To me, I don’t think there’s ever going to be a time in America where a white person looks at a black person and they don’t see that they’re black. That day ain’t coming very soon. Don’t hold your breath. So that’s a given. So why am I going to get blue in the face, worrying about that? For me, that’s one of the most important things Malcolm X said: “What do you call a black man with a Ph.D.? Nigger.” That’s it. So why am I going to spend time and energy saying: “Don’t call me a black filmmaker. I’m a filmmaker!” I’m not getting into that argument. I’ll leave that to the other Negroes. [Laughs] The other so-called Negroes.
Do you still feel that you are writing for a black audience? Right up front you said, “Look, Woody Allen writes for intellectual New York City Jews and I write for blacks.”
Yes, but that does not exclude—if you do it well—everybody else. I like Woody Allen’s films, but there’s stuff in those films I don’t get, and the person next to me is dying! I don’t get it. But that does not deter from my enjoyment of the film. I think the same is true of me. Black people be rolling down the aisle, and white folks don’t understand it. They may not get everything—all the nuances—but they still enjoy the film. So I don’t think there’s any crime in writing for a specific audience.
I think people were surprised, maybe because of their own naïveté, that you would do that, that you would want to—
See, that’s that whole crossover motherfucker that motherfuckers fall into. That’s because anytime they see the word “black,” they have a negative connotation. I wasn’t raised like that. That wasn’t my upbringing. So I’m never going to run from the word “black.”
In 1987, in writing about racism, you wrote: “We’re all tired about white-man this, white-man that. Fuck dat! It’s on us.” No more excuses. But if you ask white people if you had said that, given your persona, they would be surprised.
Yeah, but where are they getting their perceptions from? [Laughs] From TV, magazines and newspapers.
And are you coming across in a way that’s not truthful to who you are?
Yeah, because the way the media portrays me is as an angry black man. The funny thing to me is when white people accuse blacks, when they see somebody black who’s angry, they say, “Why are you so angry?” [Laughs] If they don’t know why black people are angry, then there’s no hope. I mean, it’s a miracle that black Americans are as complacent and happy-go-lucky as we are. I don’t think I have that much anger. I don’t think I’m angrier than I have a right to be. See, that statement you read me is not a complete statement. On one hand, you cannot deny the injustices that have been committed against you as a people. On the other hand, you cannot use as an excuse: “Well, I really would have liked to have done that, but Mr. Charlie was blocking me every single time.” I think that’s the more complete statement.
You’ve said you don’t think blacks can be racist.
Right.
Are you speaking of black Americans?
In this case, I am speaking of black Americans. And then what I always say, and people never print, is that for me there’s a difference between racism and prejudice. Black people can be prejudiced. But to me, racism is the institution. Black people have never enacted laws saying that white folks cannot own property, white folks can’t intermarry, white folks can’t vote. You got to have power to do that. That’s what racism is—an institution.
Institutionally hindering an entire people?
Yeah. Me calling you “white motherfucker,” I don’t think that’s racism, I think that’s prejudice. That’s just racial slurs. That ain’t gonna hurt nobody. Anybody can be prejudiced. That’s the complete statement. But that never gets printed.
I see racism all over the world: one tribe to another tribe, the Japanese to the Chinese, and so on. It’s incredibly complicated and incredibly sad, and so I can’t buy your statement, “White people invented racism.”
Where did it start then?
I don’t know where it started. What do you think caused it?
Because they wanted to exploit people. Colonization. Why do you think there’s no Native Americans? Why do you think they’re on reservations?
You think that was the beginning of racism? The 1600s?
No, way before that.
We’re talking about history now, and I’m curious as to whether you’ve thought about what are the origins of prejudice, what are the origins of racism. “White people invented racism” makes it seem like you believe there was a grand conspiracy to deny the fruits of the planet to everybody by a group of people sitting in a room in Amsterdam in 1619.
You don’t think there was a plan to wipe out the Indians?
I think that’s certainly what happened, but I don’t think it was drawn up like the Magna Carta.
Look, that shit had to be planned. There’s no way . . . They saw the riches this land had and they took over. And that’s what the Afrikaners did in South Africa. And before that, that’s what all of Europe did when they split up Africa into colonies. I mean, [pause] maybe white people didn’t invent the patent on racism, but they sure perfected that motherfucker! They got that shit down to a science that’s being implemented now, full throttle.
You don’t see any decline in it, do you?
What, racism? No. I don’t smoke crack. [Laughs] If anything, it’s on the upswing—with eight years of Reagan, and now Bush. And now this war, America’s in this patriotic fever. I went to the Super Bowl, man, I wish I hadn’t gone. I was nauseous with all that flag-waving and airplanes flying overhead. God bless America.
It’s fascistic.
