HELEN WHEELS: The Interview (1983)

 © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 1983/2022
Images from the Internet unless indicated

I have told this story before: before I even knew who punk/metal vocalist and songwriter Helen Wheels was, she made a deep impression on me. Though unidentified, she turns up at the CBGB bar in the 1978 film, Punking Out, where she mentions that she is never bored, as she fidgets around; the full 25-minute film is linked HERE; Helen’s comment is at about 22 minutes. Her strong personality and sharpness shook me up for some reason, and made me look at my own life.

Born Helen Robbins, it was the Dictators’ Handsome Dick Manitoba who gave her the “Wheels” to her name. But her larger claim to fame was as a songwriter who penned some songs for Blue Oyster Cult, including the B-side of “Don’t Fear the Reaper," “Tattoo Vampire.”

The petite and muscular Helen formed the Helen Wheels Band, and I knew I had to interview her. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Helen Wheels being not bored in Punking Out

Helen Wheels: The Interview (1983)

Helen Wheels’ stage persona may appear to be a frightening one. She licks knives and sticks them into the stage reasonably close to the audience, and shoots a pistol – point blank – into the crowd. With blanks, of course.

Her prior two bands, made up of biker types, added to this mounting paranoia. In these two previous forms, Helen’s music was not overly appealing to me. True, she wrote some cuts for Blue Oyster Cult’s infamous Agents of Fortune album (the only one I like, actually), the music she performed was heavy metalish, which was not the kind I wanted to hear.

So, with some reluctance, I went to see a Helen Wheels Band show (honestly, she was playing with a band I wanted to see) and I liked what I saw. Then her six-song EP, Post Modern Living (on Real American Records) came out and I was a bit more impressed, but the funk strumming was a bit tough for me to take at times. Despite all this, I found myself going to more of her shows at varied locations, from CBGB to the School of Visual Arts (SVA). Before I realized it, I was entrapped by the powerhouse. Her music is more down-to-earth rock’n’roll than previous incarnations, and I’ve come to love the record. What’s more, but don’t tell anyone, Helen Wheels is a pussycat. Her values are vastly different than my own liberal ones, and there are beliefs she holds true that never entered my ken. She’s open and has an infectious personality that’ll knock you on your ass.

There are a lot of things I could have asked Helen about, from her connection to BOC to her stance on UFO culture and her own abductions, to her tattoos, but I decided against that for being too obvious. So, when I interviewed her at the Brooklyn Zoo (March 26, opening for Iggy Pop), I walked in with only one question on my mind.

FFanzeen: In the movie Punking Out, there’s a shot of you at the bar of CBGB, saying that you’ve never been bored in your whole life.

Helen Wheels: Yep, it’s true. I’m still never bored. I’m so busy all the time doing stuff, and if I don’t have something else to do. I just go over and pump some iron.

FFanzeen: How long have you been doing that?
Helen: Kinda in a less serious way, for a couple of years, but quite seriously for three months. At least four days a week. I find it’s something that’s making me extremely happy, as well as strong. I mean, I can bench press 130 pounds now, which is quite a bit more than I weigh. I guess it stimulates the blood, but just being strong, you have a new kind of confidence. I mean, I was always strong and I always carry a big knife, but now, sometimes I don’t even carry my knife. It makes you feel pretty cocky and good. It’s my latest favorite thing to do – when I get sick of making phone calls and booking the band, and making posters and all that other stuff, and I still work on the wardrobe, making new costumes. Plus, the way I keep from being bored is that I haven’t had a television in 12 years, so that really helps. I think television is a negative kind of thing – video games – kind of programming things. And I think it gets people kind of depressed and down, so I read a lot, and pumping iron is the best thing for me lately. It makes me feel really cheerful. It must stimulate certain hormones or something, because I get really high off it. The same kind you get off singing, from the oxygen. I really enjoy it.

FFanzeen: Before you were doing it seriously, you were always in good shape; muscular.
Helen: Yeah, for years I’ve always had a set of dumbbells around and I would lift, here and there. I always enjoyed doing any kinds of test of strength: arm wrestling (for example). But I find it’s also amazing because it’s the only way I’ve ever heard of to actually get a perfect body.

FFanzeen: So you do more exercise than just lifting weights.
Helen: I do chinning, I have a trapeze. I hang upside down, do sit-ups hanging upside down, and I have a bench. I also have, like, leg presses, and extensions.

FFanzeen: You have all this where you live?
Helen: Yeah, I’ve got a home gym. I even got a little trampoline to run on.

FFanzeen: Isn’t it better to work out with a coach present?
Helen: Yeah, my boyfriend’s my coach. He’s great. He did a lot of weight lifting when he was younger, and now we work out together. The main thing is to keep good form, whatever you do, because you can hurt yourself pretty badly.

FFanzeen: Are you going to start competing?
Helen: I was fantasizing about competing in this contest in Queens, but I might wait until there’s one in Manhattan, ‘cause I really don’t want to take the subway out in my little posing suit. Actually, I have to get a posing suit. I don’t have anything quite small enough.

(ffoto by Robert Barry Francos)

FFanzeen: You could always use your leather bikini (that she uses on stage).
Helen: [laughs] Some of those girls really don’t have too much on. I’ve recently become friends with the middleweight Miss America, Leslie Barber, who is absolutely incredible. She’s my height and she has, like, fourteen-inch biceps. She’s great.

FFanzeen: Have you ever been interviewed by any bodybuilding magazines?
Helen: Yes. As a matter of fact, a magazine called Lady Athlete photographed me at the Ritz on Monday. They’re doing a big piece on me. They did “before” pictures, where I’d only been working out for a couple of weeks. They may be here tonight also, with the editor of Body and Power, which is the biggest bodybuilding magazine. The writers have taken a lot of interest in me, because they feel I might be good for the sport, in a sense. Women’s bodybuilding is a very young, fledgling sport, and people have a lot of misconceptions about it. Like at the competitions, there might be 300 men and eight women.

FFanzeen: What kind of misconceptions?
Helen: Oh, you know, that the women are gonna end up being, like 230-pound bull-dykes after six weeks. It doesn’t happen, because women don’t have testosterone. They have different hormones, so the main thing that most women will get first is that they’ll lose their body fat, which will make them happy. And then they’ll get definition. And they’ll get strength.. If you have a bad back, it helps your posture a lot, as long as you watch your form.

