Blank on Blank

“I‘m just an obnoxious guy who can make it appear charming, that’s what they pay me to do.” – Bill Murray in 1988 as told to T.J. English

This previously unheard interview was recorded at Bill Murray’s house in New Jersey. T.J. was writing a profile for Irish America magazine. Bill’s dog was there and had an interest in his pants. Vintage Bill Murray on fame, Cadillacs, taking care of his mom and talking to women while famous.

Watch the animated version of this episode from our series with PBS Digital Studios: http://blankonblank.org/bill-murray

Blank on Blank

“I‘m a coward, I didn’t want to die” – Patty Hearst in 1982, as told to Larry Grobel.

Larry Grobel told us the story about a time back in the early 80s when he borrowed a swimsuit at the Playboy mansion. It seems that back then, Hugh Hefner kept spare trunks at the ready whenever his guests felt the urge to test the waters beneath the famous Grotto. The reason Larry took an impromptu plunge? He wanted to nab the first interview with the infamous Patty Hearst after she got out of prison.

Was the woman who was famously kidnapped in the 1970s–and then caught on camera robbing a bank with her captors–a victim or a criminal?  Here’s the unheard audio with the famous interview Larry did for Playboy.

Watch the animated version of this episode from our series with PBS Digital Studios: http://blankonblank.org/patty-hearst

Blank on Blank

“I don’t know what the ‘big time’ is” – Tom Waits in 1988 as told to Chris Roberts

Imagine what would happen if you sat down on a couch next to Tom Waits? Here’s the tape.

Watch the animated version of this episode from our series with PBS Digital Studios: blankonblank.org/tom-waits

Blank on Blank

“I keep my mouth shut now. I’ve turned into a professional coward.” – Hunter S. Thompson in 1967 with Studs Terkel.

The interview was recorded shortly after the release of Thompson’s book, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga. He spent more than a year living, drinking and riding with the Hells Angels up and down the California coast. Hear what he learned.

Watch the animated version of this episode from our series with PBS Digital Studios: http://blankonblank.org/hunter-thompson

Blank on Blank

“I carried a knife taped to my leg. I never used it but it was there.” – Dustin Hoffman in 1971.

Listening to this interview tape from the Pacifica Radio Archives, we were drawn to this idea of the struggles that pop up between different generations and the internal questions one confronts as he or she gets older — and becomes famous.

Watch the animated version of this episode from our series with PBS Digital Studios: http://blankonblank.org/dustin

Blank on Blank

The interview originally aired on Wallace’s television show, The Mike Wallace Interview, on February 25, 1959. The show ran from 1957 to 1960 and now more than 65 episodes are housed at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

Read More

Mike Wallace rose to prominence in the mid-1950s with the New York City television interview program, Night-Beat. That became the nationally televised prime-time program, The Mike Wallace Interview.

Who are you, Ayn Rand? You have an accent, which is?

Russian.

Russian. You were born in Russia?

Yes.

Came here?

Oh, about 30 years ago.

And whence did this philosophy of yours come?

Out of my own mind, with the sole acknowledgement of a debt to Aristotle, who is the only philosopher that ever influenced me. I devised the rest of my philosophy myself.

You are married?

Yes.

Your husband, is he an industrialist?

No. He’s an artist. His name is Frank O’Conner.

Does he live from his painting?

He’s just beginning to study painting. He was a designer before.

Is he supported in his efforts by the state?

Most certainly not.

He’s supported by you for the time being?

No, by his own work, actually, in the past. [CROSSTALK] By me if necessary, but that isn’t quite necessary.

Mike Wallace: There is no contradiction here, in that you help him?

No, because you see I am in love with him selfishly. It is to my own interest to help him if he ever needed it. I would not call that a sacrifice, because I take selfish pleasure in it. I say that man is entitled to his own happiness. And that he must achieve it himself. But that he cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy. And nor should he wish to sacrifice himself for the happiness of others. I hold that man should have self-esteem.

And cannot man have self-esteem if he loves his fellow man? Christ, every important moral leader in man’s history, has taught us that we should love one another. Why then is this kind of love in your mind immoral?

It is immoral if it is a love placed above oneself. It is more than immoral, it’s impossible. Because when you are asked to love everybody indiscriminately. That is to love people without any standard. To love them regardless of whether they have any value or virtue, you are asked to love nobody.

But in a sense, in your book you talk about love as if it were a business deal of some kind. Isn’t the essence of love, that it is above self-interest?

Well, What would it mean to have a love above self-interest? It would mean, for instance, that a husband would tell his wife, if he were moral according to the conventional morality, that I am marrying you just for your own sake, I have no personal interest in it, but I’m so unselfish, that I am marrying you only for your own good.

Should husbands and wives tally up…

Would any woman like that? I agree with you that [marriage] should be treated like a business deal. But every business deal has to have its own terms and its own kind of currency. And in love the currency is virtue. You love people, not for what you do for them, or what they do for you. You love them for their values, their virtues. You don’t love causes. You don’t love everybody indiscriminately. You love only those who deserve it. Man has free will. If a man wants love he should correct his flaws, and he may deserve it. But he cannot expect the unearned.

