it's
really not that amusing. She said, "Well, this is the New York
art world we're talking about here and they're far too sophisticated
to behave like this"...and she was wrong! (laughs)
SEM: Yep. No shit! (laughs)
BR: When she came in the day the
exhibition was supposed to happen, she just had this shell shock look
and I thought, "Oh fuck!" (laughs) These people really did
threaten her. They said, "We're going to destroy your
existence", "We'll have you run out of the art world".
People who were her best friends. Prominent gallery owners who'd
known her for years. They said, "We're never speaking to you
again if you do this show", "I'm never stepping foot in
your gallery again and neither will anyone else in the art world".
SEM: Outrageous.
BR: She was just terrified.
Ordinarily, if somebody had done this to me after I'd talked so much
about it to them, I'd be really really pissed off, but I felt bad for
her. In the context of my life, this is a tempest in a teapot. This
isn't going to have any effect whatsoever but to the art world this
is some firestorm. It's scandalous. It was shut down sight unseen.
Nobody knew what these paintings were like. I started doing them when
I was 18 years old, you know? At 18 years old I didn't have any
volatile political ideology or anything. I still don't.
SEM: Right. Your life experience to
that point isn't a whole lot, even though at 18 you think it is.
BR: That's true, but at 18 I came
up with the idea for these paintings. I started doing paintings at a
highly developed level and I came up with the ideas for my
experimental photographs then and I also started doing my first music
then. I didn't have a lot of life experience but I exposed myself to
all sorts of different things. At that time I dropped out of high
school because I wanted to grow up to be an artist because artists
live these interesting lives and that's what I was interested in.
They're usually rewarded for poor behavior that would get anyone else
in trouble.
SEM: I've always thought from
reading your books and interviews that your intellect was on a
different level anyway. So to be 18 and coming up with all of this I
think you're kind of a step above anyway. Or maybe I'm grandstanding
you? (laughs)
BR: (laughs) Not at all, you're
absolutely correct!
SEM: I mean that's the way I read
it.
BR: Yeah, I mean as for ideology,
go look at my Instagram page and you'll see I've made these t-shirts
that say, "Ideology is Toxic". I've never promoted any
ideology. On the contrary, I reject the very concept of ideology.
SEM: The artist that you were going
to share the exhibition with, Darja Bajagiuc0u263 , had controversy
of her own in 2016 with a piece called "Bucharest Molly".
Maybe because of that they said, "Hey, why don't you get Boyd
Rice and do an exhibition together"?
BR: Well yeah, I think they wanted
her on the bill because she was evidently popular in the art world.
People were buying her stuff. They thought I had this reputation of
being transgressive and so does she. I said to Amy, "These
paintings (of mine) aren't transgressive or provocative or
controversial at all. They're just very contemplative. They're
essentially a visual equivalent of what I do with sound. It's
supposed to be evocative. Very open ended, not anything with
political imagery. I'm absolutely not interested in politics and
haven't been since I was in high school and everyone has scolded me
for it. I just thought artists are more like mystics. They just can't
concern themselves with every weird ass thing on the ballot.
SEM: So was she brought into the
exhibition after it was given to you?
BR: Well, Chris Viaggio who curated
it has been in touch with me for a few years now trying to make this
happen and I think he finally convinced Amy that it would be a good
idea to have her on the bill, that it would be a way of presenting it
or something.
SEM: And you liked her stuff?
BR: Yeah. Of course once this whole
controversy first started, people went through her back catalog with
a fine tooth comb and found all sorts of things that were
questionable. They were mostly things like, "Oh, she's friends
with Laibach on Instagram and Facebook!"
SEM: (laughs)
BR: Of her work that I've seen,
I've never seen anything using fascist imagery or any political
content.
SEM: Were you familiar with the
"Bucharest Molly" piece?
BR: No, uh-uh. I've never even
heard of "Bucharest Molly".
SEM: That is the one where a girl
holding a teddy bear that has a swastika on it and on one leg of her
pants it says "Heil" and on the other it says "Hitler"
and there was some kind of like fountain thing coming out of it's
stomach with black liquid. Like a multi-functional piece or something. That's what started
the whole stink at that overseas exhibition. That's what made me
wonder. People are calling you a neo-Nazi but she has a piece that
says "Heil Hitler" and a swastika on it, why wasn't she as
equally a target as you? Probably because she was a darling of the
art world, whereas you've been the target of some peoples ire for so
many years, "we'll just continue to pick on him".
