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Interview magazine The
wisdom of the Wild. Sandra
Bernhard interviewed by Tori Amos Sandra Bernhard is an actress, comedienne, performance artist and singer
whose unconventional views continue to break social boundaries. Her latest
album, ‘Excuses for Bad Behavior, Part One,’ features her wry but heartfelt
musical interpretation of old hits and contemporary culture. It’s happening again. A time when boundaries are being broken right and
left. About time that happened again. About time breaking down the patterns
became more cheered than acts of conforming to them. About time success for the
sake of it became less important than content. About time those who really have
something to say get the hearing they deserve. There will always be those who
are unafraid to take the stage and show that talent is something that can never
be tamed. And there will always be those who pigeonhole them as wild. Well, the
way we see it, what some call wild we call the wisdom of the wild—wisdom
because to let out what’s inside is the way to individual freedom. It’s also a
way to break down the boundaries between us all by getting what’s inside us all
out in the open. That’s why, in this special feature on the wisdom of the wild,
we decided to really let loose with a story that runs twelve pages and includes
up-to-the-minute interviews with, and photographs of, three entertainers who
are incontrovertibly about breaking boundaries. Starting with Sandra Bernhard,
an actress, comedienne, performance artist, and singer who has freed herself
from traditional show-biz confines and who also has a new album, aptly titled
Excuses for Bad Behavior, Part One, coming out this month. The subject of our
second story, Little Richard, helped to pioneer the rock ‘n’ roll revolution of
the 1950s. Still on the loose at sixty-one, the rocker who was once considered
off his rocker continues to cross the lines of sexual, racial, and even musical
stereotypes—and to break boundaries as a performer who is so far out, it seems
he’s still years ahead of everyone else. And finally, we’ve added a little
finale about another singer who, like Little Richard, also has Little in his
name, and whose one-of-a-kind talent is so big we’re predicting that the whole
world will soon be getting wise to him. All we can say is, it’s about time. Sandra Bernhard wants to talk about music. Her new album, Excuses for Bad
Behavior, Part One (Epic/550 Music), is being released this month, and it is
full of her wry but heartfelt musical take on past hits and contemporary
culture. Upon Bernhard’s request, we asked fellow woman in song and passion,
Tori Amos , to interview the outspoken actress-singer-all-around-pop-icon.
Amos, whose second album, Under the Pink (Atlantic), has just gone platinum,
once sang backup on Bernhard’s Without You I’m Nothing album and was eager to
hook up with her old pal again. The two met over mint tea and iced coffee
recently at Tea & Sympathy in Manhattan. P.G. Tori Amos: Thank you for having
me do this. I’ve never done this before but I’m gonna try and do a good job. Sandra Bernhard: It’ll just be
like a really easy talk. Tori: I love your new record. Sandra: Do you? I’m really glad. Tori: I think you should sell
crystal suppositories with it. Sandra: (laughs) That’s a
brilliant idea. I love that. Tori: When I listen to this
thing, what keeps coming back to me is that you’re one of the few people who
talks about the stuff that’s really going on inside. You uncover feelings that
we hide from ourselves. None of that “just love everybody no matter what you’re
feeling” stuff has worked for me. I mean, I think there are moments when some
of those New Age tapes can help. But what kind of tape am I going to listen to
when I want to fuck some guy, but I’m not supposed to fuck him because I’m
supposed to be fucking another guy? But you’re one person who talks about real
feelings. I love your “Sympathy for the Devil,” by the way. Sandra: Well, you know, the
Stones have always evoked that kind of ‘60s and ‘70s sexual awakening, and it
just seemed more interesting to me to interpret it as a kind of sexual ballad. Tori: You’re Jewish, right? Sandra: Right. Tori: I don’t know many Jewish
people who really talk about Jesus a lot the way you do. Sandra: Well, I’m sure that Jesus
was an incredible person, you know? He must have been really something. Tori: Who knows, maybe you were
there. Who knows - you might have blown him! (laughs) I don’t really doubt it. Sandra: (laughs) I’m sure we
crossed paths on the rocky roads to crucifixions. But you know, it’s always
stuck out in my mind that you’re never really part of America unless you landed
at Plymouth Rock. You’re almost always a visitor here. As much as I love
America, as much as I feel American, there’s still that constant fear that you
don’t really belong. Tori: Well, I think if you have
big lips, you certainly don’t belong in this country. Sandra: Well, I certainly didn’t
belong when I was in high school. Now people are trying to buy lips. Tori: Yeah, but I hate that. I
don’t think it’s fair that these girls can go buy lips. I mean, I had my lips
when I was nine, and boys called me “bubble lips,” and they didn’t know what
lips could do. The thing that kills me is that these girls who can buy lips
never had to go through being nine years old and… Sandra: Exactly. That’s what I’m
saying. They never had to pay the price of alienation. Tori: That’s right. They have no
right to have those lips. Sandra: But they’ll lose them;
eventually their lips are absorbed back into their system. Tori: People don’t know that they’re
not real - that’s what really gets me. You know, you can’t fake a voice. You
can’t fake humor. As we know, some people try to fake humor. Sandra: That’s for sure. And you
have some people trying to fake a voice, too, so it’s all kind of
interconnected. (Tori laughs) So here we are.... Tori: Six years later. (laughs) I
remember being in the recording studio that day. You were jumping up and down,
doing your record Without You I’m Nothing, and I came in to do “oohs”
for you on “Little Red Corvette.” Sandra: That’s right. And they’re
great “oohs.” Tori: (pauses) Such a long time.
