The companion to hope, "change" is perhaps the most over-used and under-executed words in the common vernacular today. With their movie, La MISSION, actor Benjamin Bratt (who is best known for playing Detective Rey Curtis in the NBC drama Law & Order) and his writer/director brother Peter... more

The companion to hope, "change" is perhaps the most over-used and under-executed words in the common vernacular today. With their movie, La MISSION, actor Benjamin Bratt (who is best known for playing Detective Rey Curtis in the NBC drama Law & Order) and his writer/director brother Peter (who previously collaborated with his famous sibling on the 1996 film Follow Me Home) explore the motivations that might transform change from an abstract concept into tangible social movement in the forward direction on an individual level.

Human beings, by their very nature, resist change. This innate intransigence is often only overcome when the consequences of maintaining the status quo are significantly more painful than personal growth and transformation. In La MISSION, the central character finds himself at such a crossroads.

Che is a tough walking and talking Latino man who has secured the position he enjoys within his local community thanks to his testosterone-charged social skills, which are prized among his peers. However, Che is himself a victim of cultural stereotypes which dictate what a man should be, and unless he can reconcile his outdated ideas of masculinity and overcome the homophobia that to this day is a very real part of his culture, he risks losing the one thing that is most important to him - his son, Jes, whom he finds out is homosexual in the film's opening act.

The story was inspired by two characters in the Bratt brothers' life: Che is based on an older schoolmate and natural born leader whom Benjamin and Peter looked up to as kids (though the real-life Che has two sons, neither of which are gay), while Jes' journey echoes that of a family member who experienced a similar struggle for acceptance when his father discovered he was gay. But the family roots in La MISSION go even deeper. The film is set in the San Francisco neighborhood in which the brothers were raised, and its underlying message of hope and transformation is a testament to the convictions of Peter and Benjamin's activist mother, Elda Bratt, who participated in the Native American occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 (with her two young children in tow).

Though the subject matter of La MISSION may seem a little earnest for some, the underlying issues are handled in a sophisticated and subtle manner, which belies the power of the film. Politics take a backseat, as the viewer is immersed in the colorful lowriding culture Che reveres, and the very personal issues which father and son are fighting to overcome. Heartfelt and touching, La MISSION is all that independent filmmaking should be.

SuicideGirls spoke with Peter and Benjamin to find out more about La MISSION, and their wider calling to inspire and enact change through the ancient art of storytelling and their shared passion for film.

Question: What inspired you to specifically write about homophobia within the context of the Latino community?

Peter Bratt: Homophobia is only one of the things explored in La MISSION. What I was interested in was our ideas of masculinity and power. Benjamin's character Che is a patriarch who has really learned to negotiate life using the "might makes right" credo. He uses violence and intimidation to control his world, and in turn, holds a place of respect in the streets and in the community. I think you'll find the same thing in the dominant culture. It doesn't matter if it's a Fortune 500 executive, a star athlete, or a movie icon like Brando's Godfather -- we're conditioned to admire "powerful men" who acquire their power through domination and control. Regardless of race, these types of male figures are what most men are encouraged to emulate.

With La MISSION, my intent was to try to equalize that balance of the masculine and feminine. In that way, the film also explores issues of domestic violence perpetrated against women; it looks at homophobia, and to some degree class and race. Why? Because within a culture of domination, all those things are connected. The character Che, through the power of the love he has for his son, is ultimately forced to confront those old male identities, which he has cultivated over a lifetime. And in turn, he has to find something else within himself that is more feminine than it is masculine -- something that is perhaps more difficult to do in the Latino world than it is in the mainstream.

Directly related to all of this, of course, is how we regard the "feminine." As a culture, we look down upon feminine traits like emotion, nurturing, love, etc. In fact when we talk about those very subjects, we often apologize for doing so. I've done this several times when discussing the film. We say, "This might sound corny, but..." We apologize for those things because they are seen as "feminine" and therefore inferior and not worthy of our respect.

In the film, Che sees his gay son as "weak" and therefore feminine. And that's what's really at the heart of Che's shame -- that his son is no longer a "man," and is now a "bitch" or "pussy." The sad truth is that this speaks just as much to our culture's misogyny as it does its homophobia.

Q: Benjamin and Peter, much of your shared background went into this movie. Can you talk about your family, your mother in particular, and growing up in The Mission?

PB: Benjamin and I were born and raised in San Francisco by a single mother. We were children during the '60s and the '70s, which was a really active time for social movements. You had the Black Power movement, the Brown Berets, you had a lot of people of color asserting who they were culturally and politically. Our mother was part of that social movement that was happening all around the country and really vibrantly in San Francisco. We were raised with this kind of social activist consciousness that was very much a part of the time, and certainly a huge part of what was taking place in The Mission district, which was largely Latino and also Native American at the time.

Along with the social activism of the time there was this incredible artistic movement. The two kind of melded together. You had artists who were singing, writing poetry and painting pictures that were very political in nature and yet incorporated all these cultural artistic sensibilities. We were kind of incubated in that and I think that comes through in the film. Even today when you walk through The Mission, it's largely an immigrant Latino community. If you walk through you see murals on almost every building, and a lot of times the murals depict the struggle of immigrants, of indigenous people throughout the different stages of California history. You have all this geography and peoples interacting and growing, some leaving, some changing, and I think that comes through in the story a little bit.

Q: Definitely. The subject matter of the story is very political, but you've managed to make it an incredibly personal story, and it's incredibly moving as such.

PB: Oh thanks.

Benjamin Bratt: One thing I want to make clear is that there was an agenda of afoot when the story was written. The story, although it's very culturally and geographically specific in its examination, Peter as a writer wanted to take a broader look at archetypes that are very familiar to all of us.

PB: I think at the core of the story what I wanted to explore as a writer was the idea of change and transformation. As we know, Obama was elected on a platform of change we can believe in, and that speaks to a lot of people. At the time where we're at in human history I think everybody knows that we need to change something in the direction we're going. For me what was interesting is, what does that mean at the very individual level? What does it mean for a character like Che who finds respect and has earned his stripes through domination and often times violence? What does it mean to change that behavior or those attitudes that he's developed over a lifetime?

What I found is that that process often times is really incredibly painful and there's a certain amount of suffering involved. We have to give up something of ourselves in order to make that change. I think just as that happens on an individual level, to change like Obama is suggesting is going to take a collective burning or suffering. That's really the core of the idea that was explored in the film, watching this man motivated through love go through the fire so to speak, and lose a part of himself in order to gain something new.

BB: It's ultimately a spiritual journey that he's set upon by the catalyst of information that he's drawn from the son revealing his sexual orientation.

Q: Given the minority subject matter, was it easy to get the project funded?

BB: The number one thing that dictates what gets made in this town is money, and by and large studios, and even fairly larger independent companies, they won't take on a subject matter for a film if they can't see a marketplace for it. Surprisingly, we found when we first took the story out to what are considered more traditional forms of funding, they didn't get where they could market it, and if they can't understand where and how to market it, they're not interested because they can't make money from it.

PB: I really think it comes down to a question of perception. When Benjamin and I first took the film around, the reaction was, "Why do you want to tell a gay story? We've already dealt with this kind of content. It's kind of passé." I think the underlying assumption there is that mainstream culture has maybe dealt with it on a certain level, but it's still a relatively taboo subject within the Latino community.

BB: And in most minority groups.

PB: So actually right after going to Sundance and talking to distributors and marketing people, you find that what comes under the banner of Latino can't necessarily include an aspect or a texture that has homosexuality in it. Latino is very narrowly defined and just by having an aspect of the story that has homosexuality discussions and conversations going on takes it out of that genre. What that tells me is how Latino culture is perceived is also very narrow.

Q: How's The Mission changed over the years?

PB: When we were growing up [it] was probably Mexican American, today it's still Mexican American but it's equally Central American, there's a Brazilian population, there's African American, there's now a Southeast Asian presence in the neighborhood, and there's also young hipsters who come, and a growing white middle class because of gentrification. To me what makes it uniquely American is that [the cultures] all come together, they borrow from one another, and then sometimes there's a collision. Some people claim the neighborhood is "ours" and "you're taking it away," but if you go way back, the first human communities that lived there were Native American. So it's constantly evolving and changing and I think that's still happening today. But what I think makes The Mission so alive is this kind of social activist nature that it has, and one of the reasons why it does that is because there's still struggle.

Q: I'm told you had to negotiate a gang truce in order to shoot in The Mission. Can you talk about that process?

PB: It's actually not as glamorous as that. We worked with a Mission community member to do outreach to the different non-profits in the neighborhood. One of these was an organization that works directly with the gangs in the area of violence prevention. We were going to be filming in their "territory," so through our outreach person, we respectfully let them know that. And like anywhere, respect goes a long way.

Q: I understand that that community outreach also extended to the local kids.

PB: Well, when Benjamin and I were young, oftentimes the first exposure that we had to art was at a lot of the community centers in The Mission district. There used to be the American Indian center in the heart of The Mission where we went and did classes; There was archery, there was potlucks, powwows. There's The Mission Cultural Center which today still offers photography, silk-screening, dance, música, Capoeira -- which is an Afro-Brazilian martial art which I did for 20-years in The Mission. That still is going on. There's this incredible artistic movement within The Mission.

So we actually went to centers that still exist like that in the community to cast a lot of the young cast members who were acting in front of a camera for the first time. You can see what happens to a young person in this community, which often times is filled with struggle, the working class families and some below the poverty line. When you see a young person go, "Oh wow! These camera and lights, these are here for me," there's a light that goes on, an empowerment, and it's really electrifying to witness.

BB: I think the golden rule for all artists in general, but particularly for writers, is write what you know. So it probably makes less sense for us as filmmakers to tackle say the horror genre, or something like that, as opposed to something like a neighborhood that's near and dear to our hearts. So in answer to part of your question, it's not surprising to me that my brother is the architect of this story. It really does have universal themes, both on the heavy emotional side and in terms of what exists in real life, the levy that hangs in the balance often times in the face of struggle. [It's not surprising] that he sets it within a neighborhood that is not only familiar, but deeply meaningful, not just to us but the extended family that we still enjoy in the city, and it necessarily has a political / social justice bent to it, which is something that was instilled in us by our mother. Essentially it's storytelling from the point of view of something near and dear to our hearts.

Q: Black music dominates the film's soundtrack. Is there any reason you used that rather than traditional Mexican music?

PB: Actually I really believe that African music is the soundtrack of American music. It's at the heart of American music, not just in North America. A lot of the Latin sounds have their West African roots, the clave rhythms of Cuba, salsa, merengue, cumbias, R&B, jazz, soul, it all has freakin' heart.

This country, and a lot of the nation states in the Western hemisphere, was founded on the oppression of indigenous people, and then Africans who were brought here as slaves, so for me that African core influences all cultures -- and the lowrider culture in particular, especially [Benjamin's] character who's an OG lowrider. The lowrider culture went hand in hand with R&B oldies. When people see lowriders and cholos and vatos, and they hear that soul music, the two just seem to go together naturally...Again, it's more like cultural borrowing, and even today you see a lot of African American rappers, they actually have taken the lowrider, which is akin to the Mexican American experience, and made it their own. Again, that's also something that is uniquely American, cultures borrowing and sometimes colliding against each other.

