...Hunter S. Thompson, Annette Funicello, Scott Joplin, and many others.
Part 7 of a continuing series. You can see earlier links in the series by clicking on the crumb tag at the bottom of the post.
Showing posts with label crumb. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crumb. Show all posts
Friday, December 06, 2013
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Robert Crumb Talks About...
...Jack Kerouac, Linda Lovelace, Hugh Hefner, and others.
Part 5 of a continuing discussion of prominent people. A couple of examples:
Pete Seeger: Seeger… he's a saint. Pete Seeger's a fucking saint, but I never found his music very interesting. You know, musically he can play the banjo, but he's so political, so deeply, vehemently political — and I agree with his politics completely — but it made his music political; the message was more important than the quality of the music to him. He's a literary musician, you know? But he dedicated himself to getting out there an playing these left-wing, rousing songs to labor unions and strikers, it's amazing they never put him in jail. Well, actually, I think he was in trouble for a while but he never went to jail. Is he still alive? I think he is. I think he's still going! I know someone who recently talked to him and I guess Seeger is very inspirational. He's still very lucid and he talked about the old days. You know, he started all that political campaigning in the '30s, and he started very young with that. He's from an upper-class family with money. I think it was the Seeger family whose maid was Elizabeth Cotton, and one day they found her playing guitar and singing and they went, "Oh my God! This woman is a talented singer/musician!" Somebody, years ago, gave me, as a gift, a huge box set of ten LPs of all of that left-wing folk music done by the folknics, not by the real folk, but the folknics of the '50s and early '60s: the Almanac Singers; Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. It's just totally uninteresting. Real country hillbilly music by deeply ignorant, racist people is much more interesting than that stuff. As I said, I agree totally with their politics, but musically it's really uninteresting. The whole folknic scene, even when it was happening in the late '50s and early '60s, I was never moved by it. I preferred rockabilly. [laughs]
Michelangelo: Michelangelo? That's interesting, because just last night Pete Poplaski and I were looking at a book of reproductions of the Sistine Chapel. I had seen it before, but now they've just restored the place and everything is very bright and clear now. And examining it, Pete and I had a discussion about it, because Pete's into all that Renaissance art, and I was looking at it and it just seemed very mannered and stylized to me and not very interesting. The guy is just like glorifying the male body. It's all about writhing, muscular male bodies. And even the women, they have male bodies with tits pasted on. The guy's not into women, you can tell. He's not into feminine at all. He's not interested in the round, elliptical charms of the female form. No, he's interested in the lumpy, muscular male body. And the whole Chapel is nothing but that. And I couldn't find... there wasn't much of a humanistic element, it's just so mannered. And Pete pointed out, as I was talking to him about it, he said, "It's all about the expression of romantic, religious ideas. It's not about real human beings." So for me, there's no subtle humanity about the expressions or what's going on. It's a very deeply Italian thing. A lot of that Renaissance art is like that to me. I prefer the Flemish and German stuff of that period, you know, it's got much more to do with real life and real human beings. Bruegel, to me, is much more interesting than Michelangelo and a lot of those other Renaissance artists from Italy. Even Leonardo's not that interesting to me, although he was one of the first artists to make very, very detailed, naturalistic drawings and paintings. But he's only marginally interesting to me.
Click the link to read them all; the previous discussions can be found there in the sidebar, as well.