BR: Yeah. I think it's getting to a
level of hysteria now. I find it ironic that these sort of militant
liberals are creating racial divisions by talking non-stop about
racism all the time. They talk about it the same way that feminists
talk about rape and Christians talk about the devil. They're obsessed
with it and they need "the other / the opposites" for their
identity. They need some boogeyman and I've been that boogeyman for
the last forty years practically.
SEM: You fit in all those slots!
(laughs)
BR: (laughs) Yeah! I forget where I
was going with that. It's just a really strange period we're living
in. Like the last few years every time I turn on the news some person
is being called a racist or someone is being called a nazi and you
look at these people and you go, "That person's not a racist!"
This is a time tested tactic that people use to attempt to silence
anyone they disagree with and it's worked for decades. It's the worst
thing on earth. People lose their jobs, University professors are
called racists and they just resign, you know? I've been getting that
for forty years but it's been ages since anyone has said anything
like this, so I was thinking, "Well, we're living in an age
where everybody is called a racist and you know they obviously aren't
and everybody can't be a nazi". Even the people who think
they're nazi's and they dress up like nazi's, they aren't nazi's.
They have no machine of the state behind them making their ideas into
reality so that other people have to deal with it. Hitler may be on
TV every day, but he's been dead for a while now.
SEM: Who was
that guy that people kept punching? I can't remember his name now,
but there was this guy that everyone was calling a nazi and he would
go out and speak at these places and people would just run up and
punch this dude.
BR: Was that Milo Yiannopoulous?
The gay guy who had a black boyfriend and everyone was calling him
racist?
SEM: No, but that's interesting. I don't know anything
about that.
BR: He was banned from speaking at
Berkeley and he was protested when he came here to Denver. He was in
the news a lot. I mean Berkeley is the birth of the free speech
movement and now it's in the forefront of censoring anybody and
everybody that they don't agree with.
SEM: Isn't it kind of funny that
the liberal machine who would want free speech for everyone seems to
be the ones trying to censor it? Just because they don't agree with
it? Not that the other side's any better.
BR: Yeah. I have this pie chart
that I invented. The traditional political graph has always been a
straight line, and would show the political spectrum and in the
center would be the centrists and then there'd be the left and the
right and then far left and far right. I've turned that into a pie
chart so that now the far left and the far right kind of overlap
because I think they have more in common with one another now than
things that separate them. They both act the same way. They're both
intolerant. They both want to take away people's rights if they have
the power to do so, you know? I don't doubt for a moment that they
would.
SEM: I know you aren't an
incredibly political person but what is your take on the Trump
administration and what's been going on?
BR: I like it because I think it's
bringing this sort of thing to the forefront. People who act
hysterical are showing their real nature. They're showing that if
they have the power to shut him down, they'd do it in a second. The
thing is, because their candidate lost, a lot of people feel
powerless and helpless and there's nothing they can do to change the
reality of life that they disagree with at this point but they can
always go out and attack the small fry. They can always go out and
attack someone like me. They can always stop someone from giving a
speech at a University. So that's what they're doing. I actually love
this divisiveness. I think it will ultimately result in something
good. In high school when people would scold me for being apolitical
I would always say, "I'll be interested in politics the day a
businessman runs for office. Someone who knows how the world works
and understands economies and capitalism and things like that" .
There was even a brief period when Nelson Rockefeller was gonna run
for President and I got really excited and Andy Warhol's reaction to
it was the same as mine, he said, "I think Nelson Rockefeller
would be a good President because he's a businessman and he knows how
things work plus he's an art collector. He's part of the art world,
he has an appreciation for that." When he was Vice President he
bought a bed designed by Max Ernst and it cost something like $50,000
or $120,000 and everybody was just horrified that he would be wasting
money on a bed. He was going to leave it in the Vice Presidential
residence and whoever was Vice President next could have it, but
nobody wanted it.
SEM: Really??
BR: Yeah. They said, "Oh,
that's too weird". It had, like, a chinchilla bed spread on it.
