Music Interview; Kinky Friedman

I tested just yesterday oh. OK. Oh yeah we. Do. Oh. Yeah. Is. It. Hello. This is Marty Dale and I'm speaking with Kinky Friedman who's graced us with his presence here today. Katie and you. Hi kinky headed. Thanks for coming by. It's a pleasure to be here Marty. Always nice to be here in Boulder here many all the Guild calls. Yes. Now you were just out with a new book it's called Elvis Jesus and Coca-Cola. What are the three most widely used words in the world with the possible exception of course of the word tedious.

And that the title comes from the concept that those are the. Well when I come from a tribe in Borneo the nomadic pygmies named the poor non tribe that I live with for about three months during my two and a half years in the jungle and these are the only Western concepts they had Elvis Jesus and Coca-Cola. Some of them asked me while this was before Jesus and the reason is because it sounds better. And because Jesus has not yet appeared on a postage stamp. Now this book is number six for you. Is that it. Yeah I'm starting to spit these little buggers out like sunflower seeds I guess you are is the number six and it's the first for Simon and Schuster So it really is looking like it's going to be a financial pleasure for the character but as I often say money may buy you a fine dog but only love can make it wag its tail. Are you when was the first book published. I believe 85. So you are male or eight years was pretty good but I exist and how about a book or years life

sometimes intercedes right. But it helps to be an unemployed youth you know helps me to do right. Now you live in Texas now are you living in New York. Well I'm I'm living in Texas I suppose. I'm kind of a Married to the wind right now Jet Set Gypsy so I'm on the road most of the time but when I am somewhere in one place I suppose it is Texas right in the heart of Texas. Do you miss performing musically anymore. Oh not a bit. Very delighted that I'm not. And really professionally I'm country music anymore. I've applied the model when the horse dies get off to country music and I got out just in time I think other books look like they have been very very well and the movie is coming forth from the bucks and musically the the new CD we have out called Old Testaments a new revelations of the extremely well and these new country guys just don't do a hell of a lot for the cannister. In fact I've taken lately to referring to Garth Brooks as the anti Hank.

Of. Course I never fit in too well with the old guys I say yeah. What was the worst thing about being on the road as a musician. The worst thing I think is just gradually becoming a human jukebox you know becoming an applause junkie from town to town. And I find that very masculine lead tip tip tapping on my little typewriter into the early hours of the dawn. It is much more rewarding and actually the kinky character my audience used to consist largely of Jewish homosexuals lawyers and now it is expanded to women who are finding the kinky character in the books to be much more vulnerable and sensitive than it was on stage so that the guy who get your biscuits and ravening your buns in the bath correct a mundo. So yes it appears as if a lot of things on the stage have bled over into the page now and then it looks like fairly successfully. So Country music's loss has been literature as gain. What how do you write. Do you get up in the morning have a set.

The way you do it are a very un disciplined style but as I say I have no hobbies no responsibilities and so I try to get about five pages a day if I can when I'm not on the road and I start with a nonfiction idea like Elvis Jesus and Coca-Cola features the death of my friend Tom Baker about eight years ago and really have yeah in his movie you know he was probably my best friend he was working on a movie about Elvis impersonators he was directing and that disappeared shortly after Tom's death. So all that's true and from there on a kind of fly by Jewish radar and I just see where it takes me and unfortunately will lead you into a literary or or or spiritual cul de sac now and then but that's a lot like real detective work actually. So you know sometimes the digressive elements of the book are more interesting than the plot lines themselves. And hopefully the book will resolve itself as all good mysteries do and as life never does. Speaking of the digressive elements you you know I feel like I know your place son Vandam Street and I know what kind of coffee you like and I know how you take care

you're so guys and I'm aware of how you cat is. You know how does that stuff. Come out and fit into the books. Is it is it simply a digression there. Well it's probably the most important part of the books and it's totally and. You know I mean when I started writing. I never knew that I could write any prose kind of stuff I didn't know the one liners would if there was any brick and mortar to hold them together at all. I think John D MacDonald who wrote the Travis McGee series was the one verse that articulated totally entertaining and amusing yourself and not worry about it. You know and and the other people would and would enjoy it and relate to and that's what I pretty well tried to do. And most of the stuff that actually is nonfiction stuff the lesbian dance instructor in the loft above me was real of course when he cats. There was no name. But and my little puppet head with the key to the building and its mouth of course was real and the two

