The Black Pimp Speaks Boyd Rice interviewed by Brian Clark via telephone, 2003 (an edited version

of this interview appeared in Rated Rookie #6, 2004) BRIAN: Have you ever had a regular nine-to-five job, or have you always been able to support yourself off of your creative pursuits? BOYD: The last nine-to-five job I had was when I lived in San Francisco I was an alarm agent. I was the person who responds to a building when an alarm goes off inside. You drive a sort of police car with a cage in the back, you dress up in a uniform that looks like a cop uniform, you carry a gun, and you just drive around town all night until an alarm goes off. They radio you, you drive to the location and you make sure that somebodys not running off with everything in the building, or if theres a trespasser you wrestle him to the ground, put handcuffs on him and turn him over to the police. That was my last nine-to-five job, though it was actually a graveyard shift. It was a great job. I had more fun on that job I got to see crimes taking place in the middle of the night, I got to see buildings burning to the ground, all sorts of stuff. BRIAN: How long did you do that for? BOYD: About five years. I quit doing that just before moving to Denver in 1989. BRIAN: Since then youve been able to support yourself with music and writing and other stuff like that? BOYD: Yeah. BRIAN: You consider yourself a misanthrope, correct? BOYD: Well, not really. I feel that its just so ingrained into my soul that I really dont have to think about it. I just know that most people dont have a lot to offer me. BRIAN: When did you first realize that you were at odds with most people with consensus reality? BOYD: I think when I was two years old in the sandbox. I think I formulated my basic philosophy there, and I havent really had to alter it very much ever since. I was playing with a couple of cousins who were a few years older than me, and they were jumping up and down in this sandbox my father had built, and I told them that if they kept doing that, the bottom would fall out, and it would be ruin, and they wouldnt be able to play there anymore. They said; Dont be a big baby thats just stupid, thats not going to happen. Then, when it did happen and you could see the shadow coming down the road when it happened, they were the most shocked, surprised kids on earth. They got terrified and ran home, and I just kinda thought: Jeez, I can see everything fairly clearly, and it seems like most people dont have that gift. This was my feeling I dont even know if I was talking at that age, but thats exactly what I thought. BRIAN: And it hasnt changed since then? BOYD: No. When I was growing up in the early sixties, most people were a hell of a lot more responsible than people are these days. I think actually, you know, its gotten worse its truer today than its ever been at any time, since Ive been alive. BRIAN: That people are irresponsible? BOYD: That people are irresponsible, that they cant see whats going on right in front of them, that they cant see the

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outcome of events that they have absolutely no foresight. It seems like having foresight isnt that big of a deal, but when you deal with very intelligent people who cant see the outcome of their actions and dont know that if they pursue a certain course of action, its not going to be to their benefit it becomes a big deal. Ive run across a lot of people like that. BRIAN: That seems to be the state of affairs worldwide, in a lot of ways. BOYD: Yeah, it is. And when you have that faculty of foresight, and you tell people things are going to happen, and you explain why theyre going to be the way youre telling them it is, they dont believe it they cant see it. When it happens the way it had to happen they think that youre psychic or something. Like those riots in Los Angeles ; I told people well in advance those were going to happen. I said: I have a feeling theres going to be parts of the city of Los Angeles on fire. and people said: Well, why do you say that? And I said: Because these police are obviously going to get off, and people are going to get angry, and theyre going to go out and loot, and kill people, and burn down buildings. And people said; Oh, youre just such an extremist, you have such an extreme point of view nothing like thats going to happen. Theres no way those police will get off. But it happened BRIAN: To what extent are you currently involved with The Church of Satan? BOYD: Virtually not at all to almost no extent. BRIAN: How close were you to Anton LaVey? BOYD: I knew him for several years when I lived in San Francisco , probably saw him at least once or twice a week. Id often go over to his house at eight at night, and then leave sometimes at eight in the morning. I spent a lot of time with the guy. He was one of my closest friends in San Francisco . I visited him probably once or twice a year after I left San Francisco , up until the time he died. BRIAN: Do you still consider yourself a Satanist? BOYD: Well, I use the word Satanist, but I dont know if I ever really considered myself as somebody whos into Satan. I was into Gnosticism and Hermeticism before I met Anton LaVey, and when I went on talk shows as a spokesman for The Church of Satan, thats what Id talk about, those ideas. Those ideas still form the basis of my thought, more so than worshiping some figure of an adversary. Anton LaVey was really the archetypal Satanist. He was like a figure out of literature or something. He embodied that whole spirit. When he was alive, and he was my friend, I was proud to say I was a Satanist that I was a member of the inner circle of The Church of Satan but since his death, my research into occult matters has evolved exponentially. So less and less does The Church of Satan have any relevancy to my life. BRIAN: My conception of the typical Satanist, is someone who was picked on a lot in high school, and as a means of overcompensation, they change their name to Damien Lucifari, or whatever, and then they go around wearing a pentagram necklace, and they think that this gives them some sort of power, or changes their nature which isnt going to change at all. To me, it seems like the average frat boy lives out a more satanic life than any of the Satanists that Ive ever met. But I get the impression that your interpretation of Satanism is far more along the lines of what LaVey had actually envisioned. BOYD: Yeah, well I think that my initial attraction to the Satanic thing was that it seemed like there was a strong element of this sort of Social Darwinist attitude in LaVeys Satanism that was latent, but was never stressed or emphasized. So I thought: This would be a far more powerful creed if you brought out all that was strongest in it all that was harshest and really emphasized that aspect of it. And thats the way the creed evolved after my initial involvement. Id never heard LaVey use the term Social Darwinist once when I initially knew him, but then soon enough, that became what was emphasized. Now, if you read these modern Satanic people, they all mention that. So I think thats something that I brought to The Church of Satan. BRIAN: LaVey has been quoted as saying that Satanism is just: Ayn Rand s philosophy with ceremony and ritual
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added. BOYD: I think somebody may have said that about him, I dont think he actually said that. BRIAN: Well, do you relate to Ayn Rand at all, because she was a definite influence on LaVey? BOYD: I have mixed feelings about her. There are aspects of her that I find compelling, and then there are other aspects that just sour the whole thing for me. I really havent delved into her material enough to make a proper or informed commentary. There are a lot of figures whore like that where there are aspects of them I find fascinating, and other aspects that blow the whole deal for me. Like Nietzsche for instance, hes a guy who says: If youre going to the bedchamber, bring along a whip. and the guy probably died a virgin. So I can agree with a lot of the things he says, but they would be more credible if somebody else anybody else were saying it. BRIAN: My impression of Nietzsche is that his philosophies were everything that he himself wasnt. Which to me, is a real problem with a lot of philosophers, which is also, I suppose, why Im interested in people like you and LaVey that it isnt just idle talk. Its not just some intellectual sitting in an attic somewhere typing up manifestos that dont have any bearing on reality. Nietzsche is the kind of clich example of someone who has intellectualized dealings with the world, but he himself is just a skinny little guy he was all talk, basically. Boyd: Yeah. BRIAN: What is your understanding of Magic? BOYD: I think that the textbook definition is: Making things happen in the world in accordance with your will. Which I think is imminently possible. But theres lesser black magic and greater black magic. Greater black magic obviously deals with using the powers of your mind to make something happen in accordance with what your desires are, whereas lesser black magic is manipulating things so that what you want to happen is likely to happen. For me, its magical to know that virtually anything you want to do, you can create a process that will make it happen. Its as simple as; if you want to get someplace, you put one foot in front of the other until youre there, and I think most things in life are just about that simple, you just have to know the process that brings them about. Life is like a great big sponge you can get anything out of it that you want, you just have to know where to squeeze it. BRIAN: So its not necessarily something supernatural to you per se? Its more about willpower? BOYD: Yeah. BRIAN: Do you believe in things like curses? BOYD: I do. The simile that LaVey used to use about people, is that people are like light bulbs. You have a 250watt light bulb, and then you have like a 40watt light bulb, and most people are 40watt light bulbs. The 250watt people are few and far between. I feel that certain people are more likely to have a curse work than other people. BRIAN: What about prayer? BOYD: I think that prayer is exactly the same process. I absolutely believe that prayer works. They did a test I think it was in a 1952 issue of Newsweek in which they had two fields that were exactly the same soil, and planted them with exactly the same seeds. In one field they had people praying for the plants to grow and prosper, and in the other field they had people cursing the plants. The side with the prayers grew and prospered, and the side with the curses shriveled up and died BRIAN: So what is your impression of that? BOYD: My impression, is that prayer is one of the most basic forms of magic. That its harnessing the powers of your mind. Everything is energy; theres energy in the mind, the world is made out of energy. It only follows that you