There are very few us then in this world, by your standards, who are worthy of love.

Unfortunately…. yes… very few. But it is open to everybody, to make themselves worthy of it and that is all that my morality offers them. [CROSSTALK] A way to make themselves worthy of love, although that’s not the primary motive.

Isn’t it possible that we are all basically lonely people and we are all basically our brothers’ keepers?

Nobody has ever given a reason why men should be their brother’s keepers, and you see the examples around you, of men perishing by the attempt to be their brother’s keepers.

You have no faith in anything?

Faith…. no.

Only in your mind.

That is not faith. That is a conviction. Yes….. I have no faith at all. I only hold convictions.

As we said at the outset, “If Ayn Rand’s ideas were ever to take hold, they would revolutionize the world.” And to those who would reject her philosophy, Miss Rand hurls this challenge. “For the past 2000 years the world has been dominated by other philosophies. Look around you, consider the results.” We thank Ayn Rand for adding her portrait to our gallery. One of the people other people are interested in. Mike Wallace… Good Bye.

Ayn Rand on Objectivism

“First of all, I do not call it Randism, and I don’t like that name. I call it Objectivism. Meaning a philosophy based on objective reality. Now let me explain it as briefly as I can. First my philosophy is based on the concept that reality exists as an objective absolute. That man’s mind, reason, is his means of perceiving it. And that men need a rational morality. I am primarily the creator of a new court of morality which has so far been believed impossible. Namely, a morality not based on faith, not on arbitrary whim, not on emotion, not on arbitrary edict, mystical or social, but on reason. A morality which can be proved by means of logic. Which can be demonstrated to be true and necessary. Now may I define what my morality is, because this is merely an introduction. My morality is based on man’s life as a standard of value. And since man’s mind is his basic means of survival, I hold that if man wants to live on earth, and to live as a human being, he has to hold reason as an absolute. By which I mean, that he has to hold reason as his only guide to action. And that he must live by the independent judgment of his own mind. That his highest moral purpose is the achievement of his own happiness. And that he must not force other people nor accept their right to force him. That each man must live as an end in himself and follow his own rational self-interest.”

Religion

Reviews have said that, “You scorn churches, and the concept of God.” Are these accurate criticisms?

Ah.. Yes… I agree with the fact, but not the estimate of this criticism. Namely, if I am challenging the base of all these institutions, I’m challenging the moral code of altruism. The precept that man’s moral duty is to live for others. That man must sacrifice himself to others. Which is the present day morality

What do you mean by “sacrifice himself for others”? Now were getting to the point.

Since I’m challenging the base, I necessarily will challenge the institutions you name, which are a result of that morality. And now what is self-sacrifice?

Yes…What is self-sacrifice? You say that you do not like the altruism by which we live. You like a certain kind of Ayn Randist selfishness.

I will say that, “I don’t like” is too weak a word. I consider it evil. And self-sacrifice is the precept that man needs to serve others, in order to justify his existence. That his moral duty is to serve others. That is what most people believe today.

Yes… We’re taught to feel concern for our fellow man. To feel responsible for his welfare. To feel that we are, as religious people might put it, children under god, and responsible one for the other. Now why do you rebel? What’s wrong with this philosophy?

But that is in fact what makes man a sacrificial animal. That man must work for others, concern himself with others, or be responsible for them. That is the role of a sacrificial object. I say that man is entitled to his own happiness. And that he must achieve it himself. But that he cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy. And nor should he wish to sacrifice himself for the happiness of others. I hold that man should have self-esteem.

The Democratic Process

“I object to the idea that the people have the right to vote on everything. The traditional American system was a system based on the idea that majority will prevailed only in public or political affairs. And that it was limited by inalienable individual rights, therefore I do not believe that a majority can vote a man’s life, or property, or freedom away from him. Therefore, I do not believe that if a majority votes on any issue, that this makes the issue right, it doesn’t.”

“There is nothing wrong with the democratic process in politics. We arrive at it the way we arrived by the American Constitution as it used to be. By the constitutional powers, as we had it, people elect officials, but the powers of those officials, the powers of government are strictly limited. They will have no right to initiate force or compulsion against any citizen, except a criminal. Those who have initiated force will be punished by force, and that is the only proper function of government. What we would not permit is the government to initiate force against people who have hurt no one, who have not forced anyone. We would not give the government, or the majority, or any minority, the right to take the life or the property of others. That was the original American system.”

“I’m opposed to all forms of control. I am for an absolute laissez-faire, free, unregulated economy. Let me put it briefly. I’m for the separation of state and economics. Just as we had separation of state and church, which led to peaceful co-existence among different religions, after a period of religious wars, so the same applies to economics. If you separate the government from economics, if you do not regulate production and trade, you will have peaceful cooperation, and harmony, and justice among men.”

Robber Barons

“This country was made not by robber barons, but by independent men, by industrialists, who succeeded on sheer ability. By ability, I mean without political force, help, or compulsion. But at the same time there were men, industrialists, who did use government power as a club to help them against competitors. They were the original collectivists. Today, the liberals believe that the same compulsion should be used against the industrialists for the sake of workers, but the basic principle there is, “Should there be any compulsion?” And the regulations are creating robber barons, they are creating capitalists with government help, which is the worst of all economic phenomenon.”

