Patti smith & robert maPPlethorPe - Christopher Bollen

They were new york before 

new york knew what to do with 

them. They were lovers, best 

friends, fellow survivors. 

Patti smith 

& robert 

maPPlethorPe 

both became art-world 

legends and ’70s icons of radical 

downtown bohemia. Now smith 

finally oPens uP about their 

days together, living at the chelsea 

hotel, buying art suPPlies 

before food, mixing with warhol 

suPerstars and future rock 

gods, and doing whatever they 

had to do just to stay together 

By christoPher bollen 

This spread: Patti Smith and RobeRt maPPlethoRPe in new YoRk, 1970. phoTos: noRman Seeff.

96 

In 1967, Patti Smith moved to New York City from 

South Jersey, and the rest is epic history. There are 

the photographs, the iconic made-for-record-cover 

black-and-whites shot by Smith’s lover, soul mate, and 

co-conspirator in survival, Robert Mapplethorpe. 

Then there are the photographs taken of them 

together, both with wild hair and cloaked in homemade 

amulets, hanging out in the glamorous poverty 

of the Chelsea Hotel. It is nearly impossible to navigate 

the social and artistic history of late ’60s and ’70s 

New York without coming across Smith. She was, as 

she still is, a poet, an artist, a rock star, and a bit of a 

shaman. But it is her friendship with Mapplethorpe 

where her legend begins—and like most beginnings, 

this one has been romanticized to the point of 

fantasy. How is it that two such beautifully ferallooking 

young people with no money or connections, 

who later would go on to achieve such extreme 

success—Smith with her music and Mapplethorpe 

with his photography—found each other? It is a myth 

of New York City as it once was, a place where misfits 

magically gravitated toward one another at the 

chance crossroads of a creative revolution. That’s 

one way to look at it. But Smith’s new memoir, Just 

Kids (Ecco)—which traces her relationship with 

Mapplethorpe from their first meetings (there were 

two of them before one fateful night in Tompkins 

Square Park) to their days in and out of hotels, love 

affairs, creative collaborations, nightclubs, and gritty 

neighborhoods—paints a radically different picture. 

In this account, the two struggle to pay for food and 

shelter, looking out for each other and sacrificing 

everything they have for the purpose of making art. 

Just Kids portrays their mythic status as the product 

of willful determination as much as destiny. Smith’s 

immensely personal storytelling also rectifies certain 

mistaken notions about the pair, revealing specifically 

that they were not wild-child drug addicts but dreamers, 

more human and loving than their cold, isolated 

stares and sharp, skinny bodies in early photos lead 

one to believe. Smith left New York for Detroit in 

1979 to live with the man she would eventually marry, 

the late former MC5 guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith, just 

as Mapplethorpe’s career as one of the most shocking 

and potent art photographers was reaching its 

apogee (his black-and-whites of gay hustlers, S&M 

acts, flowers, and children were headed to museum 

collections and a court trial for obscenity charges). 

By then Smith had already produced Horses and 

had risen to international fame. Her book follows 

Mapplethorpe all the way to his death in 1989 

from complications due to AIDS, but it’s mostly 

about two kids who held on to each other. 

As I began reading Just Kids, Smith hadn’t yet 

officially agreed to an interview, but I continued to 

move through it, spending an entire Sunday in my 

apartment unable to let go of the book. I finally had 

to put it down to attend a cocktail party at a friend’s 

house, and when I got there, I saw Patti Smith across 

the room. I went up to her, and we made a date for the 

interview. It’s this kind of chance meeting that makes 

you think there’s some magic left in New York. We 

met at a café that Smith has been going to since she 

first moved to the city. She ordered Egyptian chamomile 

tea, and I ordered an Americano. 

PATTI SMITH: That’s what I drink. I’ve already 

had two. 

CHRISTOPHER BOLLEN: I can drink an endless 

amount of coffee. I’m sure one day that will catch 

up with me. 

SMITH: I used to drink like 14 cups a day. I was 

a pretty speedy person, but I never noticed. Then, 

when I was pregnant, I had to give up coffee. After 

that, I cut down to five or six cups. Ever since I hit 

60, I drink only two. What I do is I get an Americano 

and a pot of water and I keep diluting it, because it’s 

not even the coffee, it’s the habit. 

BOLLEN: That’s my problem. I really don’t 

smoke cigarettes that much except when I write. 

But when I write, I smoke. It’s bad, but I’m scared 

that if I break the habit, I won’t be able to write. 

SMITH: It’s part of your process. It’s what you 

have to do. I’ll tell you how to break it. You don’t 

have to. Like, coffee was part of my process. Now, 

if I want to go to a café and write and drink coffee 

for two hours, I just order them. I don’t drink 

them. A lot is just aesthetic. So you light your cigarette 

and let it sit there and don’t smoke it. 

BOLLEN: Do you think that would work? 

SMITH: If you attach anything harmful to the 

creative process, you have to do that. If you learn 

“i ReallY believe that 

RobeRt Sought not to 

deStRoY oRdeR, but to 

ReoRdeR, to Reinvent, 

and to cReate a new 

oRdeR. i know that he 

alwaYS wanted to do 

Something that no one 

elSe had done. that waS 

veRY imPoRtant to him.” 

nothing else from me, this is a really important lesson. 

I’ve seen a lot of people go down because they 

attach a substance to their creative process. A lot of it 

is purely habitual. They don’t need it, but they think 

they do, so it becomes entrenched. Like, I can’t go 

without my coffee. I can go without drinking it, but I 

can’t go without it nearby. It’s the feeling of how cool 

I feel with my coffee. Because I don’t feel cool with 

this tea. [Bollen laughs] You know, there are pictures 

of me with cigarettes in the ’70s, and everybody 

thought I smoked. I can’t smoke because I had TB 

when I was a kid. But I loved the look of smoking— 

like Bette Davis and Jeanne Moreau. So I would have 

cigarettes and just light ’em and take a couple puffs, 

but mostly hold them. Some people said that was 

hypocritical. But in my world, it wasn’t hypocritical 

at all. I wasn’t interested in actually smoking them. I 

just liked holding them to look cool. All right, was it 

a bad image to show people? I’m happy to let people 

know I wasn’t really smoking. 

BOLLEN: I think it’s almost part of the romance 

of creating. As an artist, you kind of have to buy into 

your own romance a bit when you are making work. 

SMITH: Yep. Except for me, I haven’t really 

changed at all since I was 11. I still dress the 

same. I still have the same manners of study. Like 

when I was a kid, I wanted to write a poem about 

Simón Bolívar. I went to the library and read 

everything I could. I wrote copious notes. I had 

40 pages of notes just to write a small poem. So 

my process hasn’t changed much. The way I dress 

certainly hasn’t changed. When I was a kid, I 

wore dungarees and little boatneck shirts and 

braids. I dressed like that throughout the ’50s, to 

the horror of my parents and teachers. 

BOLLEN: Most people take a long time to find 

themselves—if they ever do. How did you catch 

on so early? 

SMITH: Because even as a kid, I wanted to be an artist. 

I also did not want to be trapped in the ’50s idea of 

gender. I grew up in the ’50s, when the girls wore really 

bright red lipstick and nail polish, and they smelled 

like Eau de Paris. Their world just didn’t attract me. 

I hid in the world of the artist—first the 19th-century 

artists, then the Beats. And Peter Pan. 

BOLLEN: Were you always attracted to New 

York City? 