duties uptown and downtown Judy were real. Who didn't know that the other one existed and so I didn't beat myself to death inventing new characters I used real people and I use their real name in the course of everybody signing a legal release form. So hell yeah. If they have any beef later they can speak to my attorney Sonny Corleone. Who are your influences in terms of detective novels you must've read them I know you refer to Sherlock Holmes quite calm and always great and of course kind of died believing that the White Company was his masterpiece of the whole world remember him by him dropped out that set never had North America ever read it so. Rex Dowd is another one neuro brilliant. And of course Raymond Chandler who much like myself was a bestseller in England which I currently am I'm kind of the Josephine Baker of London right now very popular over there. But he was a cult nerd in America when he died. And I cherish my cult status actually I'm clinging to it for life at the moment because

things look like they're going to be very successful or the cancer hey you may wreck that. Well I've you know waited a long time for this and I'm not afraid of success and I'm not afraid of failure just afraid it may have to stop talking about myself for five minutes. How about any of the I mean the whole detective thing is just bursting wide open in terms of a publishing phenomenon isn't it it just seems like they're there all over the place everybody seems to be writing. Yes Jimmy Buffett. He's even doing well I'm boiling right under Jimmy Buffett in General Schwarzkopf in the number of books we're signing. I'm not everybody can write in time will tell. You know and. I. That's a distinct phenomenon the Jimmy Buffett and got Brooks and Michael Jackson and that it's not really the number of books you sell or how big you are. Those guys will always be what they will never catch up with Elvis Jesus and Coca-Cola anyway and every generation we've got this thing of loneliness running through our culture. That's got to be mined by somebody. And Judge Roy Bean worship Lillie

Langtry. And today very few of us get very few people know who Lillie Langtry was even. Some do but everybody knows who Judge Roy Bean was. So history has a way of playing little tricks on us a little Freudian slip every now and then. And I like to fly heavily of course would Jesus comment on this since in the early 70s the Texas Dubois thank God never had a big hit. Because if we did I'd probably be playing Disneyland with the pips right now. So you know you might be dad he could be dead that would be very conceivable. But the fact it's just dumb luck dumb luck that I'm alive but I have seen these uncanny parallels between my life and the life of Jesus in that we're both of the Jewish persuasion neither of us married neither of us had a home to speak of. Neither of us actually held a job. And we just travel around the countryside irritating people. So this is kind of a second coming for the cancer 20 years after the first one.

It's a great privilege. It is and that's why I'm performing in bookstores and not not at concerts and club dates anymore. I'm just playing bookstores and whorehouses radio stations and the occasional bar mitzvah in the Woody Guthrie tradition. Very Gandhi like the Zen of that and will that tell about the movie what's going on it's a power year for the Kings. Ha yeah anything's possible. The movie oh we've got Bob Dylan I will and also involved and when Bob speaks we're going to use subtitles. That's an idea that we've toyed with and Willie and I are doing a duet a movie called Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other. And Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell are aboard and Ruth Buzzy is playing a lesbian dance instructor. The real question now is who plays can't you. And we've got this new executive producer the same guy that did home alone for a long time talking to Gotch British fell and I'm going to take a screen test next month and we'll see. I would like to play the character. I would I would I think it would be

for me. I would hate to see the River Phoenix is kinky for something happened back the other day. The idea is now getting very hot and then this big producer this big production company television company called me the other day when I was at the ranch and they said we want to take your books and make a television series. And how would you feel about Mac Davis playing in the series and I said well how do you feel about that there was a play you told the story. I mean it's not quite what we wish has happened it's not quite best foot forward. So I don't want michael j fox he is Kinky Friedman. They've come up with Gabe Kaplan all kinds of people you know. Now maybe it may be that Harrison Ford or Bob DeNiro one of these guys is going to step forward maybe I would step down. Yeah you know I can see that they might be OK at it. Yeah there was one guy that could have done and that's worn out worn out could've played the character