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can focus one energy you can harness one energy to affect other kinds of energy. BRIAN: And this isnt something that needs to be supernatural? BOYD: No, it doesnt need to be supernatural you dont need to believe that it comes from God. I just think its a process that people probably once were aware of once knew how to use and manipulate and what we have now is just the vestigial forms of it; people going to church and saying prayers, people lighting a candle to one of the saints, asking the saint of good travel to bless their journey, and that sort of thing. BRIAN: Do you personally do things like that? BOYD: I do certain things like that... BRIAN: What is your conception of God? BOYD: Its an all-encompassing creative / destructive force that binds the universe. BRIAN: So its dualistic then? BOYD: No its Trinitarian. I think that the original idea of the trinity came from the fact that you have a creative force, and a destructive force, and then the third part of that is the union between them the balance between them. So yeah, theres a duality, but the duality is transcendent, because its all part of the same force. BRIAN: Youve talked a lot in previous interviews about Abraxas does that still encompass your conception of God today, as it did maybe ten years ago or so? BOYD: Yeah, absolutely. BRIAN: At what point in your life did you conceive of it that way, or in those terms? BOYD: I first started thinking along those lines when I was very young, watching an episode of Dark Shadows, and one of the characters said a simple line that sort of changed my life. It was an episode where there was this kind of Dr. Jeckel / Mr. Hyde figure, and he was about ready to drink this liquid that was going to transform him, and he said something to the effect of: Im doing this in the hope that I can build a bridge in Mans divided nature. And I thought: Mans divided nature building a bridge and it was just mind-boggling to me. I thought: Thats really important, Im going to think about this. So thats when I first started thinking along those lines. Interestingly, after however many years thirty years or something I finally saw that episode of Dark Shadows again, and what the guy actually says is completely different, but thats what I took away from it. BRIAN: Besides co-authoring The Manson File, what exactly was your relationship with Charles Manson? BOYD: I was on his visiting list for a while, and I used to go see him in San Quentin. I was trying to release some tapes that hed done in jail, and trying to put out a record or CD of thatYou know, this is a lot of stuff that I generally insist on not talking about. I mean, The Church of Satan and Charlie Manson? this is stuff that Ive been talking about for fifteen years, and I think Ive probably said virtually everything I can say on these topics. BRIAN: Oh, ok well BOYD: The thing is, I think Ive said everything I can say about it, so every time I get asked these questions, I get a little more bored with the subject matter. So every time Im asked about this stuff, I think my answers probably just get worse and worse and worse with each interview. So not only am I still talking about all this stuff that Im not really interested in anymore, but Im doing it in an inarticulate way. If I could do an interview about Manson to just put the whole thing into perspective, and do it in a way that transcends everything Ive said thus far, that would be great.
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BRIAN: Well, I understand that these days youre into a lot more esoteric stuff, but the reason that Im asking you these questions is that people still seem to have this concept of you that is totally warped, and based on hearsay and conjecture which isnt really based on reality at all, yet it persists. So yeah, I realize that some of this stuff is over ten years old for you, but its all still floating around out there, and thats what people are still reacting to. People are still reading things you said in interviews ten, fifteen, even twenty years ago, and theyre reacting to that out of context as if it were being said today. BOYD: Yeah, well it all ought to be organized in some sort of timeline, at the very least. BRIAN: I realize that you probably havent seen Charles Manson in like fifteen years or so, but its one of these things that people are always fixated on, and still talk about. But if you dont want to talk about him, then of course thats totally fine. BOYD: Well, I wrote an article about him once, and I thought: This is going to be my final thing on Charles Manson. It goes into why I found him interesting, what was funny about him, what was disappointing about him all that stuff and I thought: Ok, Im gonna print this, and it will be the definitive thing, so if anybody asks me about Charlie Manson, I can just refer them to that. But the things never been printed. BRIAN: Ok, well if you dont want to talk about Manson, Ill just skip those questions. BOYD: Well, what do you want to know about Manson? BRIAN: Well, I guess, just what you relationship with him was exactly. Id read somewhere that the two of you were friends that you considered him a friend and I just wanted to hear about that. BOYD: Yeah, well, I did consider him a friend at the time. He was really one of these amazing people whos a larger-than-life character. It was very interesting to meet him and to get to hear all his stories firsthand. He told me amazing stories and anecdotes things that have never been in any of those books about him. Hes one of these people who has an incredible amount of insight, and hell tell you little stories that embody these insights. Like hell be telling you a little joke, and there will be a sort of a moral to it that will encapsulate the exact meaning of the thing. BRIAN: How did you manage to get on his visiting list? BOYD: I just wrote him, and we started corresponding back and forth, and at a certain point he said: Well hey, you know, you sound like a pretty good guy, why dont you try and get on my list and come over and visit me? So I went over to San Quentin and filled out some forms, and thought this would probably never happen in a million years. Then I was surprised one day to get a letter from him that included a form saying that I was on his visiting list. BRIAN: I heard that he had a name for you like The Black Pimp or something? BOYD: (laughing) No, well, thats on one of his CDs he says: Boyd Rice is a black pimp. BRIAN: What is that supposed to mean? BOYD: I have no idea what that means some weird Manson thing. Actually, at the time, his name for me was Abraxas. He said: Ill call you Abraxas, because you stand in two circles at the same time. BRIAN: Did he know about that [Gnostic] stuff before he met you? BOYD: Oh yeah, absolutely. Thats one of the things that really interested me in meeting him that Abraxas was at the center of his philosophy. BRIAN: He always put a lot of emphasis on dualism and the God / Satan thing.
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BOYD: Yeah, absolutely. BRIAN: Did he influence your thinking on that at all? BOYD: No, Id thought that way for a long time, but that was what had initially interested me about Manson. I thought: Wow, hes got this whole cohesive thing worked out, in the sense that he knew the name of this ancient deity that represents this principle. BRIAN: So why did you stop visiting him? BOYD: I stopped visiting him because I went there one time with a bullet in my pocket, and was arrested, hauled off to jail and taken off his list. BRIAN: They arrested you for having a bullet in your pocket? BOYD: Yeah, the actual charge, I think, was: Smuggling an explosive device into a federal penitentiary. BRIAN: Jeeze thats ridiculous! BOYD: (laughing) Yeah, well to get to where Manson is, youve gotta go through about three different metaldetectors. BRIAN: And you just had it in your pocket because youd forgotten it was there or something? BOYD: Yep, I just had it in my pocket. BRIAN: So youve actually argued for Mansons release, right? BOYD: Well, at the time, he thought that if he could get a lawyer, he could get a writ of habeas corpus, and then he could get another trial. Legal authorities watching the trial had said that at the first trial there had been so many things that were done wrong, that he could easily get another trial, and then he could easily get a lawyer who was good enough to get him off. So, for a while we were trying to do that, because he wanted us to do that, but you know, Im not one of these Manson aficionados who thinks he completely not guilty of anything. Thats actually one of the things I found least interesting about him; that if he was trying to do what people have said he was trying to do, and if he had the kind of control over those people that people have said he had, then the whole episode is very interesting, but if its just a bunch of hippies killing rich people, then those crimes arent the least bit interesting. And thats what he claimed that it was a bunch of young kids trying to stop the war in Vietnam , and as some sort of protest they killed rich people. He actually blames them for putting him in jail. The criminals who take responsibility for their own acts are far more interesting to me, than the people who say: What? Who, me? I didnt do anything. BRIAN: And thats what Manson does? BOYD: Yeah. Well, actually he goes back and forth on it. Again, its that dual vibe: sometimes he says that it was all part of a revolution that was going to change life on earth, and other times its like: I didnt tell anybody to go kill anybody. So its like: Make up your mind! Its like, there are a certain kind of people who, no matter what you say, theyll say the opposite. So that if they see that youre interested in their being a criminal, theyll try to pretend theyre an innocent victim, but if you were to go there saying to him: Oh, youre just an innocent victim, hed probably say just the opposite to you. Hed say: Innocent victim? I had those people butchered! They didnt deserve to live! BRIAN: Do you think hes just a schizo? BOYD: Oh, absolutely.