FFanzeen: Maybe I should try it.
Helen: A lot of people I know are, just because they see what it’s doing for me. I think it’s real positive in the same way that I feel, like, with our rock’n’roll: we’re really trying to show a strong, healthy, American image. Strong is the right word, rather than the kind of degenerate, debilitated Communist-junkie thing that is really what the media is putting out. You know, I won’t name names, but they really love the bands where there’s drug addicts, and stuff, because those people are so easy to manipulate. Put them in the big-time, tell them what to do, how to act, what to wear; you can’t put this song on the record, you put this one on. I firmly believe there’s a major conspiracy going on in this country, and the way it affects rock’n’roll is that they choose the patsies, rather than strong artist who want to control their own image and their own music. They can’t control us. To me, the bodybuilding fits in perfectly with what I’m trying to say with my music, which is, “look to yourself. Be strong yourself, because we’re the only ones who can turn this country around.” I firmly believe we’re the only country – unless there are some other free countries that have a Constitution (and) a Bill of Rights – that encourages creativity and invention, instead of squashing it. I mean, there is no rock’n’roll in Russia, there’s no rock’n’roll in Poland. They only give you disco, because disco is for mechanized minds that don’t think. I mean, those beats-per-minute puts part of your brain to sleep. It’s a serious thing. People don’t realize the seriousness of media control. And, of course, punks, and all the people, they get their images from the media, so the media even twists around the strong and good ones. I really try to speak in no uncertain terms about what I want and what I feel; what I want to bring to people from my music, aside that it’s fun, kick-ass energy. That’s the top thing. That’s what rock’n’roll is, is freedom. I want it back the way it was – 1776.

FFanzeen: Do you feel Reagan is trying to ruin that with his cutting the budget in the arts areas?
Helen: I think Reagan is a pawn. He’s not in the Council of Foreign Relations, which is unusual for a president, but everyone who advises him, is. He’s not that evil, but he’s not in control, either.

FFanzeen: What is the fascination you have for motorcycles?
Helen: Speed; throbbing energy – I only like American motorcycles.

FFanzeen: Harleys, of course.
Helen: Harleys. I like Indians. They’re hard to come by. I’ve been riding motorcycles since I was fifteen, and that’s more than half my life. Motorcycles (are) the same thing as rock’n’roll. They’re about freedom. The people that are riding – some of them are outlaws and some of them wanna just get there and ride, ride, ride. They just wanna be out and be free. It’s just “headin’ down the highway / Looking for adventure.” It is ultimate. I mean, I like the real hardcore, outlaw bikers. I think those people are kinda like, you know, the last cowboys. And by outlaw, that doesn’t mean killing people, that means making your own laws. Living your own life, having your own values. I don’t give a shit what the world thinks of me anymore. I’ve been suppressed. I’ve been put down, and I’ve been really maligned in some press. I’ve been censored off of national TV and radio for speaking out against drugs, and of being basically clean-cut, and a kick-ass, biker-rock’n’roller. And I fuckin’ resent it, because look who they put up there. Anybody who shoots dope gets first crack at it, and so many fans have died since I started rock’n’rolling, and so many of them are like the people who come here in the audience. You have a responsibility, as a person on stage, to put out a positive message, to say something uplifting, something that’s good for people. Not just that it’s all immaterial, that you have no future. That’s something that the Brits did when they said that punk started in England. We all know that they copied the Ramones. Punk started in 1976 on the Bowery at CBGB’s, which is where the punks adopted the motorcycle jackets as their symbol of freedom, ‘cause it was a biker bar.

FFanzeen: Actually, it was ’75.
Helen: ’75 was the beginning, ‘cause ’76, it was kind of like the christening. And you had the real American bands, like the Dictators.

FFanzeen: Great band!
Helen: Fantastic band. And they got shut down. I resent it, ‘cause they were one of the greatest bands. The Ramones, bands like that, that were very patriotic. I mean, if you look at a Ramones logo, it’s a presidential seal: Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee and whoever they have now.

FFanzeen: Ritchie.
Helen: Then they bring over the British disco shit and all that, and mixing it up with the rock’n’roll. And then they’re calling that New Wave.

FFanzeen: Don’t you feel that it is also from American groups, like Devo?
Helen: Yeah, but to me, that was more like “thin-tie, wimp rock.” Yeah, that was the same kind of thing that the press did. They picked up those bands, and called those bands the New Wave, and they left out the Dictators; the Ramones, who should have had a No. 1 hit a long time ago. They’re doing all right, but they’re not having the success they should have. Look at some of the big Brit bands. They aren’t very talented, and any kids who were hanging out in the early days, I mean, those were not the bands they went to see. They were the thin-tie ones with the least energy and the most, like, disco mixing, which is what they went to for big money; and to me, that was a real sick perversion of the whole thing … it has no place in what I want to say. It goes back to what I was saying about having responsibility. I see junkies up on stage, and the audience thinks they’re the greatest fuckin’ thing they’ve come across since the Sex Pistols, or whatever shit they got last from the media, and then they think, “Oh, man, it’s so hip. Let’s try shooting dope. Let’s check it out. That’s what our rock’n’roll heroes are doing.” Right from Keith Richards on down. And the media loves it. Then I go to the shows and the kids that were alive and wonderful – full of energy – they’re, like, nodded out on the tables. And then, one by one, like Jessie Blue [not to be confused with the bland “Oranje Guice” singer, Jessi Blue – RBF, 2022], they die. By accident, you know? “We didn’t shoot junk all the time, just now and then.” Jessie Blue was a friend of mine and she was a real talented girl. She had a lot of heart and soul. She was in the Slander Band. She was just “foolin’ around,” you know. She was in Punking Out with me. And she died from it. So many of them died from it. If they don’t die, they’re like the living dead. And that’s worse, ‘cause then they’re just a patsy of the powers-that-be, that don’t want people like me around to say, “Take your vitamins, lift weights, and be strong, and you can control your own life, and bring the country back to health with you.”

FFanzeen: Was there ever a time when you were into drugs?
Helen: I’ve taken drugs, sure, but I really cleaned up my act. The older I got, the smarter I got. I found out that I wanted to live. I still go 100 miles an hour on a motorcycle once in a while; 110.

FFanzeen: [Faking shock:] But isn’t that illegal?
Helen: Well, the laws – you know, you do it late at night when there’s no one else on the road so it’s not a danger to them. I think everybody has the potential to be their own person. Everyone has the potential for the kind of health and happiness and freedom that I’m talking about, in this country, anyway. It’s only because of the twisted media image that so many people are down on themselves; sad, can’t find a place in life. That’s what [the media] want. They’re trying to beat down the strongest ones. I always come back. I always come back stronger, too. And that’s what I hope to encourage other people to do, to fight for whatever the fuck you wanna do. If you want to be an accountant, man, fight to be that accountant. Be the best one that there is. But if you want to be something that’s impossible to get at, like the president, or a total outlaw, or a rock’n’roll star, just follow your heart. That’s what “Break the Chains” is about, it’s about personal freedom. Following your intuition and your heart. To be whatever you want to be. I was just a kid who dreamed. There’s not too many people up there giving you a positive word. There’s all this negativity coming down. They have to fantasize because the reality is made so miserable for them. I see a lot of people now; they just want to escape. But I figure the real thing to do is just make it better so you can be in reality and feel good.