And then I waited on you - remember? - at a Steven Spielberg tribute dinner. I
was an usher-waitress. Sandra: Jesus Christ. Tori: And you said to me, “What
are you doing here?” And I said, “I’m an usher-waitress.” And you said, “When
are you gonna do something?” Sandra: I knew you were already
doing something, but I meant, When is someone gonna do something for you? I was
up in Boston recently, and they played your video late at night on one of the
local Boston music shows and they interviewed you. You were talking about your
song “Cornflake Girl” and how it was all about girlfriends dissing each other.
That really stuck out in my mind. There are so few women in general, let alone
in the business, who aren’t completely threatened and confused by other women’s
success. It’s a very disappointing thing. I’ve always gotten myself overly
involved in supporting other women who’ve not always been as supportive in
return. I think it’s a woman’s responsibility to her friends and to other women
who are real artists and real sufferers to say, “I believe in you, and I know it’s
hard, but it’s gotta come together.” That’s why when I saw your success, I
thought, It’s just so great and weird and perfect. Tori: That’s what “Cornflake Girl”
evokes. It’s based on the Alice Walker book. The women that I wrote it about
were people who I thought I knew. Then, all of a sudden, my jaw is on the floor
going, “No, she didn’t do this; she didn’t say this; she doesn’t mean this.” It
reminds me of when you talk about reality over and over on your record. Instead
of, “Well, let me see their higher self,” it’s, “No, honey, I don’t want to see
their higher self; I want to see…” Sandra: Who the fuck they really
are! Tori: Yeah! Not potential
behavior, but where they are choosing to stand right now. Your work is
interesting because there’s so much humor, of course, but there’s also that
place in the heart that comes through, especially in this record, that I love
so much. Sandra: I wanted to go in a much
more musical direction this time because music is my first love. Tori: Is it really? Sandra: Oh, yeah. When I came to
L.A., that was what I wanted to be: an entertainer, a singer, in the mode of a
Bette Midler. Tori: But you’re doing that. Sandra: Yeah. I am doing that,
but in an edgier way. I think that I’m trying to appeal to the disenfranchised “everybody,”
not just specifically gay. The song on my album called “Phone Sex” is really
about alienation and loneliness, and about being a voyeur, because in this day
and age it’s much safer, physically and emotionally, to be a voyeur. I’m so
obsessed with the commerciality of sexuality these days. It’s available at your
fingertips—twenty-four hours a day you can have sexual encounters with people
you’ll never meet. And just what does that do to the psyche? I mean, people who
really get into that, who depend on that—where are they at? Tori: It keeps coming back to,
Where’s the romance? Sandra: Where’s the emotion, and
where’s the commitment, and where’s the vulnerability? Tori: Where is kissing? Where is
walking in the rain and having peanut butter and jelly together and going, I
don’t need any more than this. I mean, in my mind, I usually don’t think about
fucking a guy. Or a woman, for that matter. For me, it’s always about having
peanut butter and jelly, and then kissing them. If you asked me what I’d like
to do right now out of anything else in the whole world, there’s just this one
person that makes me feel really good. And I don’t want to have a relationship
with this person, but I would just love to kiss them. It’s not about cheating
on anybody. That kills me that if you’re with someone, you can’t have a moment with
someone else. Sandra: Well, I think we all do
have moments with other people. For most of my relationships, I would have
liaisons, and I would feel guilty. I would be dishonorable in a relationship
because I wasn’t getting what I wanted from that person. It was unfulfilling
and untruthful. And now I’m in a relationship where I really love and respect
the person. I mean, I can’t say that I have no desire to flirt or have that
moment, but I don’t know how much you need to really have those kind of Henry
Miller-esque experiences for your entire life. I think that becomes really
draining, when you’re constantly looking for things from other people, but you’re
not looking within yourself. You’re on tour now, aren’t you? Tori: Yeah, I’m on tour. Sandra: So you’re probably
exhausted and really vulnerable, and wherever you stop, you’re looking for
somebody for some comfort. Tori: Yeah, but Henry Miller hasn’t
shown up on the tour yet. I seem to find myself turning more to the audience
for comfort these days. Sandra: When people pay to see
you live, they already connect with you on a much deeper level than people who
just buy your records. It’s a very intimate, one-on-one experience with 2,000
people. Tori: And you’re not cheating on
anybody. Sandra: No! (Tori laughs) No, you’re