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BRIAN: So how would having him released be a positive thing then? BOYD: Well, I dont necessarily think it would be. We were just excited about it at the time. We thought it would be exciting to get Mansons name back in the news again. He keeps talking about getting released, but realistically he doesnt want to be released. BRIAN: Hes been in prisons his whole life thats how he functions. Or thats at least how it seems to me. BOYD: It is. BRIAN: Its interesting to me that so many people are so fixated on Manson, to the point where it borders on ridiculousness they collect books and videos and whatever. It shows you the way that people intellectualize life and live it vicariously, at a distance. Whereas you actually met him and hung out with him, rather than beating around the bush. You milked it for all it was worth, whereas ninety-five percent of Manson fans will sit around reading about it and fixating on it, but theyd never have the balls to actually just go and talk to the guy. BOYD: Yeah, its funny, because Genesis P-Orridge said the same thing when I took him out to the Spahn Ranch. We were walking around out there, and he said: You know, Boyd, this is what makes you and me different from other people. A lot of people read about Manson and talk about him, but how many people are so devoted that they would actually go to the place where he lived, so that they could experience it and get a deeper sense of reality about what the whole Manson thing was about? And I was kind of laughing at what he was saying, and he said: No, I really mean it. A lot of people will sit down and read a book, but how many people will leave their house and actually track down the actual places and go there. He also said that having actually visited the place it all seemed more logical to him, because he could see how it was this fantasy land that was far away from the rest of civilization that they could get totally into this fantasy out there, and get into a group mind, and how over a period of time it could mutate so that they eventually got to where they did BRIAN: Well its true; thats why I think that people like Genesis and you, and others it makes all the difference in the world, really that there are doers and then there are talkers. I personally see that sort of thing as going all the way back to people like Nietzsche hes a perfect of example of a talker. Im not impressed at all by people who are intelligent, but dont act out their beliefs. BOYD: Exactly. BRIAN: Im more impressed by someone like Earnest Hemmingway than I am by Nietzsche, just because he actually did it. BOYD: Oh, yeah yeah, exactly. BRIAN: There are all these amazing, inspirational people like Cocteau, Duchamp, or even Orwell regardless of whether or not you agree with his politics or whatever, he actually went to Spain and fought in the civil war he went and experienced it directly. Whether or not his conclusions are something you agree with, I think you really have to respect that. BOYD: Yeah. BRIAN: The intellectualization of life drives me up the walls. BOYD: Well, theres a quote that I know youll like: Knowing and not doing, is not knowing. Theres also this old Jewish saying: If not me, who? If not now, when? LaVey used to quote that in his books, though he never said what the origin was. There are people I know, who, I feel like they should have it tattooed on some part of their body. BRIAN: People who dont live out their philosophies?
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BOYD: Yeah, well, people to whom Ill say: Hey, lets do this. and theyll say: Yeah, ok, well well do that on Sunday. And I feel like saying: If not now, when? Sunday? No, life is happening right now. BRIAN: Yeah, well that isnt something that people always catch onto. BOYD: And Im the laziest person on earth, so if this is something that Im well aware of, despite my overwhelming laziness BRIAN: But its all so relative. To me, it seems that youve done several lifetimes worth of stuff. A lot of people cant understand that, because they can only think in terms of having a nine-to-five job and making a lot of money, or whatever, but to me I mean, youve traveled the world, released records, books and movies to me, thats the way to go! I think thats being way more productive than the average person who has a day job. I mean, I sleep well into the afternoon and stay up all night, and Ive always caught a lot of flack for that from housemates, girlfriends and parents. To them, that kind of behavior translates into me being a lazy person and I am very lazy but not when it comes to doing the things Im interested in or passionate about. BOYD: Yeah. BRIAN: The average person may get up at some silly hour of the morning every day, and go off to their job, and work their ass off, but whats important is that theyre working for someone else. So theyre lazy, in the sense that they dont think for themselves enough to change that. BOYD: Adolph Hitler said: One brilliant idea is worth more than a hundred thousand hours of busywork. He liked to do absolutely nothing not go to the office, just sit around eating cakes and drinking tea but its like, if you get one great idea that you can implement and it impacts a lot of people, then thats great. But if you go to the office and are working constantly, theres just no mind space for those kinds of moments of inspiration. BRIAN: Then, forty years later, you look back on your life, and you havent done anything youve just worked. To me that just seems like a waste. But, as you were saying, most people dont see it that way, and thats why society functions because theyre all working away at their jobs. BOYD: Yeah, exactly. BRIAN: Its something that I used to think was a terrible, sad thing, but at some point I realized that wow its actually really great that everyone does that, because it allows other people the luxury to live interesting lives, while the rest of the world is busily typing away at computers. BOYD: (laughing) And it keeps em off the streets, at least for eight hours a day. BRIAN: So, I havent actually heard this debate, but I know that on (Christian evangelist) Bob Larsons radio show, you were once on with Sharon Tates mother, and you told her that her daughters murder was the best thing that had ever happened to her because it had given her an identity as a victim, which shes been milking ever since. BOYD: Well, the actual context in which I said that was that she kept talking about the good lord Jesus and all that stuff she kept bringing that up in the context of this discussion we were all having about Charlie Manson. So I said: Well, you know, what did the good lord Jesus ever do for your daughter? and she said: Id like you to know, shes standing at his side right now, in heaven. so I said: Well, then what are you whining about what are you complaining about? Were living in the best of all possible worlds: your lovely daughter is up there at the right hand of Christ, and in that case, this murder is probably the best thing that ever happened to you or her. BRIAN: What was her reaction to that? BOYD: I dont know if she said anything. I know Bob started going into hysterics, partway into what I was saying