FFanzeen: How do you propose to do that?
Helen: I think I’m already doing it through the best methods I can. If people will get our record and check out some of the political inserts and some of the information there, pass the information along, and just become more well-informed about the fact that there is a media conspiracy in this country. Bankers own Marshall Amps, own ABC’s studios, own Hollywood, own all the newspaper chains, own just about everything except fanzines. Which are pure. Just the way, like, a lot of the new bands are real and pure, and that’s why I love them. I’ve had interviews for big papers where they said, “This part is too hot. Take it out. Leave in this nice part here. Leave in this stupid part here, this joke here.” Then fuck the whole thing, ‘cause if I can’t say something that means something to me, then why say anything at all? … Along with the real punk bands, and the real New Wave bands in the late ‘70s, was this immense network of fanzines crossing the country. There’s still quite a few of them. We got a list of 3000 of them with our record. Maybe 50 went out of business within that time, but a couple of new ones started. And to me, that’s where I find out about the censored bands, the local bands, the real stuff going on. They don’t wanna give me big money for stuff yet, but they’re gonna have to pretty soon, ‘cause I won’t shut up and I won’t disappear. Not unless they actually try to assassinate me or something, which they won’t do because I’m too strong. I won’t stand for it. [Laughs] It’s not just me. There are a lot of people coming up now that just aren’t going to disappear, that are positive. And I think it’s really going to start turning the tide, because people, even if their minds say, “Yeah, let’s shoot junk because so-and-so there is so cool, and this-and-that. Let’s snort speed and do all this stuff,” their inside animal, their intuition does not want that, even if their minds want to do it. If someone starts speaking to their inside animal – this is like, magic stuff, and it’s saying, “Be strong, be healthy. Be who you want to be. Really realize your fuckin’ dreams.” The animal says, “Do that, do that. Try it.” ‘Cause I find the more I follow my intuition, the happier I feel. Our record is being played in 40 states now, just by our independent efforts. Features all across the country. It’s being played in Buenos Aries, London – I think it’s tremendously exciting that this can be done independently. Independent records are really the healthiest thing in the whole industry. It’s the same as the fanzines; it’s made of the people.

FFanzeen: So, you would say your record was a success.
Helen: Absolutely. I think it was an artistic success because we put out the image, and the music, and the songs that we chose. We did it at an ultra-budget price with real good technology. We had wonderful people working on it. It’s getting played on some 150,000-watt stations, which compares with the Pat Benatar sound, or whatever shlock they get paid to play. I think the fact that it’s getting played in 40 states, is a tremendous success for us. And now, a year after its release, it’s still being picked up as a new add by maybe 5-10 stations a week that we know of. We haven’t made a fortune out of it, but we sold out the first pressing, and we’re pretty well into the second pressing now. I hope I’m not naive and that it hasn’t peaked yet. The way I look at it, it’s going to bring us a lot of success. As an independent, it’s gotten good out there. We got fantastic reviews cross-country. In fact, we’ve got response from radio stations that said they weren’t even going to listen to the record because they thought the reviews were all hype, ‘cause nobody had an EP with six great songs on it. Then they write us these letters: “Fuckin’-A. I didn’t believe the reviews ‘cause they seemed like a hype, but the record is great and we’re playing all six cuts.” We did a taped interview by [scene photographer and writer] Mariah Aguiar (d. 2005) that has been on 30 radio stations across the country, and we have a request for that quite regularly. In fact, I’m going to do a syndication radio show that’ll be on about 15 radio stations on the East Coast in April. It’s a new show, coming out of New Brunswick, New Jersey. And the college stations, where they are not programmed to play only this and only that, we’ve had tremendous success because … they like it. And that’s the young people. That’s fine with me. I hope we hit all the people. I think we got a real good start. I think we’re doing real well. I’m hoping to win the lottery so I can make another record. [Laughs] I’m ready. Joe Bouchard (bassist for Blue Oyster Cult) wants to produce it again. The same engineer (Corky Stasiak) wants to do it. They’re really tremendously excited that what could have been a dinky project has won them a tremendous amount of acclaim, too. It was Joe’s first outing as a producer, and he’s getting all kinds of kudos, so he’s ready for the next one.

FFanzeen: How is this band different from your previous two?
Helen: Well, I always like to think that as I progressed as a singer and a writer, my musicians have just gotten better and better. I think that this band [Jack Rigg, guitar, who currently works with Bouchard as writer and composer; Orville Davis, bass, has gone country; Paul Garisto, drums, is a session/touring musician including with the Psychedelic Furs and Iggy Pop – RBF, 1983/2022] has the most variety, musically. It’s not all, like 4/4, heavy metal or something. I think everybody feels a real freedom with their creativity. We’ll write a lot of songs and boot out most of them and just keep what seems kind of golden and special to us. Songs that we all like. I really don’t think we have any boring songs. And I certainly never get bored on stage. I think it’s the best band by far that I’ve ever had. I love the rhythms. There are so much more unusual rhythms, and it’s challenged me to write in many new ways. Like, now I’m writing a lot more as we’re writing the music, rather than writing a poem and setting it to music. It’s more of a give and take product. I think I’m doing my best writing now than I ever did in my life.

FFanzeen: Do you think that you’re playing with guns and knives on stage promotes violence?
Helen: No. Certainly no more than television does. I think a lot less. What it does is promote an image that people are little bit afraid of, which is the armed and dangerous woman. I think it’s an important cultural image to put out, and that’s one reason to do it, because of the “weaker sex” bullshit. … When people are hassling everyone else on the street, as I pass by, they say, “DT ticket,” which means, “Don’t Touch.” That means you don’t fuck around with this person because this person knows themselves, and looks a little weird. See, I don’t believe in gun control, because the way that things have gotten, all the bad guys have guns. They buy a Saturday night special for $25. Why shouldn’t I have a gun to protect my house? I don’t think it invites trouble. The same as bodybuilding. I think it gives a different image of womanhood for the ‘80s, that a woman is not passive. People don’t think of women as fighting back. If they did, they wouldn’t fuck around with them so much. Nobody fuckin’ touches me.