BB: There's something very attractive about the purity if you will of a character like Che. He's almost ritualistic in every detail of his life and how he styles his life, down to the way he irons his pants, the kinds of hats he wears, the types of shoes, the cars he drives, the music that he listens to. It's a very specific choice, and from an actor's point of view, to play someone that detail orientated was really fascinating. And for us, we had the very real human touchstone of the real life Che, who was a consultant on the film. A lot of the gems that come out of his mouth [in the movie] really were generated by him.

Q: The other stars of the movie are the beautiful lowrider cars. How did you set about casting them?

PB: Ben's character, Che, is based on a person we went to school with. He came up in the Mission District and, when we were in middle school, he formed one of the first lowrider clubs in the neighborhood. He's what is considered a "to the bone OG lowrider," meaning he lives by a code, an aesthetic that is unique to the older members of the lowrider community. He was our technical consultant on the set -- which means he helped Benjamin pick out his clothes, helped me select the music, and most importantly, helped us all to find those beautiful cars.

Q: Benjamin, what kind of future do you envision for your brother as a director?

BB: I've always held my brother in the highest regard, not least because of his heart, but I love the way he thinks. I love how he marries the power of this particular medium, this particular art form, with a mind for social justice. He understands that we are our stories. It doesn't matter what culture you're from, what country you're from, what part of the world, we all live by the stories we tell about ourselves. And in those stories are the markers and the indicators for how we interpret ourselves, and it's actually an indication for what our future is too.

I see him as a visionary filmmaker because he starts with the germination of a simple idea and he carries it all the way through, filling out all the various shades of grey with vibrant colors of humanity. To take a focus of a character like Che and set it within a neighborhood that will necessarily have all these external pressures forming the friction between father and son is brave because some of the subject matter, particularly the homosexuality issue, is still very much a taboo subject within the Latino culture. But he's a provocateur as well, and all good art should provoke discussion. I think this will certainly do that.


La MISSION open on limited release on April 9. For more information on La MISSION and details on upcoming screenings go to LaMISSIONTheMovie.com/.

Brendan Rowe is one of those hidden gems of a tattooer in the Los Angeles area. Between his incredible dedication to his craft and a great sense of humor, it’s hard to imagine anyone hasn’t already been exposed to his work. A solid tattooer for the past nine years, it’s strongly suggested anyone... more

Brendan Rowe is one of those hidden gems of a tattooer in the Los Angeles area. Between his incredible dedication to his craft and a great sense of humor, it’s hard to imagine anyone hasn’t already been exposed to his work. A solid tattooer for the past nine years, it’s strongly suggested anyone within driving distance try advantage of his short waiting list while they still can. With the mix of traditional style and an equal amount of modern color theory, his style can only be classified as timeless. Anyone that has sought quality tattoo work in the Los Angeles area knows tattoo artists are a dime a dozen, but I assure you Brendan is a rare breed.



TattooSnob: Let's get the most generic question out of the way. Tell us a little about yourself!
Brendan Rowe: Hmmmm... the about me, huh? I hate these, I feel like there's so much pressure to say something really fantastic. But still humble. So, I'm an over thinking, self diagnosed neurotic who tattoos people for a living. Nah, I'm just kidding. I am a sarcastic asshole though, I love giving people a hard time. I think it comes with the job. Tattooers are such shit talkers.

Well, I would say I'm an artist at heart. I love everything that has anything remotely related to the subject. I've been making art since I can remember, and I can definitely see myself gray and painting.

My job is my life, I've been doing it 9 years and I still love going to work everyday!




TS: Artists often refer to a time period when it all came together, could you tell us a bit about when that was for you?
BR: I would say about 3 years ago. I kinda grew up and let go of some baggage. I started drawing for drawings sake again and just being me. I worked with this guy Aaron, in Portland, ME. He taught me a lot about life and work. He would always joke about how hard our job was and how lucky we were to be doing it. And we are. I love tattooing and I love art, and that's what I do. That feels good.

That's when it all came together for me, when I let go of my little boy ego, and went back to just drawing pictures on people and paper. As a result, I feel like I'm producing my best work and it keeps getting better everyday.

TS: At one point you mentioned to me that you use vegan tattoo ink. To be honest I didn't realize most inks weren't vegan until you pointed it out. Why did you make the switch?
BR: It's not so much about Vegan as it is safe and organic. With the popularity of tattooing, came money. One unfortunate result of that is, there are more bad products than good on the market these days.

There are a lot of inks that contain some shit you don't want in your body, i.e. latex, plastics, heavy metals, and I'm sure a bunch of other shit I'm not aware of. I mean when something is reactive to UV light, do you really want it in your body? For the rest of your life?

I think a lot of people dismiss the fact that this substance is going on the ride with you from this day forward. For better or worse. Potentially like 50+ years.

There are very few ingredients needed to make a good, long-lasting ink. I'd tell you, but that's just some magic that I don't share.




TS: You obviously have a lot of requests for work. What's the best way for someone to get in touch with you?
BR:[/] Call me at the shop, or come by, I always ask new clients to come in and talk to me. I like to meet people and hear their ideas in person. There is so much miscommunication in emails and phone calls. The shop has a super comfy couch that I like to sit down with new and old clients to rap out their ideas.

TS: How long can the average client expect to wait before being able to get an appointment with you?
BR: About a month, usually. Sometimes quicker, sometimes slower.

TS: Is there one tattoo you've done that you'd consider a personal favorite?
BR: Favorite? They're all my babies, I love them equally. But, if I had to choose... it's this guy. There's some deeper meaning behind this tit lovin' maniac!



TS: Let's talk about the last time you were tattooed - who did it, and what was it?
BR: It was by the fantastic Mr. Marcus Kuhn of Just Good Tattoos and soon to be Art Work Rebel. And it was a Chakra in my right palm.

TS: Are there any artists out there you'd like to be tattooed by, space and time permitting of course?
BR: Hopefully this winter I'll be sitting down under the talented Jason Kundell, space and time permitting of course. I would love to be tattooed by a number of people, but the space is the problem. I don't have much left, and when Jason's done, I'm afraid I'll be down to "collector" pieces. And that list is long, Juan Puente, Lu's Lips, Grime, Jeff Zuck, Sung Song. There's a bunch.

TS: What are some of your favorite tattoo conventions to attend/work at? Do you have any you specifically like to work, or any new ones you'll be checking out this year?
BR: Favorites? None so far, really. I haven't gotten the chance to check out a lot of different shows. I find it hard to get out of the shop. More recently though, this past 1st annual Hollywood show was really good! I hope they do that one again. And I'm super excited to get on my way to Portland, OR in October, really looking forward to that!



TS: Let's get completely off-topic for a second and talk about the Christmas photos you took last year. Any chance this will become a yearly thing?

BR: HA. I'm thinking it might. It will be hard to top last year! That was a lot of fun! Our motley crew walking in Sears portrait studio, tattooed and rocking Christmas sweaters. Hats off to the ladies working there. They definitely took control and made asses out of us. It was great!

TS: During longer tattoo sessions people are prone to chatting--I know some entertaining subjects are bound to come up. Any particularly humorous memories you'd like to share?
BR: Endorphins are fantastic. Sometimes. I've tattooed some characters. I've got a great story that I tell clients when they ask me this question. It involves trench coats, a box cutter, blood, cigarettes, and someone passing out flat on the floor. It's quite good. Or I tell them about the time the woman pulled an Exorcist and painted my wall in vomit. No exaggeration... painted that fucking wall!

TS: What are you involved with aside from tattooing?
BR: I regretfully am not involved with anything as of now. I'm new to LA and I have been putting all my energy into clientele and settling in here. I see some projects in the future, just need to find the time.

I do find the time to pursue art in many mediums. I've been screen-printing a lot lately. Maybe some clothes on the horizon? I still love to paint and explore new mediums.




TS: Any last minute plugs?
BR: Myself and friends:

LOBSTERKNUCKLE.com
myspace.com/lobsterknuckle
UNBREAKABLETATTOO.com
ARTWORKREBELS.com




Brendan Rowe

TattooSnob.com

John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten) says he doesn't like tattoos, but try not to hold that against him. If I'd been calling in on behalf of a golf magazine, he'd probably tell me how much he's offended the sport. Not because he's disagreeable -- he really isn't -- but because... more

John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten) says he doesn't like tattoos, but try not to hold that against him. If I'd been calling in on behalf of a golf magazine, he'd probably tell me how much he's offended the sport. Not because he's disagreeable -- he really isn't -- but because first and foremost, above all else, the OG punk rocker is a provocateur and contrarian.

The Sex Pistols frontman is back on the scene after reviving his post-punk avant-garde music project Public Image Limited (a.k.a. PiL). The band, which was formed in 1978 in the wake of The Pistols dramatic demise, featured a revolving cast of players (including SG's Martin Atkins), with Lydon being the driving force and only constant.

Returning to the stage after a 17-year hiatus, PiL played a series of critically acclaimed shows in the UK in the latter part of 2009. With the music industry in a state of flux, and with very little cash flowing to support any artistic endeavors, Lydon financed the reunion in a true-to-form, eyebrow-raising fashion. The singer who had once called for "Anarchy in the UK" become a spectacularly unlikely spokesman for a brand of British butter called Country Life, appearing in a humorous commercial which sent sales of the saturated fat soaring.

Lydon, who lives in California, is now set to bring the organized chaos that is PiL stateside. The band will be playing Club Nokia in Downtown LA on April 13 prior to a highly anticipated opening-night performance at Coachella and a series of dates across the US.

SuicideGirls called Lydon up at his Malibu home to talk a little bollocks about life, butter, music, politics, PiL, the psychology of punk - and his apparent dislike of body ink.

John Lydon: Who's this?

Nicole Powers: It's Nicole Powers with SuicideGirls.

JL: Is that a magazine?

NP: It's a website.

JL: It's a most unfriendly title.

NP: Well it actually doesn't refer to people behaving like lemmings and jumping off cliffs.

JL: I hope not. [laughs] Because I couldn't be condoning that.

NP: It's actually a reference to a Chuck Palahniuk phrase that he used to describe a subculture of people who chose to commit social by having tattoos and piercings.

JL: Oh that's quite novel.

NP: It's a very punk rock concept, since it's about people choosing to mark their body permanently, thereby permanently committing social suicide with regards to the mainstream.

JL: Oh tattoos.

NP: You don't like them?

JL: No.

NP: Oh dear! What's your objection?

JL: I think that they're ugly. [laughs]

NP: Oh no! You're not supposed to say that! Everyone assumes that tattoos are punk rock by default.

JL: Certainly not! [laughs] Not to my estimation at all. They're the very last thing I would want to be doing, to put a moniker on my body that I might not quite approve of in a few years time. You know, "Love ya Sharron," and then you're stuck with it. What I find with tattoos though is the lack of originality, particularly a punk type concept of it. It's what people think will make them punk, when punk really is a mentality.

NP: I can appreciate that. I mean I'm aware that you done things like the Country Life butter commercial, and the UK I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here reality TV series, and the nature shows, which might seem cheesy. But then for you, that's the most punk rock thing you can do, because that's precisely the opposite of what society expects you to do.

JL: Well yeah, and it doesn't happen deliberately, it just opportunity knocks -- and I get knocked for it.

NP: Well there's no knocking from this direction.