Watch the full interview

Ayn Rand was born Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1905. She was born into a family that was Jewish but non-observant. During the Russian Revolution, the family fled to the Crimea, but later returned to Saint Petersburg where she was one of the first women to enroll in Petrograd State University. Already an avowed atheist, it was here at university that she was introduced to the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato, and to the writings of Nietzsche.

“Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.”

“Love is the expression of one’s values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.”

“Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.”

“If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.”

David Gerlach

Patrick Smith

Amy Drozdowska

Diana Tantillo

via APM

“Frozen Wonder” by Marc Frederick Teitler

“Adagietto 30 (b)” by John Horler And Chris Laurence

Blank on Blank

Joni Mitchell was interviewed on November 3, 1986. Joe was writing Off the Record–his oral history of rock and roll.

Read More

Joe Smith was a longtime record executive and one-time radio DJ. From 1986-88, he interviewed more than 240 music artists and executives to write Off the Record. Then in 2012, he donated more than 230 hours of interviews on cassette tapes to the Library of Congress.

People were very protective of me. Overly so. I was in the industry for a long time before I had any idea of what drugs people were doing. I mean, I just said, “Jeez, looking awful skinny. Why doesn’t he have an appetite.” I was very very sheltered when I first entered into it. I was young for my age. Not as naïve as they expected. I don’t know why I seem to bring that out in people.

Yeah, I like my freedom. I like to do my own grocery shopping. People do recognize you. They are kind of shocked. Some people like it. It makes them feel at ease. It confirms their hopes that you are in fact similar to them. Some people can’t stand it. One time I sat down, we had good tickets on the floor at some rock concert. We moved in, we got there late. The fellow sitting next to me said, “You can’t sit here.” I said, “Why not? I’ve got tickets.” “But you’re Joni Mitchell.” I said, “So?” He said, “You shouldn’t be sitting there. You should be backstage, or you should be up in that box.” He was very annoyed. Some people are upset to see you doing ordinary things. Those people, if they were a celebrity, they would have an entourage. You know if you see yourself as a kingly type, then you need your serfs and your army and someone around you.

I like to move around. I travel. I’ve driven across country by myself. When I felt that fame, people were nosing me out, well I moved on. I used traveling names. Wigs, if necessary. I didn’t think I had much of a following in the south. I thought I was anonymous down there so I kept to the south. I found in certain pockets that I was quite recognizable, and I just hit a wig store.

At that time I was pretty much a. “Good Time Charlie.” I was a bad student in the school system. I failed the 12th grade. I had done my book reports from classic comics!

Oh really? (laughs)

I was anti-intellectual to the nth. Basically I liked to dance and paint, and that was about it. As far as serious discussions went, at that time most of them were overtly pseudo-intellectual and boring to see teenagers sitting around solving the problems of the world. I thought, “All things considered, I’d rather be dancing.” (laughs)

I liked playing in small clubs. I really liked holding the attention of thirty or forty people. I never liked the roar of the big crowd. I didn’t like the sound of people gasping at the mere mention of my name. It horrified me.

Also for a lot of reasons, because I knew people were fickle, I knew that they were buying an illusion. I didn’t want there to be such a gulf between who I presented and who I was. As Geffen pointed out, he said, “You’re the only star I ever met that wanted to be ordinary.” I never really wanted to be a star. I didn’t like entering a room with all eyes on me. I still don’t really like the attention of a birthday party. I prefer Christmas, which is everybody’s holiday. It’s just my nature. I don’t like to be that zeroed in on en masse. Over the years I’ve adjusted to it. Now I’m the other way around. You can give me 400,000 hostile people and I won’t even break sweat. If you give me 200 adoring people, my mouth will dry out. (laughs)

I don’t know how to sell out. If I tried to sell out I don’t think I could. By that I mean to make an attempt to make a commercial record. I just make them and I think if I was a kid I would like this song. So you have to have a certain amount of grab-ability, initially, and then something that wears well, that you’ll love for years to come. That’s what anything fine is. It’s recognized in painting. It’s not recognized … I’m just working in a toss-away industry. I’m a fine artist working in a commercial arena, so that’s my cross to bear.

I have lost my credibility as a hit maker because of these side excursions into other branches of music by not being consistent. Consistency seems to be all important.

What do you regret?

Oh I would do the same thing in a minute.

[crosstalk] never a minute of regret for that. You’ve been there.

Are you kidding? Oh I don’t. No, I have no regret.

Have you accepted the fact that you don’t sell more? Does it make you angry or frustrated?

What I’m telling you is no it doesn’t make me angry. It makes me curious: Why?

Do you ever get periods where nothing comes when you’re writing? Are there dry periods there, or are you prolific enough to keep writing?

Well, musically, I would never run dry. Any time I sit down to an instrument, I could write a song. I try not to steal from myself, but the modalities create similarities. Musically, I don’t think I’d ever dry up. I trust my musical invention. Lyrics are hard.