(ffoto by Robert Barry Francos)

FFanzeen: Are you trained in any of the martial arts?
Helen: No, but I wouldn’t mind being. It’s not something I would put out of my mind. Bodybuilding is one way of making myself strong and I might be interested in doing that. … Although the ultimate defense is a .45. It’s the same as pressing 125-plus pounds. When I can press 180 pounds, then if a 180-pound man starts to attack me, I’d be able to pick him up and throw him against the wall, and break his head. That’s what I see is a great use for that. When you can do pushups on your fingertips, you can put your finger right through somebody’s throat, or you pump out their eyeball, they won’t bother you. If you’re strong enough to rip their nose off their face, that’s great. To me, it’s holy. It’s kind of an art, to make yourself strong and whole. I am very spiritual. To me, I’m one with nature. That’s my goddess. And nature demands me to be the strongest, most intelligent, most creative being that I could possibly be. To do the most with my life. To me, that’s living an entirely spiritual life. Just to be the fullest human being that I could be. If I’m not writing songs, I’m managing the band, or working and doing something for bucks, or sewing my costume. I believe in doing everything related to my life. I’m a great cook, you know? I enjoy every aspect of living. I really try to. Even if you feel shitty, there’s something good you can get out of it. Read a book or something. It’s just a matter of keeping your mind alive. And not being discouraged by all the shit that’s in the world. I can’t stress the media conspiracy enough, because they want to put us down. They really want powerless people. The same thing with gun control. That’s the second amendment. There must be an armed militia of the people to keep the Constitution in line for when all these scumbags in Washington are changing the immigration laws and doing all this stuff that is destroying our country. We must have an armed populace that has the brains – and they don’t get the brains from eating Wonder Bread – that can take care of themselves. What they’re doing with all this shitty food to these kids now is terrifying, because we’re getting a new generation of nutrition. That’s something people should be immensely aware of, just taking care of their bodies and their minds. Plus, it’s like a suicide country, if you just let it tumble down the way it’s going.

FFanzeen: How do you think we can change that?
Helen: By becoming more well-informed, by watching our own personal health and strength, by finding out what we are guaranteed in our freedoms and making sure we get those guarantees. That’s what this country is built on, is the Constitution/Bill of Rights. And that’s what gives us the right to rock’n’roll. The right to express ourselves and to speak out about what we really believe in. From the selfish standpoint of an artist, I would do anything to protect the freedoms of this country, because they would have killed me in Russia. They would have put me in jail 15 years ago, just for being an outlaw, let alone singing rock’n’roll. Because I won’t be told what to do. I really believe in that for everyone: self-determination. And I think that people are hungry for a positive, American message. I’m fuckin’ sick of the British Invasion, which never ended since the Beatles, and then try to pummulgate it into everyone’s minds here that the Brit bands are the good bands, because they’re the ones in the media. They’re the ones getting $3,000 when we get $300 or something. People say, “Why don’t you go over to England and make it big over there, and then come back?” That’s the last resort, because I’m American and I’d really like to make it in my own country first. I wouldn’t mind doing well over there, too, because fans are fans. They have to clear the songs with the BBC, you know. I mean, it’s not a Communist country, but there’s a lot of political repression there. And to me, most of them are neo-disco (and) it’s all this synthesizer hype bands – and it’s all phony. And I really resent it that our media and our people are slobbering over all the English stuff. There’s thousands of great American bands here that are not getting a chance.

FFanzeen: You can hardly get a gig at a major club in New York on a weekend unless you open for a British band.
Helen: I’ve got everything going against me: I’m a chick, I’m white, I’m real American. I’m not a commie, I’m not gay, I play rock’n’roll – they don’t want me, but I’m not going away. … But I try to keep a positive thing going. Most of the people that are rockin’, they just wanna rock, and bless them. May nature bless them and let them rock. It’s the healthiest thing they can do.

When it came time to publish the article in its original form, I told Helen I was going to make it into the two-page center. She hand-created a beautiful piece of illustration as a border, after I gave her the dimensions, which I used, of course. It was not boring.

Looking back in hindsight from 2022, I wonder what Helen would make of the modern, Internet-informed, COVID-infested, anti-vaccination, White Nationalist groups, “fake news,” post-Trump, and post-1/6 insurrection America. Unfortunately, we will never know.

In 1996, Helen moved to Ithaca, New York, and after a stint as a trainer and opening up her own small press imprint, she became a member of the band Skeleton Crew and was recording a new album (Helen Wheels and the Skeleton Crew).

Helen went into Ithaca Hospital for some corrective back surgery, having hurt it over a decade before, caught an infection, and passed away on January 27, 2000, at the age of 50. Maybe her goddess was lovingly trying to protect her from learning about 9/11, nearly two years later..

 

 

JIM CARROLL: Poet Turned Rock’n’Roll Star

Text by Julia Masi
Images from the Internet
© 1980, 81 FFanzeen
All song lyrics: © 1980 by Earl McGrath Music / Jim Carroll Music; ASCAP All Rights Reserved

The following article/interview with poet/musician Jim Carroll, written by Julia Masi, was originally published in FFanzeen magazine; part one appeared in issue #6 (1980), and Part II in issue #7 (1981). Jim Carroll passed away in September 2009, so I republish this in tribute; even though I personally was not a fan, I respect his accomplishments. I did see him perform a number of times at CBGB’s, however, jumping in with the Lenny Kaye Connection. – RBF

Part I: The Poet

[Jim Carroll]
He may be a rookie to the rock’n’roll stage, but already Jim Carroll’s got a following. Last summer, a group of his devoted fans traveled from San Francisco to New York for his Fourth of July gig at Irving Plaza, where his music was more dynamic than the firework symphony in the street.

If he has any gimmick at all, it’s his honesty. He’s as willing to lay it on the line during an interview as he is in his most recent book, The Basketball Diaries, or his stunning debut album, A Catholic Boy, on Atco Records.

In fading blue jeans and a plaid shirt that matches his reddish blond hair and off-sets his clear blue eyes, Jim seems younger than his 29 years. He’s spent the past few years living in California, but he hasn’t lost his New York accent or his effection for the City. On August 22, he spoke almost non-stop to this awe-struck reporter, explaining his evolution from Pulitzer Prize nominated poet to up-and-coming rock’n’roll star.

