The most successful stuff is sold to you as indispensable social information. The message in the music is, ‘We are terribly, terribly slick and suave, and if you listen to us, you can probably get a leg up in society, too.’
My general take on American music since 1969 is that it’s just getting stiffer and people are getting more uptight – audience, performance, and palace guard.
And it’s a – it’s a term that’s based on contempt; it’s a term that’s based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism, and, everything that’s rotten about rock ‘n’ roll.
If you give a good performance, something that gets some feeling across to people, that’s such a rare gift. It’s underestimated at this point in history, when the music biz is inevitably turning into a kind of politics.
Well, it wasn’t like I was going to run out and score heroin and score an ounce of coke – but incidentally, on the road, I would usually get tanked up and as stoned as I possibly could to go on stage. And offstage, it would be a demon that would come up about twice a week.
There are no pimps, no whores, no transvestites – gone. Now that’s more the culture I’m comfortable in … I don’t like it in the house, you know what I mean, but I like it somewhere around.
