Episode 658: Jim Skafish

[00:00:02] There's so much to begin with and let me say first off, as you know, I released Conversation in the Rejects which is the expanded reissue of my second album. And that came out in December of last year. It's only a few months ago but it

[00:00:27] was last year on the 29th. So with that right now, working on that, you know, doing some video things, getting it out there for people and doing that. So the main thing right now is that record. There's a million other things going on

[00:00:43] at the same time but one of the things that I've been in the process of doing for years is reissuing the old catalog, things that were reissued that are out of print and also reissue... not reissuing, releasing for the first time a lot

[00:01:01] of recordings that go back into the early 1970s. So we've got early recordings, recordings that are you know not so back in the day. Both studio and live. We've got other releases that were out there that I'm in the process of

[00:01:17] reissuing. Also composing all the time. There's also a lot of back catalog of songs that I've written. So it's kind of doing all those things sort of at once. How do you budget your time generally? It's really really hard and

[00:01:31] I realize we're in a world now where everybody would say that's right, say it like everybody is going through that. So what it is that I have to do is really try and have a project mapped out as well as I can. And let's say

[00:01:49] pragmatism is not my strongest point and where say being in the moment, letting whatever happens happen you know flow through me that's more my default. So trying to be inspirational and pragmatic at the same time. So say with

[00:02:06] conversation in the rejects I worked on it for 20 years and it's not to say that it was only that project that I was working on but during that 20-year period there were so many different things that had to happen and at a certain point

[00:02:21] having it mapped out was better than just kind of flying by the seat of your pants to use an old cliche. So it's a question of trying to be inspirational which comes really naturally to me. Being spontaneous which

[00:02:34] comes really naturally to me and being sort of in this linear thing of well we're in physical form and you've got to map it out and you've got to go from point one to two to three and that is not that natural to me. It's an

[00:02:48] acquired skill for me and I've acquired it out of necessity more than enjoyment if you know what I'm saying. In other words being organized making sure that everything makes sense you know it's all written out on paper and your

[00:03:04] notebooks whatever online that's what I've been doing so it's a question of trying to do that and my tendency is to take on too much because of how excited I get about everything so I keep it pulled back enough where it's borderline

[00:03:19] too much most of the time but I've at least got a handle on it because like I said with conversation in the rejects it was a tremendously complicated project to release. I mean starting with the idea of I had the tapes so I had all

[00:03:35] the tapes which most artists don't have the tapes to their work and I happen to have all the tapes the 24 track tapes and the two track masters and in 2004 I took them in Chicago recording company and had them digitized to Pro Tools

[00:03:49] which was also complicated because the tapes had to be baked they reach a point and most musicians obviously know this where the tapes can no longer be played because the magnet magnetic particles are I guess you could say

[00:04:02] they're strained from the tape or they're not as attached to the tape I'm not sure the exact it breaks down over time. Yeah right right of the technical terminology so they had to be baked in ovens so I'm in the studio tape is in

[00:04:15] the oven it comes out we get one play out of it and so that went on for quite some time it wasn't just a one day kind of a thing so once that happened

[00:04:25] then I had to get the legal rights back and getting the legal rights back was also complicated and I was able to achieve it then from there a lot of what happened was the creative project you know the creative process excuse me

[00:04:39] what's it going to be called it went through a lot of different titles you could go conversation expand and I thought okay it's so boring it's terrible right and then I had conversation in the music they wouldn't

[00:04:52] let you hear and I thought well that's good but it's too long so finally I settled on it's a little clunky. Yeah look clunky that's a perfect word I like that word it's a little clunky so if you're gonna say people are gonna then

[00:05:03] probably abbreviate it with letters like C A H you know they're gonna do it like that so then we came up with conversation in the rejects and I felt that was really good especially because the main point of this record

[00:05:18] is that it wasn't just reissuing the conversation record it was a whole another record of the tracks that IRS records hated they hated them so much and consider them to be just so controversial and what makes it kind

[00:05:34] of an oxymoron I guess you could say is that they were known for being the super trail blazing label and then here it was I pushed it too far they hated it they wouldn't release it and no one knew about those recordings in

[00:05:52] terms of hearing them I mean I talked about them a bit in blog posts or online but no one had ever heard them because I had the tapes they weren't bootleg by somebody in the record company or even somebody who worked for the record

[00:06:03] company because they didn't have the tapes so once conversation in the rejects came out it was a real milestone and obviously it was born of a tremendous amount of emotional pain and PTSD and just so much baggage but

[00:06:18] that when it came out there was a real sense of I'm really happy this is out there for the fans and I really tried to make it as special as I can for the

[00:06:29] fans it was really important to me with everything that I do is to try and make it the best it can be for the fans and so so far everybody who's gotten it has really loved it I don't take that for granted because you never

[00:06:43] know you might always can get a descending opinion potentially but everybody who's gotten it so far has really really liked it so that's kind of the main thing that's going on right now I'm kind of deciding in the back

[00:06:55] of my mind what's the next reissue going to be and I'm not sure which one it's going to be but there's a lot of back material like I could be doing this for years and so I want to expedite the process as much as

[00:07:09] possible but at the same time working on new things as well too so it's it's a lot to do especially when you're on your own and I don't mean that literally but it's not like as if that I have the I guess you could say the benefit maybe

[00:07:25] it's not a benefit of a major record company because a major record company would have never spent anywhere near the money it took to release conversation and the rejects correctly they would have Xerox the old cover made

[00:07:37] it look like crap wouldn't have even made it look better on CD visually as opposed to a vinyl you know how they do that they just slap it together so I took all of this care and doing it and I do have a great team of really