Joni Mitchell on Living in SoHo

“I got in before SoHo was SoHo. It was just Little Italy when I was in there. It’s still off the touristy track. It’s just away from the Saturday action, the crowds and everything. It’s too expensive. It’s insane. You’ve got to be a billionaire to live on Manhattan now.”

Finding Her Voice

“When I was 19 I went to art school. I had six months of teaching myself to play baritone ukulele under my belt, so was sort of a novice folkie. … I was singing folk songs at that time. At that time I was a folk singer. … Then I went to Toronto to see the Mariposa Folk Festival, actually to see Buffy Sainte-Marie. I still didn’t have an image of myself as a musician. I found I couldn’t work and I didn’t have enough money to get in the union, $160, I didn’t have it. I worked in women’s wear. I worked in a department store and I could barely make ends meet. I finally found a scab club in Toronto that allowed me to play. I played there for a couple of months. Then I married Chuck Mitchell and I moved across the border. We still were scrambling to work. As a couple, we were making $15 a night. There were clubs that were very cliquish that we couldn’t get into. In Detroit, we had a fifth floor walkup apartment and it had some extra rooms. When Eric Anderson and David Blue and Tom Rush, and people passed through Detroit, we  billeted them there. Bruce Langhorne, they used to stay with us. Eric taught me a couple of open tunings. He taught me Open G and Drop D Modal tuning. Once I got the open tunings for some reason, I began to get the harmonic sophistication that I heard that my musical fountain inside was excited by. Once I got some interesting chords to play with, my writing began to come.”

Learning to Write

“My husband had an education. He had a degree in Literature. I married into a camp of literary types. They, not they so much, but Chuck in particular really didn’t believe that you could write unless you read a lot. Considering me an illiterate, he didn’t give me a great deal of encouragement regarding my writing, but Tom Rush did. Tom would come through and say, “Do you have any new songs?” I’d play him a batch of them. He’s say, “Any more?” I’d say, “There’s one more.” I always would hold one out for some reason thinking it was too sensitive, too feminine for him. That would always be the one he’d choose. He chose “Urge for Going”, he chose “Circle Game.” Where he traveled and played those songs, clubs opened up to me. Because the song was my introduction to that club work. I was playing as far south as Florida. I played in Fort Bragg, which is interesting, to gung-ho soldiers while everybody I knew was burning their draft cards and claiming homosexuality and everything and anything they could to get out of the draft. I played in Charleston, which was to the Navy, and to these women from Savannah, who were the worst audience in the world. They talked all the way through your set because if the boyfriend gave you a moment of attention, they couldn’t stand it. It would always be the buzz of women in Charleston.”

Being Categorized

“I did read my press. For the most part I found that initially they always lumped me in with the women. Whereas in fact what I was doing was not what most of the women were doing. My peer group was really Phil Ochs, and Dylan, and Eric, and David Blue. Basically that was my peer group. They had me lumped in with Judy Collins, who didn’t really write at that time, and Baez. Mainly that I was a woman with an acoustic guitar. … Then they lumped me in with Janis and Carly.”

Bad Reviews

“It bothers me on this level because it’s chain reaction. That people, a certain amount of the populous are sheep, and if a critic lambastes you, unfortunately even though he’s a shoddy little writer to begin with, underpaid, jealous to boot, has an ax to grind. That his word can influence a certain amount of people who can’t think for themselves. Plus, these reviews do tend to get accumulative. They tend to get regurgitated. Lazy reviewers look up other people’s reviews and they write the same thing, so you get people writing crap based on crap.”

She had “it,” said Hedi Slimane, head designer at Saint Laurent, who named Joni one of his muses.

Joni appeared as one of the faces of the fashion house’s ad campaign and she also landed on the cover of New York Magazine’s Spring 2015 fashion issue, proving that some styles are timeless. Read Joni’s awesome interview with in that issue.

“I have always thought of myself as a painter derailed by circumstance.” Check out her paintings.

On March 31, 2015 Joni was found unconscious in her home in LA and rushed to the hospital. Original reports that was in a coma were dismissed by her reps:

“Contrary to rumors circulating on the Internet today, Joni is not in a coma. Joni is still in the hospital – but she comprehends, she’s alert, and she has her full senses. A full recovery is expected.”

Joni has made several health problems during her life — polio and its neurological effects, scarlet fever, dengue —  and has said in the past that she suffers from Morgellons disease, a mysterious skin condition that manifests in sores and fiber-like growths. Here’s how she described the disease to New York Magazine:

“Fibers in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm. They cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable, or mineral.”

Information surrounding the disorder is hazy, as it is not yet a widely accepted diagnosis. Some medical experts believe that it is in fact a psychosomatic illness.

In the 60’s and 70’s, Laurel Canyon – a neighborhood of winding streets tucked into the Hollywood Hills off Sunset Boulevard in LA – was the center of the musical universe. It was where stars like Joni, Neil Young, David Crosby, and John and Michelle Phillips all lived, played, and made music.

The music that came out of those hills even became known as the “Laurel Canyon sound” – folksy, melodic, and tuned in to the political and cultural leanings of the time.