[Organic Trains (1967)]
“Poets were always rock’n’roll stars. It’s kind of like the poet’s right to sing, as loudly and as vulgarly as he wants to. Poets now-a-days have forgotten that. Poets now-a-days are more concerned with a kind of style and not so much [with] heart. A good poet should work on two levels. The heart effects someone who is virtually illiterate. The heart level really has no verbal sophistication at all. And then [the poem] should effect the intellect as well.

“The whole thing that puts me off to the poetry scene is that it’s become kind of petty and incestuous. That’s out of frustration and I understand it, because of the way Americans take on poetry, you’d think of him as a wimp; so it’s out of frustration that poets say, ‘Fuck everything. I’m not writing for the public anymore, I’m writing for other poets.’ And they start to get into all these systems of style, like minimal poetry, which really has to do with head games, you know, intellect games.

“I wanted to get back to what the traditional role of the poet’s always been, the way he’s honored in France as the most noble profession. Doctors and lawyers envy poets there – still. And, in America…” he pauses to light a cigarette and leans forward, “I don’t give a shit that most people think poets are faggots. Or whatever their fucking ideas of poets are. I decided that I was, in the traditional sense, gonna make poetry a noble profession again.” He recalls the conversation he used to have with Patti Smith and how he would tell her, “’You just have to write your lyric and put it there. And not worry about publishing or effecting people. It’s just writing for history. Actually, it’s a great honor to be a poet now,’ I’d say to her, “’because the world is probably gonna fuckin’ blow itself up before we die and we’ll be the poets to record the end, even if there’s no one left to read it… No, we should be concerned about life and effecting people while we’re still alive.’”

[Upside Down (1970)]
After giving some thought to the way he was, and wanted to effect people, Jim realized that he needed a larger audience. And rock seemed like a perfect medium. “Kids perceive lyrics through the heart that they can’t intellectually. Say certain lyrics by the Velvet Underground; certain illusions and stuff would be over kids’ heads, but they’d get them.” His musician friends were always asking him to write lyrics. He had collaborated with Patti Smith and Allen Lanier, of the Blue Oyster Cult. “At first, I thought I would just do lyrics. But then, when I saw punk happening, I realized that I didn’t need all the technical ability that was traditionally needed. I could do my songs myself because no one can interpret the songs as well as the person who writes them.

“I wrote the music to my songs to my vocal limitations. And I had the band write the music to my own limitations. As I got better, I took more risks with my voice. I wanted to be careful. I didn’t want to write art. I didn’t want to make an art record. I hate that. I didn’t want poems with just music behind them. I wanted them to be songs. Maybe on the next record we’ll have some songs with spoken introductions that go right into the songs,” he kicks his foot and pushes the palm of his hand forward to emphasize, “that kick right into songs. But that’s easy for me. That’s what I’ve always done and it’s my strength. But I wanted to get the hard part out of the way first and just find myself with this first record.

“Kids are the hardest to lie to and most rock’n’roll lyrics are like an afterthought: in 90 percent of the cases, they’re more like the musician’s idea of what a lyric should be. And they’re not integral to that person’s experience. And so that way, when you sing them, they’re not real. They could be sung by anyone. You’re singing them but you might as well be a stranger yourself then, because they’re not about your experience. They’re about what your idea of a rock song experience should be like. Like limiting the subject matter to getting laid or not getting laid; those songs might as well be sung to some fucking fly stuck to some roof of some abandoned Chateau somewhere, for all the relevance they have to that guy who sings with no experience. They might as well be instrumentals. What I care about is putting all my vulnerability up front, especially on stage.

[Living At the Movies (1973)]
“When we first started doing shows, that’s what people recognized. I was always worried about what I was going to do when I got on stage. When I’m singin’, it’s okay, but when the instrumental break comes… Mick [Jagger] could dance around and stuff and it’s fantastic, but I can’t do that. I’d look like a fool. I can dance and shit but it wouldn’t be real to me. So I just decided that when I get out there, what I’ll just do is not rely on being influenced by anyone in my stage presence. If the songs are integral, if the words are integral to my experience, then my moves on stage will be integral to the words. Just let them move me. It was incredible the way it happened.” Jim’s eyes grow wide and a look of genuine surprise takes over his face: “ When I got out on the stage for the first time, I had fun on stage. I had music there instead of just doing poetry readings. I was moved out of my head. When I saw a video tape for the first time of myself on stage, I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t remember doing all those things…making any of those moves. I make very minimal moves most of the time.” That’s when he’s on stage. During an interview, he moves constantly. His long legs wrap themselves around each other, dangle over the arm of the chair, and stretch out in front of him as if he were unconsciously performing a yoga regimen. He explains, “[My movements] reflect my vulnerability the same way that the lyrics reflect their vulnerability fro their experiences. When people mention that, they say it’s mesmerizing when it’s right…when the magic happens.

“When a person puts forth their vulnerabilities – their weaknesses and their strengths – then it can’t be anything but an experience for the other person to relate to it. And I make the lyrics just abstract enough so that people can see that they come out of my experience, but they’re also abstract enough so that they can take them and make them their own, too. They just hit a chord in the heart.

[The Basketball Diaries (1978)]
“If you write lyrics just for the intellect, it comes out some phony stream of consciousness bullshit. It’s like rhetoric. Or else, you try to be clever, like some art band, and it’s like some tenth-rate William Burroughs. I hate groups like that. They’re trying to be clever and it’s all paraphernalia and gimmickry. They take no risks at all. They don’t show anything of themselves. It’s all hidden behind gimmicks and outfits, and things like that. That’s theater. Rock’n’roll is just about putting it out with force. And it’s real. It’s immediate. They lyrics need immediacy. Their own vulnerability’s right there. Let everything show.” He speaks with disgust of the “cock row” (heavy metal) bands, calling them “devious. Rock’n’roll is about sex, sure, but it doesn’t have to be completely. I don’t believe that and I don’t buy it. It should have some kind of integrity. As a poet, that’s what I’m trying to do: show that poetry does have integrity.

“But the line I have that sums it up most,” he quotes his song, “It’s Too Late,” “’I’m here to give you my heart and you want a fashion show…’ I saw that with the punk scene. There’s certain element of it, in San Francisco, where they make punk clubs into singles bars. They don’t listen to the music. They just come decked out in outrageousness. They don’t realize it’s like the hippies of the ‘60s. As I see here [in New York], the people in clubs, more and more lately, are evolving back into just looking like street kids. Fashion is great, but inconspicuousness allows you to get a lot of things done that you don’t, if you look outrageous.

