Cut & paste from blog that reposted interview that was deleted in a blink of an eye from Stereo Embers magazine. Blog said they will keep it online for week and then delete. Interview should be interesting enough to read for more than week...
Controversy Is Romantic At A Distance: An Interview With Boyd RiceI 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 devisiveness. 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.
Keep up with Boyd Rice:
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/BoydRiceNonInstagram:
https://www.instagram.com/boydriceofficialMerchandise:
https://boydriceofficial.bigcartel.comMute Records artist page:
http://mute.com/artists/boyd-rice