SMITH: No. As a kid I didn’t really know about 

New York City. I’m from the Philadelphia area. I 

came to New York through art, really. I went to the 

Museum of Modern Art to see the Guernica. And I 

wanted to see Nina Simone, so I saved my money 

and went to see her at the Village Gate. For me, it 

was a lot of money even if it was just a few dollars. I 

was making $22 a week working at a factory. So a day 

in New York was half my week’s pay. I always wanted 

to be an artist, but I never doubted that I would have 

to work. Having a job was part of my upbringing. 

BOLLEN: That’s what I like about the book. Even 

with all of the youthful idealism and craziness, so 

many of the chapters deal with struggling to survive. 

You basically showed up in New York with no money 

and had to get a job so you could eat. 

SMITH: Yeah. I came from a family that had no 

money. I didn’t have any idea that I would ever 

get anything for nothing. So my first thought 

stepping out on New York soil was to find a job. 

It took a while, but I got one. I got a few. I lucked 

out at Scribner Book Store, because it turned out 

to be the longest-running job of my life. 

BOLLEN: People see pictures of you and Robert 

Mapplethorpe in those early days and romanticize 

that kind of poverty and struggling. And it 

is beautiful, no question. But hunger is hunger, 

no matter what decade you live in. You say in the 

prologue to the book that Mapplethorpe’s life has 

been romanticized and damned, but in the end, 

the real Mapplethorpe lies in his art. 

SMITH: Exactly. 

BOLLEN: So if we have his art, why did you feel 

like you had to write a memoir about him? 

SMITH: Well, because I finally finished it. I promised 

Robert on his deathbed that I would write it. I 

kept notes for it and wrote other pieces for him, like 

The Coral Sea [W.W. Norton, 1996]. But it took a 

while, because the idea of writing a memoir about 

a departed friend while also having to navigate widowhood 

was too painful. For a while I had to sort of 

shelve the promise I made to Robert. In the last 10 

years, I finally got back on my feet and got the house 

in order, literally and figuratively. I was able to start 

again. I know it seems like a fairly simple book to 

take 10 years to write, but I had to gather the material 

and think out the structure. And sometimes, 

truthfully, it was painful. It made me miss him, you 

know? Sometimes I’d remember the atmosphere of 

our youth with such clarity that it hurt. So I’d have to 

let go of it for months and months. 

BOLLEN: Do you know why Mapplethorpe wanted 

you to make that promise? Did he think remembering 

those early days was important to his work or 

that people wouldn’t otherwise understand him? 

SMITH: Robert absolutely wanted to be remembered. 

And he died right in the middle of his prime. Believe me, 

if Robert had lived, we would have seen unimaginable 

work. He was hardly finished as an artist. 

“robert and i were 

always ourselves— 

’til the day he died, 

we were just 

exactly as we were 

when we met. And we 

loved each other. 

everybody wants 

to define everything. 

is it necessary 

to define love?” 

Top lefT: Patti Smith at PhotogRaPheR JudY linn’S 

bRooklYn aPaRtment, ciRca 1969. Top righT and 

cenTer: RobeRt maPPlethoRPe and Smith at 

the chelSea hotel, ciRca 1969. BoTTom righT: 

maPPlethoRPe at the loft he ShaRed with Smith on 

23rd StReet in new YoRk, ciRca 1969. phoTos: JudY linn.

BOLLEN: He was only 42. 

SMITH: Yes. I’m 63, and I still think I have yet to do 

my best work. He had so many ideas. We talked at 

length about the things he wanted to do. I also know 

that I was the only one who could write this story. 

I’m the only one who knew him so intimately. And 

he also knew me. He knew I would serve him well. 

Robert and I both loved the magic of things. And of all 

the things that have been written about him, I never 

found one that maintained the magic of our relationship 

or our creative process—and our real struggles, 

which were very youthful struggles. Whenever I read 

the biography of a young artist—say, Rimbaud—the 

biographer sits in such judgment of the young person. 

They talk about how Rimbaud did all these 

terrible things, like walking around smoking a pipe 

upside-down or wearing ragged clothes. He was a 

teenager! How can a biographer sit in judgment 

of a teenager? That’s how they dress. Those are the pure 

years when you’re discovering yourself, when you’re 

trying things out, when you have the arrogance of 

adolescence. This is a beautiful time, and it has to 

be judged in accordance with that. You know, I still 

remember what it tastes like to be 11, 17, 27. I wanted— 

if I could—to capture that without irony or sarcasm. 

BOLLEN: When you arrived in New York in the 

late ’60s, you were coming to the city at the peak of 

an incredibly creative, revolutionary moment. But it 

wasn’t just luck that you arrived when you did. You 

and the world you lived in were a big part of what 

made it that creative, revolutionary moment. 

SMITH: We didn’t know. Sometimes people say to 

me, “Oh, you knew all these famous people.” Well, 

none of us were famous. And even the people who 

were supposedly famous and had some money didn’t 

seem much different from the rest of us. I mean, if 

you sat in a room with people like Janis Joplin, they 

had arrogance, but they didn’t have bodyguards or 

paparazzi around them or tons of money. What I’m 

saying is, that line between us and them was easy to 

walk across. It was just that the greatness in their work 

was undeniable, and their arrogance or indulgences 

were more palatable. Still, they were human beings. 

BOLLEN: Did you think those years of struggling— 

not being able to find places to sleep, crashing in bad 

hotels—were necessary to become an artist? 

SMITH: Oh, yeah. First, almost as a precursor to 

that, I came from a struggling family. My father was 

on strike from the factory a lot. My mother did ironing 

and waitressing. She had four kids who were sickly. 

There wasn’t always plenty to eat. So struggling was a 

part of my heritage. But I also read the biographies 

of struggling artists. I respected Baudelaire, who was 

starving. Rimbaud almost starved to death. It was part 

of the deal. I wasn’t afraid. I was a very romantic kid. 

Struggling and starving were the privileges of being 

an artist. And, more importantly, it was a time before 

credit cards. If you didn’t have money in your pocket, 

you didn’t eat. There were no such things as credit 

cards. There was a little bit of bartering but no credit. 

BOLLEN: Credit cards really did change life as 

we knew it. 

SMITH: I think credit cards are one of the evils of 

the world. I always knew they would be. I remember 

when they started, you’d get credit cards for free in 

the mail, and people would just charge things and say, 

“Look at this stereo I got.” And I’d say, “How are you 

going to pay for it?” “Oh, I don’t have to pay for it.” 

BOLLEN: I don’t have to pay, because I have a 

credit card. Credit cards are like Santa Claus. 

SMITH: Well, they didn’t pay. They’d move. And a 

lot of businesses suffered. Also, people’s concept of 

material things changed very swiftly. When Robert 

and I were living in the Chelsea, no one had a camera. 

You had a camera if you were a photographer. 

Or if you had money. That’s why all documentation 

today is different. 

BOLLEN: Do you think that limited contact with 

cameras allowed Robert, when your neighbor first 

lent him her Polaroid, to see photography as some 

sort of special privilege? 

SMITH: Oh, Robert was an artist. I mean, a lot of 

these things don’t matter with somebody like Robert, 

because he was a true artist. Some things magnify 

people or open up areas, but Robert always knew he 

was an artist. He wasn’t intimidated by technology 

or the lack of it. He was just more frustrated. He was 

very frustrated when we were young, because he was 

a visionary in a very Marcel Duchamp sort of way. He 

envisioned whole rooms, big installations, things he 

couldn’t realize because he didn’t have any money. It 

“to me, being 

hungRY and meSSY 

and being fRee to 

live in a meSS and 

not have to woRRY if 

i bathed foR a week, 

that waS enough. 

but a lot of theSe 

PeoPle kePt PuShing, 

PuShing, PuShing.” 

wasn’t that he had to be introduced to anything. Robert 

knew about photography. He had taken pictures 

before, with a 35 mm. But he wasn’t so interested in 

the darkroom process. He liked the Polaroid because it 

was fast. Then he was seduced by photography in general—but, 

again, because of its speed. He could access 

sculpture through photography. He loved sculpture. 