[00:07:52] talented people but I mean basically I'm in charge of this whole thing but I'm really grateful I have smash plastic in Chicago they do a phenomenal job with vinyl just incredible Katie Hildreth visual artist my wife is

[00:08:07] fantastic with with helping with things and just there's a lot of people you know in that small team who bring a great deal of value to the table and I'm really aware as most of us are at a certain point that no one can do it on

[00:08:21] their own so it's not as if that anybody could get arrogant or cocky and say well I did this and make the eye sort of exaggerated it really is a team effort and that's not being said to sound my combo either it's the truth so everybody

[00:08:36] brought a lot to the table with it but it was hard figuring what's going to be the right way to release this because in one hand you have two very different records the rejects are among the most controversial my band ever

[00:08:51] did then conversation was a tone down record that the record company made me do to tone it down it was preposterous beyond belief to think that they're going to somehow make me normal which was that was the objective like

[00:09:05] we're going to make you normal and obviously it didn't work because my first album sold twice as much as the first album right I mean the first album sold twice as much as the second album and the pushback on conversation

[00:09:19] when it was released in 1983 was brutal everybody hated it my fans hated it the press hated it everybody said I sold out which is really one of the hardest things for me to have to deal with because it wasn't true IRS I mean

[00:09:32] granted a little bit for my time but looking at the roster of acts they had over the years you call them trailblazing and certainly they had some of easily some of the best artists at the time what's your sense of what

[00:09:46] they thought they were getting with you that ultimately they didn't get well I know what happened I know what happened I mean I'm real clear on what happened okay according to Miles Copeland I was the first American artist in

[00:10:00] second worldwide to be signed to IRS records in the very beginning they were wide open it was like you do your record they left me alone I wasn't bothered at all by them whatsoever they didn't do anything okay so then that

[00:10:16] record turned out basically the way that I wanted it to be okay then when happened from there is that they went commercial and safe and corporate so what happened between my first album recorded in 1979 and my second album turned in in

[00:10:35] November of 1982 is they changed the record company went tone down and safe so I have to deal with this idea that Miles Copeland used to say he's a fucking genius all around the world everybody had run into oh you're

[00:10:49] the guy says he's a fucking genius haha and I said oh geez I have to hear this all the time right and then go into what's this fucking shit you're singing about freaks and Barbie dolls Barbie dolls and freaks I won't release it okay so

[00:11:03] anybody who's heard the reach X knows that the quality is absolutely up to standard for what I was known for doing it wasn't as if that I had a refrigerator being recorded with crickets in it for 30 minutes okay it wasn't as if

[00:11:20] I recorded outside noise and called it art and I'm not even disparaging that I'm saying that it wasn't that kind of an obvious thing that a record company would have a problem with so the second album that I turned in simply built on

[00:11:34] the first it was complete logical in other words take what you did with the first album do it with the second so IRS records changed and they became safer more corporate and it's kind of this weird contradiction like okay be

[00:11:53] different but not too much have orange hair but don't sing about anything too weird and so what it happened is that I did what I would have expected to do I took the narrative further they hated it because they and and it was very much

[00:12:11] proven as it comes to what Miles Copeland said to me because we were in my tiny little apartment behind my parents house which I was living at the time it was a converted garage three itty bitty rooms and Miles Copeland came to stay

[00:12:25] with me when we were doing the new recordings for the second album the ones that had to be toned down and he sits there with the whole band we were all there in this my little itty bitty it a little itty bitty living

[00:12:38] room and he takes out this cassette he brings all the way from California and he plays New Order Blue Monday and Billie Jean by Michael Jackson he goes you need to change this is how I want you to sound so there was no pretense that he

[00:12:55] was trying to work with me as an artist he was trying to change me and make me acceptable for lack of a better word at least to my mind those are two very good songs obviously different than what you were doing what's that process of

[00:13:11] well completely different process of trying to I guess in a sense meet halfway well it was hell on earth really but the point of it is that specifically I did not attempt to sound like Blue Monday or Michael Jackson I was not willing to go

[00:13:26] to that level I just wasn't I just couldn't even attempt to do that but the process of it was really really tough because I'm dropped this this mom has dropped on me you've got to change and also it was designed to make me feel so

[00:13:43] terrible about myself you know it wasn't just like hey Jim we can't work with this it was like this whole mean aggressive like what in the fuck is wrong with you so it was really hard emotionally and so what it is is that

[00:14:01] Glenda Harrison and I regrouped and said okay this is what we have to deal with we're gonna try and write this record I wrote some of it and we co-wrote some of it and it was really really tough because and you can look at any example

[00:14:17] of this where a person cannot be who they are whatever it is say for example if your parents are saying you've got to be a born-again Christian or we're kicking you out of the house okay or if it's an issue of sexuality or whatever

[00:14:34] it is so it was like you have to be somebody you're not and the thing that was so hard about it is I thought did he forget who he signed did he forget that this is me in other words that I had been bullied and attacked my entire

[00:14:54] life pretty much every day okay not just by students but by teachers choked by a teacher locked in a broom closet and everybody left the school by a teacher this is what happened to me so when I was doing the scapegoat band I was on

[00:15:12] fire about this it was a lot of social commentary filtered through my personal experience that proved to be quite prophetic in the sense that what I was singing about then makes more sense today in other words because back then people

[00:15:29] would be like well you're really weird this is and some people loved it it wasn't as if everybody hated it but there was a lot of violence toward me as a performer our lives were threatened on a fairly regular basis and so it was

[00:15:45] the idea that when you have this identity and it was the redemption factor this is what I believe in this is what I do and then it's just taken away from you it was very very hard and I would say the experience was extremely

