JIM CARROLL’S ROCK N ROLL HEART-ON

"I don't wanna have any subjective interpretations of my lyrics. I leave them so they can be interpreted through the heart by kids, so five different kids could look at the lyrics five different ways and make it personal. Or even if you listened to it five different times, you could have five different takes of it yourself. The lyrics might mean one certain thing to me, but I make 'em obscure enough so that they're like a verbal movie, so that it's like 'goodbye, people' and they reel with them," said Jim Carroll. His first LP, Catholic Boy, is a meaty slice of urban life that cuts like a razor.

Know this—he's not just so pie putz off the streets of New York who discovered rock 'n' roll two weeks ago. Carroll was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1974 for Living at the Movies, and his second book, The Basketball Diaries, (previously published in parts), ha^ garnered much literary acclaim. Today he has a hot record\out. Does he see himself as a poet or a singer?

"I've never said I was a poet," Carroll said, "I've always said I was a writer. It just makes things easier in America. I mean even when you say that you're a writer, usually, most people say 'Great—I know that. But what do you do for a living?' If you say you're a poet', though, they're gonna back off. In the neighborhood where I grew up, being a poet meant you were a wimp or some sissy or a fag. There's a stigma attached to poetry in that sense in America, which causes frustration among poets. So they start writing for other poets, they start writing only through the intellect instead of the heart and that's vicious. Then all of a sudden, they're fucked. They're just writing for other poets and that's incestuous.

I'm not glorifying death!!

"You have all these esoteric schools of poetry," he continued, "like minimal poetry and concrete poetry and stuff that only approaches the intellect and kids really can't get into that. Kids should be_made to dig poetry. Poetry in Europe is a noble profession. In France, doctors and lawyers envy poets. I dunno...it's becoming a scientist's world. The fucking West is in decay, the world's in decay. And when the whole world's in decay, poets and writers in general have a vested interest in a decaying world, because everyone looks to poets to clarify the chaos. I'm trying to clarify the chaos through poetry. I mean, it's an incredible opportunity to be a poet who's gonna b£ around to see the end of civilization. I think it's very doubtful that we're gonna make it until the end of the century. But then again I sometimes think the world is too fucked up to end J'

It may very well be. Jim Carroll, at 29, has survived modem hazards such as drug use and abuse, rip-offs, living in Manhattan and 50's paranoia. Does he see a new age of paranoia emerging?

"Definitely," he said. "That's what kids tell me. They didn't have air raid drills and stuff like I did. I grew up with the fallout shelter scene. It was like there was a real good chance they were gonna drop the bomb, they were gonna sneak attack us. I remember my brother Tom taunting me before I went to sleep. He didn't seem to have the fear like I did. He'd say 'The Russians are coming...they'll drop the big one.. .the Russians are coming!' My brother was always trying to get even with me, because we used to watch Creature Feature on Friday nights and he'd have bad dreams and I'd tease him. He'd cry 'Mom! Mom!!'

and I'd goof on him and say, 'You're nothin'' but a fuckin' wimp!'

"Anyway, these kids come up to me now and more than ariy other question about the Basketball Diaries, they ask about the 'war baby' thing. See, they were raised in the 60's and their mother's and father's rap to them was "It can't happen. It's not going to affect us. No one is crazy enough to set it off.' And now, countries in the Middle East have the bomb, not just us and the Russians anymore where there was a stalemate. The formula was easy before. "

Well then, is he an advocate of the No Nukes movement?

"Fuck that, man," Carroll exclaimed. "I think the benefits should be for i the priorities. I saw pictures of kids in the news last week who were in Africa starving. It wasn't Biafra or Bangladesh or the standard places where you see this. It's still there. Kids are starving. You see these kids and it's immediate weeping time. Those are the priorities that should be given, not saving the fucking whales' I love animals, don't get me wrongl I'd love to be ope of those Green Peace guys and stand in front of harpoon boats and stop 'em from killing whales. But, I'd rather do a benefit concert to put food in these kids' mouths. It's as simple as that.

"Nukes are something else," he said. "Of course nuclear power is a fucking crazy thing. Harrisburg fucked up, and everyone said that this was the final proof. Well, it's also the final proof for the industry because it came as close as it could to happening, but their fail safe system worked. They stopped it, but it was close."