“I want to be part of life. I don’t want to be standing on the edge looking into it. I have to do that by the nature of what I am anyway. Why should you outcast yourself in some kind of outside environment? I went through a whole period when I had my hair long and stuff, even through I wasn’t into the hippie scene. I just thought it was wrong. I was a street kid. I guess the reason I grew my hair long was just to get laid and be an outcast ‘cause the girls I was with dug it. But now I just think differently. My art’s too important for that anymore. If people do it, then it’s fine. But in my position, the way things are for me, I just find I can be more effective without it. Without having any particular style or fashion: ‘It ain’t no contribution / To go and rely on an institution / To validate your chosen art / And to sanction your boredom, and let you play out your art’ [“It’s Too late”],

[Book of Nods (1986)]
“And then I talk about the negativity of the whole scene. I say two things. In some song I say, ‘It’s when the body at the bottom / That body is my own reflection / But it ain’t hip to sink that low / Unless you’re gonna make a resurrection’ [“Into the Night”]. I’m speaking more about my own experiences with drugs and stuff,” which he speaks more about only in the past tense. “You know, there’s nothing heroic about it. You know, that whole thing about, like, a lot of people get into it because it stacks you up above everyone else – the whole romance of the whole thing? They think it’s heroic. And it is heroic in the sense that at least you’re not a dilettante. You’ve thrown yourself over into it completely. You have a chance to be heroic in the real traditional sense of poetry, to start a second life, by coming out of the fuckin’ pit. And I say also in that same song, ‘When they got nothing to give / They parent their legs for what’s negative / They’re so decadent, until their daddy’s money from home is all spent… / So I think it’s time / Because it’s too easy to rely / On worshipping devils and strangers in bed / Though they get good drugs and they do give good head’ [“Into the Night”]. I like those lines,” he smiles. “It is true, you know? I can’t completely deny them, myself. The attraction of the negative. It’s been a part of my life for too long. To look for the good is so much harder.

“”The mythology and the ritual of Catholicism, I’ve come back to. I think it’s fantastic. The whole cult of the Virgin is very attractive. It’s the only feminine side to Western religion. The Virgin is hardly ever mentioned in Protestant religions.

“A good poet should have a feminine side to him. The thing that made me feel best about a review one time, was that [the critic was] saying that I had the ‘best feminine side of any poet in America,’ which has nothing to do with homosexuality. The guy pointed out that. It’s usually homosexuals that have the least feminine side in the works. It’s like Jung said, [that] every guy has a female side and every woman has a male side. Which, as an artist, is imperative to have. And it comes naturally to me.”

Referring to the title of his album, Jim comments that, “A lot of people think that’s an anti-Catholic song.” Comparing the discipline of Catholic elementary school to a jail, he recites, “’I took the doctor’s scalpel, and I slit the cord’ [“Catholic Boy”]. I wanted life. But then, all of a sudden, I got put back in the fuckin’ slammer. They confine you with dogma and put boundaries around it. But the mythology is just the opposite, to open up. It’s about the letting of blood. There’s a lot of images of blood. I call my album Catholic Boy because my whole life is based on [it]. Your history comes out of the streets and what effects you when you were young. That’s what’s in your heart and that’s what’s in your gut. You can’t escape it. People who go to Eastern religions after they grow up are looking in the wrong way. That’s only in the intellect that you think about it. But in the heart, you have to rely on what you grew up with when the heart was formed. In the heart sense, in the sprit of it. And that’s Catholicism for me.

[Fear of Dreaming (1993)]
“What could be more ‘punk rock’ than the Stations of the Cross? Following a guy around with a crown of thorns and a crucifix – His own crucifix – up to the top of a mountain, and having Him pierced in the side by a centurion so that the blood flows? And that blood! I think that’s what the crucifixion was all about. When the centurion struck Him in the side and this magical blood came forth, that was supposedly mixed with water – a Holy Water – that blood was a letting out of all man’s ego. He had to die for man’s ego because man’s ego had built up to such a point. I mean, man’s ego is overwhelming. His arrogance. And his pride.”

He leans forward and drops the level of his voice until it’s just above a whisper. “When I think about it intellectually, it makes sense to me, and that was what junk was all about. After a while, you just wanted to do it to keep watching the blood come up. And letting the blood come out to take out your own ego, because when you were high on junk, you could see the bullshit of what it was. It just slowed everything down and your vision was narrowed. Most people think you just go on the nod. Well, people who go on the nod are wasting a heroin head. I liked a good nod as much as anyone when I was on the stuff. But man, I wanted to see people and their bullshit, too.”

Sinking back into his chair, he admits that, “with this ‘Catholic Boy’ song, that’s kind of anti-Catholic school, but when I say ‘redeemed through pain not through joy,’ that’s the way it should be. The fact is that these Born Again people, you hear them speak, they testify, ‘The Lord is with me 24 hours a day. I get joy from Him. I get such a buzz.’ It’s like a methadone maintenance program for religion. They’re gonna get the buzz 24 hours a day or nothin’s happenin’. They want something back for it.

[Poems, Interviews, Photographs (1997)]
“The thing that I always thought about religion was, that if you love God, you don’t do it because you’re afraid you’re gonna go to Hell. You don’t not sin because you’re afraid you’re gonna go to Hell or because you want to get into Heaven and get this 24 hour a day buzz. You do it because God made you. And you’re alive. And that’s all! If you’re redeemed through pain; if you pray three months that this good friend of yours is not gonna die of leukemia and he dies anyway and you’ve still got faith in what you’ve been praying to before, then that’s love of God and belief. And I don’t get any buzz from that. The fact is I can’t even say I have faith in God. In an intellectual sense, I don’t even know if I can believe in It. There’s too much else happening. But I love the rituals of it. And I want to believe it in my heart. And sometimes I can believe it. But it’s very hard.

“Like Rimbaud said, ‘Charity is a key.’ And that’s what the letting of the blood of Christ is all about: charity. And charity has to be the key more ever now. And those people just don’t think about that.”

Jim tells of his friend who embraced the diet and philosophy of an obscure religious cult. He lived in the desert fasting and preparing himself for the destruction of civilization. He ate only fruit and things that grew from the trees in an attempt to purify his body enough so that he would be able to consume his own urine. Jim explains that, “apparently, during Armageddon, when the Four Horsemen come and the world’s ending, then you can get by and survive, ‘cause you don’t need any food. All the food’s gonna wither. You can get by on your own cycle of pissing and drinking it. And in theory, that works. But the whole point to me was, and I said this to him one time, what the fuck are you gonna do, hide in a cave during a nuke war and drink your own piss? Why would you want to, man? What I’d wanna do is just be around the person I love most. Or, if not, be with any stranger if you didn’t have time to make it to that person.