JL: Oh, thank you! But you know, the butter campaign, which was to promote a British product, I thought it was a very brave thing on my behalf. The money that I earned from that has now gone completely -- lock stock and barrel -- into reforming PiL.

NP: Well I actually want to congratulate Country Life Butter, because it was a risk on their part.

JL: It was. It was seriously, seriously an interesting project, from start to finish. Because it was an insane prospect originally, and definitely tweaked my interest.

NP: It's butter with balls, because they were putting the reputation of their brand in your hands.

JL: Yeah, they took a gamble and I treated them with the utmost respect because of that...They were very, very gracious with me. They presented something like a script, and I told them I would adlib and improvise. They went with that, and it paid off.

NP: I read one of your interviews where you talked about how Country Life Butter has been more supportive of your music than any record label.

JL: Yes. They've treated me with more respect than any record label I've ever worked with, and that's a very strange thing to be saying. You would presume that they're corporate and therefore the enemy. So we should be very careful who we attach false rumors and labels to, as indeed many have been attached to me over the years erroneously...I'm very pleased that I made butter acceptable again socially.

NP: You increased sales by 85% I understand.

JL: That's an astounding figure. Really, really kind of overwhelming. Good, golly, gosh! And my record company said they can't sell a record.

NP: What I found interesting reading the press building up to this tour is that you're finally getting the respect for what you did with PiL 14 or 15 years too late.

JL: Yes.

NP: I guess in the scheme of things its good, because there's many artists throughout history that didn't get any respect until after they died. But it might have been nice for people to give you some respect for PiL a little sooner.

JL: Well it might not also. Because I'm the kind of person, I do have inner resolve and inner strengths, and so I'm able to -- and I love to quote Shakespeare when it suits me -- I smile in the face of adversity. In many ways the struggle is as enjoyable as the achievement. You can't keep a good dog down and all that -- maybe I should have a dog tattoo. [laughs]

NP: Well you worry about getting a tattoo that you'll later regret, but part of having tattoo is that you live life with no regrets. That's a very important part of the ethos.

JL: Yes. I gather that. It's certainly a way of making yourself alienated, unless everybody on planet earth has a tattoo. Because it divides doesn't it? And the powers that be just don't seem to want to employ people with tattoos.

I'll tell you, my 15-year old nephew, he's just put a tattoo on his neck and of course it's creating all kinds of uproar in the family. But it's knowing where that's going to take him, because the school have thrown him out.

Also, and I don't mean to be sounding nasty here, but Steve Jones, a fellow Sex Pistol, I hate his tattoos. They all seem to be the mass consumption ones, you know. I don't see anything that strikes me as impressively different. There's a poisoning aspect in there because of that. But I do love art, and a jolly decent drawing or painting transferred to a human body can be impressive.

One tattoo that impressed me, it was years ago, was a jigsaw thing, from head to toe, a complete jigsaw pattern. It was most excellent. I thought that was a clever idea. It was a jigsaw puzzle with a few pieces missing here and there. I thought that was really great. Things like that that spark and immediate interest. But, my god, I live on the beach here, and the amount of second hand work is appalling. So unfortunately for you and your website, I'm focusing on all the negatives at the moment, but then I've had a career where I've suffered all the negative aspects -- and I think wrongly. I think I've done nothing but good for music. I've been consistent at it too. I think I've offered purposefully and honestly enough so many new genres into music, and to see them imitated now and be part of the casual mindset of modern music, it's intriguing that my name is missing from the list of thank yous.

NP: Well they do say imitation is the best form of flattery.

JL: No. I've dealt with that expression and I've found it to be not true. It actually a cheeky way of saying, "Thanks, look what I've stolen from ya."

NP: I can see that. Being paid in return for the inspiration would be the best form of flattery.

JL: It would kind of help. Or at least [to be] given a nod and wink in the correct way and direction. Because I do believe in respecting my fellow human beings and I don't like to see anyone, including myself, disrespected. I see no reason for it. All my life what I've done is fight for the individual, and fight for groups that are downtrodden, be it race, creed or color, or whatever economic or social reason. To be still treated as some kind of fowl-mouthed job is a bit upsetting and wrong.

NP: Well you are very erudite. I know that you're a big bookworm too.

JL: Yes. Love books. One of the greatest tragedies of me at the moment is that my eyesight is beginning to wane. That might be from sheer over-reading, and that's really painful because the concept of losing my eyesight is really challenging to me. It's like I've run it in my mind: what couldn't I afford to lose, my ears or my eyes? Oddly enough, being somewhat of a musician, I concluded my eyes. Because nature, I couldn't bear to not be observing it. I find that much more musical than anything I've ever done.

NP: You've done some nature programs haven't you? What inspired you to do the nature stuff.

JL: Because I love life, all kinds. I don't know what it is that makes a thing live but I'm deeply intrigued by that, whether it be an ant, a mollusk or an elephant, or indeed my fellow human beings. I realize, as humans, we are top of the agenda because we have that most magnificent gift of all -- language.

NP: Some scientists are starting to argue that there's levels of intelligence and communication amongst animals that mean certain species should actually be given human-like rights.

JL: Yes. That's a fascinating subject, particularly the way whales can communicate. I love sharks and particularly great whites. When I was doing that program on them, I noticed that they do have a form of communication with each other. They definitely have a hierarchy, and a grouping. They travel in packs and that's surely not the wild, free-roaming, savage killers we've been led to misbelieve.

NP: So if animals are so communicative, it's not really language that sets us apart from the animal world, really the only thing is art.

JL: Well, I don't know, I've seen chimpanzees paint.

NP: ...And elephants.

JL: And elephants, I've cottoned on to that. I'm not sure of the artistic value. I'd have to see more elephants' work.

NP: And there's some debate about whether they're just following cues from their trainers, and repeating actions, rather than deciding to paint a flower.

JL: Yes, there's every possibility of that. Do you know that killer whale that killed the instructor recently? You can't tame the beast in them and at some point these poor animals are going to become incredibly frustrated at the prison we've wrapped them in. This is why I'm very anti zoos. That's what that is, that act of aggression is, "I want out."

NP: But then the flip side of that is that there are zoos that are very responsible with things like breeding programs.

JL: But what are they breeding? They're breeding animals that know nothing but captivity. And to be quite frank there some wonderful nature programs that show you these creatures in their natural environments -- be happy with that. That's not the same as a wolf in a box in the corner of Whipsnade Zoo is it?

http://www.zsl.org/zsl-whipsnade-zoo/

In fact I had problems when I was visiting the gorilla terrain with that too. That American money was beginning to creep in and there was future prospects of them building five star hotels for American tourists to go on gorilla safaris. Well if you start doing that you're absolutely murdering what these lovely wonderful beasts are all truly about...I think humans do not have the right to turn wild beasts into tourist attractions. It really, really upsets me. The game reserves in Africa upset me. They're all rounded up and back in their cage for the evening and let out in the morning.

NP: Well it all goes back to this idea of extending what we know as human rights to animals, and figuring out how far down the food chain you go.

JL: All the way. It's an interesting discussion. It isn't openly debated quite yet, but I'd like to see it done so. I think it could only be to the advancement of all causes.

NP: Well also when you treat animals without humanity, you're compromising your own.

JL: Yes. I can't stand to see those chicken farms and the slaughter house things. But I do understand that we have two different sets of teeth in our mouths and as a species I don't suppose we would ever have advance this far by lettuce leaves alone.

NP: So are you a vegetarian?

JL: No. I tend to eat what's available according to the environment I'm in. Thirty years of touring has taught me that, otherwise I'd be looking for grass and bean sprouts in Milwaukee.

I tell you what the shock for me is, living in America, is how cheep chicken is. Don't be raising the price on cigarettes, because that's a choice issue there. But with certain food things, if we treated animals with a bit more respect and cost, I think the slaughter and cruelty would go down as the price went up. So that may be a solution there other than Chrissie Hynde's "Meat is Murder" brigade, which takes it to too far of an extreme all at once.

NP: Right. A chicken's life should be worth more than five bucks.

JL: Yeah. Absolutely.

NP: I'm not a vegetarian either, but I want my chicken to have led a happy and fulfilled life before it died.

JL: Otherwise what are you eating but misery? Well that's going to translate into your system eventually.

NP: And knowing I didn't give a shit about that chicken's life is going to eat into my soul.

JL: Yes, I believe that.

NP: So I'm all about eating happy and fulfilled animals.

JL: Yeah, but maybe not always. I mean there are huge amounts of my time when I don't drink alcohol, but there are other times when I do, and it's the same with meat. But I don't believe running around assaulting women in fur coats is going to solve anything.

NP: Well there is the argument that plants have feeling too..

JL: Ah, Prince Charles led this charge didn't he. He played Pink Floyd to his cabbages. I'm not sure where that's left him with regards to standing and reason with the world but a novelty. I mean he's a Buddhist, and that's where his leaning would naturally take him. It's novel. It might actually be true. He might actually be doing a cabbage a favor. You take it too far though it would leave us without any food source whatsoever, and that's stone cold bonkers. I mean I don't want the whole world to end up like emaciated models.

NP: So you like meat on your women?

JL: I like human being to look human, not like concentration camp victims.

NP: Well that's also what SuicideGirls is all about, redefining beauty to take it away from the model stereotype.

JL: Well you have to. It's preposterous. There's no one out there really capable of being that thin in the general public so who are you making and selling this dress to? Basically a bag of bones. Very unattractive. And I don't want my world full of everyone in the same size. Good heavens. I get problems with that myself, you see I'm big boned -- there's a polite way of putting it.

NP: But you always seem pretty svelte on stage.

JL: Well I have to be fit to do what I do, but I don't exercise. There's not really what you would call a muscle on me.

NP: So how do you stay fit if you don't exercise?

JL: Stress.

NP: Ahh. So what's been stressing you out recently?

JL: Trying to keep this tour together. Definitely handling the finances of it, and hoping it will be a success. I'm hoping it will raise some level of interest in what's gone wrong with the music industry, and what's still right with me. I would expect that to be of some interest to audiences both young and old.

NP: Absolutely. Music, generally, is so bland today.

JL: The latest thing I find so offensive is Sting trying to go Irish. He's done a jazz album, now he's trying to be like a Gaelic folk artist. It's just upsetting that he's not creating new genres from his own heart and soul. It's all set formats already laid out on a table for him. In he comes and fine dines, and out he waltzes onto the next menu. It's a little lazy.

NP: What do you think of Lady Gaga?

JL: I think she hilariously is very, very interesting. We know what she's up to, we know what she's doing, it's that she does it very, very well. There's a great sense of fun and self-mockery in it, which is very endearing.

NP: There's an intelligence behind it.

JL: Yeah, there is. And they are actually great pop songs. I think "Paparazzi" is stunning, amazing, such a clever way to deal with the subject.

NP: Who else do you find interesting right now?

JL: Off the top of my head nothing is coming to mind.

NP: It's a bland world out there.

JL: It is.

NP: I understand on the PiL tour you're going to be culling songs from your entire discography, some solo stuff, some Pistols stuff.

JL: Probably not The Pistols end of it, because I really want to focus on PiL and the achievements therein. If I started putting in Pistols material indeed I'd be there all night long. We play on average two and a half hours per night, although in America there's some license restrictions on that, particularly [at] Coachella. They originally offered us only one hour, but they've sensibly given us an hour and a half. But that's still not long enough for a PiL performance.

