New Again: Diana Ross

In keeping with her 1980 single, Diana Ross is coming (back) out and wants the world to know. In February 2017, the Motown legend will return to the Venetian Theater in Las Vegas for nine nights to reprise her April 2015 residency “The Essential Diana Ross: Some Memories Never Fade.” Ross is expected to perform the hits that cemented her as a music icon, from her over five decade long catalog, including tracks from her days in the Supremes and from her solo career.

In advance of tickets going on sale this Friday, and months before lucky audiences can watch Miss Ross perform classics like “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” we’re revisiting her Interview cover story from October 1981. The singer, actress, and producer chatted with Andy Warhol about the places she wanted to travel to, her (at the time) three children, and her frustrations with the press. —Natalia Barr

Diana Ross by Andy Warhol

Cover story: Two pop stars lunch at the Carlyle Hotel.

MONDAY, AUGUST 3, 1981, 12:30 P.M., THE CARLYLE HOTEL DINING ROOM. Andy Warhol is lunching with Diana Ross, whose latest album was released this month on RCA. Her single, “Endless Love” (Polygram), recorded with Lionel Richie, has already become the number one song of the season.

Diana, who headed the 1980 Best Dressed list, was perfectly suited for the day in a loose-fitting beige silk top and skirt, with western boots of beautiful burgundy leather adding that Diana Ross dash of glamor.

ANDY WARHOL: Sue Mengers took me to see your show in California a couple of years ago. You were so nervous when we came backstage because you thought you did a so-so show. You give the best shows.

DIANA ROSS: I just really want it to be perfect. I expect excellence from everybody concerned with the show and I know it’s difficult.

WARHOL: Could you give a two minute monologue and tell us how it all started?

ROSS: I’ve been singing since I was really little. I’m from a singing family, but they’re not professional singers, only gospel—my grandfather was a minister. I started to sing the music that was out then because my mother used to play it all the time. It was the end of the ’50s, the beginning of the ’60s. There was Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers, Etta James…What’s exciting is that I’m getting ready to do two of those old songs on my new album. We used to sit outside on the stoop and sing. We even used to put our radios and record players outside.

WARHOL: The trendy street is now Columbus Avenue and the kids are out on the street singing away.

ROSS: I really don’t think that Detroit was any different than New York of Boston or Philadelphia. Kids always wanted to listen to music outside because that’s where they hung out with their friends. It just wasn’t an inside thing to do. I lived on the north side of Detroit. Right down the street from me there was a young man by the name of Smokey Robinson. I was very proud to live down the street from him because he was our only celebrity in town. He was singing with the Miracles. His niece, Sharon, was one of my best friends so I spent a lot of time there. So I knew Smokey. I moved from the north side of Detroit to the east side and that’s where I met Florence and Mary—the other girls in the Supremes; I met them in church. We were all in the church choir. We started to sing together but we weren’t even thinking about singing professionally. The word got around that we were good and then three boys came to my house and asked me if we wanted to be their sister group. They were the Primes. Eddie Kendricks was one of them. The group that they started for us was called the Primettes. As time moved on we changed our name to the Supremes and they changed their names to the Temptations.

The only recording studio was in Motown—it was called Tamla/Motown at that time and we used to audition there because Smokey Robinson was at that studio and Berry Gordy was the president. I remember asking Smokey to listen to my group and he did. For the first couple of years we were just singing background. We used to back up Marvin Gaye; Mary Wells was there then, Marv Johnson, the Marvelettes, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Junior Walker and the All-Stars… I’m just trying to think of all the groups which were there before we got there. They were fairly successful, everybody was making it. So they signed us on a contract but we never really got a hit until 1960, ’61. At the same time we were still in high school and Berry did not want to take us on the road until we had graduated.

WARHOL: You started when you were eleven or twelve?

ROSS: No, I was sixteen. Smokey was really the special part of making us get in to the right door. He wrote the first couple of songs that we released: one was “Breathtaking Guy,” one was “Ask Any Girl.” And Berry even wrote a couple of the songs that we released. But our first hit record was by three boys who worked at Motown named Brian and Eddie Holland and Lamont Dozier.

WARHOL: They’re now on their own, aren’t they?