[00:15:58] tough because then when Miles Copeland came to the studio he was throwing the tapes against the wall he was screaming at us we could barely keep our composure to cut the record interestingly the record turned out good

[00:16:11] it was just not interesting from a subject matter point of view and not as avant-garde but there were hits on that record we believe they didn't bother to push them so it wasn't as if the music ended up being bad it just wasn't

[00:16:27] the record that I wanted to put out really that the aftermath of it was worse than the experience because then the records not ever released again on vinyl it's not put out in CD it's not put out digitally it sits there for

[00:16:43] decades then I have to go through this legal process of trying to get it back and all those things that happened so it was a really difficult process and being dropped by the label and I think I don't want to say the worst part but

[00:16:56] one of the worst parts is that people thought I sold out and I was furious about that in other words and it was way before social media right so I couldn't go on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or any platform and tell my

[00:17:12] story and so it was kind of just sat there for all these decades and then I was really happy when I put out conversation in the rejects I was able to through the liner notes and through what I've let people know exactly what happened so

[00:17:27] in other words this is exactly what happened it wasn't my decision to do it and yet you could use this example it's like being in a bad marriage like oh I've got it cheese I've got to stay in this bad marriage I'm hoping to get

[00:17:44] through it for the kids you know that a lot of people can relate to that most people can't relate to being cast out by your record company because it's kind of a unusual experience so when I agreed to do it I thought well we don't have

[00:17:59] any options were flat broke we can't I barely had money to eat on we didn't have any other options it was really rough so I thought well I've got to try and do something let's see if something good could come out of it it strikes me you

[00:18:15] know with the benefit of a being outside and and being quite a bit hindsight that it's an example of you spending so much of your life fighting both to determine what your identity is and and to find the right people to surround

[00:18:29] yourself with to create that art and really having you know several years of momentum only to be in a sense greeted with the same thing that you had been met with when you were younger it's a good way of putting it Brian I think

[00:18:45] that's it's very true and the thing that was so hard about it is that you know the press loved us or hated us people were oftentimes time to attack us at our shows sometimes in a way that became life-threatening I could live

[00:19:02] with all that actually I could live with even the idea of everybody finding colorful ways to make fun of me and talk about how freaky I am and all of that but then when the rug is pulled out from under you by a person that you thought

[00:19:17] was on your side who was pivotal to what you were doing it was devastating and especially when you believe in this relationship and I think if we use it in a more personal analogy we've all had somebody we thought was the best

[00:19:36] friend who turns out to be a fair weather friend and throws us under the bus or somebody were dating who we think really loves us and they're just using this and they're going to discard us and cheat on us it was like that

[00:19:48] and going through it the PTSD actually became worse as the years went on because there wasn't any resolution so it was this whole long process I mean the record came out my you know my reissue the record came out 40 years later so

[00:20:09] this wasn't even say 10 years or five years and I know for young musicians who are maybe 18 when they think of 40 years it seems like a cryptic and unable to be processed right but it was that and I felt so much baggage around

[00:20:28] the whole process that it took me getting the music together and out there and remastered by Trevor Sadler great remastering job his re mastered records for Madonna nine-inch nails Ramsey Lewis, D. Lee Dan, David Byrne I'm so

[00:20:45] fortunate to have been working for me since 2005 by the way he's done all of my records and so once I heard everything I came to realize I really like the music because I was made to feel so horrible about all of it from one end with

[00:21:03] Miles Copeland like who in the fuck do you think you are what the hell is wrong with you like as if you're you're the person at the dinner table who's eating with your fingers and slobbering food all over the place

[00:21:13] it's like that kind of an example to the other end of it with my fans who wanted that kind of a record who hated the second album hated it and so it was that sense that that sense of trauma was deep inside.

[00:21:32] So when I got the record out there and I finally said God I really love this music and I love the way I put it together put both records into one. I'm not going to try and be slick and do the weird record in the normal record.

[00:21:45] Just put it all together let people decide I was really happy with it but still the trauma of the experience is still a factor. How profound of an impact did the I guess in a sense the failure of that record have on your career?

[00:22:01] Did it completely sideline you? Well, not completely, but it really changed everything in a way that could be arguably said for the worse. I'm not trying to pronounce it in a doom and gloom way. No, I didn't get sideline because I didn't let it happen.

[00:22:20] So what had happened is I continued doing what I've done ever since then from then until today it was just at a smaller level. So I wasn't able to tour internationally like I did under Miles Copeland and IRS.

[00:22:36] So what it ended up happening is that it made it so much harder. So in other words, I released limited series cassette as my first independent release in 1988. That's going to be reissued. It's been out of print for a long time.

[00:22:54] It was a great idea because I had Aretha Franklin's backing singers on on two tracks. I had Jeff Ward drummer for ministry and lard and nine inch nails. I played for them for a while. He was on drums on a couple tracks.

[00:23:09] I had a great horn section they had played for Brian Wilson, but what it happened is I had to start doing everything on my own. So I was making recordings on my own from front to back.

[00:23:22] And so when I did limited series cassette, it was a mixture of me doing everything and I had some guests. I did best kept secrets in 1992. And that was pretty much all on my own. Those were both cassette releases only.

[00:23:38] Then I did, you know, my holiday jazz album in 2005. We recorded it. And that was a real departure because it was unlike anything anybody would think that I would do. And strangely out of all of my independent releases, it's the most successful.

[00:23:54] And it is a traditional straight up jazz record. And because I was skilled in classical and jazz piano, I did that. Then I released What's This, which is a compilation of 1976 to 1979. Another single solo track, nothing I could do.

