The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [163]
I know that Jackson perceives the world around him as completely mad. He studies CNN and the Weather Channel to check the state of the world. And I can see the admonishment in his eyes: “What have all you people done?” I see him walking around shaking his head. I’m glad he has Stevie Ray Vaughn to guide him right now [laughs]. He can find some abstract joy or guidance in music—music being an inspiring and somewhat safe haven.
In a 1971 issue of ‘Rolling Stone,’ you reviewed an album by the German actress and singer Lotte Lenya, and at the end you wrote, “It was hard for me to face up to being a girl. I thought girls were dumb. But Lotte Lenya showed me how high and low-down you can shoot being a woman.”
She was pretty tough. I only saw rare footage of her doing “Pirate Jenny,” but she was pretty strong. And when I was a teenager, I listened to Nina Simone, another strong female. But in terms of women I could relate to, there weren’t too many. I related to Lotte Lenya, but I related more to Bob Dylan. I loved Billie Holiday, but as a performer I related more to Mick Jagger.
What were some of your seminal rock & roll epiphanies?
I grew up with the whole history of rock & roll. I was a little girl when Little Richard hit the scene. I remember the first time I heard Jim Morrison on the radio: “Riders on the Storm.” We were in a car, me and a friend of mine. We stopped the car—we couldn’t go on: “What is this? What are we hearing?” I remember that sense of wonder.
When “Like a Rolling Stone” came out, I was in college—I think I was a freshman. It was so overwhelming that nobody went to class. We were just roaming around, talking about this song. I didn’t know what Dylan was talking about in the song. But it didn’t matter. It needed no translation. It just made you feel like you weren’t alone—that someone was speaking your language.
What was your vision—musically, lyrically, spiritually—at the time you recorded ‘Horses’? It was a pivotal album in its time but does not sound at all dated today.
Part of that is because it came out of five years’ work. The opening lines—“Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine”—I wrote in 1970. “Redondo Beach” was an early poem. The process of doing a record happened organically from years of improvising, gaining a voice and gathering my ideas.
But the early intention, right from my first performance with Lenny at St. Mark’s Church [in New York] in February of ’71, was merely to kick a little life into what I perceived as a dead poetry scene. It seemed self-absorbed and cliquish. It didn’t make me feel expansive or beautiful or intoxicated or elevated at all. I was trying to kick poetry in the ass.
People felt that I was stepping on hallowed ground, being irreverent. But I didn’t care because the people who were supportive were cool. What do you care when 80 percent of the poets in America were against you but you have William Burroughs on your side?
Did you read at rock & roll shows in the early days?
Sometimes I’d get jobs opening up for other acts. The New York Dolls would play with three or four other bands you never heard of, and I’d have to open the whole night. Nobody wanted to see me. I had no microphone. I’d just yell my poetry. And these guys would yell, “Get a job! Get back in the kitchen!” I just shot it back at them. But as I started developing with Lenny and Richard [Sohl, Patti Smith Group bassist], we got sturdier, and our thing started to get more defined.
I seriously worried that I was seeing the decline of rock & roll. It was stadium rock and glitter bands. It was getting square from Peter Frampton on up. So I started aggressively pursuing what we were doing. But still not self-motivated—I don’t care if anybody believes me or not. My design was to shake things up, to motivate people and bring a different type of work ethic back into rock & roll.