ROSS: Yes, what happened was Brian and Eddie and Lamont broke up and left Motown. The Temptations changed members many different times. We changed members once while I was there and then I left the group and the Supremes continued. The Four Tops were at the company, but everything just started to change. People grow up and things change. That’s a capsule of twenty years. After graduation from high school our first tour was a Motown revue and then we went on a Dick Clark tour. Dick Clark was very helpful, as was Ed Sullivan. Then the Murray the K Show was here in town. We used to do the theater circuit when we first started, which was the Apollo in New York, the Royal Theater in Baltimore, the Uptown Theater in Philadelphia, the Howard Theater in Washington.

WARHOL: And the Paramount in Brooklyn.

ROSS: Yes. We were out of school then and that first album was the biggest hit we ever had. We had like three or four hits on it: “Come See About Me,” “Baby Love,” “Stop in the Name of Love,” “Where Did Our Love Go?”

WARHOL: And these were all written by those three guys?

ROSS: Those three guys. But they also wrote for Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. They wrote “Dancing in the Street,” “Heat Wave.” I think that kind of sound is coming back again. You know, Berry started off with maybe four artists and he built the whole Motown sound. Stevie Wonder came to the company. Berry must have had hundreds of acts.

WARHOL: I saw Stevie Wonder out at the Paramount and he was great. He was playing the harmonica.

ROSS: Yes, when he was really tiny—”Fingertips.” I watched him grow up, too. Then Berry left Detroit and moved to California.

WARHOL: We knew so much about you because we had these intellectual lesbian friends who followed you all over the world. They singled you out as the one they really loved. They weren’t lesbians then, they turned lesbian five years later.

ROSS: They just kind of opened up, huh? The other day in the recording studio a guy came in to do some arranging for me and he said, “You know I saw you at the Apollo. I remember one of the stage managers who is dead now pointing you out and saying, ‘If Berry Gordy spends time with that girl she’s going to be a big star.'” I meet a lot of people who have been with us for 20 years.

WARHOL: During the ’60s it was really much easier to go up to Harlem. I went there a couple months ago to dinner and I had the best time. We went all over. There’s so much money to be made up there. The restaurants could be thriving with people just going uptown. I think you should invest your money in something up there and really make people come up there again.

ROSS: Once it was such a beautiful area.

WARHOL: I could be still. Entertainment and food up there, it’s a whole new world. You can make so much money.

ROSS: I wonder why it stopped. I don’t know New York very well. I feel like I’m still such a newcomer here. The last time I remember the Apollo I was working there with Richard Pryor. Everybody knew he was going to be a big star. At that time he was doing dialog about President Eisenhower. He wrote his own things and they were just extraordinary. I remember working with Otis Redding. My mother loved Otis Redding. I have such memories; I keep thinking about all the people I worked with. I was in the recording studio and I was talking to one of the engineers who is 24 and they don’t know these people. They just absolutely don’t know the people and it just tickles me. I don’t feel like I’ve grown up.

WARHOL: Not that many people who started like you did in the early ’60s lasted.

ROSS: I’m still just a baby, just Mick Jagger and me.

WARHOL: It’s your figure. How do you keep so skinny?

ROSS: I don’t eat very much. Why don’t we order, by the way?

WARHOL: You’ve got the best figure.

ROSS: Actually, I think my body is the best it’s ever been in my entire life. All of a sudden I feel more womanly, I feel like I got a figure. I was always really straight up and down, the skinny one in the middle, like that poster at Elaine’s of the Supremes at Lincoln Center—it was done by Joe Eula. To me that’s really a reflection of the way I was. I was just like a bean pole. Now I’m getting a few curves and I like it. It took me fifteen years. I didn’t eat this morning because I wanted to eat now.

WARHOL: You don’t have any beauty secrets like exercising?

ROSS: When I’m working I actually forget to eat. I don’t eat sweets because I don’t care about them. I have no real secrets. I just realize that as I get older I should stay strong so I exercise more now. I use the Nautilus equipment whenever I can.

WARHOL: Do you have that at home?

ROSS: No. But I would like to get it up in Connecticut.

WARHOL: Do you go to a gym?

ROSS: I belong to a club here in town. I jog and I roller-skate. I dance—that’s the best exercise. I love to dance.

WARHOL: Where do you dance?

ROSS: I haven’t been going out to any place since Studio 54 closed up and that’s the truth.

WARHOL: Do you dance at home?

ROSS: Yes, we move all the furniture back and dance on the stage, too. It’s not a choreographed kind of thing, it’s much freer. It keeps you strong.