[00:24:10] And then the reissue of the first album and the second album have come out. But there's a great deal of back material, both studio and live. But it made it a lot harder. In other words, it was hard to do the bookings.

[00:24:25] It was hard to get any type of shows going. It was very, very hard. You know, so it was the kind of thing that it was rough. So everything was a lot smaller. But I mean, one, you do the best you can with what you have.

[00:24:39] But I mean, I was unwilling to give up. In other words, that was a real key point. I was unwilling to say I'm out. I wasn't going to do that. I wasn't going to do that. I wasn't going to. And so as difficult as it was.

[00:24:52] And there were other things that happened with it, too. Okay. I was teaching music. I also taught at a college level briefly. I was playing with my keyboardist band, Javier Cruz. We had like kind of a new wavy dance kind of a thing happening.

[00:25:08] I was playing on some other people's records doing some production, not necessarily hit records. So there is a lot going on. But it definitely, I mean, the choice Miles Copeland made changed my life forever. There's no question about it. It changed everything.

[00:25:24] And I'm not saying that I have even a smidgen of resentment toward him because I don't. I love Miles Copeland. A lot of the things he did for me were great blessings. But what he did with the second album really made everything difficult for me.

[00:25:40] There's no way to pretend that it wasn't. And I'm not willing to spin it to try to make it sound like, Oh baby, it's rock and roll. Deal with it. It was horrible. But at the same point, I don't hold any malice toward him at all.

[00:25:52] An incredibly painful experience. It sounds like in a lot of ways he didn't handle it particularly well. But have you have you been in touch with him after that? Have you discussed what happened? It's an interesting question.

[00:26:05] He and I have never discussed what happened, but I have been in touch with him. Quite a few times for different reasons. OK, so I haven't talked to him in a while. But over the years, I've talked to him like, say, for example,

[00:26:19] when Erga Music War was released by Warner Brothers. OK, and they did kind of a shoddy job. They just they didn't have the master tapes and they took a copy and they put it out there with some club looking kid on the cover.

[00:26:34] Right. And they made it as a major order DVD. He didn't know about it. He didn't even know. So I called him and we talked about it. Around that time I volunteered. If there was anything I can do to help get, you know, to help get

[00:26:51] Erga Music War back out there again. And that didn't go anywhere. I even suggested, well, why don't we talk to Sting? Because I was always on good terms with Sting. We were always real cool with each other. In fact, when my bass player's bass broke in France,

[00:27:05] he let my bass player use his bass. There was that sense of camaraderie. I mean, when I was touring with those groups, XTC, the police, U2, UB40, English Beat, squeeze all those groups. It was a great experience because we could have easily been treated like crap.

[00:27:23] We were the low men on the totem pole. Right. We could have easily been treated. Babel, we were treated great. They didn't have to treat as well. No one's going to yell at them if they don't. So it was the kind of thing that that went nowhere.

[00:27:38] We're trying to get Sting involved. They're like, no, he won't want to. They didn't even really run it by him. But I volunteered that. Also, I was talking to Miles Copeland about other things. So yeah, I've been in touch with him, but we hadn't talked about this experience,

[00:27:55] which I'd be willing to talk about, but it just hasn't unfolded in that way. Obviously, very difficult to process. And there is a sense in which it was a failure. But I wonder if there's also a sense in which that experience was edifying from the standpoint,

[00:28:09] all the success that you had had up till that point was you being yourself. And this first time when he tried to really fit into someone else's version of you, that's where you got knocked off track.

[00:28:19] So isn't there a sense in which that is kind of a validation of what you had been doing all along? Well, in a weird kind of way, yeah. I mean, I'm not trying to wrap it up in a pretty package obviously,

[00:28:29] because it was painful and there's no denying that. But I never wanted to be like anybody else anyway. In other words, so it wasn't like I suddenly thought, wow, maybe I could be like some singer in a weird little haircut and just bopping around the stage

[00:28:47] and singing about things that don't matter. Or don't matter to me, okay? It was the idea that it was like trying to make yourself somebody or not to make a relationship work and it failed. I went back and had to regroup, worked quickly into regrouping,

[00:29:05] but that process to your point was very painful because then there was still the idea of all of this guilt and all of this emotional trauma that even if it wasn't mentally, say, rubber stamped, like I'm a terrible person and I'm worthless,

[00:29:22] I'm a terrible artist, I have nothing to offer. It was how I felt because of all of the brutality of what had happened and it's sort of like, okay, like I said before, all this stuff was happening and it was really rough going through those years

[00:29:39] on a multitude of levels. I mean there were some good times, not many, and then you're always hoping to have that victory at the end. It's like being an athlete and you're on a team that's like less than 500. And then you're hoping that you're gonna be able

[00:29:55] to get that team into a winning slot and it didn't happen, the whole thing fell apart. So the regrouping part of it was painful, but I did it and I was making recordings. A lot of them are absolutely the same quality

[00:30:12] in terms of the aesthetic value and what it is, a lot of variety, a lot of diversity, but no, that is that I had to claim that back but there was no way I was ever gonna be like anybody else. It just wasn't gonna work, right?

[00:30:26] And especially because even when we talk about you know, people say well who influenced you? And I'd say hardly anybody. I was inspired but not influenced. What's the distinction? Here's the distinction. Inspired, feeling excitement by what somebody's doing, helping that to invigorate who you can be,

[00:30:50] motivational, influenced where you're gonna try and sound like them or use some of their techniques or some of their things. I never tried to be like anybody and if there's anybody, any kind of music that you've said was influenced by it would be classical music.