But, I'm enjoying the whole Trump spectacle. It has made the United
States into this kind of reality TV show where the populace is
behaving like an audience members on a Jerry Springer show. That's
entertaining to watch.
SEM: You don't subscribe to any
political party or have any political affiliation though do you? You
just stay apolitical?
BR: I'm utterly apolitical but you
know, I'm registered as an Independent because every once in a while
something comes up that I think should be voted for or against so I
participate to a small degree. It's not the end of the world for me,
whoever is in office, because I'm an outsider and I always went my
own way. I lived through the oil crisis with Jimmy Carter. Most
people think he was the worst President on earth and that life was so
bad for them during the time he was in office. Except for waiting in
line for gasoline, my life's the same as it's always been. I can go
anyplace and live under any political system.
SEM: Circling back to the
exhibition, has anyone else volunteered to pick it up?
BR: Yeah,
I've not vetted them but I've had a few requests. I think Darja would
probably be the better one to setup a situation where the show is
restaged. I would like it to be in a legitimate gallery, you know a
proper gallery.
SEM: Sure because you're proud of
the work. It wasn't the work that got the show cancelled.
Unfortunately, it's like I think I said before, it's your perceived
image.
BR: Yeah, it's my persona and
that's largely a caricature created by people who don't know me or my
work. I mean, if I committed a real crime 30 years ago the statute of
limitations would of run out on it! (laughs)
SEM: (laughs)
BR: Even twenty some years ago,
there's nothing I ever did or said that would constitute a crime I
could be charged for. I've never harmed anyone. I've hurt a few
peoples feelings in San Francisco but I mean you can't even carry out
a normal conversation without saying something that will hurt
someone's feelings, especially today. (laughs)
SEM: (laughs)
BR: If you say "midget",
it's like, "Oh no, no! They're called 'little people' now".
I can't switch out words I've been using since 1956. (laughs)
SEM: (laughs)
BR: Just because somebody has
decided, "Oh, we can't say that anymore".
SEM: Right, that is not politically
correct Boyd! You can't say that anymore.
BR: Yeah, politically correct. You
know who initially used that term, right?
SEM: No.
BR: There's several different
stories going around but I think it was Stalin, but it might have
been Lenin. Some people now are saying Mao. But, that was actually a
thing where if you had politically incorrect thoughts you could be
sent to the gulag. These people today would send ME to the gulag if
it was in their power to do so, but instead they can just try to
spoil my life. Stop my good time, you know?
SEM: (laughs) Well do you think the
air has been cleared as far as that appearance on the Tom Metzger TV
show and the photo with Bob Heick?
BR: Well until two weeks ago I
thought it had! (laughs)
SEM: (loud laughter)
BR: Because I mean, thirty years
ago! I don't know how old you are but what were you doing thirty
years ago?
SEM: Let's see...thirty years
ago...I was eighteen years old, so I was just getting ready to move
out of my parents house for the first time.
BR: Ah. Did you do anything that
was against the law? Like drink under age or use any drugs?
SEM: Ummm...I MIGHT have done a few
questionable things in my pre-eighteen year old life, sure. (laughs)
BR: Yeah, well eighteen years old
is different than thirty but I mean I wouldn't expect anyone to judge
anybody else by something they did'a0'a0'a0 thirty years ago. The
thing is I didn't even do...I mean I was on Tom Metzger's show. I
think if you watch that whole episode I really didn't say anything
scurrilous.
SEM: As a matter of fact, the clip
that I was able to find, I don't think it was the whole thing, I
think it was only 5 or 10 minutes, but it seemed like they tried to
bait you but you never said anything racist or controversial.
BR: Well the part they show that is
supposed to constitute that I'm a racist, I said that there were
people, critics in Europe, who were saying that Industrial Music was
the first sort of, and they actually said forty years ago, that this
was the most uniquely 'white' music. It wasn't influenced by anything
that had influenced rock-n-roll. I thought that surf music or Heavy
Metal were uniquely 'white' without any roots in the Blues or
whatever.
SEM: Industrial Music was so new at the
time but you were already ahead of that though.