NP: Have you been out to Coachella before?

JL: Yes. It's baking bloody hot and freezing cold at night. The waiting and the hanging around in that baking heat is very draining. The waiting before any gig is so amazingly stressful.

NP: But compared to Glastonbury, Coachella is the five star festival experience.

JL: Listen, I go back 45 years and I remember the original festivals when I was 12 and 15. I'd go off to them on my own. I'd bunk up on the train. The atmosphere was amazing. It could be raining all weekend and it was just one big horrible mud bath, [but] it just always seemed better. These festivals these days seem to orchestrated. The idea of having to use a credit card to get into the toilet is insane. Everything is about purchase isn't it? You end up feeling like you're just visiting some weird and wacky shopping mall. The music, in that you're offered an infinite variety of music, that's always intriguing, but the modern aspect of these things is they have three or four stages operating at the same time. To see one band you're going to miss a couple of others. I wish it was just one stage. I don't like that dissipation of energy. It creates the cattle herding environment of people having to shift from one field to another. That's negative. It negates the open-mindedness that festivals are supposedly originally all about.

NP: Are there any other bands at Coachella you're looking forward to seeing?

JL: I'm really pleased that Jay-Z is on at the same time. No dis of his music, some of those records are great, absolutely. But live, it comes across to me like a Las Vegas production. And I say this out of experience because a few years back at a Pistols gig in Poland, Jay-Z was on the bill there and I got to catch some of that show. I just thought you could put Liberace in the middle of that and it wouldn't be much different. I thought it was rather poor because it was just him going "u-huh, huh, huh" in between all this dancing and flashing lights and it became irritating. It wasn't a sharing experience. He wasn't sharing anything. It was just showing off. I can't bear acts that go on and tell you how great they are. It's a negative for me. PiL is all about open up your heart and here we go.

NP: So when you're not playing music and reading books, what do you do?

JL: I'm yelling at the news.

NP: I shout at the TV too.

JL: I can't help it. I find Faux News very entertaining. It's wonderful. I'm never going to be disappointed with the absurdities I hear nightly, and daily...In fact the entire network is to me deeply hilarious that it's run under the guise of news. How the word news can be so misinterpreted.

Saying that I love Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and coupled together, for anyone who has children, it's surely the best hour of family viewing. Children really and truly do understand and grasp the bigger issues.

NP: Talking of children, you're the stepfather of Ari Up from The Slits. They reformed recently too.

JL: Well they're bumming about yeah. That's a band that's not reformed, they're not like that. When they get the money together they go out and play, it's as simple as that. There are times when all of us have to be very, very careful on the purse-strings, because we do live almost momentarily, from moment to moment. When the money's there you can do things. There's no one there giving us handouts for this.

NP: Right. It's often hard for people to understand how you can be in a big name band and still live a very hand to mouth existence.

JL: Well my band has an enormous name and reputation, but it's not record company supported. So indeed where are the finances supposed to come from? It's extreme hard work. Everything I do outside of the band, for me, goes back into it. I'm not unhappy about that situation. That seems to be the way it works best for me, as indeed it had to right from the very beginning when I first formed Public Image.

NP: Well artists throughout history have relied on sponsors.

JL: Yes. This is very true. Every classical composer had to have a royal family to pay them. Do you think I should approach the Queen for a bob or two?

NP: I think you should. I mean you've done so much to promote her.

JL: And I would think not negatively. Hopefully I've made it completely clear to the royal family that while I'm paying tax for them I have every right to comment. More so than most I would think seeing as I have to go through all kinds of rigmarole to earn enough to be able to pay that tax. I suppose the way I live, and Ari is the same way with The Slits, is outside of the system.

NP: What are your feelings towards the royal family these days?

JL: Wonderful people. Is there room for inbreds? Yes, of course. If in any way, shape or form you love to study nature there's a classic example.

NP: Well in America, even though there is not royalty, we've created an aristocratic class with the likes of the Hiltons and the Bush families.

JL: And the Kennedys.

NP: So there is a social need for it.

JL: Well whether you like it or not you have to face up to the fact that human beings somewhat need some kind of leadership. I'm all for the art of the individual, but I'm very aware that many people can't possibly be that way. Without someone telling them what to do they feel hopelessly lost. Now that might be because of the education system we all have to suffer our way through.

NP: Well the problem with democracy is it relies on an educated populace, and we don't have that anymore.

JL: No. Odd isn't it?

NP: That's why you see so many people voting against their interest. I know that you've been very vocal about the need to encourage literacy and education.

JL: Yes. I used to run an internet radio thing which went for six hours every Saturday morning. On it I would debate with politicians and so-called, alleged intelligentsia. I remember serious debates, me saying I think children should not look down on education because I see it as just about the only thing that's free that actually carries any value. But I would get pedantic nonsense like, "Education: What does that word mean?" Well it can mean many things, but it's allowing children to be open-minded. And I'm afraid you're never going to get that with a Republican led country.

Their behavior as of late I think has embarrassed America immensely across the entire planet, and they're still promoting anger and ignorance. They really do want to keep us dumb. I mean they even want their own president to be dumb. George Bush is a classic example of how they so ill-consider us as a population. I view myself as American in this respect, because that's where I live and pay tax. I find it infuriating.

NP: So if you were president, what would you do?

JL: Retire. [laughs] I think, unlike the Bush's I would bring broccoli back to the White House. I remember that was one of his biggest issues, he hated broccoli. It's funny, every Republican president we've had, they're all very, very big meat-eaters, and they're very against vegetables. It's bizarre. This is why they're all constipated, and hence the lack of brain cells.

NP: Well probably George Bush's greatest achievement was officially declaring ketchup a vegetable.

JL: Wonderful huh? Well officially he is a vegetable. I've seen a most excellent bit of footage on CNN yesterday morning. It was terrific. It shows him and Clinton out in Haiti dealing with the homeless there. That's a great thing, to say America's here to help you. But every time George Bush shook hands with someone he then wiped his hand on Clinton's shirt. Now what does that say? A lot. Volumes. And that kind of misrepresentation of this country has got to stop. You can look at it in many ways. Is he being humorous? But ultimately he's being insulting. There's still the implication of 'you dirty peoples,' and that's wrong.

NP: So if you met George Bush what would you say to him?

JL: I'd say: "Sit down you drunken uncle." I know he's allegedly given up alcohol, but the effects are still in there. I think when he was young he drunk enough to last a lifetime.

NP: I could never quite put my finger on whether George Bush was really dumb, or really clever and acting dumb to appeal to the masses.

JL: I think he's like this; You've been to birthday parties, you know, when it's for kids and all the family members gather. He's that stupid uncle that spills the lemonade on the table and spoils the kid's birthday cake. That's him.

NP: Well the lemonade he's spilt on the planet we're going to be cleaning up for years.

JL: Yes. But that's it. He's clumsy. He thinks he's witty. He possibly is. If he's left in less dangerous situations you might actually find him very pleasant, but never, ever give a man like that a position of responsibility. People voting [for him], that's bad enough. But the fact is that party fully supported Coco the Clown and let him lose on the world. And the result is two catastrophic wars in the Middle East. Please! Why are we listening to them anymore?

NP: Well, that goes back to education.

JL: Well you know as well as I do that Republicans are not for educating the masses. They believe completely in private schooling, and bugger the rest of us.

NP: Well thank you for taking the time out to chat. I'm very much looking forward to the live show.

JL: Alrighty. Ooh, can I end on the best tattoo I've ever seen?

NP: Please do.

JL: It was on Fantasy Island. The little bloke was called tattoo.

Robert Williams has had careers that would fulfill many lesser artists. He worked for Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, and was involved in the hot rod movement. He created psychedelic posters and was part of Robert Crumb’s Zap Comix collective. He’s a painter and sculptor whose work has been exhibited around... more

Robert Williams has had careers that would fulfill many lesser artists. He worked for Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, and was involved in the hot rod movement. He created psychedelic posters and was part of Robert Crumb’s Zap Comix collective. He’s a painter and sculptor whose work has been exhibited around the world. Guns N Roses took their debut album title from Williams’ painting “Appetite for Destruction” which was also the album cover. He’s one of the founders of Juxtapoz, the biggest art magazine in the world, and it was the title of his first book of paintings that gave the lowbrow art movement its name. He’s written extensively about art including the Rubberneck Manifesto in which he famously argued that “something dead in the street commands more measured units of visual investigation than 100 Mona Lisas.”

Last year Williams had his first solo show in years in New York, “Conceptual Realism: In the Service of the Hypothetical” and this year it opened at Cal State Northridge. Williams was also asked to contribute to this year’s Whitney Biennial. Much of his popular success comes from his skill and precision at depicting the realistic details in his work in a way which make the flights of fancy seem natural. His oil paintings, shows the influence of twentieth century pop culture but his craftsmanship and skill are worthy of the old masters. Imagine if Salvador Dali was raised on EC Comics, pop culture and dropped acid, and you have a hint of what Williams’ work is like.

What was most striking about talking with Williams was that an artist who has had such long and influential career was so clearly touched and appreciative of my own observations towards his work. He believes he’s currently working at the top of his game, which for those who attended his recent show is hard to argue with, but he believes with passion that he has the skill and the talent to create work so powerful and affecting to convert the critics of his approach and subject matter. The following is an edited version of a far-reaching conversation about art, comics, Los Angeles and what Williams likes about watercolors.


ALEX DUEBEN: You’ve mentioned that underground cartoonists were your first peer group. You were part of the Zap Comix collective, which included Robert Crumb and S. Clay Wilson and Spain Rodriguez and others. What were you trying to do?

ROBERT WILLIAMS: Underground comics is closer to art than it is to comics, because you could do as you please. It started in the early fifties when the Kefauver subcommittee cracked down on comics. There was a book called Seduction of the Innocent by a Dr. Wertham that later created an investigation into comics and how they were causing juvenile delinquency and all the really good comics got run out of business. I’m old enough, and my peer group was old enough, to remember the really great comics. Then all of a sudden the spigot was turned off and from that point on it was Disney comics and happy animal comics and whatnot.

It started with the psychedelic poster movement. The fine arts world never acknowledged the psychedelic poster movement even though the psychedelic poster movement was far far larger than the poster movement in the late 1890s with Toulousse-Letrec and other artists. All of the artists that were involved in poster movement were, much like myself, disenfranchised artists. The thing slowly started creeping towards comics. Some of the psychedelic posters started breaking down into panels. Underground comics, the first one that I can remember is Jack Jackson’s God Nose from ’64, so there’s a heritage in this thing. Crumb came out with Zap in 1967. I was working for Ed “Big Daddy” Roth doing illustration, cartoons. They were very irreverent and I was in trouble for it. The seeds were there. Even if Crumb wasn’t born and I wasn’t born this thing was going to surface.

When we started doing underground comics, they were very subversive, very pornographic, very antisocial. Every social more we could find, we would violate. Our attitude was, you think those comicbooks were bad back in the fifties? You ain’t seen fucking nothing yet.

AD: So all that was very conscious and very intentionally dealing with these subjects and in that manner?

