The Catholic Boy Confesses: Jim Carroll

By Clarice Rivers
Interview January 1980 (pages 54-55)

JIM CARROLL has been causing a stir on the literary scene ever since the publication
of his BASKETBALL DIARIES–when he was sixteen. He is also the author of numerous books
including THE BOOK OF NODS (a collaboration of prose poems with PATTI SMITH) and LIVING AT
THE MOVIES, for which he was nominated for a PULlTZER PRIZE.

CARROLL has now opened a new chapter in a career filled with coincidences and deserved
good breaks. CLARICE RIVERS spoke with the street wise, super-sharp poet about his latest
endeavor, the release of his fabulous first album, CATHOLIC BOY, available on ATCO Records
and Tapes.

CLARICE RIVERS: To quote a line from a poem in your book Living at the
Movies, “gliding towards some future,” it could suggest that when you left
New York seven years ago to live in Bolinas, California, that you were gliding towards
some future in rock and roll. Or did your leap from the more tranquil life of a writer to
center stage performer happen overnight?

JIM CARROLL: No, it didn’t happen overnight. I never really thought about rock
and roll. I liked it in a certain way. There were only a few people I liked though. I
could listen to anything that the Velvet Underground did and after they split up, what Lou
Reed did. I really didnt listen to the radio much, especially after I left New York, after
my last book of poems had been published. When I was living in the country outside of San
Francisco I spent the first four years practically a total recluse. I was learning to
enjoy boredom for the first time in my life. The highlight of my day was going down to the
post office to get my mail.

CLARICE: Those four years were you working on poetry?

JIM: I wrote two books and another book of poems. Towards the end I worked
pretty much on writing rock lyrics. I wrote a book of prose poems and a book of short
stories which is the one I’m interested in now and which is all finished. The book of
poems has also been completed. I think I might take this book of poems which has about 60
pages and the best of some of my old poems and make that a book.

CLARICE: What else?

JIM: I had three dogs because when I growing up in New York my parents would
never let me have a dog. I was always bringing home stray dogs and they’d make me kick
them out. So I had these terrific dogs and we’d go for these long walks alonq the coast
every day. Then I’d come home and work a lot and it was actually one of the happiest times
of my life.

CLARICE: What happened then?

JIM: I started to write songs for other groups. I wrote some songs with Patti
Smith in mind. Of course, Patti writes most of her own songs. I wrote some lyrics together
with Allan Lanier from the Blue Oyster Cult, who wrote the music. At first I was just sort
of writing for other people. I didn’t start listening to rock and roll anymore than I had
before, which was practically nothing. I liked rock and roll and I liked the idea of poets
working with rock and roll, so I decided that I was going to maybe give it a shot, but I
really didn’t think too seriously about it until I saw Patti when she came out on a tour
there.

CLARICE: When was that?

JIM: That was about two years ago.

CLARICE: Describe how Patti Smith, an old New York poet friend of yours, got
you on stage singing for the first time, singing your own lyrics.

JIM: Patti had to do a show in San Diego so I went down there with her. She
asked me to open up the show because she didn’t like the opening act. She decided to bag
them. We hadn’t rehearsed anything. She just told the road manager that I could open the
show instead, and her band would back me up. I said what I’ll do is I’ll just go out and
read the lyrics I’d been writing because I had those memorized. I went out on the stage
and it was incredible, because for the first time in my life I was having fun on stage. I
never liked giving poetry readings. But there was this incredible energy from these kids
in the audience and there was this incredible energy coming from the music behind me. This
was my first taste of really doing it and liking it, having all this energy and having
these kids to perform for–not just some kind of stuffy college poetry audience. It was
great and I decided after that that maybe I could do it myself and perform myself. I
thought that I could write the music myself and kind of fit it to my own vocal
limitations. I always knew that no one, no matter how technically limited you were as a
singer, nobody could sing a song as well as the person who wrote it. So I found a band of
musicians; four guys who were looking for a direction because they weren’t getting
anywhere. They were fantastic musicians but their songs were a bit like the Sixties.

CLARICE: They needed a leader?

JIM: Exactly. They were willing to do it. In fact, they thought it would be fun
even though we weren’t thinking too seriously in commercial terms at this time. This was
about a year and a half ago. I told tem that instead of giving a poetry reading I’d just
do these songs with this band. We rehearsed for a couple of weeks, wrote the music to it,
and it worked out quite well. It was a fantastic feeling and I was really enjoying
performing for the first time. I also saw the potential that it had for a poet to reach an
audience which usually wasn’t that interested in poetry.

CLARICE: Patti ignited the idea you already felt about livening up poetry
readings?

JIM: Exactly. Patti gave me that chance in San Diego when she asked me to do
the show with her. The first time she ever did a poetry readinq with Lenny Kaye, this
famous reading at St. Mark’s Church, where she played with music behind her for the first
time, that was the night I was supposed to give the poetry reading originally with her.

CLARICE: You didn’t turn up?

JIM: No. I got arrested in Rye, New York, while I was visiting this friend I
grew up with who had moved up there. For some reason there was this big crackdown by the
local police on all these high school kids there who were into drugs. They had this raid
on my friend’s house that morning because he was one of the dealers of hashish at this
school. I was still in high school then or just out of high school and they threw me into
jail. I had to stay over night.