BR: Yeah, yeah. The wild thing is that
I was involved in the Art world when I was a teenager and then most
of the people who formed the Industrial scene were people who'd been
in the Art world. People like Genesis P-Orridge and the other people
in Throbbing Gristle, my friend Z'ev. I met Z'ev at a gallery
performance in San Francisco at a gallery called La Mamelle and we've
had a lifetime bond. I knew him right up until the day he died.
SEM: I'm really sorry about that. He
was brilliant.
BR: He was brilliant. He was the most
under appreciated artist / musician I know. He stayed here after his
train accident for three and a half months because his doctor told
him that if he spent the Winter in Chicago he might not be alive when
the Spring comes. In Chicago, he didn't have a car so he would've had
to go out walking in blizzards but here, he could just stay in the
warm house.
SEM: That's really nice.
BR: He was a lot better when he left.
When he came here he looked like a shadow of himself. He looked like
an old man, he could barely go up the stairs, he had C.O.P.D. and by
the time he left he looked 100% better. So I was shocked when we were
called and told that he was gone.
SEM: How long after he left did he
pass?
BR: Maybe six months?
SEM: Wow.
BR: I'm not sure, yeah.
SEM: Then you've had another close
friend, Adam Parfrey who passed and I'm sure that had to have been a
shock too because he was so young.
BR: Well he was the same age as me! His
father died when he was 61 and I guess for the last couple of years,
Adam was saying he was probably going to die the same age as his
father.
SEM: Kind of prophetic.
BR: Yeah. We had heard about Adam when
we were at a bris in Beverly Hills. I had met Esther Shapiro , the
co-creator of "Dynasty", and we were having the most
wonderful time, we had gotten along so well. Then the phone rings and
it was Adam's sister. She said that he was in a coma and they don't
know if he is going to survive and maybe if you came up and visited
him, you might stir something in him. Maybe he might come out of his
coma or at the very least it will give you a chance to say goodbye to
him. So we left L.A. immediately and flew up there. He'd been
responsive but when I got there he wasn't. You probably don't want to
hear all of this...
SEM: No, no it's fine. Please. I know
he was a great friend and a big influence on you. So to hear this
coming from you is welcome.
BR: Ok. So, he couldn't speak but he
could understand what people in the room were saying and stuff but by
the time we got there he wasn't speaking. He was just laying there. I
went in on the morning of the day he died and I sat down and said,
"Good morning Adam!" He turned his head toward me and
opened his eyes. Then later on his sister called Joe Coleman and he
really reacted to Joe he was reaching for the phone and trying to
talk and he was opening his eyes a bit so I was hoping he would get
better, you know? While we were there his breathing became very
labored, then it looked like he was barely breathing at all, but he
was. I squeezed his hand and said, "I love you Adam. I love
you." and literally sixty seconds later, my wife went to go get
the nurse because of his breathing and the nurse came in, took one
look at him and said, "He's gone".
SEM: Oh, God. Wow.
BR: Yeah. Joe Coleman got on the
airplane to come down and he was en route when Adam died so he
arrived much later and I think he spent the whole evening in there
with Adam's corpse talking to it and he took pictures with him with
his face leaning against Adam's and it was really strangely
beautiful.
SEM: His knowledge of the bizarre was
phenomenal.
BR: I met him when there was an
underground film showing from Germany in San Francisco and everyone
in the sort of Industrial scene went to see it. He had a proposal for
a book and he wanted me to write something for it and it was going to
be published by Grove Press I think. I took one look at it and I
thought, "Nobody on Earth is ever going to publish this book!"
(laughs) It was sort of a prospectus for what became 'Apocalypse
Culture' but that didn't come out until several years later. In the
meantime I talked to Adam a lot on the phone. He was like the only
person I could speak to who understood where I was coming from
because he was coming from the same place.
SEM: Yeah, you guys were tight for
a long time.
BR: Yeah! (laughs)
SEM: Do you keep up with anyone
else that you used to perform or collaborate with?
BR: I'm really bad about keeping in
contact with people but I'm still on good terms with virtually
everybody. Every once in a while if I'm in New York I see Genesis
P-Orridge. A lot of people from that time period have nothing to do
with him any more. Cosey told me, "You're the last person from
the old days that still speaks to Gen".
SEM: With the health scare that
Gen's had, to see that Psychic TV is still going to be out and
performing some shows in Europe is a great sign. I would have sworn
several months back when the news came out about the illness that she
would have been gone because she looked horrible.