WARHOL: Do you have a new show to take on the road when the album comes out?

ROSS: Actually, it’s fairly new. I’m going places I have never been before. In Vegas I’m working at the Riviera Hotel for one ten-day engagement. I’m taking a new show in there. It’s not a regular Las Vegas show. I have five horns and they’re called the Asbury Jukes. Have you ever heard of the Asbury Jukes?

WARHOL: No.

ROSS: They’re an exciting horn group. I am so crazy about them. I have three sexy girls who are going to play strings. And everybody is going to be standing, nobody’s sitting. We’re all on separate pedestals. I had a new set built. It’s all black patent leather. Everything is black and shiny. Last time I did an all-white one, now I’m doing an all-black look. I’m going to do it in Atlantic City, too.

WARHOL: You decide all those things yourself, the whole look of the show?

ROSS: Yes. That’s my pleasure. I really feel like it’s constantly creating. I don’t like it to be boring for me so I keep doing new things. I spend too much money on my sets and my gowns. I think the presentation is important. I don’t think people want to see the old show all the time, they want to see a new show. So every time I make a new circuit, a new time around, then I change the show. You can’t change the songs; people still want to hear “Lady Sings the Blues” and they still want to hear some of the oldies. What I really want to do here in New York is to work in the park. Not a paid thing, a real summer kind of thing. Maybe next summer.

WARHOL: That would attract millions.

ROSS: I would hope so. I’d like to make a television special from it or something. I think it would be a great idea but then I don’t know. What are you going to eat?

WARHOL: I can’t read French menus.

ROSS: Do you spend a lot of time in Europe, Andy?

WARHOL: I was going to Germany once a month.

ROSS: I would have thought you’d be going to Paris once a month.

WARHOL: We stop in Paris when we go to Germany.

ROSS: Then why can’t you speak French? You should be able to read these menus.

WARHOL: I have people like Bob who do it all.

ROSS: I want to live in Paris for a couple of years. I’m dying to do the Josephine Baker story. I really want to be there and do it. It’s certainly my intention to do it. Did you know her?

WARHOL: I met her the last few times she was in New York. I run into her adopted son, Jean Claude Saber. He works for French TV.

ROSS: I just think her life story needs to be done. I think she was an extraordinary woman. To see someone who was basically a showgirl have the kind of lifestyle she had was extraordinary. I really think she made her own lifestyle. Maybe we should get a waiter and order. I’d like a medium cheeseburger and French fries and a small salad.

WARHOL: I’m going to have the same thing, but a lot of ketchup.

ROSSL Me, too. A lot of ketchup, a lot of mustard.

WARHOL: So, the Josephine Baker story is the next movie you’re going to be working on?

ROSS: I don’t know. I don’t want them to make it into a television movie, and I don’t want them to make it into a Broadway show.

WARHOL: Have you bought it yet or bought the book?

ROSS: I talked to the girl who did the last book and it’s being discussed. We don’t know if it’s necessary to get that book. I’ve been talking about Josephine now for almost three years. I would like to do it and I would like to help in getting it done period.

WARHOL: The Motown Story would be a great movie.

ROSS: It’s not interesting for us to do our own lives.

WARHOL: Do you get a lot of scripts?

ROSS: Yes, but not a lot of quality. I’m really lucky, Andy, I have my performing career so I can continue to do personal appearances. Most actors have to do a film. But I thought I would wait until I found something I really liked. In the last year there’s only been three projects, actually maybe four, that were really quality and that I thought I could do. A lot of my friends feel that I’m wrong to wait. They say I should have done My Bodyguard, but I don’t think so. I think I’ve been right.

WARHOL: The last time you were writing a lot of your songs. Think of all the bucks you could make.

ROSS: I don’t know if you do it just for that, Andy. You do it if it’s good.

WARHOL: You would be good at writing your own material. You pick the right material. I think you’d write the best love lyrics.

ROSS: It’s easier for me to sit with the producers and the writers and I give them my feelings and my thoughts and what I think I feel like singing about and then they go away and write it.

WARHOL: Can’t you just do that yourself?

ROSS: It requires a lot of time. It seems like I don’t have a lot of time for all the things I need to do. I’m spreading myself fairly thin right now. I have responsibilities to my children. I have a big staff that works for me. And when you have a staff, and I’m sure you know this, you’re always concerned with everybody’s life all the time. I cannot make a plan to leave town without coordinating everybody who works for me and what they have to do. Who’s going to be in New York? Who’s going to be at the house? What secretary is going to travel with me? Am I going to have wardrobe, hair?