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he could see where I was going with this, and he cut in with: (hysterical voice) I cant believe it! You horrible, insensitive have you no feelings! Youre a monster! Youre a monster! How dare you come on my show and say this to this poor woman, whose daughter was killed by your hero! BRIAN: (laughing) Oh thats great! BOYD: (laughing) It was good radio. But you know, the Manson show was really the dumbest one. Except for that moment, it wasnt really very good, but some the other shows I mean, Im in touch with a guy, who, the first time he found out about me, was when he was fourteen years old and heard me on the radio debating Bob Larson one of my first appearances. Hes now twenty-eight years old, and has been following my career ever since. I run into people all the time who were introduced to me by my appearance on one Bob Larsons shows. BRIAN: But youre not debating Bob anymore? BOYD: No, my debates these days would probably be very different. He doesnt have his radio program anymore hes now concentrating on going from town to town performing exorcisms. BRIAN: Would it be fair to say that you and Bob had a symbiotic relationship? BOYD: Yeah, I think so. I think Bob is at his best when he has somebody he can totally debate. BRIAN: So, really, you were great P.R. for each other? BOYD: Yeah, I thought so. I thought it was good radio I mean, people are still talking about it, what, twelve, thirteen years later? When one of my CDs was released, they actually had cassettes dubbed off one of my appearances on Bob Larsons show, and these were sent out with P.R. copies of the new CD. So the next time I went to Europe , everybody I ran into had just been listening to my show with Bob. I had come off looking like the good guy, because Bob was yelling and screaming, and I sounded calm and reasonable even though the things I was saying were not the least bit reasonable as far as most people are concerned people still came away with the idea that I was the innocent victim, because Bob was like beating up on me, yelling and screaming, and losing his temper. The thing about his show was that the Christians who listened to it were like these old ladies who were afraid that their grandchildren were getting into heavy metal and Satanism and stuff, so theyd donate all this money to him. I think everybody else who listened were those young kids, who were into heavy metal and Satanism. (laughter) BRIAN: So, youve said that youre a Social Darwinist, right? BOYD: Well, I used to say that fifteen years ago. Thats something that I used to talk about a lot, but its something that I really have no particular interest in anymore, because I figure that peoples lives are going to be basically formed by their instinct or their lack thereof. Certain people are going to operate in a certain way, and other people arent, so I just take that for granted. I dont wish to change anybody I dont think you can take a weak man and make him into a strong man and I dont think you can take a stupid man and make him into a clever man. Its kind of like: water seeks its own level. So, I would look at Social Darwinism probably a negative way; I would give people more options more liberties to make a lot of mistakes, and to do foolish things that are going to result in their own demise, and that sort of thing. I think that most of our laws are trying to counter that. They have to make more laws every day to take up the slack. BRIAN: So its nature, not nurture? BOYD: Oh yeah, definitely. BRIAN: Youve said in the past that youre an aesthetic fascist, but not a political fascist. It seems like a lot of people seem to have trouble seeing the difference between the two, or even seeing one. BOYD: Im not a fascist at all. I have absolutely not a political bone in my body. Most people perceive my views as being so harsh, that they only way they can find a connection between my opinions and other opinions that are similar
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is fascism, but fascism is a word thats thrown around so much today that its like, anybody who disagrees with you is a fascist. Ive seen people wearing t-shirts on the street that say: George W. Bush is a fascist, and I wonder what these people really know about fascism, because if you equate George Bush to Mussolini or to Hitler, I think its time to go back and read your history books again. What most people refer to as fascistic is really just a basic human instinct that most people think that they are correct, and they want other people to think like them. They want other people to like the same things that they do, to hate the same things they do and care about the same things they do. From that point of view, Im the least fascistic person you will ever meet, because I dont give a rats ass what anybody else thinks. I dont care what they believe, I dont care about their feelings, its like: I wipe my ass on your feelings. Keep them away from me. Youll know what I think about your feelings if you knock on my door and start sharing your feelings, but otherwise, you dont have a thing to worry about from Boyd Rice. Just dont stand in front of me when Im in a hurry going down the street. BRIAN: Ok, so, you dont have a political bone in your body, but your views, as I interpret them, seem to be somewhat libertarian. Do you agree with that at all? BOYD: Well, that seems like its just some wacky term that somebody made up. I suppose you could say that I fall someplace near what some people describe as libertarian, but Id never describe myself that way. I dont really put too much faith in ideas like liberty and freedom and that sort of thing. I mean, freedom to do what? Freedom to play Russian roulette? Freedom to drive a car drunk? I dont even know what people mean when they talk about liberty. BRIAN: Regardless, it seems to me that you just want to be left alone I see that as being libertarian, in a way. BOYD: Well, in a lot of ways thats true, but obviously anybody who is doing something in a public forum isnt going to be left alone. So theres a balance Im passionate about certain ideas and I feel the compulsion to put them out in a public forum. Doing that leads me to a lot of like-minded individuals, and for me like-minded individuals are one of the things that makes life worth living so its paradoxical. BRIAN: Like-minded individuals are a fairly small percentage though, arent they? BOYD: Theyre a small percentage, but it was a small percentage that wanted to start the American Revolution. Christianity started with twelve disciples. I think the entire shape of pop culture can be changed by a handful of individuals, or even a single individual BRIAN: So tell me about your interest in totalitarianism you kind of have a thing for dictators, right? BOYD: Well, I have an interest in power. I have an interest in people who find themselves in the position to exercise absolute power. Its an interesting archetype. The most fascinating people to me, in world history, are people whove done that. Obviously, the people who did that in the twentieth century theres a lot more information about them but Id love to see the home movies of Genghis Kahn, those mountains of human heads They didnt have cameras in Genghis Kahns day, but they did have cameras during World War II, so... BRIAN: So, at this point in your life, you dont seem to have any interest in Social Darwinism or aesthetic fascism as being political. BOYD: Well, theyre not political. Thats the thing that most people dont understand about politics: that to be political about something, you have to be able to snub all chance in hell of implementing those ideas in the real world. I dont think that any time soon theres going to be a political group that is going to say: Lets implement a lot of laws based around the idea of Social Darwinism. Thats not going to happen. Theres not going to be a political moment which says: Hey, fascism worked pretty good in Italy for the first ten years or so, lets get back to that. For people who take those ideas seriously as a political form its like Im sorry I dont know I think the countrys thinking sort of when south in the sixties, when people started thinking that if you wrote a slogan on a piece of cardboard and walked down the street you were engaging in some sort of activism, or that youre changing the world, when of course youre not you might as well pee into a fan.

