The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [192]
I’d be tryin’ to explain to my black friends who didn’t really feel like I should be wearin’ it, like, “Look, I love this culture, I’m down with this.” But you’re a kid, so you’re not really sure of anything, you haven’t really experienced life yet, so you don’t really know how to explain yourself to the fullest. You’re tryin’ to find your own identity and you’re stuck in that whole thing of, who am I as a person? Walkin’ through the suburbs and I’m getting called the N-word, and walkin’ through Detroit I’m getting jumped for being white. And goin’ through that identity crisis of, “Am I really not meant to touch the mike? Is this really not meant for me?”
And all this is inside you as you’re coming up as a white rapper trying to enter this black culture.
Even growing up as a kid, being the new kid in school and getting bullied, getting jumped. Kids are fucked up, kids are mean to other kids. School is a tough thing to go through. Anybody will tell you that. I didn’t really learn how to fight back till seventeen, eighteen. I reached my peak around nineteen, where people would call me and say, “Yo, I got beef with such and such—can you come help me out?” They knew I’d fight. I had a friend named Goofy Gary. He’d call me and say, “Yo, I just got jumped up at Burger King.” And I’d say, “All right, Proof, we gotta go fight for Goofy Gary. Let’s get in the car. C’mon.” Then I found myself being the aggressor, which was a little strange from the few years prior to that being the loner kid who didn’t fuck with nobody, wasn’t lookin’ for trouble.
Used to be Eminem was in the police blotter from time to time, but since that case you’ve made a conscious change.
Yeah. When I got off probation I remember sayin’ to myself, “I’m never fuckin’ up again. I’m-a learn to turn the other cheek.” I took on boxing just to get the stress out. Plus I chilled out a lot as far as the drinking and the drugs and all that stuff. Just chillin’ out on that made me see things a lot clearer and learn to rationalize a lot more. Sobering up, becoming an adult and trying to just become a businessman. Not sayin’ that I don’t still got it in me. Not sayin’ I’m not still down for mine. But things changed.
What I want to do is make records, get respect, have fun, enjoy life and see my daughter grow up. I don’t feel like I portray myself as a gangster; I feel like I portray myself as somebody who won’t be bullied or punked. If I feel like I’m being attacked and somebody comes at me sideways with something I didn’t start, then that’s a different story. But I just try to do what I do, get respect, and that’s it. If I can make people laugh and spark some controversy, good. It is entertainment.
BONO
by Jann S. Wenner
November 3, 2005
What was your childhood in Dublin like?
I grew up in what you would call a lower-middle-class neighborhood. You don’t have the equivalent in America. Upper-working-class? But a nice street and good people. And, yet, if I’m honest, a sense that violence was around the corner.
Home was a pretty regular three-bedroom house. The third bedroom, about the size of a cupboard, they called the “box room”—which was my room. Mother departed the household early; died at the graveside of her own father. So I lost my grandfather and my mother in a few days, and then it became a house of men. And three, it turns out, quite macho men—and all that goes with that. The aggression thing is something I’m still working at. That level of aggression, both outside and inside, is not normal or appropriate.
You’re this bright, struggling teenager, and you’re in this place that looks like it has very few possibilities for you. The general attitude toward you from your father—and just the Irish attitude—was “Who the fuck do you think you are? Get real.” Is that correct?
Bob Hewson—my father—comes from the inner city of Dublin. A real Dublin man but loves the opera. Must be a little grandiose himself, okay? He is an autodidact, conversant in Shakespeare. His passion is music—he’s a great tenor. The great sadness of his