beautifully foresees gone to Jesus some years ago. What once is slated to begin probably on a cold day in Jerusalem and now it's in the script is now complete and polished and we are. Do you write it. I co-wrote it with a woman named Karen Hicks who's rather a literary nymphomaniac and can really write the screenplay as well. And I checked out all the dialogue of issues Kinky planets we have now have two directors interested one is appalled by tell I did the reading or I will. And the other one is the Peter famine who did Crocodile Dundee. And I'd always want to get Richard Attenborough actually an octogenarian British director would be nice. Yes you know big for our job. It was like the movie is a case of Lone Star and it deals with a killer who thinks he's Hank Williams killing certain country X but not others. Is this going to be a TV film or a feature found

that that is probably an independent future film though so it will be a good one and a funny one. And who would Willie Nelson play himself. No well it would play a country singer. At the Lone Star. And how about Bob Dylan he would also play I mean they would play they wouldn't play themselves but they would both be in the soundtrack of a lot of Hank Williams songs. In the soundtrack so the soundtrack will reflect Hank and the the bill more reflects Sherlock. How about the other characters in that book and your others. Are there real people who could conceivably play themselves like rats own Rambam and oh yes and many of them want to the problem is if I play the character they they're out. I mean if I play the character we're going to need someone like John Candy to play Ratso. We're going to need big stars are you know I mean no. Nobody's going to go on without you he stars caking up we get. You know River Phoenix is Kinky Friedman It could be that some of them them that would be very happy to let them do it. I want an end to the way Hollywood works and whatever they give me at that first meeting is all I'm ever going to get if I let a studio take

over. Yeah I was going to ask about control of this prime minister sounds like it's you know you almost have to do an independent thing I think if you're if it's going to be good now I've seen a couple of The Crying Game was an independent movie Another one is the piano which is terrific with Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel and that'll be coming here in a couple months I saw it in Edinburgh that build the cluster rules that were months ago not just so well pardon me I am a very cosmopolitan spirit. Yes the Belgian Texan. But yes I saw the movie and I was in tears watching them and I was dead drunk I mean that's possible to. It's a great movie and you know that Hollywood had nothing to do with it. Much like a Roger Miller song like king of the road you know wasn't written by nine men of the Brill Building you know that Roger had to be fairly amphibious when he wrote it and then he probably passed the sign on the highway like he says that said trailers for sale or that in a minute later two minutes later and can doesn't last

he wrote the song Flying on 11 different kinds of herbs and spices. That kind of song. That's what kills country singers is you can work nine to five right and you can't write that kind of a song you have to be pretty screwed up. You know you have to be pretty unhappy. And I'm getting very happy these days I'm kind of concerned about what it might do to my writing. Well it's you lot writing country songs and now that's for sure. Yeah yeah. Not not don't ever have the urge or anything. No I certainly don't and now it's possible possible the soundtrack could hit and then I could come back in a year or two and do battle with ADD to Hank you know that's that's conceivable but I really enjoy not being in country music you know. It's. I don't really relate to it and I don't relate to it whole lot of other things I don't like the politics really well anymore. So you know I had my fling at that to yeah you ran for what was justice of the peace justice of the peace in Kerrville with her bill Texas 1986 and my fellow Kurds return me to the private sector and a woman won the race

much to my chagrin and I came in second to the guy that came in third. Chopped his family Colly up with a hatchet. Two weeks before the election and still received eight hundred votes which tells you something about the electorate. Yeah guy. But it but you know entertainment and politics are lousy places for the truth. They really are. If you tell the truth if you like to tell the truth or that's what you do that's not the place for you I think the casino fiction. It's a real good place for for the truth. Yeah you have a little at it. How about the plots of your books how how elaborately do you scheme them out do you sit there with a little outline or something and try to put it together and that ad off from that dog thing. I write in a style much like I'm sure some anon did who wrote the spectrum of Grey series The chief of police of