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BRIAN: Well, the reason asked you that, is that I see Social Darwinism as being simply something that exists, whether or not people acknowledge it. It neednt be a political philosophy it just seems to me that its just a natural law a phenomenon. BOYD: A mechanism. BRIAN: Right that humans are going to automatically rise to the top or sink to the bottom of their own merit, or lack thereof. So, I was just curious to know if youd simply lost interest in that idea, or BOYD: No, I just take it absolutely for granted that thats the way the world works. Its like gravity, or breathing you dont have to think about them, theyre facts of existence. Understanding that allows one to get on with things. What you just said is exactly what I used to tell people about Social Darwinism, because people infer that Social Darwinism is some sort of false system that would weed out the weak and favor the strong. BRIAN: Which isnt necessary. BOYD: No, you dont have to impose that, I think it already exists. BRIAN: Well, I think that people will get upset if they assume that what youre implying with Social Darwinism, is something to do with twentieth century fascism, which is really them tying the two together. BOYD: Fascism was not about Social Darwinism or based on Social Darwinism at all. Its about imposing a bunch of laws and imposing standards that people have to live up to, and I dont see any connection between those two things. To me they seem diametrically opposed. BRIAN: Well, thats an important thing to state. Most people dont have the ability to make that connection. However, it also seems to me that in really oppressive governments in totalitarian governments people, because they have something to resist and strain against, become much more hearty, whereas as in contemporary America , people have become almost brain-dead in a lot of ways. Theyre not being oppressed so they dont need to resist anything. Do you agree with that? BOYD: Yeah, I do. I mean, if you lived in some oppressive banana republic, and you wanted to change the way your life was going, there would be a figure who, you know, you could put a bullet in their head and things would change drastically, probably right away. Whereas in the United States , if you wanted to track down the person whose behind all the rottenness, you dont have a face to put with that. Its just like some big monolithic presence thats everywhere and nowhere. BRIAN: I think that in the United States peoples problems are mostly self-created, like obesity or whatever. Its their problem they cant easily blame it on anyone but themselves. BOYD: Oh, they sure can! They can sue McDonalds if theyre too fat. Thats one of the things I was talking about earlier. I dont think somebody should be able to sue McDonalds because they spill a cup of hot coffee on their lap, and then force the company to put: Caution: Hot! on the cup. Hey, guess what? coffee is made with boiling water, and boiling water is very hot, if you spill it on your lap Id like to live in a world where people who spill coffee on their lap would get a burn, rather than being rewarded by being able to sue a major corporation whore willing to throw money at the problem. BRIAN: Being rewarded for their own stupidity, basically. BOYD: Yeah. There was a movie a while back, in which these college kids went out at night, and they would lay on the lines painted on the lanes of the freeway, and after watching this movie, all these people started going out and actually doing this, and then they were getting run over by cars and killed. So what does the movie studio do? they take all of the copies out of theatres, splice out the scenes that show the kids laying down between the lanes, and then re-released the movie without that scene in it, because people all over the country were getting killed. My attitude is
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that no they should reproduce that scene, and just splice it gratuitously into every single movie in every single theatre, until all the people with so few brain cells that they cant see that this might possibly happen if they lay down in the middle of traffic all those people are done away with. Theyd be out of the gene pool forever. Now that would be Social Darwinism. BRIAN: Well, this is sort of why Id asked you about libertarianism. I see libertarian ideas as being like; legalize drugs, legalize gambling, legalize prostitution, let people make their own mistakes let people have the freedom to make their own mistakes and it will all sort itself out. As you were saying earlier, we live in a society which creates laws that are all about protecting people from their own idiocy, and eliminating those laws seems like a libertarian idea to me. BOYD: Well, I would like to take away all these safety nets. I dont know though the libertarians take things to an extreme. The idea of freedom liberty is such an abstraction, and people have held it up as this truth that we hold to be self-evident, that freedom is the most important thing in the world. I think this society suffers so much from too much freedom, too many rights that allow people to be irresponsible. Like today I saw an interview with some government official about some kid who was in Bangkok or Thailand or Indonesia or someplace, and he went out one night an spray-painted graffiti all over all these cars, and they whacked him with a cane fifty times or something for his punishment. People in America were just crying tears about this, and they were saying: Well dont you think people should have the right to go and put graffiti around in public? and the government official said: Listen, you Americans have so much time on your hands, you have the luxury to think about things like liberty, and freedom and rights. Over here, were just trying to survive. Were trying to eat. Were trying to build a better society. We dont have the luxury of sitting around splitting hairs and whining about things that are just total abstractions. BRIAN: I see the United States as being sort of the gated middle-class suburban community of the world in a lot of ways. Americans dont understand why people in places like that hate them, in the same sense that middle-class white kids dont understand why people in ghettos and trailer parks hate them just as much. Its this navet that comes from privilege. Do you see it that way at all? BOYD: I think that no matter where you go in the world, the people who have less are going to hate the people who have more. Theyre going to think that the people who have more got it at their expense, and that they somehow deserve a larger share of the pie than they have, and I dont necessarily think they do. If they want more of the pie, they can go out and get more of it for themselves, you know? Theres this idea that people that are in positions that are loftier than yours somehow didnt get there on their own wits that it was all handed to them. But I know of a lot of people whove got multi-million dollar companies, who started out with virtually nothing and had good ideas, and now they own buildings and have staffs of hundreds of people working for them, and they worked their asses off to get that nobody gave it to them. Now, having created these companies, theyre employing hundreds of people. And, if you have millions and millions of dollars, and youre running a company that takes up every minute of every day of your life, you really have less time than the person whos on welfare, to sit back and really enjoy yourself, and less time to relax and enjoy the fruits of what youve earned. So these people will probably die and leave it all to their kids. BRIAN: Are you familiar with the Finnish philosopher, Pentti Linkola? Hes pro-war, pro-disease, pro-famine any means of reducing the population. He puts environmentalism above every other social issue basically, and advocates establishing an eco-fascist regime. Im curious as to what your impressions of that are. BOYD: My impressions of that?(long pause) I just fucking hate this hippie-ass stuff, where even people who promote harsh ideas want to be viewed as a good-guy, like Charlie Manson claiming that hes an environmentalist, or whatever. I think that the world can take care of itself. I think that if man does enough damage to the environment to screw it up, it will strike back, and a lot of people will be dead, and there will be your check and balance. I think that if you want to cut down on population, just stop giving free money to people who have babies out of wedlock. As soon as a poor person has a child, they get all these services, and if they knew that for every child they had, they were going to have to earn more money to feed those kids, theyd get their tubes tied straightaway. BRIAN: But in a larger sense, you have the entirety of, say, South America and Central America which have massive population problems, due in no small part to the Catholic church disallowing birth control, or whatever it may be. So
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it seems to me that controlling population is going to be a very serious issue in the future. In fact Ive heard that India is going to soon surpass China, as being the most populated country in the world. So, I guess the reason I asked you about Linkola is that he argues that war and disease are great things, and that we should cut off aid to third world countries and just let everyone starve to death. His argument, as I understand it, is that theres too many people and we should nip this problem in the bud, before the planet does balance itself out. BOYD: George Bush was just criticized because he passed some bill to spend twenty five billion dollars on AIDS in Africa , and people said: Oh thats not enough! Twenty five billion isnt enough! I dont think he shouldve spent a single cent. I think AIDS is probably the best thing thats happened to Africa . I mean, just imagine; this is a place with so much population that the land cant support it, and they cant feed themselves, and theyre starving to death to me it seems that something like AIDS would be a godsend. BRIAN: Because the numbers go down basically, the bottom-line? BOYD: Yeah. And if you want to talk about ecology, these are people who are killing elephants, cutting off their tusks, then selling them for five bucks to tourists, or killing lions and selling their hides to tourists for a few bucks. I think it would be great if that place were just turned into a big animal preserve what about the animals? Fuck the human beings! Let them all slaughter each other with machetes, let them die of AIDS, let that entire continent turn back into a wild kingdom again. BRIAN: So you like Bush these days, no? BOYD: Yeah, I like W. BRIAN: What is it that you like about him? BOYD: Well, I liked his dad, and he just seems like looking at that smarmy Bill Clinton for eight