[00:31:09] That would be the one form of music that I would be influenced by. I loved Little Richard. I never wanted to sound like Little Richard. I never did anything Little Richard did. I didn't sing like him. I didn't do anything, but I loved him. Loved him.

[00:31:25] I loved Weather Report. I loved the New York Dolls. But I wasn't trying to let what they do assimilate into my aesthetic. Do you get what I'm saying? What I would say is that especially, you know, the Weather Report, that's a different story

[00:31:40] but Little Richard and the dolls specifically maybe toss, you know, Bowie in there are two examples of sort of working against gender norms which was clearly a really big part of what you were presenting. Well, right, but that was natural to me anyway.

[00:31:59] Okay, so in other words it wasn't like I saw Bowie and thought I could do that or saw the dolls. I saw them as being comrades and I'm not saying that I was equal to them in musical stature in my career at that point.

[00:32:10] I was a kid, right? But what I'm saying is that that was already there for me and with doing the gender thing it was very different than what David did which was glamorous and even what the dolls did. I was doing it in an extremely ugly, deliberately ugly,

[00:32:28] unattractive, non-flattering, queer way and I was absolutely one of the first to do anything like that for sure. Certainly the first in Chicago, maybe the first worldwide but at least one of the first one or two to do that specifically. To you, why is that an important distinction?

[00:32:45] It's a huge distinction because it's like if you say rock music and people could say well rock music could be in fame and melancholy, rock music could be Johnny Thunders but there's a huge difference if you're trying to look in any kind of a surgical way.

[00:33:02] There's a huge difference between me presenting myself I'm ugly, I don't know if I'm a boy or a girl you're gonna really freak out at me there's no glamour here and I'm throwing it in your face. It's hugely different than what David or the dolls did.

[00:33:18] Clearly there's a sense in which it kind of came with the territory and came naturally but were you, and I'm thinking a lot about this now famous story of you opening for Shana N'A and they're being a lot of backlash in person but what? We almost died.

[00:33:33] Was there a sense in which you were deliberately trying to provoke? Well, I wouldn't say that I was deliberately trying to have somebody pull the gun on me which is what happened at the Shana N'A show but it was this sort of in your face

[00:33:54] full out, not considering like I want you to like me. Say for example a lot of entertainers are very based in approval and I'm not criticizing that like they want the audience to like them they wanna be approved of, et cetera.

[00:34:10] This was more, you could say it was a combination of primal therapy, life or death survival throwing it out there with maximum intensity so it wasn't like ha ha ha I'm gonna provoke you in a kind of a snarky way but it was non compromising

[00:34:29] and then certain people loved it, certain people hated it and there was a great deal of violence directed toward us through the career it wasn't just a few instances here and there. Is there a sense in which you

[00:34:45] obviously not in the case of somebody pulling a gun on you but is there a sense in which you almost fed or thrived on some of that pushback? In the moments on stage, yeah it's kind of like survival it's like if somebody attacks you

[00:35:01] you know you're in survival mode right like say if a bunch of people are mugging you or something I'd work with it some I was definitely not wanting to get off stage so it was the idea of certainly not backing down

[00:35:18] certainly that energy could keep our adrenaline going but it was hard because there was times where there was so much violence in particular shows that we couldn't keep the show going. I mean like sometimes the shows were stopped the Chicago police stopped the Shana Nasho

[00:35:41] because 6,000 people were rioting and getting ready to get on stage to kill us and the person with the gun was in the audience a friend of mine who was filming the set saw him he was standing right behind him he had the gun pointing right at me

[00:35:52] when the police stopped the show. In a case like that when you are in very real danger you know obviously thriving on the adrenaline a moment but looking back on it does that give you pause? Does that make you want to maybe tone it down

[00:36:05] or pull it back a little bit so you're not put in that situation? No. I couldn't. At the time I was in the scene at that point say I felt that it was all that I had

[00:36:22] and all that I was I realized as the years have gone on I've evolved into a much more multi-dimensional person hopefully but back then it was the only thing it's just as important to me now but there's other things as well if that makes sense. It does.

[00:36:40] But you know when you think fight or flight? Okay we were always in fight. So it's that simple in other words we didn't sit there and run off the stage I mean we did the first Milton Keynes show in London in 1980 in front of 45,000 people

[00:37:00] and they were throwing full beer cans at us on stage to a point where the headstock off the guitar got knocked off. There was so much beer splattering we were falling on stage and then I got hit in the head with a beer can

[00:37:16] and was bleeding and that's what stopped the show. That was one that stopped the show. Okay so with that particular show and the Shana Na show it couldn't continue and other ones did continue for various reasons but no it was a fight or flight

[00:37:35] I never thought for a minute like I should tone it down I never did and I never felt that I should try to like suck up. Like hey I'm just weird but I'm okay you know any of that kind of stuff

[00:37:50] I never felt that and so when that whole cycle kind of ended is again when Iris records threw us under the bus because then that way the options I had were more limited although I kept doing things. Going from all those years

[00:38:09] of incredibly oppressive environment in Catholic school when did the positive cycle begin? When was it clear that there was this avenue or this venue where you could really fully be yourself? Well I'm not sure that that came really in other words I was gonna be myself regardless

[00:38:37] it depends on what your age it is. I mean obviously I have a wife who I can be myself with I have a son who I could be myself with but it's not as if that there was kind of a light bulb moment

[00:38:53] because even the abuse and the bullying continued way past so it wasn't like as if all of a sudden I'm not on a big stage in rock and roll and all the abuse stopped it continued in my life for decades. So in other words that has been

[00:39:11] there's no aha moment with that to say oh aha here it stops like as if you're gonna put the end of the story like and then he wrote off into the sunset in the suburbs I mean that story is not my story.