Paris. Yes and I would He is do is write a street address down the back of a lope and go from there. And I do almost the same thing. I don't know who the killer is going to be. You don't know and I don't know how the case is going to be solved. When I start and I fly totally by Jewish radar and that gives a kind of a spontaneity and of course nobody that's reading my books is looking for a police procedural anyway. I mean and. So we hope that the thing flies right in that it is a good mystery but. But more important than that is is that I write with a kind of literary epilepsy. You know I kind of write what I'm really feeling I'm not targeting and I'm not saying boy this will be a mainstream idea. You know that's what romance novels I that's the kind of crap you know and. This country is interesting because the British read many many more titles than we do each year. Many more. We all got 97 people on a plane and the night I'm

reading John Grisham or they were reading the same thing. And it's nothing wrong with it really but. And I'm I'm not writing for any particular group and that way hopefully the musical grow and some of the music growing but the the the the writing will grow. And maybe the music of the writing are all intertwined and I'm not really sure at the moment. I just know that you have to you've got to learn to roll with the bullets if you're going to survive and that's what my old friend Doug Kenney said before he fell off his perch in Hawaii. Are you working on a new book. I certainly am I've got book number seven which is called Ten pretty girls set in Texas. It's a mystery. Simon Schuster I've got three books three book deal with them and they've suggested the third book be a real book novel not a kinky book not a mystery. But now that Elvis Jesus and Coca-Cola is doing so well a kind of hedging a little bit maybe we will look to a mystery again. There's a problem with trying to write at the great

American novel you know it almost never succeeds. And. What's the point is why you know do you want to write the great American now certainly not I'd. I think these books I think my next book is always my best one these days and I start to enjoy it more. And sitting there by yourself doing a five minute dinner unmask only tip tip tapping on my typewriter. And it's incredible that I'm able to do it I mean I have the attention span of a cocker spaniel you know it's just an index of the emptiness of my life that I'm able to write these books and what's also interesting is that people are relating to them that I actually see this and it's a lot more satisfying than them playing songs in a club someplace. I mean you talk to people who. I mean they pick up on a lot of things that you kind of put in as little little things to muse yourself you in the gut about it would pick up on. So I can reach one person out there I think I'm a success. If you could just light one little candle. Yeah.

Pardon me. Why do you think the British like you. Because the British love Cowboys and they don't even mind Jews and their very love Sal Mineo and Tom Waits and Billy Swan And all of Europe for some reason I'm doing very very well. Buy back the book of ABBA translated in French German and Dutch. Oh and of course I travel all over Europe this summer everywhere but Germany because the Germans of course are my second favorite people. My first as everybody else. He lowered him. But I'm all over the place. We play bookstores I toured with my girlfriend Jo Thompson who is a she's got a television show now that's premiering on the twenty seventh of September called Dance line on the national network how it's dance and structure in this country dancing and it's on every day. I think it's 7:00 p.m. Eastern. And Joe is Miss Texas a 1087 and a little known fact a lot of people don't know is that I was Miss Texas

1967. But do we travel around we play these because bookstores and she would teach line dance. Instruction while I sign the books and I would play some songs and do a reading from the books and now of course with a TV show I'm concerned a little bit about her career eclipsing my own. How about a star is born phenomenon taking place you know. Yeah and so that's that be of that that I'm concerned about that if it were to happen I have to decide and make an executive decision whether I want to walk into the sea like a James Mason Frederick March or die listening to Barbra Streisand on a track like Kris Kristofferson. Yeah they remade that little lot of times it really did and when I was in London I was with the public my publishers their Faber and Faber pointy headed intellectual publishers that DSL yet was an editor there and they got the Kinky Friedman Crime Club which was the best seller. And we were sitting in this place and they were laughing about the remake of The Lord Of The Flies because William Golding was a Faber and Faber writer who went to Jesus fairly recently. And there was a hideous remake of it made in