See what Joni’s life was like at Laurel Canyon

“When I first came out to L.A. [in 1968], my friend [photographer] Joel Bernstein found an old book in a flea market that said: Ask anyone in America where the craziest people live and they’ll tell you California. Ask anyone in California where the craziest people live and they’ll say Los Angeles. Ask anyone in Los Angeles where the craziest people live and they’ll tell you Hollywood. Ask anyone in Hollywood where the craziest people live and they’ll say Laurel Canyon. And ask anyone in Laurel Canyon where the craziest people live and they’ll say Lookout Mountain. So I bought a house on Lookout Mountain.”

— Joni Mitchell, as told to Vanity Fair

Graham Nash wrote the classic Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song  about life at Joni’s house in Laurel Canyon.

I’ll light the fire, you place the flowers in the vase that you bought today.

Executive Producer

David Gerlach

Animator

Patrick Smith

Series Producer

Amy Drozdowska

Colorist

Diana Tantillo

Joni Mitchell

“Urge For Going”

“Both Sides Now”

via APM

Ken Anderson and Rebecca Ruth Hall “November Song”

Rick Ruskin “King James Position”

Vasco “Love In An Air Baloon”

Silvain Vanot “Lullaby In Blue”

Blank on Blank

One afternoon in November 1966, Frank Kofsky took the train out to Long Island. He was about to spend a day with John Coltrane. This interview comes from the Pacifica Radio Archives.

Read More

Frank Kofsky was an author, scholar, jazz critic, and professor of history at California State University at Sacramento.

Do you live far outside of…  wherever we are now?

Well I guess I’m about four or five miles down the road (laughs).

You really sound like Farmer John (laughs).

Yeah man, when I come up here, I have to do all… to get everything I want to get—You know, I got to the store and do all that because I don’t want to come back up here.

Where do you play at home?

Anywhere. There’s a room over the garage out there that I’m getting fixed now to… I think it’s going to be my practice room. You know sometimes you build a room and it ends up you can still go in the toilet, so I don’t know, I hope I like it but… I keep a horn on the piano and I have a horn in my bedroom. The flute’s usually back there because when I go down tired, I lay down and practice and…

About how many hours a day do you play, would you say?

Not too much at this time. I find that it’s only when something is trying to come through you know that I really practice and then it’s just, I don’t know how many hours, it’s just all day.

I did a foolish thing, I got dissatisfied with my mouth piece (laughs). I had some work done on this thing and instead of making it better, it ruined it. It really discouraged me, you know, a little bit because they were certain aspects of that playing that certain fast thing that I was reaching for that I couldn’t push because I had damaged this thing… so I just had to curtail it (laughs). But at that moment, it was so vivid in my mind, the difference in what I was getting on the horn, as soon as I put that horn in my mouth, I could hear it. I could feel it and I just stopped, I just went into other things. In fact, soprano’s one of the reasons I started (laughs) getting dissatisfied with that tenor mouthpiece, see? Because the sound of that soprano was actually so much closer to me in my ear.

I didn’t want admit this damn thing because I said well the tenor’s my horn, this is my baby but the soprano, there’s still something there, just the voice of it that I can’t… It’s just really beautiful. I really like it.

The people I was staying with have a friend, a young lady and she was downtown at one Malcolm X’s speeches and, lo and behold, who should plop down in the seat next to her but John Coltrane (laughs).

(laughs) Yeah

 Were you impressed with him?

Definitely, definitely. I felt I had to see the man. I was quite impressed.

Some musicians have said there’s a relationship between some of Malcolm’s ideas and the music.

Well, I think that music, being expression of the human heart or the human being itself, does express just what is happening. The whole of human experience at that particular time is being expressed. In any situation that we find in our lives, when there’s something we feel should be better, we must exert effort to try and make it better.

So it’s the same socially, musically, politically, in any department of your life. I think music is an instrument. It can create the initial thought pattern that can create a change, you see, in the thinking of the people.

I mean I want to be a force for real good. In other words, I know that there are bad forces. I know that there are forces out here that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good.

What were you looking for John, do you want some cigarettes or…?

No, I’m just sitting up because my back is wet and I just need to get off the chair.

I don’t have any more of my prepared questions to ask you, or my improvised questions (laughs) to ask you. I don’t know when I’ll ever get the chance to sit you down with a tape recorder again (laughs). Do you have anything else to get on here?

I think you man, well you just about covered it, I believe…just about covered it.

Kofsky turned on his tape recorder when he got into Coltrane’s car. The two men drove through town and made a few stops along the way. Coltrane had moved to Huntington, New York with his wife Alice and their children in 1964. They lived in a modest house on a quiet, tree-lined street. It was a home to raise a family. Coltrane had just turned 40. He would die from liver cancer less than a year later.

Coltrane on Malcolm X

“I was living downtown, I was in the hotel and I saw the posters and realized he was going to be over there. So I just said, ‘well I’m going over there and see this cat because I’d never seen him.’ I was quite impressed.

Brotherhood

“I believe with brotherhood there would be no poverty, and also with brotherhood there would be no war.”