Part 5 of a continuing discussion of prominent people. A couple of examples:
Pete Seeger: Seeger… he's a saint. Pete Seeger's a fucking saint, but I never found his music very interesting. You know, musically he can play the banjo, but he's so political, so deeply, vehemently political — and I agree with his politics completely — but it made his music political; the message was more important than the quality of the music to him. He's a literary musician, you know? But he dedicated himself to getting out there an playing these left-wing, rousing songs to labor unions and strikers, it's amazing they never put him in jail. Well, actually, I think he was in trouble for a while but he never went to jail. Is he still alive? I think he is. I think he's still going! I know someone who recently talked to him and I guess Seeger is very inspirational. He's still very lucid and he talked about the old days. You know, he started all that political campaigning in the '30s, and he started very young with that. He's from an upper-class family with money. I think it was the Seeger family whose maid was Elizabeth Cotton, and one day they found her playing guitar and singing and they went, "Oh my God! This woman is a talented singer/musician!" Somebody, years ago, gave me, as a gift, a huge box set of ten LPs of all of that left-wing folk music done by the folknics, not by the real folk, but the folknics of the '50s and early '60s: the Almanac Singers; Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. It's just totally uninteresting. Real country hillbilly music by deeply ignorant, racist people is much more interesting than that stuff. As I said, I agree totally with their politics, but musically it's really uninteresting. The whole folknic scene, even when it was happening in the late '50s and early '60s, I was never moved by it. I preferred rockabilly. [laughs]
Michelangelo: Michelangelo? That's interesting, because just last night Pete Poplaski and I were looking at a book of reproductions of the Sistine Chapel. I had seen it before, but now they've just restored the place and everything is very bright and clear now. And examining it, Pete and I had a discussion about it, because Pete's into all that Renaissance art, and I was looking at it and it just seemed very mannered and stylized to me and not very interesting. The guy is just like glorifying the male body. It's all about writhing, muscular male bodies. And even the women, they have male bodies with tits pasted on. The guy's not into women, you can tell. He's not into feminine at all. He's not interested in the round, elliptical charms of the female form. No, he's interested in the lumpy, muscular male body. And the whole Chapel is nothing but that. And I couldn't find... there wasn't much of a humanistic element, it's just so mannered. And Pete pointed out, as I was talking to him about it, he said, "It's all about the expression of romantic, religious ideas. It's not about real human beings." So for me, there's no subtle humanity about the expressions or what's going on. It's a very deeply Italian thing. A lot of that Renaissance art is like that to me. I prefer the Flemish and German stuff of that period, you know, it's got much more to do with real life and real human beings. Bruegel, to me, is much more interesting than Michelangelo and a lot of those other Renaissance artists from Italy. Even Leonardo's not that interesting to me, although he was one of the first artists to make very, very detailed, naturalistic drawings and paintings. But he's only marginally interesting to me.
Click the link to read them all; the previous discussions can be found there in the sidebar, as well.
Friday, August 24, 2012
R. Crumb Reflects On...
...Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon Johnson, Tom Waits, John Steinbeck, et.al.
In the discussion on Steinbeck, Crumb talks of how success changes an individual:
You get successful, you give a lot of interviews, you're constantly dealing with business and money and all that stuff I talked with you about when we were in Chicago. You just slowly lose touch with your original source of inspiration. It has something to do with being involved with real, common life; that's what makes any kind of story writing interesting to me. And then you get successful and you get separated from real life. It just happens. When I say real life, I'm talking about the common, everyday life of most people. Then you start getting treated like royalty — like you're something special — and it's not the same. And you're no longer the observer, you are the observed. That puts you in a whole different position in society; a whole different perspective. Now you're hunted, you're looked at, you're watched, you're admired, you're vilified, whatever. But you can't just go out and be part of the world as an observer anymore. It's hard. It's hard for me anyway.
Click the link to read the rest. In the sidebar at the Crumb website are the other parts of this extended interview (this is part 4).
In the discussion on Steinbeck, Crumb talks of how success changes an individual:
You get successful, you give a lot of interviews, you're constantly dealing with business and money and all that stuff I talked with you about when we were in Chicago. You just slowly lose touch with your original source of inspiration. It has something to do with being involved with real, common life; that's what makes any kind of story writing interesting to me. And then you get successful and you get separated from real life. It just happens. When I say real life, I'm talking about the common, everyday life of most people. Then you start getting treated like royalty — like you're something special — and it's not the same. And you're no longer the observer, you are the observed. That puts you in a whole different position in society; a whole different perspective. Now you're hunted, you're looked at, you're watched, you're admired, you're vilified, whatever. But you can't just go out and be part of the world as an observer anymore. It's hard. It's hard for me anyway.
Click the link to read the rest. In the sidebar at the Crumb website are the other parts of this extended interview (this is part 4).
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Yet More Robert Crumb Ponderings
Part Three of artist Robert Crumb's impressions of various famous people:
TIMOTHY LEARY: “I finally got to meet him in person at a party somewhere in San Francisco just a couple years before he died. It was a friendly exchange, but at that point he was being guided around by this guy who was taking care of him. He was pretty far gone. He was really out there in the twilight zone; too much LSD, probably."