[00:39:26] This surely at some point it was clear that it was working though that you were onto something. Well I always knew that I was onto something as an artist not so much from an arrogant point of view but from a passion driven point of view.

[00:39:42] So say for example the passion was consuming I had to do this and so I always was tied into that but I wasn't sitting back with the metaphorical cigar and saying oh my God I'm onto something there was too much pain, too much frustration

[00:39:59] too much difficulty and it wasn't as if there was ever smooth sailing. So let's say if there was smooth sailing you have platinum records and you could sit there and pat yourself on the back and all that ego rubbish happened right that never happened

[00:40:13] because I was never in that position but I always believed in what I was doing from an extremely obsessive point of view but it was more of I had to do it versus I chose to. This is not a great game to play all the time

[00:40:28] but I get the sense that even if those things come to you that you wouldn't have been happier you wouldn't have been satisfied with them. That's right I think it would have I would have still continued with the mission. Like in other words it wouldn't be like

[00:40:45] oh you're in the club now and you could just be like everyone else you know for that sort of tribal acceptance thing that human beings like like oh we're all this way or we're all that way. I don't think it would have made me soften

[00:41:02] but it didn't happen so it's hard to speculate but my identity has always been too strongly formed. So in other words it wasn't like I'd look at an artist and say I'm gonna be like them I never had that. I never said I will be like whoever.

[00:41:20] Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, The Beatles. I never did that. But I loved so much art that it inspired me and made me feel like well I can feel this. I can do it. I can find what's within me. And that was important but the fact of how different

[00:41:39] the project was made it really hard commercially. Always made it hard commercially and that was really difficult but I was unwilling to try to play it like a marketing person. I just wasn't. I just wasn't willing to do it. I didn't wanna have to live with that

[00:41:59] and it may sound foe, noble and it's not meant to. It's the idea that I was not willing to compromise my integrity for anybody or anything. I just wasn't. Obviously I don't think most of us really know what it means to be our true selves

[00:42:16] when we're in our 20s regardless. There's a lot of. There's a lot of. Sure. That has to happen but with a lot of these artists as we're talking specifically about the ones who are breaking gender norms. There's a sense in which for a lot of them

[00:42:29] it is very theatrical. Was there, was it purely theatrical or was there really a deep seated sense of yourself in that? I would say it was totally myself. It wasn't theatrical because if I was gonna do it theatrically I'd present it more glamorously

[00:42:50] or present it more in a non-street way. It was not glamorous at all. In fact it was the antithesis of glamors. So if I'm wearing an old ladies old fashioned one piece bathing suit with a matching Babushka on stage it's not glamorous, it's ugly.

[00:43:09] If I'm wearing ugly piece stained underwear or diapers or tube tops it's not beautiful. Do you hear what I'm saying? So no it wasn't about this kind of like welcome to your weird fantasy and enjoy it for the moment before you go back to your normal life

[00:43:24] for the audience it wasn't like that. To a certain extent I think we have, obviously there's a lot of pushback but as a society maybe a better understanding or at least more vocabulary to describe you know non-binary or gender as a spectrum.

[00:43:43] With that in hindsight do you feel that now in your life that you have a better idea of where you sit in that? Well within myself yeah. I mean that is fine. What I'm saying is that I think it's a much more not convoluted but contradictory thing.

[00:44:05] I would allege that the abuse of gay, transgender, non-binary people is worse today. Every time I can barely sit in a second. This has been the case forever with as people get more freedom the pushback intensifies and we're seeing that in a very real way right now.

[00:44:44] Well whenever I see kids who get murdered that's the part that's of course. So I would argue that in one way it's better in one way it's not. But I mean when kids go to school and get murdered

[00:45:07] for being you know who they are it's really hard for me. There's a very real way in which being that person on stage is empowering just you know I'm sure that if you had had something like that maybe you did to extent you know

[00:45:32] maybe you did in Little Richard or Bowie or the Dolls but just being an example of that in the world is empowering for people who are trying to figure out who they are. Oh sure, sure. Well and you know the fan base that I have

[00:45:52] a lot of them have been with me from the beginning and there's been new fans who have come too but I get a lot of that feedback and it's very very what would be the right word? I hate to say gratifying because I'm not trying

[00:46:07] to be uppity about it or anything like that but sure and let me say this. I mean when your identity is so formulated at such a young age and your experiences are so extreme and there's all these things that converged I was heavily trained classically.

[00:46:32] So what separated me right there is that I could have easily became a classical pianist or a jazz pianist and I was even gonna get a music degree but I couldn't because I had to form my band I was too obsessed with it, right?

[00:46:48] It's the idea that they have all these convergences and even if I did this right now it would still be challenging for people. And if you're looking over 40 years ago it was really hard for people but it did have an audience and it did have an impact

[00:47:04] and you know it's great when those things happen but when I see the pain of people still getting murdered it's really tough. I mean I'm more composed but there was a recent person who got beat to death in school in Oklahoma

[00:47:25] and they died the next day and I couldn't deal with it. But yeah, I mean that's a case of you can trace. Oh, I see myself in it, of course I do. You can trace that to some very systemic things and legislation and things that are happening

[00:47:41] on the state level in that case. Well, it gets to a point where obviously the way the world is right now it's sort of like pop culture like okay, a lot of entertainers they could be this or that or they could look a certain way

[00:47:59] and maybe they could quote unquote get away with it. Are they really gonna arrest Lady Gaga at a show or even somebody more avant-garde, right? Probably not but it's the idea that that's sort of the illusory way it's presented in entertainment when laws are there

