Interview by April Greene
When you’ve known someone for a decade, it can seem a hard task to interview him: what can be asked that hasn’t been asked before? Luckily for me, this is not actually a hard task when it comes to Rick Berlin. I met Boston’s venerable piano glam rock balladeer – a Yale graduate who’s been signed to Epic Records and played alongside Frank Zappa and Talking Heads, and who now posts up as a political activist, waiter, and unofficial mayor of his bohemian neighborhood, Jamaica Plain – when I was a college student, and interviewed him ten years ago this month for a writing class. I liked his crazy apartment and I guess he liked the article I wrote because we became fast friends and I’ve never really stopped interviewing him since, except now we just call it catching up. What keeps me curious, besides being enamored of Rick’s 50-year career as a singular musician, are his abilities to stay fresh and thoughtful, speak carefully but generously, and to offer beautiful nutshelled insights so casually that they must often be missed. In order to avoid the latter, I took the precaution of writing down our latest catch-up:
AG: So that I don’t have to, could you please give us a one-sentence description of yourself as a musician?
RB: Hamlet on all fours snorting in the dark dirt for a true song that will write itself.
AG: What’s new?
RB: Well, I got a new tattoo: “Beauty will save the world” in Russian; it’s Dostoyevsky. But I always thought it was Tolstoy while I said Dostoyevsky, because Dostoyevsky’s so much darker than “beauty will save the world.” And I have a new song called “Beauty Will Save the World” about why that phrase isn’t about Vogue, or “pretty pictures,” or scenic views, but about the small things that open your eyes to the fact that it’s not so sad and bad out there, and even if it is sad and bad, because one little incident can lift you up, shine a light. So that’s what’s new. Another thing is The Nickel and Dime band, which I’m playing with now – it’s just these amazing guys/musicians, and Sammy, my nephew, and his friend – my friend – Jesse, BU students, who are in it. There are seven of us, and it’s crazy, a lot of booze… But “what’s new?” is a hard question, hard to answer.
AG: Why did you decide to start getting tattoos in your 60s?
RB: Tattoos are so fun, artsy, personal, and permanent. Part of it was being able to afford it; part of it was coming up with an idea I knew I could live with and that said something to me. There’s a kid at the Brendan Behan [pub] who’s a really good artist in about ten different areas, and he has a tattoo of JFK on the back of his hand. It’s an amazing tattoo and I interviewed him about it for a never-to-be-finished local documentary and he said the reason he likes having tattoos is that he knows that later on, when he’s incredibly embarrassed about a certain period in his life, that the evidence will still be there on his skin showing how absurd he was way back when. He likes having the record of all those bizarre choices, even though, you know, his skin will be melting and he might look stupid with them. I like that idea. I have another of a peacock on my shoulder – my first – and people don’t get it. They ask, “What’s with the turkey on your arm?” and I say, “It’s not a fucking turkey, it’s a fucking peacock!” So even when you’re trying NOT to be silly, you still are.
AG: For all your aesthetic interests, I’ve never known you to be much of a clothing guy. Was there ever a time when outfits figured large in your artistic scheme?
RB: Hair jobs and clothes… never got ’em right. Ever. God knows I’ve tried, but there’s a long, littered path of horrible haircuts and ridiculous, laughable get-ups. OK, I love what Bowie did, Madonna, Lady Googoo, whatever; all that ‘personae’... If you can combine theatricality and a band in such a way that you’re not hiding behind it, cool. But sometimes it seems as if you have nothing else to say except how you look and that ain’t enough. Me, I look like shit so you’ll either get the show or walk out. Not much to look at up there.
AG: As well as being a musician, you’re into photography, video, writing… Are you constantly switching from one thing to the next, or do you work in blocks, or does it go in cycles?
RB: I think I notice if I haven’t done anything in awhile, and it begins to disturb me in a vague way. But it means that when I start up again, I won’t be writing from the pattern of songs written before that break. I’m used to the ebb and flow and I know that if I’m not writing today, I will be soon. I think the only art area where I’m truly original is in songwriting, because I have no training in it. These days I’m writing for The Nickel and Dime Band, so I write songs that I can’t really or shouldn’t play, or that a guitar will do a serious job with and I fucking love it – the band translation of a piano/vox song. So lately it’s less cabaret/singer-songwriter, it’s more bluster rock. And hey, people dance to this band. I’ve never seen people dance to any of my bands, ever.
AG: Is that awesome?
RB: Yeah, it’s awesome. To tell you the truth [laughs], I’m not playing much piano in this thing. The bass player plays piano when we really need an effective job done, so that means I’m out in front as a lead vocalist, which is a peculiar throwback. I’ve never enjoyed watching some old fart try to get it on, like weekend warrior, I-remember-when shit. But at the same time, I’m incredibly busy up there, my face is going crazy, and my arms are flailing about, and oddly enough, people seem to like it, they’re not sitting there saying, “What is he doing?” which is mostly what I would be thinking. But age vanishes in that space. It’s a trip, April.
AG: That sounds satisfying. Is there anything else that you’d like to do, musically, that you haven’t done yet?
RB: I’d love to do a Paris-accordion-fiddle-piano record someday, with stand-up bass. More jazz. And I’d love to do just a sonic record with, like, Mr. Andrew Toews sometime, that would be beat-centric with crazy lyrics, where somebody else would just assemble a sound city and I’d sing over it.
AG: How about some quickies? Number one: what’s the best thing, art-wise, that could happen for you right now?
RB: To make a living. To see my musical, The Kingdom, mounted. To never stop writing songs. To break into radio, disgusting as most of it is. To solve the new media riddle and surge forth.
AG: Two: what do you love the most about yourself as an artist?
RB: Honesty. And the fact that for the most part I’m still innocent about what I do.
AG: Three: what’s something funny about other artists to you?
RB: Anytime I hear that they’re chronic on-stage farters. Billy Joel for one.
AG: What do you want to be asked in an interview?
RB: “Are midnight secrets/doubts of the self unavoidable for any artist?” Something super pretentious like that. But I think an interview that would be really interesting would be if you asked if you could interview them. Out of that interaction, both would emerge, but at a distance.
AG: What do you find different about working with older versus younger musicians, or about yourself as a musician as you’ve gotten older?
RB: I think the older you get, the more you’re okay with who you are and the less you know what that is. You’re almost this smog smear, and little bullets fire out of it with oddball art identities. It’s hard to explain. Plus, playing with that youth energy storms the complacent ramparts. Ya gotta love that. Who wouldn’t? I guess I don’t really have any questions about myself anymore, but that’s not because I have any answers.nth
Labels: Andrew Toews, April Greene, Boston, Dostoyevsky, Epic Records, Frank Zappa, Interview, Jamaica Plain, music, Rick Berlin, Talking Heads, tattoo, The Nickel and Dime Band, Tolstoy, Vogue