ADOLF HITLER: "I read an interesting book about Hitler, things that I hadn’t read in any other book, where soldiers who had been in the army with him in the First World War were interviewed. They said Hitler was the guy who never went on leave. In the entire four years, he really had no place to go home to. He just stayed on the front. And he was the guy who would always go out and drag the wounded soldiers off the battlefield. He would never shirk from any duties. He was the most fanatic soldier. That helped to understand how Hitler, who had seen so much death in those four years, that it became acceptable to him. To kill people, to face the possible violence of opposing forces was nothing to him. So he built up his Nazis into a brutal organization. They would just violently break up Communist meetings, punch people out, smash the place up. That was nothing to them, because they had previously seen so much violence and death in that war. And then they lost the war, and then there was the treaty of Versailles which stuck the knife in even deeper. Some historian wrote that ‘Hitler had the Treaty of Versailles stamped on the seat of his pants.’ The French wanted to punish Germany severely. Georges Clemenceau insisted on these harsh measures against the Germans, the heavy reparations, the ceding of territory, etc. He was as much responsible for the rise of the Nazis as Hitler or the American and British elite of finance.
WILLIAM BURROUGHS: "I love Burroughs also; a great writer. But his best writing is his straight-ahead prose. He wrote all this crazy fantasy stuff, which I think he was encouraged to do by this other beatnik writer, Brian Gyson, who, for some reason Burroughs admired. Gyson was, I think, a jive-ass, bullshit kind of guy. Burroughs, I think he lacked confidence in his own writing, because when he wrote straight prose it didn’t sell well. When he wrote Junkie, and that came out, it didn’t sell well in the beginning. And then he wrote this other book, Queer, around the same time in the early ’50s and he couldn’t even get that published. That wasn’t published until the 1980s. And Queer is a great book. Both Junkie and Queer are great. They’re both written in this very dry, prose style. And his little thin book called the Yage Letters, which were letters he wrote back to Allen Ginsburg while he was in South America looking for this psychedelic Yage plant. That’s a great book; great stuff. But the problem is, there’s not enough of that, not enough of his straight-ahead prose. He just didn’t think it was any good because he either couldn’t get it published or it didn’t sell. So then he wrote this gimmicky thing called Naked Lunch, which is mostly fantasy stuff and not very interesting to me, and that sold well. He made his reputation on Naked Lunch.
SERENA WILLIAMS: "Now you’re talking. I think a lot about Serena. I do. I collect photos of Serena. She’s just a total, super-Amazon. What more can you say? Of course, she’s also a Jehovah’s Witness. Yeah, people have said to me, ‘Hey, I can arrange for you to meet Serena.’ But I have nothing to say to her. I’m not interested in tennis, and I can’t really abide that Jehovah’s Witness nonsense. You know, there’d be no grounds for anything to talk about. So I just have to admire her from a distance. But God, what a butt, as you well know."
Click the link to read the rest. You can also click the label Crumb at the bottom of the post to read the earlier links.
TIMOTHY LEARY: “I finally got to meet him in person at a party somewhere in San Francisco just a couple years before he died. It was a friendly exchange, but at that point he was being guided around by this guy who was taking care of him. He was pretty far gone. He was really out there in the twilight zone; too much LSD, probably."
ADOLF HITLER: "I read an interesting book about Hitler, things that I hadn’t read in any other book, where soldiers who had been in the army with him in the First World War were interviewed. They said Hitler was the guy who never went on leave. In the entire four years, he really had no place to go home to. He just stayed on the front. And he was the guy who would always go out and drag the wounded soldiers off the battlefield. He would never shirk from any duties. He was the most fanatic soldier. That helped to understand how Hitler, who had seen so much death in those four years, that it became acceptable to him. To kill people, to face the possible violence of opposing forces was nothing to him. So he built up his Nazis into a brutal organization. They would just violently break up Communist meetings, punch people out, smash the place up. That was nothing to them, because they had previously seen so much violence and death in that war. And then they lost the war, and then there was the treaty of Versailles which stuck the knife in even deeper. Some historian wrote that ‘Hitler had the Treaty of Versailles stamped on the seat of his pants.’ The French wanted to punish Germany severely. Georges Clemenceau insisted on these harsh measures against the Germans, the heavy reparations, the ceding of territory, etc. He was as much responsible for the rise of the Nazis as Hitler or the American and British elite of finance.