Performing

“I only hope whoever’s out there listening, I hope they enjoying it. If they’re not enjoying it, then I’d rather not be there. I like an audience that does show what they feel and responds.”

Adding A Sax Player

“It helps me stay alive sometimes because I find that physically, man, the pace I’ve been leading, it’s so hard. I’ve gained so much weight. It’s just been a little hard physically, and I feel that I like to have somebody there in case I just can’t get that strength”

Spirituality

“I’ve got to grow through certain phases of this to other understandings and more consciousness and awareness of just what it is that I’m supposed to understand about it, and I’m sure all this will be part of the music”

Learning

“If there’s something you don’t understand, you have to go humbly to it. You don’t go to school and sit down and say I know what you’re getting ready to teach me, you know? You sit there and you learn. You open your mind. you absorb. You’ve got to be quiet, you’ve got to be still to do this.”

Miles Davis and John Coltrane had a complicated relationship. Coltrane got his start as part of Davis’ band but by the end of the 1950’s he was well on his way to making a name for himself and split to go his own way. Both possessed of large personalities, they respected each others’ musicianship but were also highly competitive – a dynamic that probably pushed both towards the groundbreaking work each would produce in the years following.

I was going with a girl who was an antique dealer in France. She gave this soprano sax to me and I gave it to Coltrane. I gave that thing to Trane, man, and it’s probably still in his hand. He probably died with it in his mouth! – Miles Davis

Some of Coltrane’s most influential recording were made while he was signed to Impulse! Records, from 1961 – 1965. For these albums, the world got to hear a magical quartet: Coltrane on saxophone, McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums.

The group recorded the legendary A Love Supreme at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey in December 1964.

Amazingly, the group only played A Love Supreme live once, during a performance in France in 1965. Watch it here.

By that same year, the quartet was starting to break up and Coltrane was moving towards a more abstract style.

 Coltrane had three saxophones: an alto, a tenor, and a soprano. The tenor pictured above was donated to the National Museum of American History by Coltrane’s son, Ravi.

It’s a Mark VI tenor made in 1965 – the same year A Love Supreme was released –  by Henry Selmer Paris, a manufacturer of high-end instruments. More on Coltrane at the Smithsonian.

David Gerlach

Patrick Smith

Amy Drozdowska

Diana Tantillo

John Coltrane

“In a Sentimental Mood”

“My Favorite Things”

APM Music

Simon Thorpe (PRS), John Donaldson (BMI)

“Break Out”

Jean Gobinet (SACEM)

“I Was Born Here”

Colin Towns (PRS)

“Downcast”

Michele Generale (SIAE), Femi Olasehinde (PRS), Paolo Porta (SIAE)

“Run Time”

Dutch National Archives

Impulse Records / Charles Stewart

Blank on Blank

In the autumn of 2012, Lisa Potts rediscovered — literally, behind her dresser — a taped cassette of a long-lost interview with Bradbury that she made as a college student journalist back in 1972. Bradbury was doing a lecture at Chapman College in Orange County, and Lisa and Chadd were tasked with picking up Bradbury from his home in West L.A.

Read More

You say you’re a madman. How long have you been in this state of mind? It sounds pretty wonderful.

Oh, since I was 9 or 10. You learn to live with your crazy enthusiasms which nobody else shares, and then you find a few other nuts like yourself, and they’re your friends for a lifetime. That’s what friends are, the people who share your crazy outlook and protect you from the world, because nobody else is going to give a damn what you’re doing, so you need a few other people like yourself.

Do you feel you have to be protected from the world that surrounds you or…

While you’re growing, sure, because you’re tender and you doubt yourself, and… Friendship is an island that you retreat to and you all fall on the floor and laugh at all the other ninnies that don’t have enough brains to have your good taste, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um… this is kind of a weird question. We had an article in our newspaper that said Ray Bradbury has never driven a car or been in an airplane. Is that true?

That’s right. What do you think I’m doing here in the back seat?

You’ve in your whole life ever driven?

Never have been behind the wheel.

Why is that?

Oh, it seemed a good idea. That’s all.

Are you scared of cars or scared or …

I’m scared of myself. I think I’d be a bad driver. I’m scared of cars, period. I’ve had too many friends killed now, and I’ve seen too many people killed in my life when I drove across the country when I was 12. I’m sure that has a lot to do with it. If you see a few real dead bodies with brains on the pavement, it does a lot to change your attitude. It means you can get it too. I’ve had a lot of relatives killed. I’ve had a lot of dear friends killed. It’s stupid. The whole activity is stupid.

What about… why don’t you like to go on airplanes? Are you scared of them, too?

I don’t like being up high. It took me 3 days to get to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

So you do write very realistically?

It’s a combination of realism with fantasy. But no, I don’t like realism. We already know the real facts about life, most of the basic facts. I’m not interested in repeating what we already know. We know about sex, about violence, about murder, about war. All these things, by the time we’re 18, we’re up to here. From there on we need interpreters. We need poets. We need philosophers. We need theologians, who take the same basic facts and work with them and help us make do with those facts. Facts alone are not enough. It’s interpretation.

We’d like to know how you go about writing a story. Like, do you take other people’s opinions? Where do you get your ideas?