[00:48:16] where kids can be murdered and where they could be denied healthcare and it's ghastly. So in other words, this dichotomy between this sort of free society and people being waged war against and I think it's a terrible thing

[00:48:38] and it's not even like decide which side of the spectrum you're on politically. I'm not even speaking of it in that way. I'm saying that there should never be a point in this country where people are killed because of the way they look or because of their sexuality

[00:48:52] or because of their race or because they're fat or because they're a woman or because they're too tall or because they look weird or because they're on the spectrum. It just shouldn't happen. It's one of those things that you say

[00:49:02] and it seems very obvious and yet here we are after all these years, you know? It seems like common sense but... Well, those are the things that I was talking about 40 to 50 years ago and I'm saying they're more relevant today

[00:49:18] and that's one of the things I'm excited about with the rejects like those topics and those songs are relevant today. Not just when they were written years ago. In fact, they're more relevant. Let's Play Doctor is more relevant today in terms of gender confusion and gender misidentification.

[00:49:34] More relevant today than it was when I wrote it in the 70s. You know, so I'm really glad about that but certainly that sense of being ahead of the curve is not a glamorous place to be. So people said, oh, wouldn't it be great

[00:49:53] if you were ahead of your time? I'd say no, it's not great. You know, I mean, what's great about it? In other words, because that's where there's this sort of glamorization of being out there like as if you're in your own wonderful little world

[00:50:09] but it's hard because people are no... Well, it's very lonely but it's also brutal. People are phenomenally narrow-minded and it depends on what way but overall. So if you get people who are open-minded, that's a really valuable thing but people who are open-minded

[00:50:34] are oftentimes not people in power as we all know. Do you feel at this point in your life that you have a better understanding of who you are as a person? Oh, totally. Yeah, completely. Let me say this. In a human form, we're not gonna be perfect.

[00:50:57] It's not possible in a human form from a spiritual perspective. If you're saying, do I have a good understanding of myself and how I work, yeah, much better so. Much better so. But I don't strive for perfection and I think when people do it's a very slippery slope

[00:51:18] because we won't be perfect in a physical body. It's a bit of a hacky question but I think it's an important one. Sure. Decades of knowledge and experience, if you were able to talk to yourself in those early days, when life was at its hardest,

[00:51:40] what advice would you impart on yourself? Well, I'm happy to answer the question but spiritually speaking, I try to never indulge the future or the past. I'm not, I haven't achieved it yet. It's more of an abstract question. Yeah, here's what I would do.

[00:52:01] What I would try to reinforce to myself is that no matter what, keep it going, no matter what, do it. Don't let yourself get so, you know, on the edge or disheveled or upset because of other people. No matter who it is, whether it's Miles Copeland,

[00:52:22] whether it's Bad Reviews, whether it's an audience trying to kill you, whatever it is, that sense of staying with it. Now obviously I stayed with it but if I would have known the idea of just stay with it it's what you should do, it's who you are

[00:52:36] and that the value is in the process, not in the reward. The value is in the process of doing something not in discernible, say, earthly or worldly kind of rewards that at that point I would have said that to myself but still nonetheless I did see it through

[00:52:53] and went through it. It might have been a little bit emotionally easier possibly. Easier if you know that things are gonna work out pretty well in the end or relatively well. Well, one of the things about it is that there's certain aspects of if we know

[00:53:10] certain aspects of the future, we would not be able to live out what we're here to live out from a spiritual perspective, certain things. So say if I would have known back then when I would not perform my first incarnation of my band at 19, my bass player was 16,

[00:53:26] okay, if I would have known then I could have never gone through this. I could have never did it. I would have not been able to go through this. If I would have seen clearly this is what you're gonna go through. I couldn't have done it.

[00:53:38] So at that point I didn't know what the consequences were going to be and I was, I don't wanna use the word naive it's a little too disparaging. I was certainly unaware of how much pushback I was gonna get. I was unaware of how much people would try

[00:53:56] to hurt me physically and unaware of how much I would be disparaged. Like perfect example of this. Okay, so many of my band members were classically trained, right? Okay, bass player original bass player master's degree from Juilliard now has played with Tony Bennett.

[00:54:15] Played bass for the Lyric Opera. Drummer Larry Meislivik music degree from DePaul went on to play for Iggy Pop. Hover your cruise music degree from Chicago State. This one journalist named David Witz in 1978 in the Chicago reader said, oh, the band can only play one chord together.

[00:54:37] Now what's ludicrous about that is he was homophobic and transphobic and he hated me and he was open about that but then to take the attack to the musicianship that's the part that was so preposterous because anybody who's ever seen my band plays

[00:54:52] know that the band is highly, highly proficient musically. No one in their right mind is gonna debate that. They can hate what I do but the caliber of musicians I had were at the top level worldwide, okay? But in other words, that's the kind of thing

[00:55:08] you get with that kind of pushback where the pushback was so not grounded. Like you could say, but see, you can't just say, I don't like you. I think you're weird and ugly and I don't like you and leave it at that.

[00:55:21] You have to make the person wrong. So like when you attack somebody you have to make them wrong so then you're justified in what you're doing to them. It's not just like, well I'm biased and I'm prejudiced and I hate you, you know?

[00:55:34] So in other words, that's what he did but then he went too far and he looks ludicrous now in retrospect because that he's talking about a bass player who plays for the Lyric opera. That's the level he's saying. Now if we were drunk

[00:55:51] which we never were on stage, high which we never were, not rehearsed which we never were but that's the example of those kind of attacks that were always waged at me and because they were so intense part of me just believed that they were true.