BR: The last pictures I saw, Gen
looked like Capt. Kurtz from 'Apocalypse Now' with blonde hair.
SEM: It was startling. Very gaunt.
BR: Really? I haven't seen any
gaunt pictures yet.
SEM: There were some pictures, not
sure if it made her Facebook page, or on her website when the
treatments had started and I think she looked very gaunt. There was a
shot from a show PTV did two months ago maybe and now you can't
really tell anything was wrong. Kind of miraculous.
BR: Well good. People at Mute told
me that the doctors were looking into various treatment options and
they have to decide so that the treatments could start. It sounds
like it's not absolutely hopeless. There are a number of ways it
could go, he just has to decide what type of risk he wants to take.
SEM: Whatever they are doing it
seems to be doing a world of good.
BR: That's good because I've always
liked Gen. I was corresponding with him before Throbbing Gristle ever
formed.
SEM: So how did you two meet? Was
it through COUM Transmissions?
BR: He was involved in mail art, as
was I. A friend of mine put out a magazine, actually a couple friends
of mine, put out these mail art magazines and she put a newspaper
article about me in one of them, so I started getting these weird
collage postcards from all over the world. Invitations to submit art
to places in South America and Europe and East Berlin and all sorts
of weird stuff. It's in those books! The only people who really
interested me were Cosey and Gen and these other people in Los
Angeles who had a group called World Imitation, they had a band
called Monitor. I had started writing Gen very early on because we
had similar interests, I liked the stuff he was doing. The first time
I went to London, I met them and it was right when Throbbing
Gristle's first single came out. They were just starting to get
really big there.
SEM: Were they familiar with the
recordings you had put out?
BR: Up to that point I'd only put
out my first album, The Black Album, but I had a tape of the sound in
the set I was going to finish when I got back to the United States
and I played it for Gen. He listened to it for a long while, very
carefully, and at one point he turned to me and said, "This is
very Industrial!" (laughs)
SEM: (laughs) That's great! Was
there some kind of influence you made to Throbbing Gristle maybe?
BR: No, they were always more of a
band doing things with conventional musical instruments and making it
noisy, where I was just working with pure sound, pure noise and
putting in a few things to make it seem musical (laughs) Even though
it wasn't.
SEM: Do you have any plans to make
further albums?
BR: Yeah, I've got a brand new one
that should be coming out soon. It's called "Blast of Silence"
and it's the most minimalist thing I've ever done. It's a 2 LP set
and each side of each record just has a twenty minute drone. It's
kind of more similar to the stuff that I visualized doing when I
first started doing music. I wanted to do something absolutely
minimalist and then when punk rock happened I kind of got side
tracked because I could do shows in real clubs instead of art
galleries. I could actually get paid for performance. So after that I
started tailoring the music I was making to be stuff that would work
well in a live performance situation because I couldn't go into a
rock-n-roll club and just do a sixty minute drone.
SEM: You don't think that would
have been too well received at the time?
BR: Well at the time my early noise
shows broke out into riots. There were people who would show up
expecting a punk rock band and they'd get this wall of noise. I'd
have beer glasses smashed on my forehead, people were smashing up
furniture. I had no persona at that time. What was controversial at
that time was just the content of what I was doing in the context of
a rock-n-roll milieu.
SEM: Are you familiar with the band
My Bloody Valentine?
BR: I've heard the name.
SEM: When they play live, there is
a song that they have called, 'You Made Me Realize" and there is
a certain point in the song where everybody plays just one note and
it goes into this really insane, white noise. Your kind of level,
loud! People that are into them know to expect it. It can last
anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes, depending how they feel on the night.
BR: (laughs)
SEM: It's brilliant. I've seen them
three different times now and I've seen a five minute version a ten
minute version and a twenty minute version. Like I say, there are
people that know to expect it and it's one of the things that make
them so unique. It's kind of like some of your stuff where it can get
hallucinatory.
BR: The new record is especially
hallucinatory. It is the same sound throughout. After you listen to
it for five minutes you start to hearing rhythms, you start hearing
little melodies coming out and you start hearing things that I know
are not in there. It's just the way your brain processes the sound
after a while. It starts getting used to some things then you start
noticing other things and I think my paintings are much the same. If
you could show my paintings to a dozen different people they would
all see different little things in there. People see skulls, some
people see penises and vaginas, everybody sees something different.