BOLLEN: There is a certain amount of magic in the 

memoir. You write about your work and events that 

involve magic. And I think that fits into this rather 

magical time of the late ’60s and ’70s in New York. 

SMITH: I didn’t realize it. But I’ve noticed and 

tried not to be seduced by the fact that I’ve always 

had both very good and very bad luck. I never 

understood why, and it’s continued my whole life. 

Sometimes I feel like I’m too lucky, and other times I 

feel like I’ve been dealt a rough hand. But we weren’t 

particularly self-conscious when we were doing all of 

those things I wrote about. I didn’t look around and 

think, Ah, we are in the era. Because, don’t forget, 

I’m a 19th-century person. I spent a lot of time wishing 

I had been born in another century. I was always 

looking backward. And it took me a long time to 

appreciate the present. Change was always horrifying 

to me. I always wanted things to stay as they were 

and never change. But, honestly, I just didn’t think 

about it, because we were struggling. One time, me, 

Robert, and Jim Carroll were all living together— 

three people with promise. But half the time we 

barely had enough money to eat. A lot of our 

preocupation was with how to pay the rent and get 

our next meal, or a little nickel bag of pot, or supplies 

to do a drawing. Our preoccupations were so practical. 

You didn’t have a lot of cash unless you stole it. 

BOLLEN: It was more about survival. 

SMITH: Yeah, it’s different now. Today, people 

are very self-conscious about fame and fortune and 

where they are at. They can almost gauge it as it’s 

happening, by how many hits they have on their websites. 

But when I talk about the past, I’m not talking 

about it like, “Oh, the good old days.” It was just the 

way it was. I could mourn the way things are. I could 

mourn the birth of the credit card, but I also know 

that because of the credit card, a lot of people are 

able to do their work. If Robert had had a credit card, 

he could have done those installations. So there’s 

good and evil attached. I always think that eventually 

true artists will be heard. Sometimes not in their 

own time. Look at William Blake. He was completely 

drowned out by the Industrial Revolution. 

His voice was not heard in his own time because 

everything became very material. He was churning 

out his hand-colored books while down the road 

there was a mill churning out thousands of books at a 

time. Almost overnight, William Blake was rendered 

obsolete. And today an artist like myself could be 

rendered obsolete, except I refuse. I just do my work. 

Good artists will rise up. They will be found. 

BOLLEN: But maybe New York isn’t the place it 

was for artists. Maybe it’s not the right city for 

the strugglers and drifters anymore. 

SMITH: Oh, yes. It’s very unfair to young struggling 

people. When I came to New York in the late 

’60s, you could find an apartment for $50 or $60 a 

month. You could get a job in a bookstore or be a 

waitress and still live as an artist. You could have 

raw space. That’s been rendered impossible. I mean, 

my band lost its practice space and had to move out 

of town. They’re all fancy galleries. CBGB is now a 

fancy clothing store. The Bowery used to be home to 

winos, William Burroughs, and punk rockers. Now 

it’s a whole other scene. That’s part of New York’s 

tragedy and beauty. It’s a city of continual reinvention 

and transformation. I think the way things are 

going now is good for commerce, bad for art. Bad for 

the common man. [Mayor Michael] Bloomberg does 

not serve the common man. He serves the image of 

the city as a new shopping center. A place to get great 

meals. Little parks that make no sense. Places like 

Union Square, as if we were in Paris. We’re not Paris. 

We’re New York City. It’s a gritty city. It’s a place 

where you have all races and all walks of life, and 

that has always been its beauty. It’s the city of immigrants. 

It’s the city where you can start at the bottom. 

I feel the Bloomberg administration has reinvented 

the city as the new hip suburbia. It’s a tourist 

city. It’s really safe for tourists. I guess I liked it when 

it was a little less safe. Or I liked it when it was safer 

for artists. Now it’s unsafe for artists. I’m not saying 

this for myself. I’m saying this for the future of creative 

communities. Because, one day, all the people 

who have driven out the artists and have only these 

fancy condos left are going to turn around and say, 

“Why do I live here? There’s nothing happening!” 

BOLLEN: What’s very moving throughout the book 

is how you and Robert took care of each other. And 

it’s rare that in a relationship between two young 

people, you both became so successful. Usually the 

support system eventually becomes unbalanced, and 

one rises while the other holds on. Would either of 

you have made the work you did without each other? 

SMITH: Robert was a great artist, and he would 

have found a way, and I would’ve done whatever I 

do. But I know what we gave each other. We gave 

each other what the other didn’t have. I was very 

sturdy and practical in my own way. So I gave him a 

practical support system and also unconditional 

belief. He already had that in himself, but it was nice 

to have someone conspire with him. I had a lot of 

bravado, and I was a good survivor. But I can’t say 

that I believed in myself as an artist with the full 

intensity that he believed in his own self. He gave me 

that. I certainly don’t count myself as any reason why 

Robert did great work. I just know that in those formative 

years . . . I know I kept him going. 

BOLLEN: You were first lovers and then close 

friends and collaborators. You were something of a 

constant when Mapplethorpe was going though so 

much self-reinvention and self-discovery. The way 

you describe it in the memoir, it almost seems like it 

was ripping him apart. 

SMITH: I was always a constant because Robert had 

a lot of duality. Part of it was his Catholicism and 

how he was brought up—good versus evil, being 

straight versus being homosexual. They were 

battling in him until he got to a point where these 

things were no longer a battle. They were just all 

of the things that he was. Robert and I were always 

ourselves—’til the day he died, we were just exactly 

as we were when we met. And we loved each 

other. Everybody wants to define everything. Is it 

necessary to define love? We just loved each other. 

BOLLEN: He shot really beautiful photos of you. 

SMITH: I liked being photographed back then. I 

was tall and skinny, and I used to dream about being 

a model. But I was too weird. I mean, my look back 

then was too weird for modeling. But I never felt 

self-conscious in front of a camera, so we didn’t have 

to deal with that. The rest was just me and him. I don’t 

even remember a camera. It’s like, when Robert took 

pictures, I could see his face. When I remember it, I 

never see a camera there. I always see his eyes squint, 

the way he looked at me, or the way he checked to make 

sure everything was right. He knew what he wanted. 

Robert was not an accidental photographer. He didn’t 

shoot and then find something cool in the images 

later. He knew what he wanted, got it, and that was it. 

BOLLEN: Were you surprised when the photography 

veered into homosexual themes and S&M? 

SMITH: It wasn’t even homosexual. It was S&M. 

For me, S&M is its own world. You can’t call it 

homosexual. It’s so specialized. But, yeah, I was 

really surprised. I was shocked and frightened, 

because the pictures were frightening. Robert 

did shocking work. Those pictures should always 

be shocking. I shudder to think people could 

get used to seeing bloody testicles on a wooden 

board. But I was worried about him getting hurt 

or killed or something, because it was a world that 

I didn’t know anything about. 

BOLLEN: You also say that he wasn’t the kind 

of person who would shoot voyeuristically. He 

would get personally involved. 

SMITH: I know that if he was taking pictures, 

he would have to involve himself somehow. He 

was too honest. I didn’t ask him about all that. It was 

too much for me. I still don’t know anything about 

what Robert really did in the ’80s. We never talked 

about it, and I never read anything, because it didn’t 

involve me. I never stood in judgment of Robert. 