WARHOL: And having a baby, too… Like Liza [Minelli], she wanted to have a baby and had to pay off all her musicians—it cost her a fortune.

ROSS: Yes, if you have a band you have to keep them on retainer, and that’s a big responsibility.

WARHOL: How many people do you have?

ROSS: When I’m traveling I have 19 musicians usually. And now it’s more because I just hired the strings and the horns. I have attorneys and I have business managers and staff that goes with each of those. I have my own management company now—I’m managing two groups—so I have the president of that company. I have a nice personal secretary. I really need another assistant. I am going into the merchandising business. It has to do with fragrances and clothing lines and all that.

WARHOL: When is that starting?

ROSS: It’s coming soon. They’ve been talking to me about that for years.

WARHOL: Great!

ROSS: I just feel like I’d like to move in that direction. New York has done that for me. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. You know, design was my major in school. I designed all the clothes in Mahogany. I always wanted to be a fashion designer and I learned costume illustration in high school. That was an incredible high school. It was more like a college. I’m moving more in that direction, just kind of merchandising my name.

WARHOL: You better trademark your name. If you don’t do that somebody could manufacture cheap perfume in Hong Kong and call it “Diana Ross.”

ROSS: My problem is that people have been writing books about me. There’s a book out called I’m Going to Make You Love Me, and I had nothing to do with it. The guy got all of his data from interviews that I’d done over the years. A lot of things that people write about you are incorrect, but you don’t fight about it. It’s in the newspaper and you’re not going to take anybody to court, you kind of leave it if it’s not harmful. But he took all these articles and made it into a book and they’re really not facts. I don’t know what you can do about it.

WARHOL: I don’t know what you can do about it, either. I never understand that.

ROSS: It’s not fair that our name can be used in any newspaper, any article connected with anything, and we can’t really fight about it. It’s like any newspaper that might take a picture of you, bad or good, and sometimes they’re awful pictures, and they can use them without your approval and you can’t do anything about it.

WARHOL: I guess it’s freedom of the press.

ROSS: It’s really not fair. You can ruin a person’s life. We should have some rights. My name, Diana Ross, is my name and nobody should be able to use that for exploitative purposes but me. People can take your name and write a book about you and they make money off of it. How is the public supposed to know you’re not authorizing that book? As soon as you make a big stink about it it only makes the book sell more.

WARHOL: But then when you put out an album they review your albums.

ROSS: I’m not talking about reviews. I’m talking about your personal life.

WARHOL: I know, but they give you something, too.

ROSS: There must be a limit.

WARHOL: I don’t think the press should be able to say false things.

ROSS: What’s false? It’s how they slant it, it’s how it’s written.

WARHOL: That’s why we tape-record everything.

ROSS: I’ve never been damaged or hurt. It’s just that I think it’s unfair.

WARHOL: But you told me before that the article on Diane Von Furstenberg in New York magazine was good…

ROSS: I liked it because I’m crazy about Diane. It’s a relationship that’s very different; I don’t see Diane a lot. So when I saw the article she looked so beautiful and it was talking about her work, too. She set up the interview and it was happening. That’s different than someone writing a book about you who you’ve never met. I’ve never even talked to this guy. If I do an interview, then I take full responsibility. I figure I’m not going to talk to anyone that I think is unethical anyway.

WARHOL: But what happens is one reporter gets something wrong and it keeps getting repeated because that’s how most journalists do an interview, they look up old material. But especially if the age is wrong I let it go by.

ROSS: It tickles me, my daughter said that to me. She said, “Mommie, why is it that every time they say your name they put your age right behind it?”

WARHOL: Your daughters are beautiful.

ROSS: Thank you, Andy. I’m so proud of them. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.

WARHOL: Are you going to let them perform and sing?

ROSS: I’d let them do anything that makes them happy. They’re crazy about the business because they’re surrounded by it so much. What’s important for me is to give them a well-rounded education and a mixture of people in their lives. They’ll make their own choices. I think they would be good in show business. I would never deny them this. I don’t know what my life would have been like if I’d never gotten into show business.

WARHOL: Do they sing with you like you did with your mother?

