The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [36]
Was that year off hard for you?
I’m basically a lazy person. It’s never hard for me to relax. But I do enjoy doin’ things. The work I’m doin’ is not work to me. It’s fun. See, it’s like a hobby that I’m gettin’ paid for and truly is part of my relaxation. This is really it for me.
Then why did you take a year off?
Well, I felt that I should do it just because I wanted to. Now, it was necessary, of course. I hired a psychiatrist so that when we went into court, I thought it might be beneficial. You tell a judge somethin’ like a cat been usin’ somethin’ for fifteen years, and he, all of a sudden the man say he ain’t gonna do it no more, and the cat gonna say, “Sure, come on now, let’s get down to the facts.” But if a psychiatrist says it, for some reason, at least the judge will kinda lean towards believin’ the cat. So that was the whole purpose of the whole thing. Because, let’s face it, man, if a guy doesn’t want to stop doin’ somethin’, the judge, the psychiatrist, the jailer, ain’t nobody gonna—the people stay in jail five years and come out on the street one day right back at it.
I believe—I’ll tell you somethin’, now, I had the psychiatrist, and the man had a legal right to what you call trim me down a little less each day until I got down to nothin’. I didn’t do that. The doctor didn’t believe this himself, that I have never in all my years, I’ve never seen nothin’ like this in my life. They even tested me, man. They thought somebody must be slippin’ me somethin’. So they cut my visitation off, just to make sure, and I still was the same way, so they said, no, it can’t be that. Not only was I not doing anything, but they try to say do you want anything to help you sleep? You want any sleepin’ pills? I said, well, I ain’t been takin’ sleepin’ pills. I don’t figure I need to take ’em now. So and that was kind of a shocker. Because the hospital didn’t believe it, the doctor didn’t believe it. And man, they tested me two or three times, the usual testin’ that they do on you. They sent me up here to McLean Hospital in Boston, because this was ordered by the court. Like, they called me up one day and I’m workin’ like hell, you know? Doin’ my concerts, and they called me up one day and said, “Hey, we want you to go to McLean’s Hospital and check in tomorrow.” Not only did they send me there, but what they did, they waited until the weather got kinda cool. Now, they know if you usin’ any kinda drugs, you can’t stand that cold. You just can’t take it. So, man, they cut off the heat on me. Made me mad as hell. I went up and told the nurse I’m gonna sue the goddamn hospital if I catch cold. I know what y’all been doin’. I want some heat put back in my room. I mean, I’m not stupid. But, I’m literally freezin’. So you put the heat back in there. I guess the woman must have said they can’t be nothin’ wrong with this man, after all the testin’ we done and everything else, and all he can do is get mad, you know. So after a while they got to believe me, but it took an awful lot of doin’, because it was unusual, quite unusual.
This came after your stay at St. Francis Hospital in Lynwood, California?
Yeah, well, this was somethin’ ordered by the court. This was part of my thing. They didn’t tell me I couldn’t work or nothin’, they just said, look, any day we might call you, you know, and say this to you. What they did, they watched my schedule and knew I was workin’, so they knew of a day when I wasn’t workin’. They knew my schedule better than me, and all of a sudden they just, bam—you just got to go, man. So they did test me a couple of times just to make sure.
I didn’t have a wind-down program. I just stopped, period. You hear about people who bite the sheets and eat up the pillow, and I didn’t do none of that. So that worried people. They took all my clothes. They searched them. And they came in my room one day, they looked under the mattress, shit. I said, “I don’t know what the hell you all lookin’ for, but they ain’t any way in the world I can get anything. Nobody’s comin’ here, and I don’t know where