I just couldn’t involve myself in all the things that 

he did. I could only support him as an artist and 

as a person who loved him. 

BOLLEN: By the late ’70s, before you moved to 

Detroit, your career had already started to move in a 

very different orbit. Do you think that split between 

you and Robert geographically was necessary? 

SMITH: No. Without sounding conceited, I was at 

the height of my fame. I was—in Europe, at least— 

becoming a really big rock ’n’ roll star. I was performing 

before 80,000 people, as big an audience as one 

could imagine. It had nothing to do with Robert. It was 

just that I had found the person I loved, and that was 

how we decided to conduct our lives. Fred [Smith] had 

been really famous as a young man, in the MC5. And 

then he got hurt by fame, crushed by it. We just agreed 

to put all that behind us and start over again as human 

beings and find out what it meant to be human. 

BOLLEN: Did you need to leave New York to do that? 

SMITH: Well, to be with Fred, I had to. He lived 

in Detroit. So I deferred to him. I didn’t want to 

leave New York. I loved New York. It was difficult 

to leave. It was difficult to leave Robert and my band. 

None of that was easy. But as fate turned out, those 

16 years were the only years I was ever gonna spend 

with Fred. So I made the right decision. They weren’t 

years, in the end, that I had a choice to play with. 

“the queStion foR me 

waSn’t if aRt got uS. the 

queStion waS, ‘do we 

RegRet that?’ i know 

aRt got uS, becauSe if 

aRt getS You, You neveR 

can be noRmal. You can 

neveR enJoY. You can’t 

go anYwheRe without 

tRYing to tRanSfoRm it.” 

BOLLEN: You mention at one point in the book, 

when you are sitting around the back room at Max’s 

Kansas City, that none of the people at the table would 

die in the Vietnam War, but most of them would die in 

the plagues of the coming decades. It obviously must 

have been hard when writing this book to look back at 

all of the people that once were here but now are gone. 

SMITH: I can look at that table and see everybody 

there and see only two survivors in all of those people 

who were iconic of those times. Jackie Curtis, 

Andrea Feldman, Candy Darling, Andy Warhol— 

all of these people are gone. All the players—even 

the kings and queens—Halston, all of them. 

BOLLEN: Why did the brilliant eccentrics of 

that period have such a high mortality rate? 

SMITH: Well, I can’t say I felt any less eccentric than 

anybody else. I just think that some people were more 

attracted to the lifestyle around art. To me, being 

hungry and messy and being free to live in a mess 

and not have to worry if I bathed for a week, that was 

enough. But a lot of these people kept pushing, pushing, 

pushing—doing drugs, indulging in very intense 

promiscuity, taking hormonal drugs to change their 

gender. There were all kinds of things—speed, 

mixing pills. I’ve often thought about what made me 

different than a lot of these people. Maybe it’s the fact 

that even though I had a very sickly childhood, I had 

a happy childhood. I was well loved. A lot of these 

people were not loved early in their lives. I’m not a 

psychiatrist, nor am I trying to be. I’m just saying that 

I lived in the same environment as these people. But 

also, I hated peer pressure. I suffered it my whole life, 

and I refused when I came to New York to get reverse 

peer pressure. I hated when I was in high school and 

people said I had to drink beer in a field to be cool. I 

would be the lookout, but I didn’t want beer. It didn’t 

attract me, and I hated that pressure. When I went to 

New York, I hated the pressure of “Oh, if you don’t 

smoke pot, you’re a narc.” That paranoiac peer pressure 

was rampant in those days. There was a lot of 

peer pressure to take drugs. 

BOLLEN: I have always suspected that for all of the 

freedom going on in Warhol’s circle, it was one big 

pool of peer pressure. 

SMITH: It was heavy. I wasn’t a part of that. That was 

too intense for me. It was very brutal—a brutal scene. 

But so was the hippie scene. That was the thing— 

Robert was like a refuge for me, because Robert knew 

that I didn’t need that stuff. For some reason my mind 

expanded on its own, and he understood that. 

BOLLEN: To be honest, one thing that really surprised 

me about the book is that I figured that you 

did a lot of drugs at that time. I just assumed drugs 

were a big part of you and Mapplethorpe’s life in the 

days of the Chelsea Hotel. I was waiting for the chapter 

where it would go really deep into drug darkness. 

But you were a very sober person. 

SMITH: I have a whole different view of drugs. 

When the drug culture was prevalent, I was appalled 

by it. To me, drugs were quite sacred. I had a romantic 

view of drugs. They were for artists and poets and 

American Indians and jazz musicians. I never believed 

in drugs as a recreational substance. No matter what 

people say or what exaggerated stories they tell, I 

could count on my hand the number of times I drank 

too much tequila with Sam [Shepard] or something. 

But it was also because of my body. I had so many 

illnesses in my youth. My body actually couldn’t 

take substance abuse. I nearly died of illnesses three 

different times before I was 20, and the last thing I 

wanted to do, after my parents went broke taking 

care of me, was to go and throw it away. I’m also too 

ambitious. I wanted to do something great, and you 

can’t do anything great if you don’t have mental clarity. 

Robert also didn’t live the crazy druggy lifestyle 

in the ’70s. I mean, he took acid sometimes. But we 

had no money. Buying a nickel bag of pot was a big 

thing for Robert. If he smoked a joint every day, it 

was like some skinny little joint. Also, a person who 

was really fucked up on drugs and couldn’t handle 

it actually repelled him. If someone came to visit us 

who had shot a bunch of heroin or was really fucked 

up, he didn’t like that. He didn’t like to see people 

lose control. I only saw Robert lose control on a substance 

once in my life. I never saw him drunk. Sometimes 

on New Year’s Eve, he’d have a couple glasses 

of champagne. But Robert was very much in control 

of himself. What he did later in life or beyond our 

sphere I can’t speak of, but I knew him for a long time 

as a person who had control of himself. 

BOLLEN: Maybe some of his graphic sexual portraits 

were his way of gaining control over the situation. 

SMITH: Robert liked to control situations. Robert was 

an artist. I’m not an analytical person. I’ve tried to analyze 

a few things sitting here, but in reality, I spend most 

of my time dreaming up work for magic scenarios. 

BOLLEN: Do you have a lot of your early drawings 

and work from that period? 

SMITH: I have some. A lot of them were destroyed 

when we were robbed. I have certain things. I have 

Robert’s letters to me. I have precious things. I don’t 

have any photographs. We were so communal, I 

always imagined what ¬ continued on page 125 

chRiStoPheR bollen iS inTerview’S editoR at laRge. 

see and hear more paTTi smiTh on inteRviewmagazine.com 

98 99

124/MORE!MORE!MORE! 125 

more burton 

Continued from page 42 ¬ this perception of him as a 

teen idol, but he’s really not that person. That’s just 

how he was perceived by society—and thus who he 

was. And that’s exactly like Edward: I’m not what 

people think I am. I’m something else. 

ELFMAN: You got all that just from meeting him? 

BURTON: Yeah, absolutely. That’s the thing. I could 

tell that he understood. You can always feel if someone 

understands the dynamic. There’s a certain pain 

in that. Johnny’s not Tiger Beat, even if that’s how the 

rest of the world sees him—as a page of a teen magazine. 

He’s got a lot more depth, a lot more emotion. 

There’s a certain sadness when that happens to people. 

So it’s very easy to identify without even really talking 

too much about it. 

ELFMAN: You’re known for working on amazing 

sets and compositing shots that use as few 

effects as possible—maybe with the exception 

of Mars Attacks!, and even then you had sets and 

actors and animated Martians that were realized 

pretty quickly. Now we are about to see Alice in 

Wonderland, which is a totally different animal. 