not cheating at all. It’s great. Tori: Are you going to tour for
this album? Sandra: In the fall. But I’m
always kind of on tour because I do a lot of college performances where I get
up with my guitar players and do a couple of songs and just talk to the
audience. I do questions and answers with the kids and see where they’re coming
from. Unfortunately, most of the college kids these days aren’t coming from any
place, at least the ones who come to see me. They seem to ask the same kind of
questions over and over again. They really become stuck in where their
sexuality is, so they ask a lot of questions about my sexuality. It’s hard for
me to relate to that curiosity anymore because it’s been so long since I’ve
been that fascinated by somebody’s sexuality. They still see me as somebody who’s
out there, who has built my career on discussing my sexuality. That must be
very fascinating, but for me it’s become boring. You just hope that they would ask
other questions and go a little bit deeper. Maybe this is where we’re at
culturally: Things are so scary and so intimidating with AIDS and the right
wing that people are looking for somebody to just give them those kinds of safe
harbors. Tori: I’ll tell you what scares
me. This isn’t a negative against this person I’m gonna bring up, but I just
have to bring her up. You know Kennedy, the MTV VJ, who’s a staunch Republican?
Sandra: Hmmmm! Now this is a
negative against her. When I heard about her, I was, like, totally blown away.
Then Vanity Fair had to actually do a piece on her where she says she’s
obsessed with Dan Quayle and thinks he’s really hot. Tori: I think Kennedy’s going
after a concept. She’s too smart to really believe what she’s saying. I’ve met
her, and I think that if she truly had to wake up with the things that Dan
Quayle talks about—not just the concept of Dan Quayle, or the concept of going
against the grain and liking somebody who has no concept of responsibility, or
the concept of that cute little elephant she has tattooed on her hip - then she
probably wouldn’t have the views she has. Sandra: I think she’s thinking,
Cool, I’m gonna be a rebel in the opposite way. But, on the other hand, maybe
she really is anti-abortion and anti-civil rights. But everything the right
wing stands for is against the music and the videos she’s promoting and introducing.
I mean, it’s like a total conflict. What is the point? Who is she trying to get
through to? I believe that people should have the right to do whatever the fuck
they want, and that’s not what the right wing thinks. So I do not support her
and I think she’s full of shit. I think she’s a very irresponsible, stupid
girl. Tori: Politically, I think you’re
a very strong figure. You talk about a lot of things, and you stand by what you
believe in. Sandra: Yeah, I always have. One
thing that’s really been important for me since I’ve become, like, this sort of
icon for the gay community - which was not self-appointed or necessarily even
accepted, because I don’t like the position - is that I’ve been able to express
people’s desires and their need to be free. But I don’t want to alienate the
rest of the world, because it’s important to me that the straight community
have a really healthy respect for the gay community. It’s always been kind of
my responsibility to go to the straight world and say, We all have the same
pains and the same disappointments. We can be beautiful; we can be ugly; we can
be masculine; we can be feminine; we can be straight or gay. But it scares me that
the gay community always expects me just to be there for them in that kind of
marginalized, ghettoized, unhealthy way. I think the great thing about being
the performer I am is that I’ve always spread it out to an audience who needs
to hear it a lot more than gay people do. I don’t need to be redundant to the
gay community about what’s wrong and what isn’t happening for them. Tori: Let’s talk about the New
Age movement, because you deal with it on this record. You obviously understand
the movement and yet you’re taking the piss out of it the whole time. Sandra: Well, I think the New Age
movement is very simplistic. Life moves too fast today, and there is no way
that you can just heal yourself, unless you’re completely isolated and living a
very privileged lifestyle. I think that Marianne Williamson and these others
who say breathily, “Look inside and just connect and love one another” - there’s
a lot of stuff to go through before you can love somebody. Tori: Right. You gotta look at
your hate first. Sandra: You gotta look at your
self-hatred first. You have to look at where you come from in terms of your
family and the kind of pains and fears you have from your past before you can
just walk into the world and say, I’m ready to love unconditionally. You have
to be an extremely evolved and smart and forgiving person. And I just don’t
always buy that those New Age gurus are where they profess they want you to be.