years, and his hideous fucking wife seeing some average down-to-earth guy in there seems a refreshing change. Everybody has this thing about how dumb he supposedly is, and its like, the colleges this guy went to, the secret societies hes a member of he cant be that dumb. I dont believe it. I mean, I think if anything, you know well, Ill just leave it at that BRIAN: How do you feel about the post 9/11 social climate in the United States ? BOYD: I went on a road-trip, when the whole thing happened, and it was interesting to drive through the American Southwest, and for the first time since the sixties, see people perceiving themselves to be Americans. We went into places towns that were predominantly Latino, towns where there were a lot of Native Americans and it was just like people from every walk of life all of a sudden seemed to be thinking in a single mind. It made me imagine what it must have been like in the United States during World War II or something. BRIAN: Do you think that kind of patriotism is a positive thing, or just herd mentality? BOYD: Well, I dont think herd mentality is necessarily all bad. People always talk about it as though its a bad thing, but when youre walking out in the woods and you see a herd of two hundred deer and they all have a single will if you get up to a certain point were youre a little too close, the dominant male will start to move and every single other member of the herd starts to move in that same direction, and they all start running, and they run as far away from you as they can get. If they were all acting as individuals, theyd be a lot less likely to survive. So no, I dont necessarily always see herd mentality as a bad thing. I think that there were a lot of ideas that were popular in the sixties that have become fossilized like for instance, people are still wearing leather jackets to be rebellious, and this is an archetype that goes back to Marlin Brando in The Wild One. Why would anybody in the year 2003 wear a motorcycle jacket to try and look like a tough guy when they dont even own a motorcycle? So, I just think that all these ideas that were in the air in the sixties have become fossilized, and people still act like they have some sort of meaning, even though they probably didnt originally have a meaning. Like people will still say: Man that guy is really on an ego-trip. I still hear people say this this is like a term from 1966 or something. As if its a bad thing
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ego trip. Is that maybe having good self-esteem? BRIAN: Do you think that maybe earlier in your life you would have seen herd mentality as being a negative thing? BOYD: Yeah, I think I did. I paid lip service to this stupid idea of individuality. Ive never really seen that individuality is any kind of real phenomenon. So at a certain point I thought: Well, wait a minute, whats all this about individuality? Whats all this everybodys talking about? If you give people the choice you give them the freedom to do whatever they want, and they will choose to dress exactly like their neighbors, or members of their ingroup. BRIAN: Do you think that applies to yourself? I wouldnt say so, but BOYD: Well, anywhere I go in the world, there are a certain amount of people dressed the way I dress. But, I made a conscious decision to wear only black in the mid seventies, a couple years before the whole punk thing happened. At that time it was very, very difficult to find certain articles of black clothing. But after the punk thing happened, now you have millions of people dressed in black. BRIAN: And that hasnt changed? BOYD: No, it hasnt. Its become another of these fossilization things, where people who are part of a certain milieu are going to dress a certain way. In the early eighties we noticed this as we were going to a Mark Pauline [of Survival Research Laboratories] show in San Francisco . We passed all these people whod come to the city for a Grateful Dead show, and they were all wearing tie-dyed shirts, and were all dressed alike, and we were laughing and saying: Look at these people, theyre still dressing the way they dressed in 1969, and its twenty some years later, how pathetic is that. And then we get to the Mark Pauline show, and everybody is waiting in line wearing military clothing and dressed in black, and we looked at each other and went: Uh oh, its already happened to our generation. BRIAN: So thats an example of herd mentality but at this point in your life you dont see that as being a negative thing? BOYD: No. An individual human being left to his own devices couldnt manufacture a modern pencil. So theres a kind of tension between collectivity and individuality. Youll always need the outsider who introduces new ideas, but once those ideas have been introduced, you need a collective of people whore all going to conform to that. People working in a single will can move mountains, people working on their own can rarely create very much. BRIAN: Youve made a lot of comments over the years criticizing the enshrinement of the victim that goes on in American culture these days. In one interview you said; In the past dominant culture was dictated by a sadist, today dominant culture is dictated by masochists, and everyone suffers because of it. So what would you do to change things? What values would you instill in people? BOYD: I wouldnt change things if I could. I think that were living in the best of all possible times. I hate to sound too upbeat or cheery, but I think that there are so many options available to people whore alive now that have never existed before, and that things are obviously going to get worse and worse. I think that people will look back to this period of time one day and will think of this as having been a really wonderful age. Theyll have nostalgia for it as pathetic as it seems now. Because things will be worse, in part, because of the population thing you were discussing. BRIAN: So do you think that in the future, sadists will run the show again? BOYD: I think that when things get degraded enough, thats naturally what will happen, and it wont be pleasant. I think the United States will in a decade or so be a third world country, and when it is a third world country the people who are going to be in power will be like the kind of military people that are down in the banana republics of South America, because thats what such a large populace demands. BRIAN: Theres this quote I really like from this old historian, named Will Durant, that goes: It is notorious that the principles which we apply in our actual living are largely opposite to those which we preach in our churches and our
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books. The professed ethic of Europe and America is pacifistic Christianity; the actual ethic is the militaristic code of the marauding Teutons. Do you agree with that? BOYD: Yeah, of course. BRIAN: Do you think that applies to you? BOYD: I dont know, I dont know if the ethic youre talking about what you mean, or I mean Im hardly a marauding Teuton. BRIAN: Right, well, thats exactly what I mean. You have this largely very negative image in the media, and you seem to be very interested in things like war, death, blood-mysticism and stuff like that, but in reality, youre actually a very personable guy. Ive never heard of you being even remotely violent to anyone. So am I just jumping to my own conclusions, or is there a grain of truth to that? BOYD: Well, just because you acknowledge that in the world of nature, the rule is predator and prey, that doesnt necessarily mean that you have to act like a predator towards others in your dealings with them. You can recognize that thats the way of the world, but that doesnt mean that that will get you the most success in dealing with the type of people that you need to deal with in the world. BRIAN: Right, but when you say some of the things youve said, people will automatically assume that that reflects your own personal behavior. BOYD: No. I understand human nature, and I deal with human nature in the way thats the most beneficial to me, which is exactly the opposite of what most people would expect from me. If you followed me around for a day with a video camera, youd see that Im very civil with everybody I deal with. I treat everybody with respect. Im nice. Im polite. I open doors for people. What I find is that when you show people your best side, youre going to bring the best out of them. They might treat everybody else like shit they might treat you like shit, until they see you extending a bit of civility toward them, and people like that. A lot of these people, they might be morons they might be pieces of shit but if I went out with an attitude like: Youre a moron, youre a piece of shit, people would pick up on that attitude. Then what would I get from them? their worst side. BRIAN: Have you always been that way, or is that something youve developed as youve gotten older? BOYD: Ive been that way for ages. Ive had this discussion with LaVey, I said: You know, people think you and I are huge assholes, but Ive noticed the way you interact with people in public, and its the same way I interact with people: Im very civil and Im very polite. And he said: Yeah, you know, something seems wrong about that. I know why we act that way, but it seems to lack some element of justice. When we come across people who are just churlish assholes, we ought to just make it known to them, in no uncertain terms: I look down my nose at you, to me youre absolutely nothing. Because most people dont go to that extreme either most people arent really civil to people, but they arent outwardly cruel to peoples faces either, so thats just as refreshing to people. When somebodys honest, and says: Give me my change quicker! BRIAN: Well, its interesting, I was just Portland a few days ago, and I saw Jim Goad, and he and I were talking about the exact same thing, and he said that hed discussed it with LaVey as well. He seems to see himself as being a very polite, civilized, nice person, who also has a reputation for being a real monster and my experience with him, was that he was a very civil, polite, considerate person. So it seems like the two go hand in hand, in a weird way that the way many people actually behave in reality is often quite the opposite of what they may appear to be advocating. Part of the reason Id brought that quote up about the professed ethic of Christianity being the opposite of what it actually is, is that this phenomenon is something that I see repeatedly in the world: that people want to hate someone like Marilyn Manson or whoever when in fact hes really just a musician, he isnt a monster at all. On the other hand, you have someone whos a warmonger, who looks normal, and claims to be a Christian, and talks about peace, understanding, love and tolerance but their deeds are exactly the opposite of their words.