What was it like working on that? 

BURTON: It was completely opposite from the 

way I usually make a film. Usually the first thing 

I know is the vibe and feel of a scene. It’s the first 

thing you see. Now it’s the last thing you see. It’s 

like actually being in Alice in Wonderland. It’s completely 

fucked up. You understand that when you’re 

shooting—that some percentage of what you’re 

filming isn’t going to be exactly like what it ends 

up being, because so many elements are added 

later. It’s in your head, and it can be unsettling. I 

did find it quite difficult, because you don’t see a 

shot until the very end of the process. Even when 

we were making Nightmare or Corpse Bride, you’d 

get a couple of shots and know what the vibe was. 

This was completely ass-backward. 

ELFMAN: Let’s end with a little free association. 

BURTON: Uh-oh. Always a bad sign. 

ELFMAN: As a kid, what was your idea of reality? 

BURTON: Well, it’s those things that I always loved. 

People say, “Monster movies—they’re all fantasy.” 

Well, fantasy isn’t fantasy—it’s reality if it connects 

to you. I always found that those people trying to categorize 

normal versus abnormal or light versus dark, 

yada yada, are all missing the point. 

ELFMAN: I remember what you said to me when you 

were fighting the R rating on Batman Returns, which 

was absurd because there was nothing really violent 

in the whole movie to put an R rating on. You said, 

“You know what’s scary to a little kid? When they 

hear one of their relatives coming home and knocking 

over furniture because they’re drunk. That’s 

frightening to a kid. Not monsters!” 

BURTON: Exactly! Or when an aunt who has bloodred 

lipstick and lips three feet long comes to kiss you 

dead-on on your face. That’s terrifying! 

ELFMAN: [laughs] Okay. Freaks. 

BURTON: We’ve all been called that before. [laughs] 

When I hear that word, I hear, “Somebody that I would 

probably like to meet and would get along with.” 

ELFMAN: Good and evil. 

BURTON: Hard to tell sometimes. That’s the thing. 

Especially when you’re making a movie, you experience 

good and evil about 20 to 100 times a day. 

You’re not quite sure where one crosses over into the 

other. It’s quite a slippery slope, that one. 

ELFMAN: Last question. I’ve always wondered, but 

I’ve never really asked you: Why in the world did I 

get hired to do Pee-wee’s Big Adventure? Because it 

didn’t make any sense, even to me. 

BURTON: [laughs] We never talked about it, did we? 

It’s very simple to me. I used to come to see your band 

play at places like Madame Wong’s. 

ELFMAN: But that’s so different from film scoring. 

BURTON: It wasn’t to me. I always thought you 

were very filmic in some way. Also, because I hadn’t 

made a feature-length film yet, I just responded 

to your work. It was very nice to be connected to 

somebody who I felt had done so much more than 

I had at that point. 

ELFMAN: Johnny and I both owe you a big debt. 

BURTON: It’s all great. There’s something quite 

exciting when you have a history with somebody 

and you see them do new and different things. 

We have our next challenge set out for us, that’s 

for sure. But let’s have you watch it, and see if you 

want to quit. 

more JAY-Z 

Continued from page 61 ¬ like when you first spotted 

him and he was producing for you? 

JAY-Z: Well, he’s really more of a peer now. You know, 

before, he was more a new guy trying to get on—a 

fan of the music that I’ve made and my lifestyle—so 

things were a little different. But he’s an extraordinary 

person. He has these ideas and these things that he 

wants to do and places he wants to go, and he’s really 

passionate about them. He’s very sincere. 

MITCHELL: Sometimes his passions ruin him. 

JAY-Z: Yeah, which is great. I like that, man! I really 

do. I mean, no one’s walking around here perfect. 

Everyone’s gonna make mistakes. That’s part of how 

you learn. I think Kanye . . . Well, I know he said 

what he believed. He was telling the truth. 

MITCHELL: To which event are you referring? 

JAY-Z: I’m talking about the Taylor Swift thing. I just 

think the timing of what he did was wrong, and that, 

of course, overshadowed everything. He believed 

that “Single Ladies” [by Jay-Z’s wife, Beyoncé] was 

a better video. I believed that. I think a lot of people 

believed that. You can’t give someone Video of the 

Year if they don’t win Best Female Video. I thought 

Best Female Video was something you won on the 

way to Video of the Year. But, hey, I guess it wasn’t— 

and that’s a whole other conversation about awards 

shows and artists. 

MITCHELL: You seem to stay away from that awards 

show stuff for the most part. 

JAY-Z: Yeah, because it ain’t about nothing. It’s cool. 

It’s acknowledgment. The fans get to see you, and 

you can do great by your record if you have a great 

performance or a great night there. That’s all part of 

the business. But at their core, awards shows are not 

really a sincere thing. You know, for a lot of years, 

the artists had to pay to play their own set. 

MITCHELL: No kidding! 

JAY-Z: Yes. That was the worst scam ever. I 

couldn’t even believe it. I mean, just now they’re 

starting to pay for half the sets and some awards 

shows pay for the whole thing. But this is just 

happening now—and it’s only because the record 

companies ran out of money. 

MITCHELL: You’ve always had interesting takes on 

awards shows. I remember back in the day, you talked 

about the Grammys and said, “Well, they don’t take 

rap seriously, so why should I go? They don’t know 

what we do—and they don’t care about what we do.” 

JAY-Z: It’s just honest, man—they really didn’t. I’ve 

always seen awards shows for what they are. For the 

awards show people, it’s about sponsorships—it’s not 

about recognizing anyone’s art, because if you get into 

the business of recognizing art, then you have to get 

it right all the time. You have to get it right. You can’t 

have the woman who wins Video of the Year not win 

Best Female Video. I mean, Herbie Hancock is great, 

but you can’t have him beat the Kanye album that year. 

I mean, come on, seriously. That can’t happen. That 

just lets me know that the people who get to pick these 

ballots just check the only name they know. I think 

that’s what’s happening with rap music now. 

MITCHELL: Yeah? 

JAY-Z: I think it’s a bunch of people who don’t 

know anything about rap, and have probably never 

even heard a Kanye West album, are doing the 

nominating, and they say, “Kanye West. I know 

that name. That’s the guy who made the comments 

about the president that time! He’s nominated!” 

That’s how the process works, and I think 

that’s part of Kanye’s frustration. Me, I look at it 

for what it is. But Kanye is so passionate about it. 

I mean, the guy shot three “Jesus Walks” videos. 

Three. Two of them he shot with his own money 

just so he could get it right. He really cares about 

it. And then, back to the original point, his passion 

kicks in and he takes things too far . . . He 

doesn’t realize that that girl, Taylor Swift, is just 

like him. That was her moment. It wasn’t her fault. 

She didn’t do anything. It’s not her awards show. 

So he just did the wrong thing to the wrong person 

at the wrong time. 

MITCHELL: Did he call you that night? Did you 

guys talk about what happened right away? 

JAY-Z: We actually had to fly out because we were 

doing Leno the next day, and he called and said he 

wasn’t getting on the plane. I knew he didn’t want to 

have the conversation yet. It’s more of a big brother 

relationship with me and him. But he came the next 

day, and we spoke in the dressing room. We had a 

nice, long talk. I think he did the right thing to face it 

and just move on. I say this all the time, but I think, at 

the end of the day, we’re gonna celebrate him for his 

passion more than vilify him. 

MITCHELL: Well, with the way that black music—rap, 

hip-hop—has become a more mainstream thing, you get 

a lot of people responding to your music who don’t necessarily 

know the history or what you’ve been doing. 