“I’d feel really left out at this point, if there was a nuclear war and I didn’t die. I don’t want to be in a cave drinking piss. The only thing we could do then is give comfort. I’d want to grab the hand of the person that was next to me, whether it was the person I loved, or some stranger if I couldn’t make it to that person, if the world was ending real quick, and just grab them in whatever shelter you’re in. Or in the subway or wherever you’re hiding from this fuckin’ attack; and just grab that person and hold her hand as tight as you can and just grab hands with the other people. I’m physically a cold person. Usually, I’m not into, you know, that California stuff where everyone touches and hugs people and stuff. That always made me uptight. But is this case, I’d wanna hold the person’s hand so tight. You only have a few seconds. It’s the only time that charity would win out in this fucked up world.

“People would be more alive in those last few seconds – because death was comin’ – then they would be in their whole lives. Death would be life for them then. It’s such an irony, but that’s the case. People would feel for once for the person next to them instead of just for themselves. They look into someone else’s eyes and probably see for the first time in their life, because the edge of death and that flirtation with death always brings that out.

“So this guy drinking piss, what’s he gonna do? First of all, if Revelations is right and the world is gonna end through some kind of mystical thing, the Four Horsemen and the Apocalypse, there ain’t no cave you’re gonna be able to hide in. Those Four Horsemen are gonna check out everything. The whole idea is people are gonna pray to die and not be able to die. So he ain’t gonna be able to hide. If it’s more like just a straight pragmatic nuclear war and everything’s gonna be destroyed, then he could hide from it in a cave.” He lowers his voice again. “But why would you want to? What would you come down to? A bunch of fuckin’ mutants!”

Part II: Soundtrack of the Times


Jim Carroll, 1994
Some people spend their whole lives searching for the spotlight, while others stumble into it repeatedly. Take Jim Carroll for example.

When Jim Carroll chronicles his career, he makes fame sound so easy: a published poet by the time he was 16, a Pulitzer Prize nomination at 22, a best selling author (The Basketball Diaries), and rock star at 29. But his success wasn’t’ built on pure luck. He admits he has no patience with dilatants. He puts everything he has into everything he does. And what he possesses is an incredible talent that can not be ignored.

He grew up tough and fast on the streets of Manhattan. And if it wasn’t for a scholarship to a private high school, he might have ended up like the rest of his friends he mentions in his song, “People Who Died.” But something in his blue eyes suggests that he was always too smart to be consumed by the streets. As a kid writing The Basketball Diaries, he had shown an incredible perception and lack of self-pity.

Jim Carroll took to poetry as soon as he was introduced to it. Knowing the value of voyeurism, he set out to study the best contemporary poets of the ‘60s by attending a Greenwich Village poetry workshop.

“I was hanging around down at St. Mark’s Church, at the Poetry Project down there, where Allan Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Ted Berrigan and all these people would read. I didn’t say anything to anybody there. I just stayed and watched in the audience.” At the time, Jim had already begun to write poetry. He showed some of it to a high school friend whose brother ran the press at City College. The brother immediately wanted to publish them. “I only had about thirty pages of poems that I wanted published

Catholic Boy (1980)
“I was too shy to introduce myself to the people at the poetry scene. But then when I had this book, I could give it to them and that way I could introduce myself. And they said, ‘We wondered who you were, if you were a poet or just spyin’ on us.’ Then I started to publish when I was 16, in the magazine that they ran out of [St. Mark’s], The World. And every twelve issues, Bobbs-Merril Publishers would publish this big hardcover anthology of the best works from it. From that I started to get from the underground press into hardcover publishers and stuff. And then I started publishing in the Paris Review, because this poet, Tom Clark, was the poetry editor and he hung out at the St. Mark’s thing.

“And that’s where I first published the diaries, too. They asked me if I had any prose because they were having a prose issue of The World. I said, ‘All I have is these diaries that I kept when I was young.’ And I started to read them at poetry readings at St. Mark’s and they always went over real well. And when George Plimpton read them, he asked me to give him some for the Paris Review [for which he was editor]. I gave him twenty-five pages and I got letters form all these publishers who wanted to publish them. But I didn’t want to publish that book until I published a really big volume of poetry because I didn’t want to be known as a street writer. I wanted to show that I could write as a poet. It was stupid. It was being hung up with style.”

Jim held off publishing the diaries because most editors “wanted to make some changes in it and give it more sociological meaning. Like why I was doing all this and stuff. Since I wasn’t the same age anymore, as 13 to 15, it would’ve been bullshit to change them. Each one I kind of wrote to be a short story; to stand by itself. They weren’t day-to-day diaries. They were all subjective little short stories and anecdotes. I didn’t want to put in any, like ‘Dear Diary, why is this happening to me? Because my parents hate me, I’m shooting junk.’ Bullshit! I did it because I wanted to party.

[Dry Dreams (1982)]
“I never had any editor touch my work at all. Even when I was 16. I wouldn’t allow it. And now that I can command it, of course, I don’t let them. If an editor makes suggestions, that’s one thing. But the only thing I think of an editor as is someone who checks for typos and misspellings. I just didn’t like the idea of that. I really cared about the diaries since this was a book that I wanted kids to read. And I wanted a big distribution on it instead of just to the poetry audience. I wanted a paperback house. All I cared about was the paperback edition because it was affordable for the kids.”

After he published Living in the Movies, the book that earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 1974, he moved to California and became a recluse. “I didn’t like the lifestyle in California, that kind of mellow, laid-back shit. I just wanted to use a landscape. I didn’t associate with anyone. I just lived in the country. I had dogs for the first time in my life. I love animals, but could never have them. I’d bring home strays every week when I was a kid and my mother would say, ‘The city’s no place for a dog.’ You know that line? So, once I got out there, I got, like, four dogs. And I’d take these long walks with ‘em and I was writing a lot of poetry and these prose poems, thinking about what I was going to do with the diaries.

“Then, after, I slowly decided I was going to do rock, by what I was writing and what I was reading.

“The book that effected me the most was The Time of the Assassins, by Henry Miller. It was s study of Rimbaud’s works, but it’s really a study of Henry Miller by Henry Miller. It speaks about how a poet – real poet – has to effect the heart as well as the mind. And you have to effect people who are virtually illiterate, as well as the people who are intellectuals. Rock’n’roll is the way you effect people on the social level.”

His initiation into rock’n’roll was a fluke. He had a small part in an underground film with Patti Smith, where he was reading this poem, “The Guitar Voodoo.” [The poem is about a girl with a magical guitar; whenever she plays the strings she inflicts pain to an enemy. The faster the guitar strings vibrate, the worse the pain gets.] The day after the film was shot, Patti Smith was giving a concert in San Diego. She asked Jim to go along.