You don’t pay any attention to anything anyone else says, no opinions. The important thing is to explode with a story, to emotionalize a story, not to think it. You start thinking, the story’s going to die on its feet. It’s like anything else. If an athlete is running around the high hurdles, let’s say, and he starts thinking about the next hurdle, he’s doomed. He’s going to knock it down. People who take books on sex to bed become frigid.  You get self-conscious. You can’t think a story. You can’t think, “I shall do a story to improve mankind.” Well, it’s nonsense. All the great stories, all the really worthwhile plays, are emotional experiences. If you have to ask yourself whether or not you love a girl or you love a boy, forget it. You don’t. A story is the same way. You either feel a story and need to write it, or you better not write it.

Did you have any formal training in writing, of any type?

Not formal, no. But I am a dedicated madman, and that becomes its own training. If you can’t resist, if the typewriter is like candy to you, you train yourself for a lifetime. Every single day of your life, some wild new thing to be done. You write to please yourself. You write for the joy of writing. Then your public reads you and it begins to gather around your selling a potato peeler in an alley, you know. The enthusiasm, the joy itself draws me. So that means every day of my life I’ve written. When the joy stops, I’ll stop writing.

In most of your books, the Martian Chronicles is about Mars, but even in Illustrated Man, everything that happens in outer space is on Mars. I was wondering, are you really preoccupied with Mars, or why are you?

Oh, I think because it’s closest to us. You grow up with the romance of Mars. When I was a kid, some of the earliest clear photographs of Mars were being published from the Lowell Observatory in Arizona. Since it’s the nearest planet, and we know, we’ve always had this feeling that someday, if we went anywhere, it would be to the moon and then to mars. That’s the way it’s turning out. We’ll be landing there in a few years now.

Bradbury on Dreams

“It’s rare you get an idea from a dream. I can’t really recall a story that ever worked out that way. I think in 35 years of writing, that I’ve ever had a dream that held up. They’re much too dislocated.”

Fashion

“I was partially raised by an aunt who was a dress designer, so I was around her studio all of my early life. I know materials. I can look through Harper’s Bazaar and decide what works and what doesn’t, or any other magazine, Seventeen if you wish.”

Music

“I’m turning into a full-fledged lyricist, and I will probably be working with a lot of groups during the next few years. There are at least 4 or 5 folk groups or rock groups touring the country right now using the titles of my books for their names.”

Inspiration

“Edgar Allen Poe really started me when I was 8. I fell in love with everything of his.”

Fantasy

“Sometimes you have intuitive insight about how you think things are going to be, and you write that. Other times you fantasize completely, which has nothing to do with predicting the future.”

Speaking Out

“Go out and make your own speeches. People need you. Go on TV. It can be done. After you speak up a few times, people say, “Hey, we got a crazy man in the community,” and they’ll begin talking to you.”

It took a few years for Ray Bradbury to find the courage to ask a woman out.  The year was 1946. He was 22 and found himself in a bookstore in Los Angeles. A female clerk there, named Maggie, thought this trench coat-wearing young man was shoplifter.  

Suspicious, she approached him. They started talking and, as they say, “that’s all she wrote.” The couple was married for more than 50 years and had four daughters. It was Maggie who allowed Ray to develop as a writer; in the early years of their marriage, she worked full-time while Ray stayed at home to write. One chance meeting changed American literature.

Read more about the controversy here

Take a look inside Bradbury’s house pre-tear down 

Discover more Hollywood houses of scandal

Bradbury had his own TV series in the vein of shows like Twilight Zone and Tales from the Crypt. Bradbury was host, and each episode was based on one of his stories. It ran on HBO for two seasons, then on USA for an additional four seasons.

“I’m surrounded on every side by my magician’s toyshop. I’ll never starve here …. Out of all this, what do I choose to make a story? I never know where the next one will take me. And the trip: exactly one-half exhilaration, exactly one-half terror.”

Watch our favorite episodes: The Playground & Banshee

Gene Roddenberry was the creator of Star Trek and he once tried to bring Bradbury on as a writer. Bradbury declined, but he and Roddenberry struck up a friendship that lasted til the latter’s death.

Forest J. Ackerman was essentially the godfather of sci-fi – he even coined the term. He was an actor, publisher, and collector of all things sci-fi. He and Bradbury met as teenagers, when they were both members of the Los Angeles Sci-Fi Club.

Ray Harryhausen was also a member of the Los Angeles Sci-Fi Club with Bradbury during their teen years, Harryhausen went on to become one of the most celebrated special effects masters in Hollywood.

David Gerlach

Patrick Smith

Amy Drozdowska

Chris Zabriskie

“Readers! Do You Read?”

Jahzzar

“LandH”

“Planet Zero”

Blank on Blank

This conversation was recorded on March 13, 1978, for a profile Grobel was writing for Playboy. Dolly would appear on that cover of the magzine.  But take her clothes off?

Read More

I’m just pretty open and honest. There’s not just a whole lot I won’t tell you. I think most people appreciate that the fact that you’ll just be open and honest rather than putting you down by saying, “well, don’t ask silly questions.”  I would say that if you asked something I thought was a silly question, I would…

All right, here we go, when did you first use a flush toilet.