It was like being in Nazi Germany at that Super Bowl game! Instead of Leni Riefenstahl—
—You had NFL Films!
You had NFL Films and “Up With People.” [Laughs wildly] And Whitney Houston lip-syncing the national anthem. That marred the game for me.
Do you care that some people feel you hide behind the shield of racism, that you’re quick to call people racists to deflect criticism of yourself?
No. [Yawns] That doesn’t bother me, not at all.
Let me bring up two instances, quite specifically. When you opened your shop in Brooklyn, some dude from MTV asked you, “Spike, what are you going to do with the profits from this store?” And in what didn’t get bleeped out, you said you don’t ask Robert De Niro what he does with the profits from his restaurant. So you were assuming that he was asking you because you’re black and you were opening your own business. I won’t come to his defense—because I don’t know what was in his mind, asking the question—but look, Robert De Niro is not at all a political guy, but there are white artists who—
That is bullshit. That is complete bullshit. No white person who’s opened up a motherfucking business has ever been asked, “What are you gonna do with your profits?”
But people like Sting and Bono, who are political—
That is bullshit, that is bullshit. You’re telling me people ask Sting if his album goes triple platinum, “What are you going to do with your profits?” This is motherfucking America. When black people start to make some money, then it becomes a fucking problem. [Very upset, yelling] Tell me a time when a white artist was asked, “What are you going to do with your profits?”
I’ve asked white—
That is bullshit! No one would ever come to someone’s restaurant opening or book coming out and say, “Mr. White Person, what are you going to do with your profits?” I don’t care what you say, that shit don’t happen.
I’m telling you, I’ve asked white artists who have political points of view, okay, whether it be the rain forest or the Irish problem, if they’re doing something about it, I’ve asked them.
That is not the same thing, David. I’m talking about the first day the store is open, and he has a microphone in my face, “What are you going to do with your profits?” It was a racist question. The night the motherfucking Tribeca Grill opened, they did not ask Robert De Niro, “What are you gonna do with your pr
ofits?” It’s plain and simple.
Got it. The other controversy involved kids being killed for expensive sneakers such as Air Jordans. Then you wrote in ‘The National’ that the criticism of you was racially motivated. Do you feel it’s possible to be concerned about what’s going on—kids being killed for sneakers—and not have it be racist?
I don’t believe that shit. [Jumps up, acts this out] You go around Chicago and look for some motherfucker that wears the same size Air Jordans you have and boom . . .
It seems illogical to me, too, but Michael Jordan reacted in a very different way than you did. Maybe because he has a different program than you do. But I know there were black groups that actually picketed Chicago Stadium and put out leaflets—
And Operation PUSH is behind that.
—about Michael and Nike, and the creation of status symbols in the community. Your reaction to that was very defensive. I’m not blaming you. You have a right to defend yourself, but—
You don’t think I should defend myself when they’re saying that the blood of young black America is on my hands and Spike Lee is responsible for black kids killing each other?
No, I would hope that you would. It was the manner in which you defended yourself that suggested that anyone who cared about that problem was a racist, because they don’t really care about black kids anyway. To me, if it was white kids that were getting killed and someone screamed bloody hell, that you could say was racist—the only reason they care is ’cause it’s white kids getting killed; if it were black kids in the inner city, no one would care.
Wrong. Wrong. The emphasis is wrong. The emphasis should not be on the sneakers. The emphasis should not be on the sneakers or the Starter jackets. The emphasis should not be on the sheepskin coats or the gold chains. The emphasis should be on: What are the conditions among young black males that are making them put that much emphasis on material things? What is it that makes the acquisition of a pair of sneakers or a gold chain that gives them their worth in life, that makes them feel like a human being? That’s where the motherfucking emphasis should be.
The causes, not the symptoms.
Exactly.
I understand that. But don’t you feel, in creating those ads, that you increased the level of status attached to that particular product, Air Jordans, so that it became something more desirable? Don’t you feel you increased people’s desire for the product? Isn’t that what a good commercial does? Makes them salivate, makes them want?
Yes, but at the same time I believe that young black Americans are not going to go kill each other over a pair of sneakers. That is my belief. I don’t think a motherfucker is going to shoot somebody because he has a pair of sneakers. And if that’s the case, then . . . then let’s not sell cars. Let’s get rid of the whole capitalist system as a whole! I mean, you just can’t harp on the sneakers. If people want to be so righteous, let’s do away with the shit across-the-board. Just don’t jump on me, Michael Jordan and [Georgetown basketball coach] John Thompson.
Are you comfortable saying you’re a capitalist?
[Pause] Am I a capitalist? [Pause] We all are, over here. And I’m just trying to get the power to do what I have to do. To get that power, you have to accumulate some type of bank. And that’s what I’ve done. I’ve always tried to be in an entrepreneurial mode of thinking. Ownership is what’s needed amongst Afro-Americans. Ownership. Own stuff.
