Interview

RP: Well, I guess they'd pick up patterns. There's also a way of sending intelligence through these publications. I grew up in that whole conspiratorial atmosphere in the '50s, being born in the [Panama] Canal Zone to parents who worked for the OSS [Office of Strategic Services, a World War II-era precursor to the CIA]. So I grew up with this kind of paranoia about communism. There wasn't so much trust. You only hung out with your own kind, and it was a really suburban, white-bread type of existence. There was nothing foreign to the lifestyle. I would refer to it as a Reader's Digest-type of existence. That was the only subscription that came to our house.

GO: Reader's Digest was the biggest magazine in the world.

RP: Yeah. And it still seems kind of weird to me that someone could come out of that existence and kind of go the opposite way-you know, completely antisocial, antiestablishment, anti-Democrat, anti-Republican, certainly anti-IRS.

GO: Well, when Ted Kaczynski was a student at Harvard he apparently participated in a mind-control study where he was experimented on with LSD, and some people think that's what made him the Unabomber. So that's one way something like that can happen.

RP: Does anybody take acid anymore?

GO: I think so.

RP: I was the worst candidate for that kind of thing. I never had a great time on it.

GO: I took it at Woodstock.

RP: I took it at Woodstock too.

GO: It was bad. I had to leave. I didn't want to share my -blanket or be "all one."

RP: Actually, that was one of the few times that I had a good time on it. But I didn't like hovering above myself and looking back, or going through a door and thinking, How many times did I just go through that door? How do I get back? You know, that's not for me. I remember that I went out to California right after I graduated from high school and that's when I first did acid, right on Sunset Strip. I was a completely clueless teenager, you know? Drop out, tune in, turn on.

GO: Turn on, tune in, drop out, blow your mind.

RP: That's all I knew. That's what I wanted to do. At that point, I was a huge fan of Cream. I remember going to see them in Boston in '66 or '67. They were already sort of doing a much more psychedelic type of music. I liked the sound a lot. I don't know why. There was just something about it.

GO: Well, the sound was complicated. It was a little bit like jazz-like John Coltrane or something.

RP: Well, Fresh Cream [1966] was an amazing album, but then Disraeli Gears [1967] was completely psychedelic-the songs on Disraeli Gears are a little bit more sophisticated than your garden variety pop songs. But, like we were saying, it's interesting how someone can come out of an environment that sort of tries to shut down curiosity and imagination and channel it into something more mainstream . . . It's funny how so many kids can just leave that behind. I mean that's what's sort of interesting reading about the No Wave movement in New York City in the '70s and the early '80s-the one thing all of the artists and musicians and filmmakers and people involved with it had in common is the sort of environment that they left behind.
GO: Yeah. We were all refugees.

RP: And they all came to New York City and disappeared into this alternative environment and started to experiment. What's interesting to me is that it still goes on today. It might take on a little bit of a variation, but that's what's great about going to see new art or music or even film-the way it can now be made and distributed.

GO: But when we were coming up, I remember going to Max's Kansas City, and all of the older artists would be sitting at the bar and the young freaks would be in the back room, but everyone was kind of in the same place, you know? Do you think that generations still have the same kind of dialogues that they did back then?

RP: I think it depends on how open you are. I mean, as an older artist, I'm fairly open. I've sought out and had conversations with people like Nate Lowman and Dash Snow and Dan Colen. I just met Rita Ackermann literally 15 minutes ago. But when I was younger, I was always fairly timid and withdrawn. I went to Max's and CBGB a lot but I was always afraid -because I just didn't fit in. One of the places that I went to was the Ocean Club-I wasn't so much afraid there, but I could still only peer into the place where everyone ate. I remember watching Brice Marden because he had his own table.

GO: All the girls wanted to meet Brice Marden.

RP: I also remember going to Mickey Ruskin's and seeing Lawrence Weiner and Carl Andre high-five each other. But, you know, that's the kind of thing that gets passed on, and you start to establish your own place. That's where places like the Mudd Club and Tier 3 and Barnabas Rex came in, because you didn't have to stand in the wings any longer-you were a part of what was happening. I don't have any idea where that happens in Manhattan now-I can't even imagine that happening because who could afford to live in New York City now, you know?