So, I’d rather take somebody like a Patti Smith or a Courtney Love and listen
to their kind of raw screaming-out than a Marianne Williamson. I just think
there’s more to be gained by people who admit their failure and their pain and
their fuck-ups. I think Courtney Love is an incredibly articulate, smart,
pointed girl who’s been through the shit. She’s a really good voice for women
right now. I don’t know what went on between her and Kurt Cobain - I’m not interested
in knowing. I just think she’s one of the few modern women who have followed in
the footsteps of some really funky rock ‘n’ rollers who were just spewing out
the shit. I also like her because she says things the way I used to ten years
ago when I wasn’t afraid to just say whatever was on my mind. But I don’t do
that anymore. You just reach a certain point in your thirties when you go, This
just doesn’t feel safe anymore. I still say things through my work, but in a
much easier, safer way. Tori: I don’t find anything safe
about you. Sandra: Ten years ago, when I
first started my career, I would fucking say whatever I wanted, twenty-four
hours a day, especially since I didn’t have the media on me like I’ve had in
the past five or six years. There’s something about the media crawling up your
ass. It’s hard enough to really express yourself in a completely emotional, raw
way, but then also to have to explain it to the press and reinterpret it to
make them understand where you are really coming from—well, that’s not my job.
I love that you’re putting on lip gloss right now. (To tape recorder) - Tori is
putting on some lip gloss. Tori: Want some? Sandra: No, honey, I’m all right.
My lips are moist enough. (Tori giggles) Anyway, I’m always interested in
strong women in this business who are surviving, being one myself. My guru now
is Courtney Love. They laugh. Let me see if there’s anything else I wanted to
throw out here. Oh, I know. The one thing I wanted to address—the pictures I
took for this story. They’re, like, very kind of edgy and a little bit druggie
and a little bit fucked-up. I always like to explain - the pictures tell a
story, and then you read the story and they have nothing to do with each other.
‘Cause I’m, like, the least fucked-up and the least druggie person in the world,
right? Tori: Right. Sandra: So it scares me that
people are gonna see these pictures and go, “Well, this is everything she
hates, everything that she, like, rails against and now she’s in these pictures
and…” Tori: They’re gonna call you
Kennedy. (They both laugh) Sandra: Exactly! So I really
think that I should respect the audience enough to say, Well, this is what we
decided to do in these pictures and the photographer just kinda took me on a
journey. Hopefully, they’ll be understanding. It’s just another side to my
persona. I’m not in the mood to shoot heroin, but these pictures look like I’ve
been shooting heroin. It’s great to be able to play it out in pictures, but not
in real life. Tori: You take great pictures.
You know how many men find you incredibly sexy? Sandra: I love to hear that. Tori: You’re smiling! I’m telling
you… Sandra: No, no, it’s nice to
hear, you know? Tori: Because you’re very
feminine. With all your strength, you’re very… Sandra: Well, that’s important to
me, too. I mean, I think that I’ve drawn from some of the most feminine women,
people like Jackie Kennedy - like, I am totally devastated that she’s gone. She
had it all. She had the ability to keep her life completely private and never
show you her hand of cards, which, to me, is the most amazing thing in the
world. And if I’ve learned anything in my thirties, it’s about holding back a
little bit in that way, really paring down, and just going. You know enough
about me. If you want to dig, if you want to pry, do it on your time, but I’m
going to be a woman of dignity, and I’m going to be a woman whose work speaks
for itself. To me, her death is really like the passing of a whole era. But, I
mean, if I can cover the gamut from Courtney Love to Jackie Bouvier Kennedy
Onassis, I think that says it all. |