JERRY GARCIA
by James Henke
October 31, 1991
I heard there was a meeting recently, and you told the other band members that you weren’t having fun anymore, that you weren’t enjoying playing with the Dead. Did that actually happen?
Yeah. Absolutely. You see, the way we work, we don’t actually have managers and stuff like that. We really manage ourselves. The band is the board of directors, and we have regular meetings with our lawyers and our accountants. And we’ve got it down to where it only takes about three or four hours, about every three weeks. But anyway, the last couple of times, I’ve been there screaming, “Hey, you guys!” Because there are times when you go onstage and it’s just plain hard to do and you start to wonder, “Well, why the fuck are we doing this if it’s so hard?”
And how do the other band members feel?
Well, I think I probably brought it out into the open, but everybody in the band is in the same place I am. We’ve been running on inertia for quite a long time. I mean, insofar as we have a huge overhead, and we have a lot of people that we’re responsible for, who work for us and so forth, we’re reluctant to do anything to disturb that. We don’t want to take people’s livelihoods away. But it’s us out there, you know. And in order to keep doing it, it has to be fun. And in order for it to be fun, it has to keep changing. And that’s nothing new. But it is a setback when you’ve been going in a certain direction and, all of a sudden, boom! A key guy disappears.
You’re talking about Brent Mydland [Grateful Dead keyboardist, 1979–1990]?
Yeah. Brent dying was a serious setback—and not just in the sense of losing a friend and all that. But now we’ve got a whole new band, which we haven’t exploited and we haven’t adjusted to yet. The music is going to have to take some turns. And we’re also going to have to construct new enthusiasm for ourselves, because we’re getting a little burned out. We’re a little crisp around the edges. So we have to figure out how we are going to make this fun for ourselves. That’s our challenge for the moment, and to me the answer is: Let’s write a whole bunch of new stuff, and let’s thin out the stuff we’ve been doing. We need a little bit of time to fall back and collect ourselves and rehearse with the new band and come up with some new material that has this band in mind.
Did you see Brent’s death coming?
Yeah, as a matter of fact we did. About six or eight months earlier, he OD’d and had to go to the hospital, and they just saved his ass. Then he went through lots of counseling and stuff. But I think there was a situation coming up where he was going to have to go to jail. He was going to have to spend like three weeks in jail, for driving under the influence or one of those things, and it’s like he was willing to die just to avoid that.
Brent was not a real happy person. And he wasn’t like a total drug person. He was the kind of guy that went out occasionally and binged. And that’s probably what killed him. Sometimes it was alcohol, and sometimes it was other stuff. When he would do that, he was one of those classic cases of a guy whose personality would change entirely, and he would just go completely out of control.
Brent had this thing that he was never able to shake, which was that thing of being the new guy. And he wasn’t the new guy; I mean, he was with us for ten years! That’s longer than most bands even last. And we didn’t treat him like the new guy. We never did that to him. It’s something he did to himself. But it’s true that the Grateful Dead is tough to . . . I mean, we’ve been together so long, and we’ve been through so much, that it is hard to be a new person around us.
But Brent had a deeply self-destructive streak. And he didn’t have much supporting him in terms of an intellectual life. I mean, I owe a lot of who I am and what I’ve been and what I’ve done to the beatniks from the Fifties and to the poetry and art and music that I’ve come in contact with. I feel like I’m part of a continuous line of a certain thing in American culture, of a root. . . . My life would be miserable if I didn’t have those little chunks of Dylan Thomas and T.S. Eliot. I can’t even imagine life without that stuff. Those are the payoffs: the finest moments in music, the finest moments in movies. Great moments are part of what support you as an artist and a human. They’re part of what make you a human. What’s been great about the human race gives you a sense of how great you might get, how far you can reach. I think the rest of the guys in this band all share stuff like that. We all have those things, those pillars of greatness. And if you’re lucky, you find out about them, and if you’re not lucky, you don’t. And in this day and age in America, a lot of people aren’t luc
ky, and they don’t find out about those things.
When it comes to drugs, I think the public perception of the Dead is that they are into pot and psychedelics—sort of fun, mind-expansion drugs. Yet Brent died of a cocaine and morphine overdose, and you also had a long struggle with heroin. It seems to run counter to the image of the band.
Yeah, well, I don’t know. I’ve been round and round with the drug thing. People are always wanting me to take a stand on drugs, and I can’t. To me, it’s so relativistic, and it’s also very personal. A person’s relationship to drugs is like their relationship to sex. I mean, who is standing on such high ground that they can say: “You’re cool. You’re not.”
The Rolling Stone interviews Page 30