Chords for Jim Carroll - interview & reading [6-2-92]

_ _ _ _ [B] _ My next guest is a poet as well as a musician.
His acclaimed works include the Basketball Diaries and his rock album Catholic Boy.
He has a new spoken word album on called Praying Mantis.
Please welcome Jim Carroll, folks.
[F] _ _ _ _ _ [D] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [F#] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ Now I remember you for, I guess it was on the Catholic Boy album, People Who Have Died,
which I [G#m] always thought was an interesting song.
You remember that tune?
Jimmy got off on a railway [G] train, baby got off with a jugular vein.
These are people who have died, died.
_ The extra [G#m] died is what did it.
Yeah.
Two dies.
I always loved that song, but actually you had your first artistic _ _ aspirations early on.
You wrote Basketball Diaries when you were how old?
Well, like I just turned, like I was just 12 turning 13 and then it ended when I was
[F#] just about to turn 16. Mm hmm.
And didn't Kerouac thought that that was a great piece of literature for you?
He wrote a great blurb about it.
Yeah.
He said that you wrote better than most adults or something.
I think it was like he writes better prose than 89% of the novelists working today, which
was, you know.
Leave it to Kerouac to pick a number like 89%. Yeah, right.
_ A lot of time on the road there.
Now, _ what your band was on Tom Snyder once.
I have trouble putting that together in my head because I remember you guys being pretty out there.
And how was Snyder?
How did he treat you?
Well, it was strange at the last minute.
They told us that.
I mean, we plan on doing people who died.
It was getting all this airplay at the time.
And there was nothing really offensive, any lyrics or anything that were censored by the FCC.
But they wouldn't let us do that.
They wouldn't let us do anything except this one semi-ballad, Day and Night, on it, which
was built around a backup singer and keyboards.
And we didn't have _ Alan Lear from the Blue Oyster Cult play keyboards on it.
And he wasn't there, you know.
So we were just planning on doing Rocker.
And _ _ they finally settled on letting us do this one song, Wicked Gravity, which was good,
I guess, not to do the hit, so to speak.
But also, there was a terrible problem.
I was in the green room, and Maureen Reagan, Reagan's daughter, not the one who wrote the
big expose lately, but the one who's very conservative, political, feminist type.
She was on talking her political [N] manifesto deal _ first.
And I was on second, and I was going to come out and speak, and then with Tom, and the
teddy bear, and then we'd do a little _ _ song, you know.
And _ what was it?
So they said, listen, you need a little touch-up right before I was going to go on.
Run into the makeup room and get it done quick.
So I run into the makeup room.
I said, I got to get on in a second.
And _ they say, OK.
And all of a sudden, before I know it, these two huge Secret Service guys who were protecting
Maureen Reagan _ grabbed me and slammed me down to the ground.
And the guy, he did it by the textbook.
He put his knee right on my chest and just held me there until Maureen Reagan looked
down casually and said, oh, he's all right.
He gave me a copy of his book.
He's on the show.
I couldn't believe it.
You know, they thought I was some incredible John Hinckley guy, and I was going to throw
a bomb into a dressing room, you know, have all this makeup powder exploding and stuff.
But it was a terrible ordeal.
Then I had to go on.
You know, I was kind of in shock and my chest was hurting quite a bit.
The guy was about 600 pounds. _ _
And he had shades on.
Yeah, he did, actually.
And he had the little thing in his ear, which pissed off Robert De Niro so much.
But that was, let me see.
Yeah, that was a terrible thing.
But I did _ remind her after the incident, well, for that, I really hope that you get your
father to put my book into the White House library.
So I hope the basketball diaries is in the White House library.
Well, you know, anything that goes into the Reagan library is condensed down into a three
by five card with all the pertinent information on it.
So maybe it's in there.
You're going to do a piece, a _ spoken piece for us right after the commercial?
Yes.
OK.
Are we going to take, are we going to do it right now?
Oh, I'm sorry.
My mistake.
Tell us about it.
I'm going to, well, I'm going to do two _ pieces.
One's a short kind of, I don't do too many political things, but this is kind of a semi-political
poem that's on Prae Mantis, actually.
It's a new work.
And the other one is a piece which isn't on the record, but it's from the book, Forced
Entries, which is like a book of diaries, like follow up to the basketball diaries. _ _ _ _
And it's, I was, I wanted to pick a funny piece, you know, but most of the funny pieces
were too long or couldn't be read on the air, you know.
So this is, it was when I just got straight in California, you know, from my heroin addiction,
which I think is no big secret, in like the early, early 70s.
And I went out there and it was a lot better, you know, they really treated you a lot better
helping you get off.
And so I was clean and all these emotions were coming out.
So it was kind of a sentimental piece.
Any truth to the rumor that Maureen Reagan got you hooked on heroin? _ _ _
_ _ Not on heroin, but she did turn me on to freebase.
_ _ No, come on, we're kidding.
_ She's trying to help him deal with the pain of the 600 pound guy in the wayfarers on his chest.
That's right, you said this will take care of it.
All right, Jimbo, the stage is yours.
You know, you have that tremulous delicacy of a poet.
You know, it's funny, you read like a poet to me.
I know people, friends, when I call them up on the phone, they go, is this something,
did a parent just die or something?
A tremulous voice.
Yeah, it's very tentative.
But I guess you express yourself through your art, please do.
_ Spoken word piece from Jim Cowell.
All right.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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Okay, the first piece is, this is a piece _ from the Praying Mantis album. _
It's called To The National Endowment Of The Arts. _ _
It's a fact that before his death, Robert Mapplethorpe placed 36 custom cameras
with automatic timers set to last up to nine years
in various bedrooms of your board members, of your congressmen, of your senators,
of your cabinet, of your fantasies, your well-kept hidden lusts and impotence,
your dazzling hubris and inertia. _
So some night there'll be a flash you'll barely notice.
You'll think it's a distant lightning, perhaps, and I suppose in a way it is.
It is heat lightning from his grave.
It's a freeze frame of your virulent hypocrisy which, exposed,
loses all immunity in its systems, its censoring bureaucracy.
It's a record to be collected someday _ soon by 36 righteous men
who are waiting, waiting, even now, _ _ your doors. _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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_ [E] _ _ I'm [N] not even lying on what you were doing before.
_ We're back with Jim.
Give me one second.
_ Jim's going to do a second piece.
This is called Sampling Nietzsche.
Well, I got so tired of hearing all these, like, rock and rollers from the stage
quoting Nietzsche lately, and especially the ubiquitous Nietzsche quote,
What does not kill you only serves to make you stronger,
which is a smart thing to say, of course, and it might be true,
but that I wrote my version of it, which is,
What does not kill me only serves to make me sleep until 3.30. the next afternoon. Thank _ _ _ _ _ _ you, Jim. _ Of _ course, we're _ referring to Ray