RW: You have to understand, we’re in a period of history now where artists think they have to placate everybody in the world. They have to get the largest audience possible. The underground artists and underground world were very happy just to deal with themselves. None of those underground comics were ever made for a general audience. The attitude was, fuck the general audience. It was just like the psychedelic rock posters that had that lettering that you couldn’t fucking read until you knew how to read it. It wasn’t for every idiot. It was for an intelligent arcane audience that was in the know. Now the attitude is we’ve got to make everybody fucking happy, but that time there was a big cultural separation between the underground and the overground. The Vietnam war was the ignition point. That was when the country split right in half.

AD: I’ve read a decent amount of underground comics from that period and I have to admit I’m sometimes unsure how much I get, not just in terms of the references, but because it was for a different audience at a different time.

RW: It wasn’t something to hunt you down and appease you. It was something if it interested you, you go and investigate. It wasn’t something for everyone to get hip to. It was a very closed world. And there’s another factor, Alex. There were two philosophies. There was the graphic abstract world of the comics which I belonged to, that Rick Griffin belonged to, that S. Clay Wilson belonged to, that Victor Moscosco belonged to. And then there was the literary graphic story side of the underground comics that Crumb belonged to and Gilbert Shelton belonged to. They were interested in telling stories. My side of the thing, the abstract world, was more into the abstract illusionary art world to take you through a mind expanding trip. Now eventually as underground comics got more popular and had a larger audience, the literary side took over because people weren’t interested in the abstract side anymore they were more interested in reading the story and throwing the comic book away.

AD: Which is something that continues to do to this day in comics where abstract work is really a largely obscure and ignored corner of comics.

RW: That’s what happened to the underground comics. They got so popular and so big that they started to have to cater to a much larger audience and they had to start making much more sense. The earlier comics weren’t responsible for making any fucking sense. So after about 1970 or ‘71, the psychedelic nonsense really tapered off.

AD: Which is the point when underground comics became a genre essentially.

RW: Yeah.

AD: You guys were making comics, but were those old comics hugely influential?

RW: Absolutely. You have to remember that the only artists who could draw and paint were comics book artists and artists who did B-movie posters and stuff like that. Illustrators. The art world had turned its back on it. Almost every one of us in the underground comics had a fine arts background and faced the same pressures the same bigotry.

AD: You guys liked EC comics and Wally Wood and--

RW: Wally Wood was my hero. I talked to him a couple of times. I’m sorry I didn’t get to know him better. Unfortunately every time I talked to him both of us were drunk.

AD: And if we go back to Pop Art and Roy Lichtenstein, who took a comics panel and played with it in a way that was disdainful of the panel.

RW: Not only would he take a comic book panel and would denigrate it so it even looked funkier, he would take a comic book panel verbatim and then find stylizations in there and alter them so it looked as if it was even more retarded. He was showing his indifference, because in pop art you show a cold indifference.

AD: He wrecked what art there was in the panel and I think that indifference and coldness you mention is why pop art leaves many people cold.

RW: The buying public in art are not into it that much. They’re interested in the value and how it looks as decoration in a large modern home.

AD: Do you feel art scene at large remains indifferent to you and your style even now?

RW: The art scene now is more open than I’ve ever seen it in my life. But there’s a problem with the art. I knew this a long long time ago. If you get a lot of people that want to be artists, you have to adjust down the capability requirements so that all these people can be artists. You can’t expect to take young people and force them into a rigorous discipline of learning how to draw and paint. That’s what they did one hundred years ago in the old European art academies and in the United States in the early Twentieth century. They had really tough schools. It was hell to get through an art school a long time ago. Now they’ve eased that so you just have to be sensitive and be able to pay the tuition and attend and flop around some colors. The discipline has gone out of it completely.

The arts have to be open for everybody with every kind of style. I’m for making the thing open and free. I don’t think an artist has to learn to paint and draw. I prefer to do that, but I want the ability to have as much right to be in a museum as someone else. I respect their right to put anything in there. If they want to have a pile of sand in the middle of the museum, that’s okay with me. As long as I have room in there.

AD: Your show in Los Angeles which was in New York last year is the first show you’ve had for a number of years. How prolific are you?

RW: I’m slow. I plod along. I used to be a lot more prolific in my thirties and forties and my twenties, but I’m sixty-seven years old and I just work at it continually. I’m just as happy to do a real big tight oil painting and plot every little detail out and crawl across it like a snail. That’s the way it gets done. I’m not the most prolific artist, never really have been.

In the eighties I was turning out two and a half paintings a month. Now I turn out a painting every two and a half months. But they’re a lot better paintings. More detail.

AD: So you’re in the Whitney Biennial this year.

RW: I am in the Whitney Biennial.

AD: Was this a big deal?

RW: It was a very very big deal. I didn’t realize how big it was at the time. I’ve been showing in New York for about twenty, twenty-five years now and it’s just been a slow process of eroding away these obstacles. Eighteen years ago I got into Tony Shafrazi’s gallery and then I proved myself there having a number of sold out shows. I’m sure Tony got me in the Whitney. Tony’s probably the second or third biggest gallery in the world. He’s quite a character.

AD: You’re showing six watercolors at the Whitney. What do you like about watercolors?

RW: I don’t like anything about watercolors.

AD: Um, let me rephrase then. Why did you feel six watercolors would be appropriate for the show?

RW: That way I could have my name in the show six times. And have six different ideas instead one big painting. They said they would accept six small watercolors. They saw my watercolors at the Shazfrazi show. You saw the four. They said they would accept six of those so I sat down and did six.

AD: So you don’t enjoy watercolors?

RW: I enjoy watercolors immensely, but I love those tight ass oil paintings. That’s the real test and that’s the real form of expression. Those are ass busting to do. They’re difficult and if you spend a lot of time on them and they don’t work out, man, it’s really a gamble. I’m at the top of my form and I’m busting my ass on those big oil paintings. Later, when I get old, I’ll be doing a lot of watercolors. Don’t worry about that.

AD: I know you grew up in California and you’ve lived in Los Angeles for a long time. What keeps you there? The city keeps changing so much.

RW: I love the weather. I’ve got hot rods. I’ve got room -- a house on a big lot with room. I love going to New York, but I can only handle New York for about a week and then it starts closing in on me. New York has an energy that maybe you can see it in Tokyo and Berlin and Rome, but New York is the capital of the world when it comes to cultural energy. But I’ve got to get out of there after awhile.

AD: From your perspective, does Los Angeles have a good art scene?

RW: LA is going to take over New York eventually. New York got all its culture from Europe. The old Victorian principle of sophistication. To be sophisticated you have to be inhibited. That doesn’t exist on the West Coast or the Pacific Rim. LA knows to be sophisticated, copy New York, but they fail at it miserably. I don’t mean to run New York down but you come out here and get involved in the art world out here and there is so much energy going in all directions it can’t be contained. It’s like trying to herd kangaroos or something. They try to be sophisticated, but they fail, and in that failure they come up with their own dynamic.

Not only do you have the motion picture industry out here, you have the hot rod culture, the biker culture, the surfer culture, the tattoo culture. On and on and on all started out here. Psychedelic posters. Underground comics. It all started out here. It happened spontaneously. It can’t stop itself.

See more of Robert Williams work here

Get the book Conceptual Reality here

It's that time again! Hell City is once again ready for the sexy Suicide Girls to set the main stage on fire! Although the girls themselves should be the trophies, the new trophies are pretty cool, too, once again designed by the world famous Don Pendelton! (image) Make sure to book your rooms... more

It's that time again! Hell City is once again ready for the sexy Suicide Girls to set the main stage on fire! Although the girls themselves should be the trophies, the new trophies are pretty cool, too, once again designed by the world famous Don Pendelton!



Make sure to book your rooms at the Hyatt before they all sell out!!



Hell City is one of the largest gatherings of the Suicide Girls at any tattoo convention, making the festival even hotter! Come out and see all of the lovely SG's at their booth and on stage!

PLEASE let me know if you're planning on joining as well this year and I'll add you to the list!

sunshine
radeo
lainey
parish
patton
king
luscious
phecda
porcellana
rourke
buffy
dika
doctor
frolic
jessemay
madison







If you have an iPhone, why not test your tattoo knowledge! Be sure to download the newest app from Hell City called "Tattoo IQ" available now in the app store!




Last but not least! Pint Size Paintings Vol #1, "Miniature Paintings By Big Artists" book is now on the shelves! The Worlds Largest Collection Of Miniature Paintings is now available, grab your copy now!



See you all in Hell!!

It seems like every music video director turned flmmaker eventually makes a big studio action movie. Even Michel Gondry directed The Green Hornet. That big budget movie won't be out until December, thanks to the latest production delays, but we'll get to hear from Gondry before then. His latest... more

It seems like every music video director turned flmmaker eventually makes a big studio action movie. Even Michel Gondry directed The Green Hornet. That big budget movie won't be out until December, thanks to the latest production delays, but we'll get to hear from Gondry before then.

His latest film takes you deeper into his personal world than you may want to go. The Thorn in the Heart is a documentary about Gondry's aunt Suzette and her son Jean-Yves. Filming discussions with them and other family members reveals the Gondry legacy in the film industry, but also some lifelong emotional conflicts. It's like when you're at someone's house for dinner and they start fighting, only you can't leave. Gondry's camera is still there.

The documentary played at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, where Gondry was surely the only person speaking broken English in a French accent. The echo in a large meeting room way too big for a single interview, and made him sound surreal. The subject of his film led to a discussion about his very artistic process, more about the meaning of film than its literal content.

That sort of discussion seems appropriate to Gondry's body of work. Films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep leave a lot open to interpretation. You could analyze the themes or just marvel at the handcrafted imagery. Even the high concept comedy Be Kind Rewind turned out to be a call to arms for people to pick up cameras and make their own films. The Thorn in the Heart may be a personal exercise or it may speak to everyone, but either way, here is some insight into all the films Gondry has and will make.


Question: Do you think film was in your blood?

Michel Gondry: Oh, in my genes? I think in a way yes. I mean, I never had the ambition to become a director because I didn't really think of it. I didn't think of the director when I was watching a movie, what it took to make the film, until I bought a camera. But, my father was doing a lot of Super8 and my cousin, as you've seen in the film. Being surrounded by this and photo, I was printing my own photo when I was really young, so the technical aspect of it really attracted me. The idea that you can imprint an image with a chemical element on a piece of paper was really magical to me.

Q: Do you think it's something you can be born with, even if you don't grow up around the technique?

MG: It's hard to answer that. I think it's always a combination because you can have it and then if you are exposed to it, then the fact that you have it in you, it captures it and then it reveals it. So you can have it in you and then you're not exposed and you never knew you had it in you. Or, you can not have it in you and then by a succession of coincidences, you end up doing it and being good at it so you do it. So it's very hard. I don't know how I could identify that. I tried to remember. I remember watching Chaplin movies and liking them but never in a sense of "That's what I want to do" until I was in my '20s.

Q: What makes people need to do what they need to do, like you make films and I need to write?

MG: Well, I think it's always a combination of things, coming from inside and coming from outside. As well, there is a great deal of privilege when you can be an artist and do your hobby for a living. You have to really appreciate that because I think if you're not born in the right place in the world, then you're fucked. It's going to be a million times harder. People always say, "Oh, it's amazing. You've worked with the guy I was at school with" and see the world as small. It sound corny, but I say it's small because I don't share it. In an artistic profession, there is a sense where people get really protective to maintain their privilege. They're not really trying to share it and share the creativity with other people. I think everybody should be entitled to express themselves or have creativity or do an activity that makes them happy when they wake up.

