The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [73]
Do you think you’ve achieved greatness?
[Long pause] Greatness is a point of view. There is great rock & roll. But great rock & roll within the context of music, historically, is slight. I think that I am growing as a painter. I’m growing as a musician. I’m growing as a communicator, a poet, all the time. But growth implies that if you look back, there was improvement. I don’t see necessarily that this album is any, to use your word, “greater” than the Blue album. This has a lot more sophistication, but it’s very difficult to define what greatness is. Honesty? Genius? The Blue album, there’s hardly a dishonest note in the vocals. At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn’t pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there either.
What do you think of the theory that great art comes from hunger and pain? You seem now to be living a very comfortable life.
Pain has very little to do with environment. You can be sitting at the most beautiful place in the world, which doesn’t necessarily have to be private property, and not be able to see it for pain. So no. Misery knows no rent bracket [laughs]. At this time in my life, I’ve confronted a lot of my devils. A lot of them were pretty silly, but they were incredibly real at the time.
I don’t feel guilty for my success or my lifestyle. I feel that sometimes having a lot of acquisitions leads to a responsibility that is more time-consuming than the art. That’s probably one of the reasons why people feel the artist should remain in poverty. My most important possession is my pool—it’s one luxury I really don’t question.
Last question. What would you have listed, as Woody Allen did at the end of ‘Manhattan,’ as your reasons why life is worth living?
It would be very similar to his. I would name different musicians, but it might finally be a beautiful face that would make me put the microphone down. I would just be thinking fondly of someone who I love, you know. And just dreaming off . . . Basically, if you want to say it in one word? Happiness?
It’s a funny thing about happiness. You can strive and strive and strive to be happy, but happiness will sneak up on you in the most peculiar ways. I feel happy suddenly, I don’t know why. Some days, the way the light strikes things. Or for some beautifully immature reason like finding myself some toast. Happiness comes to me even on a bad day. In very, very strange ways. I’m very happy in my life right now.
FRANCIS COPPOLA
by Greil Marcus
November 1, 1979
Would you do it all again? [Referring to ‘Apocalypse Now,’ a complication-plagued project]
I’m tempted to say no. I really think there’s a limit to what you ought to give a project you’re working on. It’s not worth it, it’s really not worth it. I don’t know that I would be able to avoid doing it again, but I’m forty years old instead of thirty-six. My leg hurts, my back hurts, my front hurts, my head hurts. I’ve got nothing but problems. I mean, I could be the head of KQED [San Francisco’s public television station] and do interesting little experimental things and not be such a wreck.
There were times when I wished I was working for someone else so I could quit—but I don’t think I ever thought of cutting my losses and coming home. There were a lot of troubles. Marty’s [Martin Sheen] heart attack [which delayed filming even further] . . . severely traumatized my nervous system. We didn’t know if he was going to make it. If he’d gone home to the U.S. for treatment, he might not have come back—his family might not have let him. I was scared shitless. The shooting was three-quarters done; it was all him, what was left.
Firing my [original] lead actor [Harvey Keitel]—that was bad. It’s a terrible, terrible thing to do: sure, it jeopardizes the production, but