[Praying Mantis (1991)]
Her opening act, a heavy-metal band, began to pose a problem, so Patti cancelled them and announced, “’Jim will open the show.’ I said, ‘Wait a minute, Patti, what am I gonna do?’ She said, ‘We’ll do what we did in the movie last night, only the whole band will play behind you.’ It was very generous of her because it takes away the whole anticipation of an opening act. Patti would just come out playin’ a guitar behind me. I said, ‘Well, that’s cool. I’ll do it, but I’m not gonna read this thing ‘cause I’d be too nervous. I’ll start shaking with the piece of paper. I didn’t have it memorized. I’ll do some of the lyrics that I’ve been writing with Allan [Lanier of Blue Oyster Cult]; but we don’t’ have time to work out the music that Allan did, so I’ll just rap ‘em and you guys can jam.’ And, of course, Lenny [Kaye] and all those guys were real good at that. In the early days, they’d just jam while Patti made up lyrics. So, they started to play and I did these two songs; just rapped ‘em. Patti came over to me and was, like, leanin’ up against me while I was doin’ it. I was totally out of it. Then I loosened up and it was great. It was about ten minutes long – just right. The audience really dug it. Everything was very clear and this energy was coming at me from behind, so it was just like this sandwich of energy. It was fantastic.”

His poems went over so well that he was invited to the Mabohay Gardens to do a gig of his own. But at this point he didn’t have a band, and Allan Lanier was busy finishing the music if the songs they’d been working on. But Jim’s never been restrained by obstacles. He knew a San Francisco bar band called Amsterdam that he’d met one day while he was hitchhiking. “I got a ride from two of the guys in the band. They said, ‘Yeah, you’re a poet. We’ve read your book and stuff. You ever think of writing lyrics?’ And I said, ‘Well, people have spoken to me about it. I’ve been doing it a bit with this old friend of mine, Patti.’ But they weren’t into punk music. They were straight out of the Stones.” He remembers telling them, “Well, maybe we’ll do something together sometime at a poetry reading or something, and you guys can play behind me.” He approached them about playing the Mabohay.

“We had about a week’s rehearsal, and we worked out the music for, like, six songs. And I wanted to make sure they were songs and not just poems with music behind hem – just jamming – like that night with Patti or even lyrics with the music. I wanted to make them integral songs, with breaks, as best I could, or else just rap ‘em. But having these songs, it went over so well that the guy [who owned the club] asked us to come back the next week and play the last show when we could really turn up the volume. We did the gig the next week on a weekend night, so there was a huge crowd. People from the poetry scene were there, as well as people from the punk scene. I was really getting into it. We saw it was working.”

Amsterdam continued to perform at their old haunts before the Jim Carroll Band was officially formed. Whenever they’d back up Jim, they would hide their long hair under berets, “so the people weren’t shouting, ‘Get these hippies off the stage.’ I just wanted the band not to have any one look and not be pinned because it turns people off – especially in the clubs. They say, ‘Oh, these guys were playing hippie music.’ And that wasn’t the case when we started to work together.

[Pools of Mercury (1998)]
The Jim Carroll Band – Brian Linsley and Terrell Winn on guitars, Steve Linsley on bass and Wayne Woods on drums – could easily stand alone. They’ve each co-written something with Jim for the band’s debut album Catholic Boy, and although their music is loud, fast and extremely easy to dance to, it never overshadows Jim’s haunting lyrics.

“I demand attention when I play. It’s not just shit-kicking music. That’s part of it. I just want people to listen. Listen with their ears and listen with their hearts, too. I want them to take something away with them. I don’t want them just to come and dance and exhaust themselves and split. I want them to go home with an image in their minds. Just one image that will stick with them and move them – feel not better about themselves or anything like that, just think about themselves, or think about some image that’s left.”

The band quickly built up a following playing around the San Francisco area, and they knew the time had come to go into the studio. They recorded a six song demo tape at an eight-track studio, and when Jim returned to New York for the release of The Basketball Diaries, he took the demo with him. He had intended to bring it around to some of the record companies, but as luck would have it, he didn’t need to.

Jim’s publisher threw a party for him at the Gotham Book Mart. One of the guests was Earl McGrath, former president of Rolling Stone Records. McGrath had heard about Jim’s band through a mutual friend, artist Larry Rivers. He was anxious to hear the band and invited Jim to bring the tape to his office. Assuming that nothing would come of it expect possibly a little honest criticism, Jim brought this tape to Rolling Stone Records.

“When he heard it, he was just silent for about five minutes. It seemed like ten hours, and I thought, ‘He hates it.’ Then he said, ‘This is very strong and very different. Keith’s been looking for something to produce so I think we’d like to do something with this.’ And I was besides myself ‘cause I knew the band would freak.”

Originally, Keith Richards wanted to produce Catholic Boy, but he was tied up recording with the Rolling Stones. McGrath stepped in as producer, and when he made a move from Rolling Stone to Atco Records, he took his pet project with him.

“It took a long time after me signing before it came out. By my own choice, we put off doing it because I didn’t want to start recording until I had a total handle on the songs, by doing them live. The tendency is to just rush into the studio with the first album and do it real quick. I think it’s a mistake to rush in. I’m glad we took our time.

“We had all the arrangements and stuff, so once we got into the studio, we did it very quickly. We did two sessions about a month apart. Five days the first time and four days the second, four hours each, and we did that in San Francisco. We mixed it here. The band stayed out there, and I came back to do some of the vocals.”

Before the album came out last October, Jim had only played two shows in New York. His first gig turned into a showcase. The tiny club was filled with so many record company people that there was hardly any room for fans of either the Jim Carroll Band, or his surprise guest, Keith Richards. “We got all this flack for hype, because Keith played with me. He can play with us any fuckin’ time he wants. It’s an honor to have Keith Richards play with us. It wasn’t any hype at all. Hype is what people make it. I’ve been a poet since I was 15 years old and I’ve supported myself any way I could, to write poetry. I’ve proven myself all those years that I’m not into things for what I can get out of them financially or any other way. I’ve always stuck by poetry and I always will. And there’s no money in that. And if there’s more money in rock’n’roll, and more in, say, The Basketball Diaries, because it’s doing well, then fine. But if it doesn’t happen, then I’m a poet, that’s what I do. It just seems like a natural evolution, the way it is now. And it’s really integral to my work. The way the album turned out, it doesn’t seem like something different, outside of it, that I just started to do. It seems like a natural extension and that’s what makes it so satisfying.”