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BOYD: Well, yeah, I absolutely agree. The United States is supposed to be this peace-loving nation, but whenever it suits their whim, theyll march into another country and oust legally elected leaders, and they do it under the guise of peacekeeping. World War III will be seen as some massive effort of peacekeeping, if it ever comes. BRIAN: I think thats a very Gnostic idea things appearing to be the opposite of what they actually are in reality, and appearances being wholly deceptive. And I think that applies to you too you seem like a very decent person to me, but your public reputation is quite the opposite. BOYD: Yeah, well, if anybodys to blame for that public reputation, its largely me, so I cant really moan about it if people think Im an asshole. But I think people should be confronted with the ideas they dont feel comfortable with. I know so many people whove said: Oh I love your album Music, Martinis & Misanthropy, because thats exactly the way I feel, but I would never say any of that. So when somebody like me does say that stuff publicly, then people feel validated, like: Oh, jeeze, maybe Im not just a lone asshole, maybe Im reasonable after all, and what isnt reasonable is the world and the way its become. BRIAN: Is that how you feel? BOYD: Yeah, I feel that my most unreasonable seeming ideas are actually really quite reasonable, and that its just the rest of the world that has become unreasonable. Everyone believes in an entire fabric of abstractions they have a whole belief system that is a house of cards, in that if one of the things they believe in isnt true, then none of the rest of them are true either. So its like: Hey, what if all men arent created equal? What if some of us have a genius IQ, and other people have a borderline retarded IQ? If this is the case, then what do you mean by equal? If this is the basic foundation of our society, and everybody pays lip-service to it but its obviously not true then what? So many of the assumptions we make based on this premise that we all hold to be self evident according to the constitution if thats proven to be false, then everything is a lie. BRIAN: Well, yeah, but to me it seems like thats always been the case. Since long before the creation of the United States , there have been ideas that people have been conning themselves into believing that have never been true. BOYD: Yeah, but some of them are functional. Some of them are just survival things, to help people get through it all. BRIAN: Like what? Like Christianity? BOYD: Well, I think people need something to believe in. I dont think it matters what they believe, you just need everybody to believe the same thing then belief is functional. Especially since human beings if left to their own devices if they didnt have something to terrify them into acting decently, most of them wouldnt. So I think that fear and punishment are good. I think that societys gone to shit since the fear and punishment have abated. BRIAN: Well, one of the things that that drew me to your work initially, was some of the things that youd said in interviews for Re/Search Publications. About how society functions because everyone is in agreement, but you dont necessarily have to agree. BOYD: Yeah. BRIAN: But now, twenty years later, you seem to have gone in the other direction, where youre saying: In order for anything to function, we need to have everyone in agreement. Everyone needs to believe in something together, otherwise it all falls apart. Do you see what Im saying? BOYD: Well I still think that you dont have to agree. Like, I would love to live in Salt Lake City, because everybody there is a Mormon, and they keep the town clean, theyre polite, and if they say theyre going to be someplace at a certain time, theyre there but that doesnt mean Id want to be a Mormon. If I lived there Id want to drink, and do all sorts of things that dont have anything to do with Mormonism. I think that the mistake that people make when theyre young, is that they think that the rules that apply to me because they apply to me they probably apply to
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everybody. But I think they dont. I think that the person whos the odd man out has a different set of laws governing his life, and he has to be true to those laws for his life to go the way it should. If he tried to follow the rules that everybody else followed, it would be ruinous for him. At the same time however, if the people who are born to follow the rules that everybody follows, tried to do the things that those certain other people do lead a life of excess, have sex with lots of women, over do it, burn the candle at both ends they would burn out in a heartbeat, because theyre not meant to do that. Theyre happier as they are. Again, its the sadist / masochist thing. Most people really are masochists, and they really do need to have somebody standing over them telling them what to do. BRIAN: One of the things I really liked about the Scorpion Wind album you released, was the track about how those things that are considered virtues for most people actually become vices for the higher individual the odd man out. I found that interesting and important in a lot of ways, because I see that as being a part of the dichotomy between sadists and masochists, or leaders and followers, or dominant people and passive people, or whatever you want to call it. It was definitely something that I agreed with, immediately upon hearing it. BOYD: Well, Ive always felt like a sadist, but again, for this to be an attitude that pervades your life, it doesnt mean that you actually have to dominate another person, or that you have to tie somebody up and hit them with a whip or a riding crop or something. I think sadism and masochism are just fundamental, elemental realities that govern the world. But to think that it has to do with inflicting pain on somebody I dont think that necessarily follows. BRIAN: Right. Well, it can be thought of more simply, as being about power and control. Masochists can just be people who are passive and apathetic, whereas sadists might be people who just take charge and do what they want. BOYD: Yeah. BRIAN: So you consider yourself a misogynist, correct? BOYD: No. I think when youre younger, the things that annoy you, you are actively pissed off about them, and the older you get, the more you realize thats the way things are, and that its not worth your time to be actively upset by things you cant control, because its just the nature of things. Women used to drive me crazy because they had a prominent role in my life. At some point I realize that they all sort of behave the same, they all have the same level of emotional development, and that no matter how smart a woman is, shes going to have the soul of a twelve-year old girl. BRIAN: So this is something that used to piss you off, and now its something that youve come to accept, and dont really care much about? BOYD: Well, I was intellectually aware of it for many years, but when I got to the point at which it was so much a part of my reality that I didnt have to think about it, thats when I thought: Well maybe Ill just limit my dealings with the fairer sex. And Ive done that, and now that I dont have a female living in my home, life is a lot nicer for me. BRIAN: But you did go through a period of being kind of a tomcat, no? You have the reputation of having slept with many, many women. BOYD: Yeah, well I grew up girl crazy. But its like anything else, really. Thats why I think a life of excess is really good, because what excessiveness in anything leads to is burnout. Ive used the analogy, that if you eat a strawberry doughnut every single day, at a certain point, that strawberry doughnut is going to be just as delicious as it ever was, but its just not going to be interesting for you anymore. Its like: Yeah, thats a strawberry doughnut, Ive experienced it, I know what thats all about, and if I never see another one again, thatll be just great. BRIAN: So thats how you see women now? BOYD: More or less. I mean I still know some really amazingly brilliant women who I find very inspiring, like Desire Partridge and certain friends of mine. Alison Anders I still have a lot in common with, and her daughter Tiffany I love, but its just getting to a point in my life, where with every passing day I have less and less in common
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with other people. I started out with the feeling that there was an abyss between me and the rest of humanity, and now, where my interests are going I find that I have less and less in common, even with people who I might have once had much in common with. BRIAN: How old are you now? BOYD: Im forty-six. BRIAN: It seems to me that your public persona especially the persona that people seem to react so violently against is based on opinions you might have held ten or fifteen years ago. BOYD: Well yeah, its like a person who existed fifteen years ago, but even at the time I thought those things, or said those things it was greatly misunderstood. So people are still reacting to me as a cartoon character that exited fifteen years ago, and that perception wasnt even valid at the time. I was very angry when I was younger, but how can a person still be very angry, when its like; Ive been doing this for over twenty five years, and everythings always gone my way, and Ive lived a life that a lot of people would like to live. Ive seen a lot of places, done a lot of things what have I got to be angry about? I think a lot of people, in a public arena, they start to live up to their public persona, whatever it is. If they have a persona as being a bad boy, then they sort of become the caricature of the bad boy. Ive always just pursued my desires and had no interest in living up to some public image. I never consciously set out to be a sort of bad boy figure, but when you say you like Mussolini and everybody else in the world thinks hes horrible, thats going to be a consequence. People think youre purposely trying to be an asshole. BRIAN: Which youve never done? BOYD: (laughing) Well, I have to a certain extent. When Shaun Partridge was in town, thats what we thought our duty was being assholes. But thats long gone. BRIAN: So, youre a member of The Partridge Family Temple, and I understand that you have a Partridge Family shrine somewhere in your house, is that right? BOYD: Yeah, theres a room in my house called the red room, and I painted part of it to look like the Partridge Family bus. I turned it into a shrine, and I have a lunch pail that Shirley [Partridge] signed, and autographed pictures of every member except for the original Chris. Chris is missing because the first Chris went away, and it was before the second Chris came that the person who gave me the lunch pails got the autographs. BRIAN: Were you into the Partridges before you knew Shaun? BOYD: Yeah, well I loved the show when it was originally on TV, but when I heard about The Partridge Family Temple it just made sense to me. BRIAN: Were you pretty heavily involved with them for a while, or was it more of a passive interest? BOYD: Well, I became pretty immersed into listening to the music and watching the shows again, so I got way into it for a while. Its one of those things, like being interested in Martin Denny or something; its an interest that never really goes away. It kind of fades into the background, but then as soon as it comes back into the foreground you get excited all over again, and remember what was great about it. BRIAN: So how do you feel about the resurgence of the Lounge / Tiki / Exotica culture that youd played a big part in re-popularizing way back in the early eighties? It became really hip again in the mid-nineties, and by the time I was a college student, all these people who had been punk rockers, or whatever, suddenly went out and bought lava lamps, cocktail mixers and leopard-print purses, and started listening to Martin Denny and Brian Setzer stuff like that. BOYD: Well, you know, when the initial tiki resurgence came about, it was spearheaded by people whod grown up during the tiki era people like me. Like when I was a kid, there was a store called Robert Halls that sold all these