Each spectator's brain processes it differently than someone else's
brain.
SEM: And that's one of the great
things about art. The subjectivity and what you get out of it. That's
the hallmark of good art.
BR: (laughs) Yeah, it's such a
shame because I really do think most of the great artists were
mystics and that great art can be transformative and it can really be
alchemy but a lot of art isn't !
SEM: True that too! So, apart from
the new album, do you have any plans? I know you said that you only
do a couple of things a year.
BR: Yeah, I just physically can't
handle traveling any more. I'm diabetic now. When I go to Europe even
for a couple of weeks it's like being on a rollercoaster non-stop.
You can't always eat when you should, you can't always take your
injections when you should. I'll still do stuff but not on the level
that I used to.
SEM: Are you Type-1 or Type-2?
BR: Type-2, it's that adult onset
thing. I only found out about it like six years ago. Adam had
diabetes too. He was Type-1. He had it all of his life, his father
did too. It didn't seem to effect him any. He seemed strong as an ox,
he was very active, but for me this thing has just kicked my ass. I
feel like a shadow of the person I was even ten years ago.
SEM: I'm really sorry to hear that.
BR: Yeah, me too ! (laughs)
SEM: Well as long as you take care
of yourself and it sounds like your wife is taking good care of
you...
BR: Yeah, she's good. But at this
point I probably wouldn't do as much of that stuff anyway because I
have this wonderful house that looks like a set from A Clockwork
Orange and a beautiful life.
SEM: You're very Mid-Century
Modern, aren't you?
BR: Yeah, the kind of late
sixties/early seventies Mid-Century Modern that looks like Barbarella or
2001.
SEM:
Trust me, if we had the means, our entire house would be decorated
the same way!
BR: (laughs)
SEM: My wife is really into it. I
like it, but she's really is into it.
BR: Well if you guys are ever
passing through Denver you'll have to pop in for a visit.
SEM: I appreciate that and I'll
take you up on that if we ever are.
BR: Ok!
SEM: Thank you so much for taking
the time with me Boyd.
BR: Sure thing. Thank you. When
this controversy first happened, I'd never heard the word, 'dialogue'
used so much! "Oh, then we'll have a dialogue and you'll get to
talk...", it hasn't been a dialogue at all. THIS has been a
dialogue ! (laughs)
SEM: Well I wanted to make sure
you'd get a chance to get out your side, so did I give you a chance
to do that?
BR: Yeah, I think so. And you were
going to ask me about Manson. That's the reason why I was involved
with the skinheads. Manson wanted me to recruit some skinheads and
try to break him out of San Quentin. He had a whole plan and the
skinheads had absolutely no interest in it. Then they were suspicious
of me because my closest friend in San Francisco, Anton LaVey, he's a
Jew, so that didn't go too well. Then Manson decided a friend of his
was getting out of prison and me and this guy should hijack a
helicopter from Fishermans Wharf, fly over to San Quentin and drop
down when he was out in the yard.
SEM: Like Mission: Impossible
style?
BR: (laughs) Yeah! So that's the
reason why I was arrested going into San Quentin taking in a bullet.
I was supposed to take a bullet in every week until he had enough
bullets for zip guns or something and then some people he knew in
there were going to help him get to the helicopter. Thankfully that
didn't happen because I was caught smuggling that bullet into San
Quentin and was taken off his list. I may well have died ! (laughs)
Or at least gone to prison!
SEM: No kidding! I know at one
point you had said you were supposed to "hold your mud" on
it.
BR: Yeah and I did. Then when he died I thought, "ok I
can write the rest of this" because people were asking if I
could tell the rest of the story and I thought, "I'm not gonna
say anything at this time". Manson had said, "Rice, you
don't tell your girlfriend, you don't tell your best friend, you
don't tell your Momma. Once you get in line with this I want you to
hold your mud." So I said, "Ok". And I really did. My
wife doesn't even know this story. (laughs)
SEM: Wow! So she'll be interested
to read this!