JAY-Z: It’s the worst thing in the world. In a weird 

way, it’s funny to me. It’s the reason I made “99 Problems.” 

I was like, “People are gonna hear the chorus 

and think one thing without listening to the context 

or what the song is really about.” “I got 99 problems 

but a bitch ain’t one,” It’s like, “See? Bitches and hoes! 

That’s it. That’s all he’s about.” Right? The song is 

really about racial profiling. But there are advantages. 

I was thinking about this the other day. Forget about 

New York people—they know me. But all over the 

world, people talk to me like they’ve had a conversation 

with me before, and it’s the best feeling. I like it 

when people I don’t even know call me “Jay.” It happens 

all the time. I know these people don’t know me, 

but it’s because they listen to my music so much that 

they feel they know me. It can be overwhelming— 

certain people think they can just sit at the dinner 

table with you. But for the most part it’s really cool. 

Wherever I am, I don’t feel disconnected. It’s really 

this weird, warm feeling. 

MITCHELL: It’s like, through your music, you pull 

people into what’s going on in your world, and so 

they feel like they know you. Who was the first musical 

person who connected with you in that way? 

JAY-Z: In my house, we listened to so much great 

music that I never really connected to one specific 

thing. There was Michael Jackson, of course, but he 

didn’t speak to me. I guess it had to be early rap—you 

know, Rakim and Big Daddy Kane and Ice Cube. I 

would say those three all spoke to me directly, maybe 

Rakim a little more because he was around some real 

guys from a project that was like 10 minutes away 

from Fort Greene projects. But it was weird for me, 

man, because my lifestyle was so different. The rappers 

in that day, although they made money, they 

weren’t making more money than the street guys. 

MITCHELL: I think people lose sight of that. For a 

long time, there wasn’t that much money in rap. But 

if you had a hustle, if you were out there doing your 

thing, you could really knock it down. 

JAY-Z: Yeah. So although I connected with those 

records, I could never fully connect because the guys 

that I was around were bigger than the rappers. Rap 

wasn’t all over the radio at that time—in fact, there 

were stations that promoted that they didn’t play rap, 

like that was a good thing, like, “This is the only place 

where we don’t play rap!” 

MITCHELL: So what was the game-changer 

moment for you? 

JAY-Z: It was Jaz [the rapper Jaz-O] for me. Jaz was 

my friend. He came from Marcy Projects. When 

Jaz got a record deal, it really was a moment for me. 

I was like, “So explain this to me: they gave you 

money to make music?” He got, like, $400,000, 

which was a ridiculous number back then, in, like 

’88, because EMI wasn’t in the rap business, and 

they didn’t know enough not to jerk him. They 

didn’t know that he wasn’t supposed to get money 

equivalent to the R&B guys, so they gave him a 

contract like they would give, like, Freddie Jackson. 

When he got that deal, that was the moment 

when I said, “Man, this thing could be something.” 

But up until then, I didn’t really believe that rappers 

were making that much money because, I’m telling 

you, the hustlers used to buy rapper’s rings. You’d 

be at a hotel and the hustler would get the presidential 

suite, and the rapper would get, like, a twin 

bed. The hustler would pull up in a 735 BMW, and 

the rapper would pull up in the van—you know, the 

turtle top with 18 people in it. So it’s like, “Why 

do I want to be a rapper?” That’s why it took me so 

long to rap. 

MITCHELL: I was wondering: You knew Biggie. 

What did you think of that movie Notorious that 

came out last year? 

JAY-Z: I have an interesting perspective on Notorious 

[2009]. I felt like it was entertaining, and it was 

done well, but I didn’t enjoy it. The whole time I 

was watching it, I just saw Biggie. I saw this charismatic 

guy who made it and was very charming and 

really just a happy-go-lucky, funny guy who beatboxed 

when he got caught cheating—and this guy 

died for absolutely nothing. So I couldn’t really get 

past that to enjoy the movie. It looked like it was 

entertaining—I could see how people were entertained. 

But me, I didn’t enjoy it. 

MITCHELL: I guess I just wonder if it made you 

reflect back on that time and all that craziness. You 

know, we look back on that now, and it’s just like, 

“Wow, how could that possibly have happened?” 

JAY-Z: Right. That part really stuck with me. I’m 

like, man, it was just senseless. It was about nothing. 

MITCHELL: Did anyone ever ask you if you wanted 

to be involved in that film in some way? 

JAY-Z: Early on in the process, Mark Pitts [one of 

the producers on the film] and Biggie’s mom [Violetta 

Wallace] came to my office. They spoke about 

what they were trying to do, but nobody talked to 

me about being in the movie or anything like that 

. . . I try to stay away from those things. Even ask 

Puff [Sean “Diddy” Combs]. I give Puff the worst 

times when he asks me to be on Biggie records, 

because I never want to feel like I’m capitalizing off 

someone who’s not here—and I’m not saying that 

anyone did. But I’m very sensitive about that stuff. 

I’d rather pay homage to him in my own way, and 

keep things moving forward. 

more ghesquiere 

Continued from page 69 ¬ It’s really about emotion and 

sensation. Clothes are too, but it’s not the same. Working 

with a scent was actually very relaxing for me. 

FORD: I think it gives more emotion. This is going to 

sound crazy, but the first thing I do when I get home 

is take off all my clothes—at home, just around the 

house. Like, right now, I am sitting here completely 

naked. [Ghesquière laughs] I can’t stand clothes! I take 

everything off—my shoes, my socks, my watch, shirt, 

everything. I am completely naked. 

GHESQUIÈRE: Do you wear your perfume? 

FORD: That is what I was going to say. I stay this 

way pretty much 24 hours a day. Richard is very 

funny. He is usually completely dressed. He does 

not like to be naked. So he is in the house; we are 

having dinner. I am sitting there naked; he is sitting 

there completely dressed. I also take, like, three 

baths a day—it is not to be clean, it is because I like 

to relax and lie in the water. It is the way I calm 

myself down. But every time I walk past my bathroom, 

I go in and I put on some perfume. I use different 

ones for different moods. If I feel that I need 

to calm down, I put on certain fragrances that are 

more sensual. If I feel that I need to energize, I put 

on something else. Fragrance for me is so important. 

How did your fragrance begin? 

GHESQUIÈRE: It’s a friendship story. It started 

with a conversation Charlotte and I had years ago. 

I said, “The day I do a perfume, I’d like to do it for 

you.” I could have done something very exclusive 

and expensive. But what I like about this perfume is 

that it’s the first thing most women can access from 

Balenciaga. That was a challenge for me. 

FORD: [laughs] Because you don’t care about real 

women! We talked about that. 

GHESQUIÈRE: In this case, I care. 

FORD: Did you work directly with the perfumers? 

GHESQUIÈRE: Yes. I worked with Olivier Polge. I 

wanted to do a floral, for sure. It’s a violet perfume. 

Made of violets. 

FORD: I love violet. Oscar Wilde used to wear violet. 

GHESQUIÈRE: That’s why I like it, because it has a 

real masculine vibe. It’s not timid. 

FORD: Well, your clothes are not timid. So, lastly, do 

you get panicked five minutes after showing a collection? 

The moment I left the runway, I would always 

think, What the fuck am I going to do now? 

GHESQUIÈRE: That’s exactly what I think. 

Exactly. I usually think, I have to go back to the studio 

and chose fabrics. Or I like to go quite far away— 

FORD: And play golf. 

GHESQUIÈRE: Yeah, play golf. Exactly. 

more smith 

Continued from page 99 ¬ 

was his was mine. Even when 

we were apart, I always knew that if I needed or 

wanted something, I just had to ask him. I never 

expected him to die so young. 