CLARICE: Did you let anyone know about it?

JIM: That night I didn’t. Instead of me and Patti giving the reading, it was
just Patti, which was fantastic since Patti had twice as much time and it was the start of
her working with music.

CLARICE: So actually, it was almost the start of your thing too. It seems like
it was a certain fate….

JIM: Yes, it was very ironic. It was like, dare I say it, karma. Because it
came back on me and Patti gave me the shot later on.

CLARICE: Can you describe the Basketball Diaries, just published by
Bantam?

JIM: The diaries took place from the ages between thirteen and sixteen. They
weren’t written day by day. You can pick the book up and begin anywhere. I only wrote the
diaries on days when something interesting enough happened to write about. Each one is
like a separate short story. You can skip around or read it from cover to cover and it has
two different effects.

CLARICE: Have you continued to keep a diary?

JIM: Yes I have. I have another book of diaries planned. I don’t think it will
pick up from where the other one leaves off. I think there will be about a two year gap
and then I’ll start up again.

CLARICE: So you have it planned and you have all the diaries written?

JIM: No, I don’t have them written, but I have notes of what happened. It would
be half-fictional and half autobiographical.

CLARICE: Do you have any idea what you’d call this one?

JIM: No. I’ve had a few different ideas. I like to work in three-year sections
of diaries. The next one would be from the time I was nineteen to twenty-three. And maybe
from there the first six months of being in California, because one of the big parts in
this basketball diary is the change from just being a street kid, and going to Catholic
and public schools, and all of a sudden getting a scholarship to this very posh private
school with wealthy kids, for the first time, and meeting all these wealthy girls and
going out with them. I needed a switch like that. The switch from leaving New York and
going to California and dealing with that whole kind of California mellow-hot-tub bullshit
which I never could stand. But I stayed out there anyway, because I was always by myself.
I just kind of used the landscape.

CLARICE: You call your album Catholic Boy. Why?

JIM: I wanted to call it Dry Dreams because I really don’t like the kind
of attitude of rock and roll that is so dominated by the sexual image–it’s a kind of cock
rock. I really wrote songs with that in mind, to try and do just the opposite. So rather
than a wet dream these songs are dry dreams.

CLARICE:The trend of the moment?

JIM: The subjects are limited–you know about love. Boy meets girl, boy loses
girl, boy screws girl, girl screws boy, boy can’t get into a girl’s pants. I don’t like
songs like that. They’re boring. There’s nothing spiritual about them.

CLARICE: Do you have a favorite song on Catholic Boy?

JIM: They vary. I have different favorite songs for different reasons. I like People
Who Die[d] because it’s one of our most popular songs. It’s accessible to kids and it
has a lot to do with the Basketball Diaries.

CLARICE: How many people that were friends of yours have died?

JIM: A lot. A lot of the kids I graduated with from Catholic grammar school
went to Viet Nam. Forty kids graduated with me and eleven of them died there. It’s an
incredible percentage. Also, a lot of my friends from when I was young died or went to
jail or got into drugs and died. I got into drugs at the same time and fortunately . . .
This song is about that. It’s like an elegy but it’s not sentimental. It just lists the
people who died how they died how old they were and that’s all.

CLARICE: You don t feel like crying when you hear it?

JIM: No. It’s realIy up.

CLARICE: Do you need emotional stability to really work well or do you thrive
on turmoil at home?

JIM: Well, I think you need both. When I left New York I was cut off from all
the turmoil, excitement and adventures of the City. It was at the right time because I was
just burned out. I enjoy having a nice place and just having things quiet and peaceful.
It’s still that way even now in New York. I don’t like to go out to clubs at all. l’ve
been kind of making the scene in that sense for the first time since I’ve gotten back. I
can’t really sustain it; I can’t stay out late like I used to so I just like to stay home
and read and work. That state is okay to write in, but then vou want a period of turmoil
and excitement, intensity and variation to to draw on.

CLARICE: I wasn’t thinking so much about the turmoil of going out to clubs, I
was thinking about your personal life now. You’re married now.

JIM: One is much more inspired when things are tense with one’s wife–when
there’s turmoil and friction going on. There’s much more to draw on for lyrics, poems or
anything. You’re more inspired to do it out of rage and anger and things like that that
are going on. But then when you’re actually writing the work and polishing it and dealing
with style you want quiet and peace. You need both.

CLARICE: Do you miss that sort of New York school of poetry that you were with?
Like having friends that you can just drop in on?

JIM: They’re still my friends and I always think of them as my friends. I don’t
miss that scene at all. I think poetry readings are pretty boring. Some of my old poet
friends are a bit suspicious of what I do. I was always thought of as this pure poet, who
didn’t publish that much who was kind of a recluse and very much into hard drugs. I had
the image of not being in poetry for what one could get out of it.

CLARICE: That’s why it’s such a total switch for you to be doing rock and roll
and heavy publicity?

JIM: Yes. All of a sudden I got the money from the paperback book sale of the
diaries and a record contract. They thought I was selling out.

CLARICE: Do you think there’s a certain amount of jealousy in remarks like
that?

JIM: Absolutely. And also I’m sick of poets who just write for other poets.
They just deal with the intellect rather than the heart.