BR: Oh yeah. I'd imagine a few
people will be, but I thought when you're involved with somebody
who's that big a figure, people like that cast a large shadow. I
don't want to go around the rest of my life being known as the guy
who tried to break Charlie Manson out of San Quentin.
SEM: Yeah really. You think you
have a bad rep now?
(Both laugh hysterically)
BR:
Whenever I try to explain myself it always comes out way worse than
what the original thing was. But I thought we'd put that story out
there because that kind of deals with the Bob Heick photo and Sassy
magazine and I still love the fact that I was in a fashion magazine
for teenage girls.
SEM: I had to double take a couple of times
like, "Sassy magaz..Boyd....huh?"
BR: (laughs)
SEM: (laughing) How did that
happen? How did that picture wind up in Sassy?
BR: Well, they were going around
the country interviewing skinheads. Bob Heick called up and says,
"Hey Boyd, how'd you like to get your face in a fashion magazine
for teenage girls?" and I said, "Yeah! What do I have to
do?" and he said, "Just dress up in uniform and come with
us. They're taking us on a pub crawl, they're gonna buy our booze all
night long" and I said, "Well how many people are coming?"
and he said, "Fifty, maybe sixty". I said, "You're
kidding? Sixty people?" He said, "Yep, people are coming up
from the South, from across the Bay, there's gonna be a ton of
people". Then when I show up to meet him in Union Square, nobody
else showed up. Not even one member of his group! I'm the only one
who showed up. The ground was damp and it was a little drizzly and he
said, "Yeah, they probably stayed home because of the weather"
and I said, "Bob, these are your fucking Aryan warriors? These
are the people who are supposed to be the spearhead of your white
revolution and they don't show up for a photo shoot because of
inclement weather?"
SEM: (laughs)
BR: So it was just me and Bob. They
took us all around, took a bunch of pictures. Unbeknownst to me,
every adult female in San Francisco had a subscription to Sassy
magazine. You know, people in their mid-twenties and thirties.
Everybody keeps telling me, "If you hadn't of done that stupid
Sassy magazine thing your life would be entirely different". But
you know, my life hasn't been that bad. Quite the contrary, In fact.
I lived out my fantasies on a daily basis year after year. I've lived
by my own law, I've never backed down, never apologized and I never
will. Like the Nazi thing too, Aleister Crowley embraced the idea
that he was the "wickedest man on Earth". He didn't say he
was the wickedest man on Earth, other people said that and overall it
proved to be good for him because it would weed out anybody who was
so unsophisticated that they couldn't see through that. It was a good
litmus test for him and it's been a good litmus test for me too.
SEM: I was going to say, the people
who get you, get you and the ones that don't, why bother with them.
BR: Well that's always been my
answer. I think my audience can see through that. When people come
out and attack me, it strengthens the bond between me and my audience
because they know better and I've got seventeen or eighteen thousand
people on Facebook who get it. I wouldn't expect that many people in
the world to understand me. I certainly wouldn't have when I first
started out.
SEM: And I'm one of those people! I
just started doing this music journalism thing a few months ago and I
went at it with the aim that, you know, I'm not going to make any
money at doing this, I'm just doing it for some of the bands and
artists that I like who are still out there creating and a lot of the
usual press outlets will gloss over them. So when the whole
exhibition controversy went down, I had contacted your wife and asked
her why no one was talking about it. She said there were a couple of
different articles in a few art magazines, which I read and thought,
well, no one has talked to you! So I'm taking my abilities as "Mr.
New Rock Journalist" and doing it. I thought that they're either
going to want to publish it or they'd say, "Boyd Rice...no way!"
BR: I thought this would be great
because it gives me a pretext for addressing all this stuff. I mean
you can't go around explaining yourself to everybody who's upset. I
would have spent the last four decades apologizing for my life. But I
would like to once and for all address this, cover all the different
points and you know....so this is good. So, thank you. A number of
people had said, "I'm so angry. I want to do a whole interview
with you about this" and it hasn't really happened but this will
be good.
Between this interview being
conducted and the publication, Greenspon gallery was going to have a
"delayed opening" of the exhibition. Boyd and Darja
declined their offer. Funny how the art world tried to save face over
this. Fuck 'em. They're too good for New York. The exhibition will be
staged in Paris now. Details will be forthcoming. Stay tuned.
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