Writer’s Workshop: Robert Greenfield

RD: Speaking of sports, David Halberstam used to subscribe to what he called the “backup catcher theory,” whereby he believed that you’ll learn far more from the backup catcher than from any star. Is this similar to how do you go about researching a biography about music legends like Jerry Garcia or the Rolling Stones?

RG: What I have learned from doing these books is to always talk to the women. Unlike men, who seem able only to describe their own experiences, they tend to have a more contextual view of what went on around them.

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RD: With subjects like Garcia, the Stones, Timothy Leary, and now Puss Coriat & Tommy Weber, a common theme tends to pop up itself in your work: drugs. What draws you to focus your writing on the drug culture?

RG: My work is about people immersed in a culture in which drugs played a prominent role rather than the drug culture itself.

RD: One thing that made me laugh a number of times throughout Exile on Main Street was when you jibed at other authors of Rolling Stones related material for not knowing what they were talking about or essentially misstating the facts. How does this misinformation make it into biographies in so many cases?

RG: I’m glad to know you thought it was funny as I was roundly slagged on the internet for having criticized other writers while incorrectly identifying “Jumping Jack Flash” as an album track rather than a single. Everyone makes mistakes. My point was that other writers had printed stories that they could have learned were untrue if they had taken the time to do the research. I guess only rappers get to call one another out in public.

RD: While a good deal of books and movies about heavily drug-induced periods in history manage to glamorize the situation, in Exile on Main Street you paint a clear picture of a dangerous place where friendships ended, relationships collapsed and lives were lost. Given you actually visited Villa Nellcote – the villa in the south of France where the Stones recorded Exile on Main Street – how did you feel being there; sounds like it must have been pretty eye-opening and somewhat freaky?

RG: I lived at Villa Nellcote for two weeks and then spent another week nearby while I transcribed the Rolling Stone interview with Keith Richards that ran in the summer of 1971. As I’ve said before in print, I was lucky enough to be there during the “garden period” before the Stones actually began recording the album and everything got heavy. Living there then was like being part of a party that never ended. Every day was an adventure and all of it was fun.

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RD: When did you know you wanted to become a writer?

RG: When I was in sixth grade, my by-line appeared for the first time in the P.S. 206 Headliner. Until then, I had wanted to be a scientist. Forsaking what no doubt would have been a brilliant career as a botanist, I have spent the rest of my life putting sentences together, taking them apart and then putting them back together again.

RD: After reading A Day in the Life, a terrific read by the way, my gut reaction was that it read almost like a B-Side to Exile on Main Street given the cast of characters and locations are largely similar. Did Exile turn you on to the potential of Puss Coriat and Tommy Weber as main characters?

RG: Many thanks for the compliment. The very first time I ever met Tommy Weber at Villa Nellcote, I saw hm as a character right out of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night, I had no plans to write about Tommy until he died after I had interviewed him for Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones. As I never got to meet Puss, I had no real idea of how moving the story of her own life, her marriage to Tommy, and the fate of their two sons, Jake and Charley, both of whom I knew at Villa Nellcote, would turn out to be. As I noted in A Day In The Life, sometimes you do just get lucky.

RD: It seems like you really seek out interesting/shady folks in your research for various projects (i.e., seedy hangers on, drug runners, and scene socialites). What would you say is the most bizarre experience you’ve encountered in a research interview?

RG: If I had to name one, it would probably be talking to Hell’s Angel leader Sonny Barger in his East Oakland motorcycle shop for Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock and Out. There’s nothing like physical terror to make you ask questions as quickly as possible, pack up your tape recorder and head for higher ground.

RD: So, you co-wrote the mini-series ‘The Sixties.” That was a great series (except for the part where Josh Hamilton’s character gets dissed by Jordana Brewster in favor of the hip cult guy at the Newport Folk Festival). Do you have anything in the hopper writing for television or cinema? I heard something about a possible Bill Graham feature in the works?

RG: As a good deal of what I wrote for The Sixties was radically altered after I left the project, I don’t think I can take the blame for that particular scene. My books about Timothy Leary and Jerry Garcia have both been optioned as feature films and I am attached to these projects as a producer. The film rights for A Day In The Life are currently being shopped. I also wrote a one-man play about Bill Graham that was produced in Los Angeles. It would give me great satisfaction to see a movie or a mini-series made about Bill, an incredible character whose life richly deserves to be remembered and recognized. I am currently working on the authorized biography of Ahmet Ertegun, the legendary founder of Atlantic Records. And so, as they say, the beat goes on.

RD: Finally, who are some of your favorite writers?

RG: The list is endless. Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.D. Salinger, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Lawrence Durrell, Anais Nin, Jack Kerouac, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett. E. L. Doctorow, Mario Vargas Llosa, Tom Wolfe, John LeCarre, Robert Stone, and a host of others. I love Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra and I recently read an astonishing book by Piers Brendon entitled The Decline and Fall of the British Empire.

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4 Responses

  1. this is an awesome read, very great info its hard to find these kinds of interviews on the blogs these days. the hells angels/bikers scared the shit out of me at camp bisco this year too, but that’s half the fun!

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