On to more cheerful subjects. Living in Manhattan in the 60's must have allowed him to witness some great rock 'n' roll. Who was happening then?

"The Velvet Underground," said Carroll. "I listen to anything Lou does with much interest, I listened to everything the Doors did. I saw them [the Velvets] every night, two shows a night at Max's Kansas City the summer they broke up. You know that album The Velvet Underground Live At Max's? I recorded the fucking thing with Brigid Polk. I held the microphone of this Sony recorder. Funny thing, Brigid was trying to get me off junk by shooting speed with her, which made me 10 times more of a wreck, it just drove me to a much worse habit.

"But at any rate," Carroll continued, "we used to go see the Velvets every night. On that Live at Max's album you can hear me ordering double Pernods and asking the waitress if she's got any Tuinals and stuff." There's one for ya, Velvet Underground trivia buffs. "But before that scene, when I was going to that private school that I mention in The Basketball Diaries, 1 got turned on to Bob Dylan. That was the big change in the Diaries. Before that I listened to Dion, Roy Orbison, street music, a capella music, the Drifters. I liked Lesley Gore."

Physically, Jim Carroll looks like he stepped out of a William Burroughs story. He stands a little over six feet, and possesses the whitest skin this scribe's ever seen. His eyes are reptilian.

In the author's note that prefaces The Basketball Diaries, Carroll quoted Hassan Sabah: "Nothing is true; Everything is permitted." On his album, he has a song "Nothing Is True" and finishes off the rest of the epigraph within the course of the tune. Does he really believe it?

"Nah, I don't really believe it," said Carroll, "because I'm too much of a Christian for that. That song has these images that are obscure enough to be taken many different ways, like 'She's got inscrutable poise and nihilist charms/She gets to sleep with tubes in her arms.' Like she could be in a hospital bed, a girl shooting junk, whatever. I credited Hassan Sabah in the book, but not on the record. Burroughs has quoted that line so much that it's kin da like... public domain. Didja see Performance? When Jagger's reading that Persian poetry, that's Hassan. It was Nicolas Roeg's rap because Nicolas is really into Hassan. I spoke to Nicolas about that and he asked me where I first read that line. I told him that I first read it in one of Mr. Burroughs' books.

"Hassan was a real cocksucker," he laughed. "The word 'assassin' comes from his name, as well as 'hashish'. He used to get all stoked up on hash and he and his band of assassins pulled all these tricks to prove he had these powers so people would follow him. He didn't have bozos working for him either. He had all these lawyers and physicians from Persia working for him. Hassan was like the Jim Jones of his day."

Speaking of religious sects, why did he bitch all the way through The Basketball Diaries about Catholocism and then turn around and title his first LP Catholic Boy?

I grew up with the fallout shelter scene.

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"I think the rituals of Catholicism are beautiful," he said. "What I'don't like are the politics and the dogma of Catholicism. 1 don't like the fact that the Church owns half of Wall Street. The Pope should wake up. I think men have no right to speak about abortion at all. Woman should write the legislation and only women should be able to vote on it. How the fuck can a man tell a woman what to do with her body? It's so fucking stupid. I wouldn't like my old lady to have an. abortion, but in the end, it's her choice.

"This thing about 'no birth control allowed' is really dangerous," Carroll added. "If there was a famine and the population keeps growing and everybody believes in that dogma and carries it out, it's gonna be pretty sad. People are starving in America already . To hell with that shit."

The hit off of Catholic Boy is "People Who Died." Isn't he exploiting the memory of his dead friends for his own gains?

"Exploiting?" Carroll looked puzzled momentarily then said, "That song is a celebration! Some asshole wrote that me and Jim Morrison were into some sort of death trip and it's about time someone said ' something about it. Once and for all— THAT'S BULLSHIT!! I'm not glorifying death!! Everyone in that song didn't die of suicide, only a few did. These kids died before their possibilities were fulfilled. I celebrate them because I understood the things that were happening to them at the time, but most of the people in the song got killed by someone else or by accident or overdose. They lived on the edge and they died."

With that cleared up, Carroll looked relieved to get it off his chest. He was tired, but I had a final question. Did he think that his poetry would eventually strangle his rock 'n' roll, a la Patti Smith?

"Well if it does," Carroll smiled, "it'll be a greatway for my rock'n'roll to go." 0