Q: So people who work mundane jobs, like offices or factory, is that because they didn't have an interest or didn't know about it?

MG: I think most of them didn't have the opportunity. It's a social class thing. We still work on the same principal where some people have the luck to be born in the right place and some people don't have this luck. The people who are born in a place that makes their life easy, most of them don't try really to help the others or to see the unfairness. On the contrary, they try to maintain their privilege or oppress people who are already oppressed. It's just a system that's always been there and it's sort of terrible. It's what we should think of now instead of thinking how to make more automobiles because for the capitalist world, it thinks the only way that society can function is if you make more things then people buy more stuff and there are more jobs and more money to spend. It doesn't work like that anymore. We're going to have more and more crap. I'm talking a little bit above my head because I'm not really a specialist but I really feel people should look at other activities. People need to have activities I think but the production and fabrication of objects, finding an excuse, creating the desire for the buyer to buy them, it's wrong. Now we're exhausted. We're exhausted this way and should think of that.

Q: Is documentary a truer form of filmmaking to you than fiction narrative?

MG: Yeah, if not more. Some of my favorite filmmakers are making documentaries. I don't see that any lesser than a feature film. It is just amazing. The creation lays in other places. It's in the moment, not as much in the preparation, but in the moment and also the editing of course is very important. I watch mostly documentaries on my TV. I don't like to watch fiction, to be honest.

Q: Have you seen the documentary competition at SXSW?

MG: No, but you know when you go to festivals as a filmmaker, you never watch anything because I'm here doing these interviews. Lately I've seen this documentary that was amazing. It was called 51 Birch Street about this guy that puts a camera on his family and reveals all the story of his mom after she passed away and her father. It was just amazing. I watched it twice and I couldn't believe how enriching it was.

Q: Do you think it's the place of drama, whether fiction or documentary, to ask questions rather than provide answers?

MG: Well, it's not ask questions like you would ask a question to get an answer. You find more of the answer in the question in the sense that I think first of all, you don't want to ask a question if you know the answer. I think it's very important. It's like in science, if you hope too much for a result, then you're going to be biased. Your observation won't be really objective. The real discovery, and there is some intuition or truth that can be found and then proven, but a lot of discoveries are made as side effects. Somebody is looking for some experiment and then discover another property. Like they invented the transistor by complete randomness. I think that's interesting to be in a state of being observant to a point that you're going to capture something you were not looking for.

Q: In journalism they say you should know the answers to the questions you're asking.

MG: I think it's totally wrong. I cannot disagree more with that. I think if you're pressing for an answer, sometimes some journalists are trying to get me to say something and I can tell it right away. Either I'm going to tell it just to make them at peace or I'm not going to do it at all because it pisses me off. I think you go on an interview or an investigation like a conversation. You have to be curious of the person you're talking to. If you're not ready to be surprised then what's the point? You could write your article and not ask the person. Maybe you're hoping to go into some territory and discover something but you have to be ready to be completely surprised or taken by surprise. That's the beauty of it.

Q: Is that the difference between journalism and drama, that you can be more inquisitive in drama?

MG: Yeah, but you work with a screenplay. Or it depends, because some people like Mike Leigh who is one of my favorite directors, doesn't write a screenplay. He has a structure and he builds a character with his actor. A lot happening in front of the camera is not planned. There are some other directors who do a movie that's great and everything is carefully planned, but you have to have a lot of time to be able to write all the details of something that must look like life because it's very complex.

Q: I'm including documentary as drama, as a dramatic way to portray real life.

MG: Yeah, well, but when you say dramatic, it's some way to provoke emotion when you watch it for instance? I think if you connect with it, if people reveal things that they were not necessarily willing to say, not by manipulation but just by asking questions and asking what you would be shy to ask, I think that may be embarrassing a little bit but things you really wonder. I think if you do that then people reveal themselves in a way that's dramatic, meaning that's going to interest people.

Q: Has your family always known that they could be the inspiration for your personal films?

MG: Maybe not. It's hard to tell how they think. They encountered so much. Of course by doing that, I show it to them so it's sort of comforting probably. If I have any success, they are sort of part of it because they've been supportive all the time, so they're a part of it anyway but to show it, to officialize it probably gives them some pride.

Q: You weathered a lot of problems on The Green Hornet. Why was was it so hard to make?

MG: It's a little bit cursed. Even the one with Bruce Lee had just one season and was cancelled, so it doesn't have a history of success, which could be scary to say but it's challenging. It's interesting. That was what was proposed to me and I was interested in doing it, so I had a choice. I could have done it or done something else. It has not been a straight road. It's been very windy.

Q: Is it a relief to be done principal photography?

MG: Yeah, of course. Now I see all the problem. I see, "Oh, I should have shot it this way." I wish I had known, but it's always like that.

Q: Do you look at the comic book movies like The Dark Knight and Watchmen to see where the style is going?

MG: It doesn't fit very much in that style. I respect it but it's sort of a caricature of filmmaking. I always thought comic book being a much lighter art form should not be depending on film but should be leading film and be more creative. I see more of those comic books as overly filmic. Dark Knights and these serious knights are not my cup of tea. I like comic books but more like Crumb or the independent ones. I don't like genres that have so many codes. I don't like zomie movies, I don't like vampire movies. I know a lot of people like that because they're sort of in control of society with rules. Really it's not for me. I don't like for instance games that you play like Monopoly and such, because it's not creative to me to have so many rules.

Q: We're wondering what the Michel Gondry take on an action movie would be.

MG: Yeah, yeah, it's pretty good I think.

The Thorn in the Heart is now playing in select theaters.

Brendan Rowe is one of those hidden gems of a tattooer in the Los Angeles area. Between his incredible dedication to his craft and a great sense of humor, it’s hard to imagine anyone hasn’t already been exposed to his work. A solid tattooer for the past nine years, it’s strongly suggested anyone... more

Brendan Rowe is one of those hidden gems of a tattooer in the Los Angeles area. Between his incredible dedication to his craft and a great sense of humor, it’s hard to imagine anyone hasn’t already been exposed to his work. A solid tattooer for the past nine years, it’s strongly suggested anyone within driving distance try advantage of his short waiting list while they still can. With the mix of traditional style and an equal amount of modern color theory, his style can only be classified as timeless. Anyone that has sought quality tattoo work in the Los Angeles area knows tattoo artists are a dime a dozen, but I assure you Brendan is a rare breed.



TattooSnob: Let's get the most generic question out of the way. Tell us a little about yourself!
Brendan Rowe: Hmmmm... the about me, huh? I hate these, I feel like there's so much pressure to say something really fantastic. But still humble. So, I'm an over thinking, self diagnosed neurotic who tattoos people for a living. Nah, I'm just kidding. I am a sarcastic asshole though, I love giving people a hard time. I think it comes with the job. Tattooers are such shit talkers.

Well, I would say I'm an artist at heart. I love everything that has anything remotely related to the subject. I've been making art since I can remember, and I can definitely see myself gray and painting.

My job is my life, I've been doing it 9 years and I still love going to work everyday!




TS: Artists often refer to a time period when it all came together, could you tell us a bit about when that was for you?
BR: I would say about 3 years ago. I kinda grew up and let go of some baggage. I started drawing for drawings sake again and just being me. I worked with this guy Aaron, in Portland, ME. He taught me a lot about life and work. He would always joke about how hard our job was and how lucky we were to be doing it. And we are. I love tattooing and I love art, and that's what I do. That feels good.

That's when it all came together for me, when I let go of my little boy ego, and went back to just drawing pictures on people and paper. As a result, I feel like I'm producing my best work and it keeps getting better everyday.

TS: At one point you mentioned to me that you use vegan tattoo ink. To be honest I didn't realize most inks weren't vegan until you pointed it out. Why did you make the switch?
BR: It's not so much about Vegan as it is safe and organic. With the popularity of tattooing, came money. One unfortunate result of that is, there are more bad products than good on the market these days.

There are a lot of inks that contain some shit you don't want in your body, i.e. latex, plastics, heavy metals, and I'm sure a bunch of other shit I'm not aware of. I mean when something is reactive to UV light, do you really want it in your body? For the rest of your life?

I think a lot of people dismiss the fact that this substance is going on the ride with you from this day forward. For better or worse. Potentially like 50+ years.

There are very few ingredients needed to make a good, long-lasting ink. I'd tell you, but that's just some magic that I don't share.




TS: You obviously have a lot of requests for work. What's the best way for someone to get in touch with you?
BR:[/] Call me at the shop, or come by, I always ask new clients to come in and talk to me. I like to meet people and hear their ideas in person. There is so much miscommunication in emails and phone calls. The shop has a super comfy couch that I like to sit down with new and old clients to rap out their ideas.

TS: How long can the average client expect to wait before being able to get an appointment with you?
BR: About a month, usually. Sometimes quicker, sometimes slower.

TS: Is there one tattoo you've done that you'd consider a personal favorite?
BR: Favorite? They're all my babies, I love them equally. But, if I had to choose... it's this guy. There's some deeper meaning behind this tit lovin' maniac!



TS: Let's talk about the last time you were tattooed - who did it, and what was it?
BR: It was by the fantastic Mr. Marcus Kuhn of Just Good Tattoos and soon to be Art Work Rebel. And it was a Chakra in my right palm.

TS: Are there any artists out there you'd like to be tattooed by, space and time permitting of course?
BR: Hopefully this winter I'll be sitting down under the talented Jason Kundell, space and time permitting of course. I would love to be tattooed by a number of people, but the space is the problem. I don't have much left, and when Jason's done, I'm afraid I'll be down to "collector" pieces. And that list is long, Juan Puente, Lu's Lips, Grime, Jeff Zuck, Sung Song. There's a bunch.

TS: What are some of your favorite tattoo conventions to attend/work at? Do you have any you specifically like to work, or any new ones you'll be checking out this year?
BR: Favorites? None so far, really. I haven't gotten the chance to check out a lot of different shows. I find it hard to get out of the shop. More recently though, this past 1st annual Hollywood show was really good! I hope they do that one again. And I'm super excited to get on my way to Portland, OR in October, really looking forward to that!



TS: Let's get completely off-topic for a second and talk about the Christmas photos you took last year. Any chance this will become a yearly thing?

BR: HA. I'm thinking it might. It will be hard to top last year! That was a lot of fun! Our motley crew walking in Sears portrait studio, tattooed and rocking Christmas sweaters. Hats off to the ladies working there. They definitely took control and made asses out of us. It was great!

TS: During longer tattoo sessions people are prone to chatting--I know some entertaining subjects are bound to come up. Any particularly humorous memories you'd like to share?
BR: Endorphins are fantastic. Sometimes. I've tattooed some characters. I've got a great story that I tell clients when they ask me this question. It involves trench coats, a box cutter, blood, cigarettes, and someone passing out flat on the floor. It's quite good. Or I tell them about the time the woman pulled an Exorcist and painted my wall in vomit. No exaggeration... painted that fucking wall!

TS: What are you involved with aside from tattooing?
BR: I regretfully am not involved with anything as of now. I'm new to LA and I have been putting all my energy into clientele and settling in here. I see some projects in the future, just need to find the time.