BOLLEN: I was thinking about that line you remember 

him asking you when he was really sick. It’s devastating. 

He asked you if it was the art that did this. 

SMITH: “Did art get us?” 

BOLLEN: Yes, that’s it. And I wondered if art 

kind of did. At least for him. It’s not really possible 

to answer that question. 

SMITH: I can’t answer that. I mean, I know it got me. 

The question for me wasn’t if art got us. The question 

was, “Do we regret that?” I know art got us, because if 

art gets you, you never can be normal. You can never 

enjoy. You can’t go anywhere without trying to trans- 

form it, you know? You go into church to pray, and 

you start writing a story about being in a church praying. 

You’re always observing what you do. I noticed 

that when I was young going to parties. I could never 

lose myself in a party unless I was on the dance floor 

because I was always observing—observing or creating 

a mental scenario. That’s why performing is probably 

the truest thing I do socially, because everything is 

natural. There’s nothing fake in the way that my band 

performs. I’m not the greatest in social situations. But 

onstage, my whole reason for being there is to serve, so 

I’m giving everything of myself that I know how. 

BOLLEN: There are a lot of misunderstandings 

about both you and Mapplethorpe and who you 

were. Maybe this will clear some of that up. 

SMITH: Sometimes those misunderstandings came 

just because of the way I looked: I was skinny, wiry, 

speedy; I had a high metabolism rate, tons of energy. 

If I had taken speed, I would’ve had a heart attack. I 

was already moving at 78 rpm. But you know, I just 

wanted to be myself. That’s all I ever wanted, just to 

be myself. I don’t like people telling me how to dress, 

how to comb my hair. I didn’t set out to hurt anybody’s 

feelings, or to shock parents or anything like 

that. But you know, sometimes we make choices that 

seem to bother everybody but ourselves. 

BOLLEN: Do you think Mapplethorpe wanted to 

be himself? Is that what he was looking for? 

SMITH: Robert had different goals. He came from 

a different upbringing. His upbringing was Catholic, 

middle class, precise, military, well ordered, spanking 

clean. I really believe that Robert sought not to destroy 

order, but to reorder, to reinvent, and to create a 

new order. I know that he always wanted to do 

something that no one else had done. That was very 

important to him. I was a little different. I always 

wanted to do what somebody else had already done— 

I wanted to write the next Peter Pan, the next Alice in 

Wonderland. I loved history, and I wanted to be a part 

of it. Robert wanted to break from history. 

BOLLEN: You told me earlier that Just Kids isn’t 

a book about the birth of punk rock. You didn’t 

want to do that book. 

SMITH: I don’t think I’m qualified to write that 

kind of book. We did our work unconsciously and 

punk rock evolved around what we were doing. 

Lenny Kaye and I started working together in 1971. 

We were sort of a bridge between our historical 

roots and the great masters. We were a bridge from 

Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan and 

Bo Diddley and all the people in the history of rock 

’n’ roll. Lenny Kaye and I saw the whole history of 

rock ’n’ roll from the time we were born. The evolution 

was within us. New generations come less fettered 

with that evolution. They’re touched by it, but 

it’s not necessarily in their blood. So they’re going 

to do things that are more revolutionary. The whole 

history of rock ’n’ roll is sacred. Sometimes in my 

life I’ve been given too much credit, and sometimes 

I’ve been ignored, but to me it doesn’t matter. I know 

what we did, and I know what we’re doing. 

BOLLEN: Do you have great hopes for the young 

artists of the future? 

SMITH: There are powerful possibilities, and I think 

they’re gonna do splendid. It’s a dark period now 

because everyone is beguiled by fame. We have these 

horrible reality shows like American Idol, which is pop 

art at its basest, and it’s probably something that Andy 

Warhol, in his genius, anticipated. But the artist has 

to struggle beneath that canopy, just as we struggled 

beneath a different canopy—though ours wasn’t as 

overwhelming. True artists just have to keep doing 

their work, keep struggling, and keep hold of their 

vision. Being a true artist is its own reward. If that’s what 

you are, then you are always that. You could be locked

126/MORE!MORE!MORE! 

away in a prison with no way at all to communicate, 

but you’re still an artist. The imagination and the ability 

to transform is what makes one an artist. So young 

artists who feel overwhelmed have to almost downscale. 

They have to go all the way to this kernel and 

believe in themselves, and that’s what Robert gave me. 

He believed in that kernel I had, you know, with absolute 

unconditional belief. And if you believe it, you’ll 

have that your whole life, through the worst times. I 

wrote this book because I promised Robert I would. 

But I also wrote this book in hopes that maybe it would 

somehow inspire. It’s the same reason I made Horses. 

BOLLEN: Why did you make Horses? 

SMITH: We made Horses to inspire people who, like 

us, felt disenfranchised, unloved, disconnected. I 

wrote “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine” 

when I was 20 or 21 riding the subway to Scribner— 

not because I didn’t believe in Jesus or didn’t feel that 

he was a great revolutionary. It was about my disconnection 

with the church and my dissatisfaction with 

the rules of church, which was created by man. And 

Jesus felt the same thing. That’s why he did what he 

did. He was tearing down the old guard. I’m a pretty 

positive person, you know? I was trying to infuse 

the record with a certain positivity and also link us 

to our history. It was saluting history and also the 

future. This book I wrote is like Horses. It’s about a 

time and about a girl and a boy who were there when 

Horses was being built and committed. So I suppose 

it’s seeking to find the people that need it.. 

more goLdstein 

Continued from page 123 ¬ 

mostly Jean Paul Gaultier, 

and I’m friends with him. Before that, I was wearing 

Claude Montana extensively. When Roberto 

Cavalli first started designing men’s clothes, I was 

buying almost the entire Cavalli line every season. 

I was very well known for wearing Cavalli—to the 

extent that some of the other designers wouldn’t let 

me come to their shows. 

BLASBERG: When did you start going to shows? 

GOLDSTEIN: As far as I remember, I started going 

to the shows of the designers whose clothes I wore at 

least 20 years ago—particularly Jean Paul Gaultier. 

BLASBERG: How would you get the invitations? 

GOLDSTEIN: Originally, a friend of mine, Tommy 

Perse, who owns Maxfield here in L.A., started 

giving me invitations to the Gaultier shows. And then, 

as I got more interested in other shows, he would supply 

me with more invitations. Eventually, I reached a point 

where I could just show up and they’d let me in. 

BLASBERG: Have you ever thought about becoming 

more involved in fashion, beyond just crashing 

the shows? 

GOLDSTEIN: In recent years, as I’ve become better 

known on the fashion circuit and have stepped up 

my appearances at fashion shows, I’ve become so recognizable 

that the fashion photographers now swarm 

around me when I go to these shows. 

BLASBERG: But you like the attention. 

GOLDSTEIN: I get a kick out of it. I’m not doing it 

for any monetary reason. I’m doing it for fun. 

BLASBERG: Let’s talk more about this home. 

GOLDSTEIN: I didn’t know much about Lautner 

when I stumbled upon this house, but I knew I 

wanted it. Someone else had it under contract, and 

when he tried to renegotiate the purchase, I stepped 

in and bought it. When I was ready to start work- 

ing on the house, I brought Lautner in to see it. He 

was shocked to see what had happened to it. One of 

the previous owners had just destroyed the place—he 

painted the concrete ceilings green and yellow. So we 

worked together for almost 15 years before he died, 

and I think he was really thrilled with the opportunities 

I gave him. As far as I know, it was the first time 

he was given the opportunity to design furniture and 

really work on the entire house, inside and out, and 

bring it up to its full potential. 

