The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [56]
This is interesting: I’ve noticed that when a person goes to interview someone, he often sees himself in a position of inferiority. It’s a nuance, it’s very subtle, it’s difficult to explain. And this feeling increases when this someone being interviewed is a person of power. If you’re observant, you can see the eyes tremble and something in the face and voice changing. That’s never happened to me. Never. I’m tense, I’m worried because it’s a boxing match. Oh ho! I’m climbing, I’m going into the ring. I’m nervous. My God, who’s going to win? But no inferiority complex, no fear of the person. When someone starts acting superior, then I become nasty.
In the preface to your book, you regret that no one had tape recorders during the time of Jesus, in order to “capture his voice, his ideas, his words.” Were you being hyperbolic or serious? And if serious, what would you have asked Jesus if you had had the chance to interview him?
I meant it seriously. For sure! Today we think and speak of Jesus as he’s been told to us. So now, after 2,000 years, I’d like to know how important he was at the time or find out how much he was built up. Of course, I reject the concept of Jesus as God, Christ/God. I don’t even pay attention to that for one second. But as a leader, was he that important? You know, he might very well have been a little Che Guevara.
And a deeply enlightened person.
He might have been, but not the only one. Because many of those people were crucified just as he was. We all make this fuss about him, but it would be like saying: “Jesus Christ has been executed by Franco!” What about the others? For Christ’s sake, how many people have been executed in Spain? La garotta! What about Paredez Manot, called Txiki—one of the five Basques who was executed in the fall of 1975 in the cemetery of Barcelona, in front of his brother Miguel. He’s the one who died singing, “Free, free the country of the Basques,” smiling all the time and singing, then waving goodbye to Miguel. And that was Txiki. But there were four others who were executed, and hundreds of others all these years. So I don’t know if Christ was that important later on.
One of the first things I would have asked him was: “Where have you been all those years, where have you been? Did you go to India?” Ooh-la-la! That would have been the first question. Then I would have asked if he really behaved chastely or if he had women, if he slept with women, if he went to bed with Mary Magdalene, if he loved her as a sister or as a woman. I would have asked that. And I would have loved to have found the grave of Jesus Christ—that would have been good reportage. And those who had stolen the corpse and reported he had flown to heaven: “Who told you to do that? For whom did you do that?”
That might have ended Christianity then and there.
It might have been a good thing.
I imagine that you’d have one question to ask the Virgin Mary.
[Laughing] Certainly one.
This is getting a bit sacrilegious.
Well, why be scared of that?
Don’t you think it’s possible that Jesus was an avatar?
Listen, I don’t know how much about Jesus is just the image created by Mark, Luke, Matthew and John. They were so damn intelligent, those four. And I’m afraid . . . listen, Jonathan, do you know how many times I make people more interesting than they are? So what if Mark or Matthew did the same thing with Christ, huh? What about if Jesus Christ was much less than Luke or John? I have no serious evidence, I have no tapes. . . .
You’d be the first person I’d chose to interview the first being we met