I do find the time to pursue art in many mediums. I've been screen-printing a lot lately. Maybe some clothes on the horizon? I still love to paint and explore new mediums.




TS: Any last minute plugs?
BR: Myself and friends:

LOBSTERKNUCKLE.com
myspace.com/lobsterknuckle
UNBREAKABLETATTOO.com
ARTWORKREBELS.com




Brendan Rowe

TattooSnob.com

John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten) says he doesn't like tattoos, but try not to hold that against him. If I'd been calling in on behalf of a golf magazine, he'd probably tell me how much he's offended the sport. Not because he's disagreeable -- he really isn't -- but because... more

John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten) says he doesn't like tattoos, but try not to hold that against him. If I'd been calling in on behalf of a golf magazine, he'd probably tell me how much he's offended the sport. Not because he's disagreeable -- he really isn't -- but because first and foremost, above all else, the OG punk rocker is a provocateur and contrarian.

The Sex Pistols frontman is back on the scene after reviving his post-punk avant-garde music project Public Image Limited (a.k.a. PiL). The band, which was formed in 1978 in the wake of The Pistols dramatic demise, featured a revolving cast of players (including SG's Martin Atkins), with Lydon being the driving force and only constant.

Returning to the stage after a 17-year hiatus, PiL played a series of critically acclaimed shows in the UK in the latter part of 2009. With the music industry in a state of flux, and with very little cash flowing to support any artistic endeavors, Lydon financed the reunion in a true-to-form, eyebrow-raising fashion. The singer who had once called for "Anarchy in the UK" become a spectacularly unlikely spokesman for a brand of British butter called Country Life, appearing in a humorous commercial which sent sales of the saturated fat soaring.

Lydon, who lives in California, is now set to bring the organized chaos that is PiL stateside. The band will be playing Club Nokia in Downtown LA on April 13 prior to a highly anticipated opening-night performance at Coachella and a series of dates across the US.

SuicideGirls called Lydon up at his Malibu home to talk a little bollocks about life, butter, music, politics, PiL, the psychology of punk - and his apparent dislike of body ink.

John Lydon: Who's this?

Nicole Powers: It's Nicole Powers with SuicideGirls.

JL: Is that a magazine?

NP: It's a website.

JL: It's a most unfriendly title.

NP: Well it actually doesn't refer to people behaving like lemmings and jumping off cliffs.

JL: I hope not. [laughs] Because I couldn't be condoning that.

NP: It's actually a reference to a Chuck Palahniuk phrase that he used to describe a subculture of people who chose to commit social by having tattoos and piercings.

JL: Oh that's quite novel.

NP: It's a very punk rock concept, since it's about people choosing to mark their body permanently, thereby permanently committing social suicide with regards to the mainstream.

JL: Oh tattoos.

NP: You don't like them?

JL: No.

NP: Oh dear! What's your objection?

JL: I think that they're ugly. [laughs]

NP: Oh no! You're not supposed to say that! Everyone assumes that tattoos are punk rock by default.

JL: Certainly not! [laughs] Not to my estimation at all. They're the very last thing I would want to be doing, to put a moniker on my body that I might not quite approve of in a few years time. You know, "Love ya Sharron," and then you're stuck with it. What I find with tattoos though is the lack of originality, particularly a punk type concept of it. It's what people think will make them punk, when punk really is a mentality.

NP: I can appreciate that. I mean I'm aware that you done things like the Country Life butter commercial, and the UK I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here reality TV series, and the nature shows, which might seem cheesy. But then for you, that's the most punk rock thing you can do, because that's precisely the opposite of what society expects you to do.

JL: Well yeah, and it doesn't happen deliberately, it just opportunity knocks -- and I get knocked for it.

NP: Well there's no knocking from this direction.

JL: Oh, thank you! But you know, the butter campaign, which was to promote a British product, I thought it was a very brave thing on my behalf. The money that I earned from that has now gone completely -- lock stock and barrel -- into reforming PiL.

NP: Well I actually want to congratulate Country Life Butter, because it was a risk on their part.

JL: It was. It was seriously, seriously an interesting project, from start to finish. Because it was an insane prospect originally, and definitely tweaked my interest.

NP: It's butter with balls, because they were putting the reputation of their brand in your hands.

JL: Yeah, they took a gamble and I treated them with the utmost respect because of that...They were very, very gracious with me. They presented something like a script, and I told them I would adlib and improvise. They went with that, and it paid off.

NP: I read one of your interviews where you talked about how Country Life Butter has been more supportive of your music than any record label.

JL: Yes. They've treated me with more respect than any record label I've ever worked with, and that's a very strange thing to be saying. You would presume that they're corporate and therefore the enemy. So we should be very careful who we attach false rumors and labels to, as indeed many have been attached to me over the years erroneously...I'm very pleased that I made butter acceptable again socially.

NP: You increased sales by 85% I understand.

JL: That's an astounding figure. Really, really kind of overwhelming. Good, golly, gosh! And my record company said they can't sell a record.

NP: What I found interesting reading the press building up to this tour is that you're finally getting the respect for what you did with PiL 14 or 15 years too late.

JL: Yes.

NP: I guess in the scheme of things its good, because there's many artists throughout history that didn't get any respect until after they died. But it might have been nice for people to give you some respect for PiL a little sooner.

JL: Well it might not also. Because I'm the kind of person, I do have inner resolve and inner strengths, and so I'm able to -- and I love to quote Shakespeare when it suits me -- I smile in the face of adversity. In many ways the struggle is as enjoyable as the achievement. You can't keep a good dog down and all that -- maybe I should have a dog tattoo. [laughs]

NP: Well you worry about getting a tattoo that you'll later regret, but part of having tattoo is that you live life with no regrets. That's a very important part of the ethos.

JL: Yes. I gather that. It's certainly a way of making yourself alienated, unless everybody on planet earth has a tattoo. Because it divides doesn't it? And the powers that be just don't seem to want to employ people with tattoos.

I'll tell you, my 15-year old nephew, he's just put a tattoo on his neck and of course it's creating all kinds of uproar in the family. But it's knowing where that's going to take him, because the school have thrown him out.

Also, and I don't mean to be sounding nasty here, but Steve Jones, a fellow Sex Pistol, I hate his tattoos. They all seem to be the mass consumption ones, you know. I don't see anything that strikes me as impressively different. There's a poisoning aspect in there because of that. But I do love art, and a jolly decent drawing or painting transferred to a human body can be impressive.

One tattoo that impressed me, it was years ago, was a jigsaw thing, from head to toe, a complete jigsaw pattern. It was most excellent. I thought that was a clever idea. It was a jigsaw puzzle with a few pieces missing here and there. I thought that was really great. Things like that that spark and immediate interest. But, my god, I live on the beach here, and the amount of second hand work is appalling. So unfortunately for you and your website, I'm focusing on all the negatives at the moment, but then I've had a career where I've suffered all the negative aspects -- and I think wrongly. I think I've done nothing but good for music. I've been consistent at it too. I think I've offered purposefully and honestly enough so many new genres into music, and to see them imitated now and be part of the casual mindset of modern music, it's intriguing that my name is missing from the list of thank yous.

NP: Well they do say imitation is the best form of flattery.

JL: No. I've dealt with that expression and I've found it to be not true. It actually a cheeky way of saying, "Thanks, look what I've stolen from ya."

NP: I can see that. Being paid in return for the inspiration would be the best form of flattery.

JL: It would kind of help. Or at least [to be] given a nod and wink in the correct way and direction. Because I do believe in respecting my fellow human beings and I don't like to see anyone, including myself, disrespected. I see no reason for it. All my life what I've done is fight for the individual, and fight for groups that are downtrodden, be it race, creed or color, or whatever economic or social reason. To be still treated as some kind of fowl-mouthed job is a bit upsetting and wrong.

NP: Well you are very erudite. I know that you're a big bookworm too.

JL: Yes. Love books. One of the greatest tragedies of me at the moment is that my eyesight is beginning to wane. That might be from sheer over-reading, and that's really painful because the concept of losing my eyesight is really challenging to me. It's like I've run it in my mind: what couldn't I afford to lose, my ears or my eyes? Oddly enough, being somewhat of a musician, I concluded my eyes. Because nature, I couldn't bear to not be observing it. I find that much more musical than anything I've ever done.

NP: You've done some nature programs haven't you? What inspired you to do the nature stuff.

JL: Because I love life, all kinds. I don't know what it is that makes a thing live but I'm deeply intrigued by that, whether it be an ant, a mollusk or an elephant, or indeed my fellow human beings. I realize, as humans, we are top of the agenda because we have that most magnificent gift of all -- language.

NP: Some scientists are starting to argue that there's levels of intelligence and communication amongst animals that mean certain species should actually be given human-like rights.

JL: Yes. That's a fascinating subject, particularly the way whales can communicate. I love sharks and particularly great whites. When I was doing that program on them, I noticed that they do have a form of communication with each other. They definitely have a hierarchy, and a grouping. They travel in packs and that's surely not the wild, free-roaming, savage killers we've been led to misbelieve.

NP: So if animals are so communicative, it's not really language that sets us apart from the animal world, really the only thing is art.

JL: Well, I don't know, I've seen chimpanzees paint.

NP: ...And elephants.

JL: And elephants, I've cottoned on to that. I'm not sure of the artistic value. I'd have to see more elephants' work.

NP: And there's some debate about whether they're just following cues from their trainers, and repeating actions, rather than deciding to paint a flower.

JL: Yes, there's every possibility of that. Do you know that killer whale that killed the instructor recently? You can't tame the beast in them and at some point these poor animals are going to become incredibly frustrated at the prison we've wrapped them in. This is why I'm very anti zoos. That's what that is, that act of aggression is, "I want out."

NP: But then the flip side of that is that there are zoos that are very responsible with things like breeding programs.

JL: But what are they breeding? They're breeding animals that know nothing but captivity. And to be quite frank there some wonderful nature programs that show you these creatures in their natural environments -- be happy with that. That's not the same as a wolf in a box in the corner of Whipsnade Zoo is it?

http://www.zsl.org/zsl-whipsnade-zoo/

In fact I had problems when I was visiting the gorilla terrain with that too. That American money was beginning to creep in and there was future prospects of them building five star hotels for American tourists to go on gorilla safaris. Well if you start doing that you're absolutely murdering what these lovely wonderful beasts are all truly about...I think humans do not have the right to turn wild beasts into tourist attractions. It really, really upsets me. The game reserves in Africa upset me. They're all rounded up and back in their cage for the evening and let out in the morning.

NP: Well it all goes back to this idea of extending what we know as human rights to animals, and figuring out how far down the food chain you go.

JL: All the way. It's an interesting discussion. It isn't openly debated quite yet, but I'd like to see it done so. I think it could only be to the advancement of all causes.

NP: Well also when you treat animals without humanity, you're compromising your own.

JL: Yes. I can't stand to see those chicken farms and the slaughter house things. But I do understand that we have two different sets of teeth in our mouths and as a species I don't suppose we would ever have advance this far by lettuce leaves alone.

NP: So are you a vegetarian?

JL: No. I tend to eat what's available according to the environment I'm in. Thirty years of touring has taught me that, otherwise I'd be looking for grass and bean sprouts in Milwaukee.