Don’t ask silly questions.[laughs] Are you serious?

Well, you know, I was laughing the other night about something. I guess… My aunt had a toilet in the bathroom and we were so fascinated. We were afraid. I was afraid to use it. I just thought it was going to suck us right down. She also had the first television we ever saw, too.

How old were you when you first saw television?

Hmm… maybe eight.

The toilet around the same time?

Yeah, I guess so. It was just all new. I was thinking about if I was on the Johnny Carson show… I just got to thinking one night, I was laughing about how nobody had ever asked me about how we bathed or what we did because we made our own soap and in the summer time we’d go to the river. We’d just all pile in the truck or something. Of course we had a creek but the river was great. That was like a big bath. We could all go in swimming and we’d wash each other’s hair. Soap was just flowing down the river. That’s where we bathed in the summer time. I was making a joke about how there was so many of us and we were so dirty, we left a ring around the little pigeon river like a bathtub.

In the winter time, we just had a pan of water and we’d wash down as far as possible, and we’d wash up as far as possible. Then when somebody cleared the room we’d wash possible. [laughs] So that’s the way it was.

How often did you bath in the winter? Like once a week or every two weeks?

We bathed once a week once a week whether we needed it or not, as the saying goes. When I was in high school, it was a big deal, I had to take a bath every night because I wanted to be clean. The kids peed on me every night. We slept three and four in the bed.

I would wash every night. And as soon as I go to bed, the kids would wet on me and I’d have to get up in the morning and do the same thing.

When they wet on you, though, did you get up and wipe yourself down or just sort of accepted it?

No, that was the only warm thing we knew in the winter time. That was almost a pleasure to get peed on because it was so cold. Lord. It was as cold in the room as it was outside. We’d bundle up to go to bed.

So, we wanted to wear lipstick and stuff and daddy didn’t want us to wear lipstick so I … We didn’t have money to buy make up anyway but we used to have this medicine and mercurochrome, and that’s what I’d take as my lipstick when I was a little kid. I always wanted to wear make-up. I’d paint my lips and see there wasn’t nothing daddy could do, he couldn’t rub that off. It stained your lips and those little bitty bottles just perfect to go around your lip line. Then I would do that and I would blot it off and daddy he’d say, “come here get that lipstick off you.” I’d say real calm, “it’s my natural color daddy.” It’s so bull.  We would always like when we wanted eyebrows we’d get burnt matches, the matches that had been burnt and you could wet them and make your little eyebrows and whatever.

Like when I was a sophomore in high school I started… the teased hair came into style and I started doing that and ever since then I’ve done it. I just liked it and I wore my skirts so tight I couldn’t hardly wiggle in them. Even as a little bitty kid, even before I had a figure I liked my clothes snug and tight. People would always kid me in school about my little butt and my little blue jeans or whatever. Mama she always understood stuff like that. If we wanted to do something, Mama just always said, “you be what you are and you don’t have to worry about nothing. If you want to say something you say it, to whoever. If you want to say something just tell them.’ And I always did and I still do.

Do you like Los Angeles at all?

For awhile it’s beautiful out here and it’s exciting. I really enjoy it for a week. After that I go LA crazy. I just got to get out of here. It’s just so crazy and wild especially the places I have to be and the people I have to be around when I’m out here most of them are so spastic and so … just involved in all sorts of weird things. Especially show people. I just have to get away from here. That old get home feeling…

The country in you starts to…

Yeah, that old country in me says, “what in the world are you doing walking on this concrete when you can be rolling in the grass?”

“I got kind of scared when I thought they wanted me to do something … I didn’t want to be naked on the front of a magazine unless everybody would know it was a joke. I wouldn’t want to be naked even then.”

Dolly’s husband, Carl Thomas Dean, is something of a mystery. They met over 50 years ago and have been married since 1966, but he is rarely seen or photographed. Here’s what Dolly had to say during this interview back in 1978:

“He’s just the funniest, wittiest guy in the world and he’s really bright. He’s not backwards at all, he just don’t have any desire to be in show business, he don’t want people have his pictures in the paper.”

“A lot of people say, ‘Oh that must be terrible for that poor man,’ this and that, but he’s the most understanding person. I love him and respect him so much because he is the same kind of person I am. He’s independent. If he needs me he won’t hesitate to say, ‘I need you so I’m coming out there,’ or if he says, ‘I’m sick you need to come home.’ I will. It’s a total understanding. It’s not like I say,’Oh you do this, you do that.'”

Willie Nelson. Miss Piggy. Sly Stallone. Carrie Underwood. Carol Burnett. Watch some amazing Dolly Duets.

“Dolly Parton at 3 A.M.”

Orders fruits and cheeses

Pats the motel mattress

And listens to ghost stories

As her aunt sleeps fully

Clothed beside her

— from Madonna Paints a Mustache by Lawrence Grobel

David Gerlach

Patrick Smith

Amy Drozdowska

Dolly Parton

“Jolene”

“Mama Say A Prayer”

“I Will Always Love You”

Blank on Blank