[00:56:06] I'm not saying all of me but part of me just felt, you know, so horrible and so what fueled me was the obsessive desire in the unwillingness to give up. It wasn't like it was happy, do you get what I'm saying? And it wasn't even like fun,

[00:56:23] you know where people talk about like fun? Well, a little bit of fun, not much, not much and so, and especially because we had such high standards that it wasn't like we'd sit there and you know have cigars after the show and talk about how great we were

[00:56:38] was always like it wasn't good enough or what should we do better? And yet we were performing at this level that is very seldom seen. I've never met a drummer ever who could play Sign of the Cross from Erga Music War like Larry Meislivik.

[00:56:53] I've never met a drummer yet who can do that part. It's one of the most complicated drum performances ever. I'm saying that's the level it was and yet we always felt like it had to be better. And it's torturous, do you get what I'm saying?

[00:57:09] Because it has to be better, it has to be better and looking back on it, you know, well hindsight has that 2020 thing you could say but you know obviously we love the music. The band was elated when they got the conversation and Erijik Selma sent it to them

[00:57:28] and you know gave it to them and all that. They were elated because when you hear it where it's no longer the debris of being screamed at and yelled at and everybody hating it then you could enjoy it for what it was

[00:57:42] and for the music that it was. And like I said, I champion all musicians. I hope that everybody achieves their dreams. Everybody. In other words, it's a really rough gig. So I'd be the last person to disparage anybody and especially with how much of it has been directed

[00:57:59] at me and all of us. But it's the idea that with that people will always have to make you wrong to attack you because then that makes them right. Strikes me that having such a I guess pragmatic perspective of that time means that you don't,

[00:58:16] you never really get caught up in that trap of being overly nostalgic and overly romanticizing those struggles. Oh God no, no. I'm just like, I'm grateful I got through it. Hey, I got through it. Like I'm alive. No. In fact, you know when my son was little

[00:58:37] and he was growing up, I was never like telling him war stories like sit down with your old man. Listen, I never did that. And then eventually he's a musician and that's what he did. But when he became interested,

[00:58:51] like oh, what happened with Joey Ramon or Sid Vicious? And then I tell him, you know, it's like yeah, I can tell you but I didn't want it to be like there was these war stories because it's a violation of spiritual law

[00:59:07] to live in the past or the future and I know we all do it, but it's not good. And so what I'm saying is that since there's still so much emotional pain that I have to stay grounded in the present tense.

[00:59:20] So no, I'm not nostalgic about it at all or romanticizing it, but I'm saying is that the idea that trying to navigate the emotions is you know, you have to stay in the present tense. It's this great concept of like, you know, classical music, right?

[00:59:37] You talked about classical. You practice every day. One of my great classical piano teachers said to me and it really hit me, you miss practicing one day you notice it. You miss two days your teacher notices it. You miss three days everybody notices it.

[00:59:52] So that discipline and that focus is very, very useful for me and also the passion to create and to go where I sound like Star Trek. I don't mean it to go where no one else has gone. I'm not trying to be silly,

[01:00:11] but I mean it's yeah, it's a boldly, I forget that, I forgot that word. But whenever I thought of this, it's always been to go where no one else would go. That's always been a huge, huge part of the Skatefish band.

[01:00:25] In other words, we never wanted to be in a wave. We created the wave. Do you get what I'm saying? We created the wave. When you create the wave, at least in the timeframe, you don't get credit for it. And others when you pioneer something,

[01:00:42] you don't get credit for it. It's usually the people who come after and water it down in hijack at the gift credit. That's usually what happens. Maybe in the long run you might get credit for it, but I mean how long did it take

[01:00:53] for a little richer to get any credit? What an amazing talent. And I say that with like great reverence for him with no desire to be like him at all. In other words, I can separate that between, oh God, I really love him.

[01:01:10] And so much like Muddy Waters and Woolly Dicks and I love them. They were huge supporters of mine. And I never tried to be like them, but I mean they were so supportive of me, it was unbelievable. And you figure well how does that work?

[01:01:28] The socioeconomic doesn't match, right? They took me in, we were managed by the same person. They welcomed me, took me in, Muddy Waters compared me to Mick Jagger in print. Woolly Dixon referred to me as the best musician he knew.

[01:01:48] I thought they were gonna have a real problem with the way that I looked. I really did, I thought, oh God, they're gonna hate me. And what am I gonna do? Say don't hate me, I love you. And they just like were so welcoming.

[01:02:01] And it goes to show that their pain and mine is not completely different. I mean it's racially different, sure, but it's, they got it. And so I'm saying this that, no, it's okay what happened before. I mean we're talking about these things, it's intense, cause there's so much

[01:02:25] that we're reliving and all that, but no, I'm okay with it. It's not like I'm clinically depressed or anything, thank God. And it's the idea too that when you function, if you're famous at a young age, then you could become a primadonna. Not good, not good, not good.

[01:02:46] So in other words, yeah, I take the dog out with my wife, cook or whatever. In other words, that sense of just being a person and just doing what you have to do is very useful. And like I said, after everything I've been through,

[01:03:07] I don't believe I'd ever be able to be that person who's like in the ivory tower and speaking with the fake oxon and all that shit, right? I don't think I could ever be that. I hope I'm not giving myself too much credit,

[01:03:20] but I don't think I could because of what I've been through. You know, and it would always be, well if we're making a record is it a good record? If it's not good, fix it. If it's great, fantastic. If it's not right, you know.

[01:03:32] In other words, you look at it pragmatically as opposed to with all of this, all of this trapping, you know, when certain people leave, they walk into the room with their ego and it's this huge armor and it's just so off-putting, right?

[01:03:46] No, I don't want anything to do with it.