ROSS: They love to come on the stage but I think they love to come on the stage because of the lights. They get on the stage and look at everybody. I’m real lucky. I don’t know what their teenage years are going to be like, but I have really good girls. They work well with each other.

WARHOL: They look old for their age.

ROSS: One is nine and the other is eight and I have never babied them.

WARHOL: How old is the other one?

ROSS: She’s five. The other night my eldest daughter was sick and she had a temperature. I couldn’t figure it out. She’s teething. She’s still a baby. She’s getting her wisdom teeth. I treat them like young women. They really have good reasoning power. Chutney, the five-year-old—my niece Elena was in town and Chutney actually figured out the best thing to do—should she go to camp without her, should she take her to camp, or should she stay home with her? Chutney figured out it would be better to stay home with Elena than try to take her to camp. She had looked at all the choices and she picked one. For a five-year-old that’s incredible. I let her make her choice. I didn’t tell her, okay, we’re going to call the school and Elena is going to go to camp with you for the week or I didn’t tell her she had to take her. She made her choice. I guess all parents think their kids are amazing and I think mine are real amazing and real special.

WARHOL: If you move to Paris to do the Josephine Baker story will you take the kids with you?

ROSS: Yes, absolutely. I really think I want to live in a lot of places for at least a couple of years. I don’t want possessions to hold me down. I always wanted to live in New York and now I got a chance to be on the East Coast, in Connecticut. And I have a small apartment here in town. I want to live in Paris. I’ve never been to Israel, I want to go there. I’ve never been to Africa, I want to go there. I want to go to China. There are some places I want to go not to work, but to really explore and to see for my own education. Have you been to all these places? Have you been to Israel?

WARHOL: Every place you mentioned I haven’t been to.

ROSS: China?

WARHOL: No. Halston asked me to go with him and I turned it down.

ROSS: Why?

WARHOL: I just like New York so much.

ROSS: I do too, but you can have a lot of New York and still see what’s going on in the rest of the world, I think—like in China.

WARHOL: I’d rather go to Chinatown or Pearl’s.

ROSS: I have a lust for life. I’m in love with trees. I love nature and I’m a people watcher. I’m very interested, I wish that I could write about some of the things we were talking about. I should keep a diary.

WARHOL: You don’t? Tape-record it!

ROSS: These tomatoes are not at all like my tomatoes I get out of my garden. I have a garden up in Connecticut and we got a zucchini that was like this. We need lots of ketchup and Tabasco, please, and mustard. I’m going to cut my hamburger in half and I’m going to pick it up.

WARHOL: I’m waiting for the trimmings.

ROSS: Andy, you’re not a picky eater, are you?

WARHOL: No. Do you take many vacations?

ROSS: No, I don’t care about vacations. I go away and I come back real quick because I like my work. I really like my work to consume me. I’m not interested in sleeping anywhere else. I would like to enjoy my life a little bit more so I can really have more fun, but my work is my fun. I keep trying to do something else and really, I’m having a good time. I’m going Sesame Street. We’re just now working out what the songs will be because I’d like to do some songs that really mean something to the children. That’s going to be fun for me.

WARHOL: Do you try them out on your kids?

ROSS: I try everything out on my kids. If they don’t like it, I don’t want to do it.

WARHOL: Do you think they’re your best friends?

ROSS: Yes.

WARHOL: Do they go out and stay with their father sometimes?

ROSS: Bob [Silberstein] lives a half hour away from us.

WARHOL: He lives in Connecticut?

ROSS: Yes. He has an apartment here in town, too.

WARHOL: Is he still producing?

ROSS: Yes, managing.

WARHOL: What are the two groups you’re managing?

ROSS: One is called RPM. One is a guy I have no signed yet because I think he’s got a few outstanding contracts. His name is Mickey Free.

WARHOL: How did you find them?

ROSS: I just see them. I see many. I see reggae groups. They send me their tapes. There’s so much talent out there.

WARHOL: You don’t go to clubs, much.

ROSS: Yes, I do. If there’s someone interesting I’ll always get the words and I’ll see them.

WARHOL: Peter Tosh was at the Ritz and it was so jam-packed that the balcony was just going up and down.

ROSS: I really like that club, don’t you?

WARHOL: It’s one of my favorites.

ROSS: I enjoy being there. I have my little favorite place over in the corner that I like and I can see everything.

WARHOL: Have you been to the Savoy?

ROSS: Yes.