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things like Hawaiian shirts that had matching tikis with them, and I thought that was the greatest thing on earth; to have a lime-colored Hawaiian shirt, and then a tiki with lime rhinestone eyes. There were all these shows on TV like Adventures in Paradise and Hawaiian Eye, and stuff like that. By the time all the kids that had grown up on that culture got to their early twenties, they started remembering how cool it was, and all this stuff was starting to turn up in thrift stores, so a bunch of us created a resurgence in this tiki culture Martin Denny got wildly popular, and stuff like that. But now it seems like the newest incarnation of this tiki culture is people who are reviving the fake resurgence of tiki culture that was happening in the early eighties and late seventies. Theyre people who didnt even experience the original thing, theyre just romanticizing something twice removed. And even the original tiki thing was fake it was a fake south sea paradise thing. A paradise lost sort of thing about imagining what it must be like to be on a lovely south sea island, drinking a cocktail made with coconut juice, or something when youre actually in the backyard of your house in the suburbs, listening to Martin Denny. So its like Xeroxing something over, and over again the further away from it you get, the more it gets debased. But the original fifties fake paradise thing was like a type of paradise, because it really evoked the feeling it was meant to evoke it was magical, in a way. In that you could just completely get this fake feeling of what it must be like to be in Hawaii, by listening to a Martin Denny record. Though Martin Denny didnt use any traditional Hawaiian instruments his music isnt the least bit Hawaiian, but it sums up the spirit of the islands, anyway. BRIAN: Whats your favorite thing about Disneyland ? BOYD: Well, Ive always liked it, since I was a kid. Im coming to have more of an appreciation of the occult nature of some of the rides, since learning that Walt Disney was a master Mason. Now when I ride Pirates of The Caribbean, Ill see encoded into this ride, all this symbolism from the old mystery religions and their rituals. Ive actually just written an article about this stuff, so I wont go into it here. BRIAN: The Pirates of The Caribbean was always my favorite followed closely by The Haunted House. BOYD: Yeah, well there was a ride that hasnt been there since the eighties, where you went into a microscope, and the idea was that youd shrunk down to being smaller than a snowflake, and youd go past all these giant snowflakes. Then youd end up shrinking so much that you enter the heart of an atom you go into a room where theres this big blinking red bulb thats supposed to be the center of an atom. BRIAN: That mustve been from back in the fifties and sixties when everyone was interested in scientific stuff. BOYD: Yeah, it was made to tell about the miracles of nuclear power at one of the Worlds Fairs. When you got off the ride there was actually this musak of people singing songs like (singing voice): Miracles from molecules, helping modern man. Discoveries for happiness BRIAN: So tell me a bit about your interest in Barbie dolls. BOYD: Well, actually thats something thats been very overstated in the press. When my last CD came out, I got reviews from about fifty-two different major US newspapers, and about half of them said that I had the worlds largest collection of Barbie dolls, and I dont I have two Barbie dolls. My interest in them arose just because I had a lot of cousins whore girls. They had these dolls at the time, and the dolls were so nicely dressed and looked so elegant, and had such great hairdos. I was just forming my ideas about sexuality and about females, and I thought: I cant wait until Im a teenager and I can go out with girls who look like this! But before I became a teenager the world changed, and I never really got to experience the girls with the flip hairdos and bubble cuts, and things like that. By the time I was a teenager everybody was dressing like pigs until glam rock happened. There were some goodlooking women during the glam rock era, but otherwise its been mostly downhill since the mid sixties. BRIAN: Would you say that Barbie is your ideal of womanhood then? BOYD: Well, before they changed Barbies face. She used to have a real look of dignity, and she had these really thick eyelashes that stuck right out of the doll. But they changed her face sometime in the mid sixties, and gave her that kind of vacant airhead look, which has just gotten ever more pronounced, down to this very day.
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BRIAN: I heard that you actually met the original Barbie once, is that right? BOYD: Yes, I did. She was incredibly embarrassed by my enthusiasm. Unfortunately, she looked more like Malibu Barbie than the 1961 ponytail Barbie. BRIAN: So that was kind of a letdown then? BOYD: Well, she was working as a secretary at some video-editing studio. She was just some normal girl who just had the misfortune that her father worked for Mattel or something, and named these dolls after her and her brother Ken. Now whats that gotta be like, growing up with that? Being a brother and a sister, and then having these dolls, which are like the archetypal teenage male and female, and theyre obviously boyfriend and girlfriend Its like Isis and Osiris or something: Hes my brother but hes also my husband. (laughter) BRIAN: What is it about people like Rod McCuen and Lawrence Welk that interests you? BOYD: Well, McCuen particularly, because he was the worlds best-selling poet for a while, and when you listen to his albums, there is a lot of material that you wouldnt expect to hear from the worlds best-selling poet. A lot of really strange, dark stuff, and a lot of unusual philosophical stuff. Even his books of best-selling poetry and these are things that unmarried high school English teachers would read have these poems about feeding apples to his dog on the beach and stuff like that, then you turn the page, and the first line of the poem says: I cant remember how many times Ive jacked off in this room. Its like: What! Rod? So he must have shocked many a high school English teacher back in the late sixties and early seventies. BRIAN: What about Lawrence Welk? BOYD: I just like him because the people on his show all wore look-alike outfits and stuff, and hes very weird. Hes written a couple of books that almost read like Mein Kampf or something. Hes got a book called My America , Your America , in which he lays down his ironclad principles for success in life. Literally, this is a book about his life and his success, but if you were to read paragraphs of it to virtually anybody on earth, and say: Who do you think said that? Theyd say Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin. BRIAN: Is there any truth to the story that your grandmother was born in a graveyard on Halloween? BOYD: Yeah, its absolutely true. The story is that my great grandparents lived in a house that was very near a graveyard, and my great grandmother, who was nine months pregnant, was coming home at night on Halloween, and somebody whod been hiding behind a gravestone jumped out at her and screamed at the top of their lungs. This so terrified her that she went into premature labor and had the baby right there. BRIAN: Wow, thats pretty neat. BOYD: Yeah, and I dont know if it has anything to do with that, but a lot of members of my family have had these weird psychic abilities, and have had incidents happen over and over again. Like, my grandmother woke up in the middle of the night and realized that her husband had been in an accident she got all the kids out of bed, and drove to this bridge that my grandfather had driven off the side of. He had his nose ripped off his face, and the guy that was with him was killed. She knew that hed been in an accident, she knew exactly where it was, and she arrived there before the police had even discovered that thered been a truck run off the road. BRIAN: I know a couple people who claim to have the same sorts of psychic abilities. Do you have anything like that at all? BOYD: Sometimes. Its nothing that I can control, but for instance, I predicted the Challenger space shuttle disaster over a week before it happened. I said that if I were these people Id cancel the trip, because I have a feeling these people are all going to fry theyre all going to burn up. A friend of mine said: Why would you say that? There
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hasnt been a problem with the space shuttle in years and years. and I said: Well thats all the more reason why theyre overdue, arent they? So then I woke up that day and went into the Wallgreens near my house to get something, and there was a row of TVs everybody was watching, and I looked up and saw that explosion, and I thought: Ah, there it is, right on the mark. Source: http://www.boydrice.com/interviews/blackpimp.html

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