Hollywood I think in the past year or so and they were quoting the producer of The Hollywood producer who reportedly said does the fat kid have to die. Anyway they thought that that kind of summed up what was wrong with America and Hollywood. Yes the fact it has about that's that's the story. What if What perspective do you have now in life. I mean would I notice one thing in your books is that there's a lot of history that kind of. That. Comes to the president. You know there are a lot of strands from the past that that impact on the present. And you know your years in Borneo and. Touring the country and all that. What's what's changed. Now how do you what's you know what. Quite a quest and I'm well yeah I'd point the way kinky that's I think just as many of us read The Great Gatsby when we were in high school we had to and didn't blow our skirt up too

much back then. Later when you're sitting alone in a you know trailer somewhere and you forty two years old you read the thing in the dead of winter there. It does hit you. I mean it's a different kind of a thing. So you have to be fairly OLB this to I mean maybe you can write some. Coming of age novel if you're some 23 year old humorless constipated nerd you know maybe you can do that but but do develop a sense of humor and to say this takes time not only the humor to be funny I have to be pretty miserable be funny. I have been miserable for about forty eight years but now things are starting to look up a bit. And I. I don't know why it's taken me so long to write this a lot of the mystery writers though do start rattling fact Chamar was about forty six I believe. I know Rex Stout was about 45 so a lot of these characters start start running right now. I've learned a lot of things you know I've

learned it's a very small step from the limo to the gutter. I've toured with Bob Dylan it was a big time playing for 50000 people and then as Robert Frost says Hill is a half filled out of Torino. I've been through that to and I think the best overall thing I've heard in a long time was Damon Runyon little little line about life is six to five against. Basically all of life is six to five against basically it is so whenever we can triumph over her that would beat those odds. It's a great thing. That's a lot of fun. Let's have a little teeny little hair like this little booger. A little women's liberation tune. This one will cause a riot at the University of Buffalo in 1973 and gave me the a male chauvinist pig of the Year award the next year from the now organization something I'm still very proud of

even today. Occasionally times change the River of course and most people understand this song but I don't. The fans out there will be somebody always who is offended by the song and thinks he is a sexist so for that person whoever you are I'd like you to ask yourself is the character really a sexist that what it is. Or is it not conceivable that I'm merely holding up a mirror to sexism. You uppity women I don't understand why you gotta go and try to act like a man. Before you make your weekly visit to the shrink you'd better occupy the kid John. Liberate the saying. Get rid John biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed. That's what I do to my baby sled woman's liberation it's a go on do you hair. Good job. Biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed. Early every morning you're out on the streets passing out the pamphlets to everyone you meet. You

gave up your Maidenform for Lent. And now the front of your dresses and there's good man every single great man that's ever come along. I had a little woman always telling him he's wrong. Eve said to Adam here is an apple you handle either defoliated Sampson's mom. Getting young scientists kids when they haven't any buns in the bed. That's what I tell you my babies say a woman's liberation it's a go into your head. Good job biscuits in the oven and your bun in a bit. Mean minded harpies are breaking all the laws tearing up the girdles and I'm burning up the brawl and. Now the hair is dirty and the sex was clean. And your coffee makes my hair turn green. So damn emancipated in your mind in your body I'm going to have to cancel all your lessons in karate if you can't love I'm a little shell than this. You better cross me I'll be out shopping with.

Gay Man time biscuits and they are going to hand your buns in the bed. That's what I did to my baby sayin woman's liberation it's a don't be headed good Joe just gets in the oven n your bun in a bit. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. OK. Now. Can you give us a little idea just floating away. OK. JNU in Boulder a genuine boater. Yeah. Oh Marty. MARTIN Yeah. You know no one's ever done that before. Another. We got on tape

don't. Yeah. Yeah. We are all right it's important you know. And then I don't know him for cause I'm not a boy not yeah. Yeah Larry. Hello. Hello. This is Kinky Friedman. I don't want to take too early. Hello. Hello. How long. This is Kinky Friedman on k d n you in Boulder. Eighty eight point five FM in Fort Collins not enough going on. If. I like you. I try to go yes read over at my place. And then also you know what we need is something that says. Listen to the Kinky Friedman special. A.

Special or two over two I feel like OK right reading along. Hello this is Kinky Friedman like you ought to listen to the Kinky Friedman special Monday October 25th cagey and you and your all fine Americans.