WARHOL: I saw Stephanie Mills there. She’s really talented.

ROSS: She really has come a long way. She’s very elegant. On television the other day she said, “I was never linked romantically with anyone except Michael Jackson.” It was so cute.

WARHOL: When you come home and you turn on TV and there’s one of your movies on what do you think?

ROSS: I have never done that.

WARHOL: You didn’t watch Mahogany this month?

ROSS: No, I was out of town.

WARHOL: It’s like me listening to a game show and they’ll say, who drew the Campbell Soup can? It’s so odd to hear your name like that.

ROSS: For some reason, my main movie, Lady Sings the Blues, to me really isn’t me. I really can let go of Diana Ross when I see the movie. I’m really objective when I’m watching it. I liked that movie so much. That movie was like magic so that when I’m looking at it I’m really not seeing myself, I’m seeing the actress. I’m seeing another person, not the me of me. I haven’t seen Mahogany or The Wiz the way I’ve seen Lady Sings the Blues.

WARHOL: Do you listen to your own albums a lot at home?

ROSS: No.

WARHOL: What do you listen to?

ROSS: Everybody else.

WARHOL: Do you have music on all the time?

ROSS: All the time, everybody else.

BOB: Does Bob Mackie make all your clothes for the shows?

ROSS: Mostly all, yes. The ladies that work there are really the best. All my gowns are hand-beaded. Most gowns are machine-beaded. I basically do my own designing and they make up what I design. We do it over the telephone now. It’s not really Bob any more, it’s Ray [Agfahan] and I. We work together.

WARHOL: You use Galanos, don’t you?

ROSS: I use Galanos but that’s not for stage things; I use him for real special occasions and things—television, special occasions where I know I’m being filmed. But I never really wear his gowns on stage. My stage gowns are more costumey. There’s different levels of things that I wear. I would never wear my stage gowns to a party. First of all, all my gowns have trains on them. I make a train that goes on forever. I love long trains and then I stand there and twirl around and wrap myself up in it. How did you like Lady Di’s wedding dress?

ROSS: It was beautiful.

WARHOL: I really think she’s done so much for virginity. I hope the Pope sent her a big wedding present. She’s really bringing it all back.

ROSS: She has such a clean look.

WARHOL: Where did the Prince go on his honeymoon?

ROSS: Where did he go?

WARHOL: Indiana.

ROSS: I don’t get it.

WARHOL: IN-Diana.

ROSS: Terrible, bad joke.

WAITER: Would you like coffee and dessert?

ROSS: Let me just peek at the dessert cart. I don’t like sweets and that’s the truth. Maybe there’s some fruit or fruit tarts. Andy, do you want some strawberries?

WARHOL: Oh, not for me.

ROSS: I’ll take one heaping helping of chocolate mousse. Just one. God, not that much.

WAITER: Do you want a little whipped cream on it?

ROSS: Yes, just a bit. It’s very sweet. Tell me, is this cup a funny shape, or is it just my eyes?

WARHOL: Your cup looks melted-lopsided.

ROSS: I thought it was my eyes. I just wanted to be sure.

WARHOL: Have you been going to Broadway shows at all?

ROSS: Yes, but I haven’t been in awhile. I saw Pirates of Penzance and Sophisticated Ladies. I went to see Lena [Horne] last.

WARHOL: How did you like Lena?

ROSS: The best. I love Lena. She was beautiful? Have you seen it?

WARHOL: Yes, she is one of the really magic people.

ROSS: I rented a lot of old Mae West movies. I just enjoy watching them so much. I watched My Little Chickadee last night. She is so great. She said such wonderful things. I started doing this on the stage, “When I’m good, I’m good and when I’m bad, I’m better.” I love it. I love it so much. There’s one she did Sex, I was looking for that one. She said, “I used to be called Snow White, but I drifted.” What time is it?

WARHOL: Twenty to three.

ROSS: I’m going out with my decorators to look at chandeliers.

WARHOL: Who is your decorator?

ROSS: Vincent Foucarde and Bob Demmig. We’re just getting started.

WARHOL: Are they going to do a lot of faux marbling?

ROSS: I have a round room that I want to do that in. That’s the room where I’m going to put the chandelier.

WARHOL: It’s going to take three years to hand-paint it. And three albums worth of income.

THIS INTERVIEW ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN THE OCTOBER 1981 ISSUE OF INTERVIEW.

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