GO: Maybe it doesn't happen so much anymore.

RP: Well, if you're an artist or someone creative, it's all about cheap rent and not having to work for a living. That's what it's always been about. Unless you're a trust-funder or you somehow score a great part-time job or you work for another artist, you're going to go where you can afford to live. I remember coming to New York. The plan was to come here for three months-if I could last that long. I remember saving $2,000 and saying, "Well, I just want to check it out." I'd read about this thing called SoHo and I just came down here . . . I sublet an apartment from this guy who made porno films, and he charged me $140 a month. I was outraged because it was a roach-
infested, tub-in-the-kitchen piece of crap, and I was used to paying $60 a month in Boston. And I couldn't afford it. But I couldn't find anything cheaper. So I guess it's all relative.

GO: So what's your rent now?

RP: I don't rent, and I don't own, and I don't have a mortgage.

GO: Yeah, I know.

[Leonardo DiCaprio enters.]

LEONARDO DICAPRIO: 'Sup, buddy?

RP: Do you know Glenn O'Brien?

GO: Hi.

LD: Hi, how are you?

GO: Good, nice to meet you.

RP: Leo, this is his magazine. [shows DiCaprio a copy of Interview]

LD: Right. I was speaking with Mr. Tony Shafrazi about that.

RP: You want something to eat?

LD: Sure, I'll eat something. Tobey [Maguire] can't make it until later now.

RP: That's all right. [looks at plate] I don't know what that is but it's-

LD: Fishy?

RP: I don't know. Is it fish?

GO: I think it's roast beef, isn't it?

RP: Is it roast beef?

GO: Ham?

RP: Ham? Turkey?

LD: Is this eaten?

RP: Nope.

LD: I'll eat this. The magazine looks great, though.

GO: Thanks.

LD: It's going back old-school now, right?

GO: Yeah.

LD: That's great.

GO: Somebody e-mailed me that Kanye West has a blog and on the blog today he says Interview magazine is the shit.

RP: Oh yeah? He just got arrested.

LD: Kanye West did? What for?

RP: Paparazzi.

GO: Punched a photographer at the airport, allegedly.

LD: Good for him.

RP: Yeah, more power to him. But that's the weird thing about celebrity. I got an e-mail last night from someone saying, " ‘Page Six' wants to know if you just bought a G5 jet." I e-mailed them back saying, "No, but I just bought a Power Chute." Ultimately, though, people stop talking about what you do and start talking about your lifestyle. Luckily for me, I don't really have a lifestyle.

GO: But you were prepared for fame from years of lying.

RP: Well, that's true, yeah. I mean, it gets back to that issue of how you deal with it. Obviously, the art world is a bit smaller than the music world, and the music world is a bit smaller than the cinema world. But the art world is pretty tight even though the biggest thing that's happened to it is the auctions, which are the only reason people on the outside know anything about it.

GO: But in the old days people knew who Picasso was, right?

RP: Well, the way you would know if someone is famous in the art world is that you would ask your mother. My mother knows who Picasso was. She knows who Warhol was.

GO: What about Julian Schnabel?

RP: No.

GO: [in funny accent] You know, Mom, that guy in the pajamas?

RP: But she knows who Rauschenberg was. My mother knows who Larry Rivers was, which is interesting. I think Larry Rivers was one of the most underrated artists.

GO: She knew him because he was a looker. Do you get people coming up to you more now than you have in the past?

RP: I've had to put up security at my house upstate-you know, it's on a dead-end dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Leo just went up there, and he can attest to the fact that I live in the middle of God only knows where. But we had a guy from Germany come down the driveway the other day.

LD: [in German accent] Mr. Prince! I love your work! A moment of your time, please!

RP: [laughs] Exactly. But I think with success you do get a little more guarded and you start to change your friends. You become more isolated. And you start hanging around with people who have money! I think that's the biggest thing. Once you do get a bit of change in your pocket, you start hanging around with other people who have some change. It was kind of strange to all of a sudden go from one extreme-Manhattan-to where I went, upstate New York. But I did it because I was dying in the city. I couldn't take it. I couldn't take one more dinner party. I couldn't take one more party, period.