BLASBERG: Was redoing the house an expensive 

undertaking? 

GOLDSTEIN: I never gave Lautner any budgetary 

constraints. It was always a case of, What is the best 

possible way to do this? 

BLASBERG: No budget at all? 

GOLDSTEIN: Never. I still don’t have a budget on 

that nightclub addition. Whatever it takes. 

BLASBERG: So tell me, is this house your full-time 

occupation right now? 

GOLDSTEIN: My business cards say FASHION 

ARCHITECTURE BASKETBALL. When people ask me 

what I do, they’re usually trying to ask how I made 

my money, not what my job is. In my mind, what I do 

is those three things. They occupy most of my time: 

fashion, going around to all the fashion weeks and 

being such a fanatic when I pick out my clothes, trying 

to be in the latest fashions. Architecture, which 

you can see here, with this house. And basketball, 

which is another full-time occupation for me. 

BLASBERG: How much time could being a 

basketball fan take up? 

GOLDSTEIN: I go to about four or five games a 

week during the regular season here in Los Angeles. 

And then when the playoffs start, I’m on the road getting 

on an airplane every day for about seven weeks. 

BLASBERG: Were you always a Lakers fan? 

GOLDSTEIN: No! I’m not a Lakers fan. I consider 

myself an NBA fan because I follow every team equally. I 

just happen to live in L.A. I think that no matter where 

I lived, I would not be a fan of the home team. If everybody 

is favoring one team, I always go the other way. 

BLASBERG: But you still go to every single game? 

GOLDSTEIN: I don’t just go to the games in L.A. 

The playoffs are such an exciting time in my life. I’ve 

gotten recognition as being the number-one basketball 

fan. But I don’t do it for the fame—my basketball fame 

evolved by accident. I just went because I enjoyed it so 

much. The same thing happened in fashion. 

BLASBERG: How would you describe the way you look? 

GOLDSTEIN: First, I’d say I don’t want to look like anyone 

else, but I want to do it in a tasteful, stylish way. I want 

to stay up with the latest possible styles, so that every season 

I do my utmost to find something that’s new, that’s 

never been done before, but that’s in tune with the latest 

style, whether fabrics or exotic skins. When it comes 

to my look, I want to be as trendy as possible, and at the 

same time, I want clothes that look good on me. I feel 

that I’ve been able to maintain my figure pretty well. 

BLASBERG: Do you ever say how old you are? 

GOLDSTEIN: In recent years, I haven’t disclosed 

my age. 

BLASBERG: Well, it’s true that probably only a 

young man would want a nightclub in his backyard. 

GOLDSTEIN: Exactly. 

BLASBERG: What are you going to stock the bar with? 

GOLDSTEIN: Everything. 

BLASBERG: What do you drink when you go out? 

GOLDSTEIN: I don’t drink alcohol. I drink fresh 

juice. That’s my secret. 

FASHION DETAILS 

3.1 PHILLIP LIM 31philliplim.com • 8 88 EAU DE 

PARFUM BY COMME DES GARÇONS barneys.com 

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april77.fr • ARIAT ariat.com • ARMANI JEANS armanijeans. 

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CALVIN KLEIN COLLECTION calvinklein.com • CALVIN 

KLEIN HOME calvinklein.com • CALVIN KLEIN JEANS 

calvinkleinjeans.com • CALVIN KLEIN UNDERWEAR 

cku.com • CÉLINE celine.com • CESARE PACIOTTI 

cesarepaciotti.it • CHANEL chanel.com • CHLOÉ chloe.com 

• CHRISTOPHER KANE net-a-porter.com • CHRISTIAN 

DIOR dior.com • CLINIQUE clinique.com • COMME 

DES GARÇONS doverstreetmarket.com • CONVERSE 

BY JOHN VARVATOS converse.com • COVERGIRL 

covergirl.com • D&G dolcegabbana.com • DAVID SAMUEL 

MENKES davidmenkesleather.com • DIESEL diesel.com • 

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UNDERWEAR emporioarmani.com • ERMENEGILDO 

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ARMANI giorgioarmani.com • GIVENCHY BY RICCARDO 

TISCI givenchy.com • GUCCI gucci.com • GUISEPPE 

ZANOTTI guiseppe-zanotti-design.com • H&M hm.com • 

HELMUT LANG helmutlang.com • HERMÈS hermes.com 

• HUGO hugoboss.com • ISETAN isetan.co.jp • J BRAND 

jbrandjeans.com • JEAN PAUL GAULTIER jeanpaulgaultier. 

com • JEAN SHOP worldjeanshop.com • JENNIFER BEHR 

jenniferbehr.com • JOHN VARVATOS johnvarvatos.com • 

JOHNNY FARAH johnnyfarah.com • JOSEPH joseph.co.uk 

• KARL LAGERFELD karllagerfeld.com • KIWON WANG 

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lacrasia.com • THE LEATHER MAN theleatherman.com • 

LE MALE BY JEAN PAUL GAULTIER jeanpaulgaultier. 

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LAURENT yslbeautyus.com • LISELOTTE WATKINS 

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LOUIS VUITTON louisvuitton.com • M.A.C. maccosmetics. 

com • MAISON MARTIN MARGIELA maisonmartinmargiela. 

com • MAISON MARTIN MARGIELA ARTISANAL 

maisonmartinmargiela.com • MARC JACOBS marcjacobs. 

com • MAX MARA maxmara.com • MCQ by ALEXANDER 

MCQUEEN alexandermcqueen.com • MENDED VEIL 

mendedveil.com • MIU MIU miumiu.com • MISSONI 

missoni.com • NARCISO RODRIGUEZ narcisorodriguez. 

com • NICHOLAS KIRKWOOD nicholaskirkwood. 

com • NICOLE MILLER nicolemiller.com • NIKE nike. 

com • NOTORIOUS BY RALPH LAUREN ralphlauren. 

com • OLIVER PEOPLES oliverpeoples.com • OPENING 

CEREMONY openingceremony.us • OSCAR DE LA RENTA 

oscardelarenta.com • OSKLEN osklen.com • PALMER 

AND SONS palmerandsons.ca • PAUL SMITH paulsmith. 

co.uk • PIAZZA SEMPIONE piazzasempione.com • PIERRE 

HARDY pierrehardy.com • PORTS 1961 ports1961. 

com • PRADA prada.com • PRINGLE OF SCOTLAND 

pringlescotland.com • PROENZA SCHOULER 

proenzaschouler.com • RAG & BONE rag-bone.com • 

RALPH LAUREN COLLECTION ralphlauren.com • 

RALPH LAUREN WATCHES ralphlaurenwatches.com • 

RAQUEL ALLEGRA raquelallegra.com • ROCAWEAR 

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com • SALVATORE FERRAGAMO salvatoreferragamo.com 

• SCHOTT NYC schottnyc.com • SHAMBALLA barneys. 

com • SOCK DREAMS sockdreams.com • SWAROVKSI 

ELEMENTS crystallized.com • TABITHA SIMMONS 

tabithasimmons.com • TIFFANY & CO. tiffany.com • 

TOM FORD tomford.com • TORY BURCH toryburch. 

com • UNIQLO uniqlo.com • VALENTINO valentino. 

com • VERSACE versace.com • VERSENSE BY VERSACE 

versace.com • VISVIM visvimshoes.com • VIVIENNE 

WESTWOOD viviennewestwood.com • WOLFORD 

wolford.com • YIGAL AZROUËL yigal-azrouel.com • 

YOHJI YAMAMOTO yohjiyamamoto.co.jp • 

YVES SAINT LAURENT ysl.com 

Vol. XXXIX NO. 10 | Printed in the USA | • 

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