WILLIAM BURROUGHS: "I love Burroughs also; a great writer. But his best writing is his straight-ahead prose. He wrote all this crazy fantasy stuff, which I think he was encouraged to do by this other beatnik writer, Brian Gyson, who, for some reason Burroughs admired. Gyson was, I think, a jive-ass, bullshit kind of guy. Burroughs, I think he lacked confidence in his own writing, because when he wrote straight prose it didn’t sell well. When he wrote Junkie, and that came out, it didn’t sell well in the beginning. And then he wrote this other book, Queer, around the same time in the early ’50s and he couldn’t even get that published. That wasn’t published until the 1980s. And Queer is a great book. Both Junkie and Queer are great. They’re both written in this very dry, prose style. And his little thin book called the Yage Letters, which were letters he wrote back to Allen Ginsburg while he was in South America looking for this psychedelic Yage plant. That’s a great book; great stuff. But the problem is, there’s not enough of that, not enough of his straight-ahead prose. He just didn’t think it was any good because he either couldn’t get it published or it didn’t sell. So then he wrote this gimmicky thing called Naked Lunch, which is mostly fantasy stuff and not very interesting to me, and that sold well. He made his reputation on Naked Lunch.
SERENA WILLIAMS: "Now you’re talking. I think a lot about Serena. I do. I collect photos of Serena. She’s just a total, super-Amazon. What more can you say? Of course, she’s also a Jehovah’s Witness. Yeah, people have said to me, ‘Hey, I can arrange for you to meet Serena.’ But I have nothing to say to her. I’m not interested in tennis, and I can’t really abide that Jehovah’s Witness nonsense. You know, there’d be no grounds for anything to talk about. So I just have to admire her from a distance. But God, what a butt, as you well know."
Click the link to read the rest. You can also click the label Crumb at the bottom of the post to read the earlier links.
Friday, September 02, 2011
More Crumb Ponderings
Robert Crumb gives his personal impressions of various people, mostly cartoonists, artists, and musicians, with a few politicians and Bettie Page thrown in for good measure.
I blogged on Crumb's impressions once already, you can click the link and read those, also.
I blogged on Crumb's impressions once already, you can click the link and read those, also.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Crumb Ponders...
...about various people.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
Robert: "Father of his country! [laughs] I don’t know. I don’t know much about George Washington. I haven’t examined him closely. It would be really hard to sift out the hero-worship from the real person, I think at this point. That would be very difficult to do. He was a very big guy, George Washington; big man. They wanted to make him king. Some people wanted him to be our first King of the United States. But he, fortunately, rejected that idea himself."
ANDY WARHOL
Robert: "He had a clever little schtick, but, again, highly overrated, as far as I’m concerned. The art world just loves the guy. They still love him to death. One of his lame-ass silk screen prints goes for more money than some original renaissance art."
W.C. FIELDS
Robert: "Love him. I love to watch W.C. Fields. He has his visual jokes that he carried over from vaudeville, you know, where his hat gets caught on his cane and stuff like that. But just his persona; he embodies this American type of the 30s particularly: alcoholic; wheeling and dealing in a very low key way and not very successfully. Have you ever seen It’s A Gift, where he’s a grocery store proprietor n the 1930s? He embodies that certain type of American man at that time. A lot of people my age remember having an uncle or somebody in their family that was like the W.C. Fields character; an alcoholic with a big, bulbous, red nose."
Click the link for more. First in a series, it's said.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
Robert: "Father of his country! [laughs] I don’t know. I don’t know much about George Washington. I haven’t examined him closely. It would be really hard to sift out the hero-worship from the real person, I think at this point. That would be very difficult to do. He was a very big guy, George Washington; big man. They wanted to make him king. Some people wanted him to be our first King of the United States. But he, fortunately, rejected that idea himself."
ANDY WARHOL
Robert: "He had a clever little schtick, but, again, highly overrated, as far as I’m concerned. The art world just loves the guy. They still love him to death. One of his lame-ass silk screen prints goes for more money than some original renaissance art."
W.C. FIELDS
Robert: "Love him. I love to watch W.C. Fields. He has his visual jokes that he carried over from vaudeville, you know, where his hat gets caught on his cane and stuff like that. But just his persona; he embodies this American type of the 30s particularly: alcoholic; wheeling and dealing in a very low key way and not very successfully. Have you ever seen It’s A Gift, where he’s a grocery store proprietor n the 1930s? He embodies that certain type of American man at that time. A lot of people my age remember having an uncle or somebody in their family that was like the W.C. Fields character; an alcoholic with a big, bulbous, red nose."
Click the link for more. First in a series, it's said.
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