I tell you what the shock for me is, living in America, is how cheep chicken is. Don't be raising the price on cigarettes, because that's a choice issue there. But with certain food things, if we treated animals with a bit more respect and cost, I think the slaughter and cruelty would go down as the price went up. So that may be a solution there other than Chrissie Hynde's "Meat is Murder" brigade, which takes it to too far of an extreme all at once.

NP: Right. A chicken's life should be worth more than five bucks.

JL: Yeah. Absolutely.

NP: I'm not a vegetarian either, but I want my chicken to have led a happy and fulfilled life before it died.

JL: Otherwise what are you eating but misery? Well that's going to translate into your system eventually.

NP: And knowing I didn't give a shit about that chicken's life is going to eat into my soul.

JL: Yes, I believe that.

NP: So I'm all about eating happy and fulfilled animals.

JL: Yeah, but maybe not always. I mean there are huge amounts of my time when I don't drink alcohol, but there are other times when I do, and it's the same with meat. But I don't believe running around assaulting women in fur coats is going to solve anything.

NP: Well there is the argument that plants have feeling too..

JL: Ah, Prince Charles led this charge didn't he. He played Pink Floyd to his cabbages. I'm not sure where that's left him with regards to standing and reason with the world but a novelty. I mean he's a Buddhist, and that's where his leaning would naturally take him. It's novel. It might actually be true. He might actually be doing a cabbage a favor. You take it too far though it would leave us without any food source whatsoever, and that's stone cold bonkers. I mean I don't want the whole world to end up like emaciated models.

NP: So you like meat on your women?

JL: I like human being to look human, not like concentration camp victims.

NP: Well that's also what SuicideGirls is all about, redefining beauty to take it away from the model stereotype.

JL: Well you have to. It's preposterous. There's no one out there really capable of being that thin in the general public so who are you making and selling this dress to? Basically a bag of bones. Very unattractive. And I don't want my world full of everyone in the same size. Good heavens. I get problems with that myself, you see I'm big boned -- there's a polite way of putting it.

NP: But you always seem pretty svelte on stage.

JL: Well I have to be fit to do what I do, but I don't exercise. There's not really what you would call a muscle on me.

NP: So how do you stay fit if you don't exercise?

JL: Stress.

NP: Ahh. So what's been stressing you out recently?

JL: Trying to keep this tour together. Definitely handling the finances of it, and hoping it will be a success. I'm hoping it will raise some level of interest in what's gone wrong with the music industry, and what's still right with me. I would expect that to be of some interest to audiences both young and old.

NP: Absolutely. Music, generally, is so bland today.

JL: The latest thing I find so offensive is Sting trying to go Irish. He's done a jazz album, now he's trying to be like a Gaelic folk artist. It's just upsetting that he's not creating new genres from his own heart and soul. It's all set formats already laid out on a table for him. In he comes and fine dines, and out he waltzes onto the next menu. It's a little lazy.

NP: What do you think of Lady Gaga?

JL: I think she hilariously is very, very interesting. We know what she's up to, we know what she's doing, it's that she does it very, very well. There's a great sense of fun and self-mockery in it, which is very endearing.

NP: There's an intelligence behind it.

JL: Yeah, there is. And they are actually great pop songs. I think "Paparazzi" is stunning, amazing, such a clever way to deal with the subject.

NP: Who else do you find interesting right now?

JL: Off the top of my head nothing is coming to mind.

NP: It's a bland world out there.

JL: It is.

NP: I understand on the PiL tour you're going to be culling songs from your entire discography, some solo stuff, some Pistols stuff.

JL: Probably not The Pistols end of it, because I really want to focus on PiL and the achievements therein. If I started putting in Pistols material indeed I'd be there all night long. We play on average two and a half hours per night, although in America there's some license restrictions on that, particularly [at] Coachella. They originally offered us only one hour, but they've sensibly given us an hour and a half. But that's still not long enough for a PiL performance.

NP: Have you been out to Coachella before?

JL: Yes. It's baking bloody hot and freezing cold at night. The waiting and the hanging around in that baking heat is very draining. The waiting before any gig is so amazingly stressful.

NP: But compared to Glastonbury, Coachella is the five star festival experience.

JL: Listen, I go back 45 years and I remember the original festivals when I was 12 and 15. I'd go off to them on my own. I'd bunk up on the train. The atmosphere was amazing. It could be raining all weekend and it was just one big horrible mud bath, [but] it just always seemed better. These festivals these days seem to orchestrated. The idea of having to use a credit card to get into the toilet is insane. Everything is about purchase isn't it? You end up feeling like you're just visiting some weird and wacky shopping mall. The music, in that you're offered an infinite variety of music, that's always intriguing, but the modern aspect of these things is they have three or four stages operating at the same time. To see one band you're going to miss a couple of others. I wish it was just one stage. I don't like that dissipation of energy. It creates the cattle herding environment of people having to shift from one field to another. That's negative. It negates the open-mindedness that festivals are supposedly originally all about.

NP: Are there any other bands at Coachella you're looking forward to seeing?

JL: I'm really pleased that Jay-Z is on at the same time. No dis of his music, some of those records are great, absolutely. But live, it comes across to me like a Las Vegas production. And I say this out of experience because a few years back at a Pistols gig in Poland, Jay-Z was on the bill there and I got to catch some of that show. I just thought you could put Liberace in the middle of that and it wouldn't be much different. I thought it was rather poor because it was just him going "u-huh, huh, huh" in between all this dancing and flashing lights and it became irritating. It wasn't a sharing experience. He wasn't sharing anything. It was just showing off. I can't bear acts that go on and tell you how great they are. It's a negative for me. PiL is all about open up your heart and here we go.

NP: So when you're not playing music and reading books, what do you do?

JL: I'm yelling at the news.

NP: I shout at the TV too.

JL: I can't help it. I find Faux News very entertaining. It's wonderful. I'm never going to be disappointed with the absurdities I hear nightly, and daily...In fact the entire network is to me deeply hilarious that it's run under the guise of news. How the word news can be so misinterpreted.

Saying that I love Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and coupled together, for anyone who has children, it's surely the best hour of family viewing. Children really and truly do understand and grasp the bigger issues.

NP: Talking of children, you're the stepfather of Ari Up from The Slits. They reformed recently too.

JL: Well they're bumming about yeah. That's a band that's not reformed, they're not like that. When they get the money together they go out and play, it's as simple as that. There are times when all of us have to be very, very careful on the purse-strings, because we do live almost momentarily, from moment to moment. When the money's there you can do things. There's no one there giving us handouts for this.

NP: Right. It's often hard for people to understand how you can be in a big name band and still live a very hand to mouth existence.

JL: Well my band has an enormous name and reputation, but it's not record company supported. So indeed where are the finances supposed to come from? It's extreme hard work. Everything I do outside of the band, for me, goes back into it. I'm not unhappy about that situation. That seems to be the way it works best for me, as indeed it had to right from the very beginning when I first formed Public Image.

NP: Well artists throughout history have relied on sponsors.

JL: Yes. This is very true. Every classical composer had to have a royal family to pay them. Do you think I should approach the Queen for a bob or two?

NP: I think you should. I mean you've done so much to promote her.

JL: And I would think not negatively. Hopefully I've made it completely clear to the royal family that while I'm paying tax for them I have every right to comment. More so than most I would think seeing as I have to go through all kinds of rigmarole to earn enough to be able to pay that tax. I suppose the way I live, and Ari is the same way with The Slits, is outside of the system.

NP: What are your feelings towards the royal family these days?

JL: Wonderful people. Is there room for inbreds? Yes, of course. If in any way, shape or form you love to study nature there's a classic example.

NP: Well in America, even though there is not royalty, we've created an aristocratic class with the likes of the Hiltons and the Bush families.

JL: And the Kennedys.

NP: So there is a social need for it.

JL: Well whether you like it or not you have to face up to the fact that human beings somewhat need some kind of leadership. I'm all for the art of the individual, but I'm very aware that many people can't possibly be that way. Without someone telling them what to do they feel hopelessly lost. Now that might be because of the education system we all have to suffer our way through.

NP: Well the problem with democracy is it relies on an educated populace, and we don't have that anymore.

JL: No. Odd isn't it?

NP: That's why you see so many people voting against their interest. I know that you've been very vocal about the need to encourage literacy and education.

JL: Yes. I used to run an internet radio thing which went for six hours every Saturday morning. On it I would debate with politicians and so-called, alleged intelligentsia. I remember serious debates, me saying I think children should not look down on education because I see it as just about the only thing that's free that actually carries any value. But I would get pedantic nonsense like, "Education: What does that word mean?" Well it can mean many things, but it's allowing children to be open-minded. And I'm afraid you're never going to get that with a Republican led country.

Their behavior as of late I think has embarrassed America immensely across the entire planet, and they're still promoting anger and ignorance. They really do want to keep us dumb. I mean they even want their own president to be dumb. George Bush is a classic example of how they so ill-consider us as a population. I view myself as American in this respect, because that's where I live and pay tax. I find it infuriating.

NP: So if you were president, what would you do?

JL: Retire. [laughs] I think, unlike the Bush's I would bring broccoli back to the White House. I remember that was one of his biggest issues, he hated broccoli. It's funny, every Republican president we've had, they're all very, very big meat-eaters, and they're very against vegetables. It's bizarre. This is why they're all constipated, and hence the lack of brain cells.

NP: Well probably George Bush's greatest achievement was officially declaring ketchup a vegetable.

JL: Wonderful huh? Well officially he is a vegetable. I've seen a most excellent bit of footage on CNN yesterday morning. It was terrific. It shows him and Clinton out in Haiti dealing with the homeless there. That's a great thing, to say America's here to help you. But every time George Bush shook hands with someone he then wiped his hand on Clinton's shirt. Now what does that say? A lot. Volumes. And that kind of misrepresentation of this country has got to stop. You can look at it in many ways. Is he being humorous? But ultimately he's being insulting. There's still the implication of 'you dirty peoples,' and that's wrong.

NP: So if you met George Bush what would you say to him?

JL: I'd say: "Sit down you drunken uncle." I know he's allegedly given up alcohol, but the effects are still in there. I think when he was young he drunk enough to last a lifetime.

NP: I could never quite put my finger on whether George Bush was really dumb, or really clever and acting dumb to appeal to the masses.

JL: I think he's like this; You've been to birthday parties, you know, when it's for kids and all the family members gather. He's that stupid uncle that spills the lemonade on the table and spoils the kid's birthday cake. That's him.

NP: Well the lemonade he's spilt on the planet we're going to be cleaning up for years.

JL: Yes. But that's it. He's clumsy. He thinks he's witty. He possibly is. If he's left in less dangerous situations you might actually find him very pleasant, but never, ever give a man like that a position of responsibility. People voting [for him], that's bad enough. But the fact is that party fully supported Coco the Clown and let him lose on the world. And the result is two catastrophic wars in the Middle East. Please! Why are we listening to them anymore?

NP: Well, that goes back to education.

JL: Well you know as well as I do that Republicans are not for educating the masses. They believe completely in private schooling, and bugger the rest of us.

NP: Well thank you for taking the time out to chat. I'm very much looking forward to the live show.

JL: Alrighty. Ooh, can I end on the best tattoo I've ever seen?

NP: Please do.

JL: It was on Fantasy Island. The little bloke was called tattoo.