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MM
Alright, now, I just need to do a couple more things, so . . . just
GT
The air look you this brave or' hanging firmament - this majestical roof fretted with gold and fire, why it appears none other to me now than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors
MM
What is that?
GT
The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals
MM
What is that?
GT
Ah, Hamlet.
MM
Oh, omelet
GT
Omelet, omelet, Omelet his self. [Greg laughs]
MM
Maybe, Greg, if you - can you wear your hat a little bit further back on your head. That looks good. That looks good.
GT
Oh, what a piece of work is man. How noble in reason. In apprehension how like an angel.
MM
Alright, we're good. Good, good.
GT
In form in moving, how like an angel.
MM
In form and movement, yeah.
GT
In apprehension how like a god. How are we going to work this? Do you want to ask me questions? Or do you just -
MM
Yeah, ah, let's see
RT
We may ask you to repeat something if there's something juicy comes through -
GT
Absolutely, yeah, sure
RT
And real relaxed of course
GT
So, how long have you guys been out on the road now?
RT
Well, this current trip -
GT
This current trip -
MM
Oh, about a week and a half.
GT
How much longer you got to go?
RT
Well, what do you think, another nine months, ten months maybe, yeah, yeah.
GT
Wow.
RT
To get it all down.
GT
Wow.
MM
Yeah, there's another, there's another - there's two interviews - Eric Hobsbawm, you know him?
GT
No
MM
Historian, British historian.
GT
Wow.
MM
He wrote jazz articles under the name Francis Newton.
GT
Now, I believe I've seen that name somewhere.
MM
And he's also, he's a British historian, let's see now, do you want to lean on that or -
GT
Oh, I don't care. No, I'm just - I just happen to be ambiently do so. If you don't need me to do that, just, just, now I know and I won't do that.
MM
Yes, shame on you.
GT
Yep [Greg laughs]
MM
Alright, let's see.
GT
Now, and he became interested in Lord Buckley?
MM
Yeah, what happened was - he was in Chicago, he's friends with Studs Terkel and Studs -
GT
Buckley lived in Chicago I gather.
MM
Yeah, a lot
GT
OK
MM
OK, yeah.
GT
To the extent that he lived anywhere, right?
MM
Yeah, there's some debate as to, you know, he had some homes - especially when he hooked up with Elizabeth, but - this looks beautiful, I think. Let's see. Yeah, we're good. OK I'm rolling, so.
GT
OK
MM
Alright, first question: Why did you do it?!
GT
Why did I do it! Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
MM
Tell me, what was your first encounter with His Lordship?
GT
That is an easy question to answer.
MM
You know what, I'm sorry, Greg, I don't mean to - I'm going to move a little bit over here. And maybe you can speak to me just, you know, so you're, so you're not looking right in the camera.
GT
My first encounter with His Lordship Lord Buckley -
MM
Hang on one second - make sure I got you - Alright, Prince, you are swinging.
GT
My first encounter with His Lordship Lord Buckley was when I was a teenager of about 13. I had an uncle, God bless him, who was very much a mentor for me as a kid. And I guess, in the best sense of the word, he was a creative mentor. His record collection was one of the focuses of the modern world for me. And one afternoon while going through it, I found an album and on the cover was a picture of a man in a white coat wearing pince nez, those glasses without the things that go behind your ear. And, and a ribbon and it was Lord Buckley. And I played this album wondering what my uncle Kelly was doing with this, this, you know, guy that look like a 19th century gentleman. [Greg laughs]. And lo and behold did I get a big surprise. Did I get a big surprise. And I remember one of the things that was on there was a version of a Christmas Carol as only Lord Buckley could have done it. And he sounded just like one of my other uncles. And he sounded like all the people that were down the street at Kilpatrick Street and Center Avenue, which was the avenue in my neighborhood years ago. And that was my first encounter. Never forgot it. And over the years after that, every now and again, on some radio program, or in somebody's record collection or at a party or whatever, this would pop up again. And it popped up again all the way into my adult life.
MM
What was it that - I mean what - now, you, you, you ran into him before you went to Oxford.
GT
That's right, before I went to England, as a kid. But, Lord Buckley was - represented something very new. I was growing up in the late '50s when I discovered him in Pennsylvania, big eastern industrial town, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. People must know it. I grew up in a community which in Pittsburgh was very much the equivalent of what south central LA is here, or what Roxbury is in Boston, or what south west Chicago is, and so on and so on. And racial divisions, at that time, were very stark. Those of you who read your history books know, know some things that were going on in the South in those days and etc. etc. But, when I say racial divisions, I mean, I mean that in a deeper sense. There were cultural racial divisions.
MM
Now what does that mean?
GT
The way black folks dressed; the way they ate, the way they wrote, the way they talked to each other, the way their music sounded. All these things were, at that time, different than the way white people did such things. Still are to some degree, but more so then. And there was a dividing line. We were not just physically, or politically, or socially segregated. We were culturally segregated. And there was abroad in the land, and had been for decades, in the land, a sort of a notion that the artist works of black folks were some how inferior to the artistic works of black - of white folks. Oh, there were a few notable exceptions. There was the great Louis Armstrong and there was Miss Lena Horne, who was, you know, prettier than half the white women around her and - OK, and all that. But, we know that from nineteen hundred straight up to the time that I was born, while white America had a sort of fascination with the panache and the grace of black entertainers, there was this sense that, well, there was the white world of art, which was high and sophisticated, and of moment. And there was the black world of art which was entertaining, but after all that's all it was. So, along comes Lord Buckley, and what Lord Buckley is doing is - he is adding substance to something which, up to then, the white world assumed, and, I guess, even most of the black world assumed, had no substance. Which was black humor. He was a white man doing black humor. But his black humor was: political satire, social commentary, had religious overtones. It wasn't buck and wing, and it wasn't, it wasn't Mr. Bones and Mr. Interlocutor. And it wasn't even, I mean, it wasn't even, you know, Moms Mably or Red Foxx. It wasn't jokes about drinking or jokes about sex, you know, alone, you know. It wasn't regular nightclub fare. So, in that sense, all of a sudden, coming out of the face of a white man, a, what I recognize as a distinctly black voice. Was saying the kinds of things that you were reading in the New Yorker about Lenny Bruce saying. And we all today know that what Lenny Bruce was saying and doing was socially significant, and culturally significant and that's what Buckley was doing. He was, in those days, one of that handful of people who rose above the level of being a comedian to being what, in the last century, was called a humorist.
MM
Twain?
GT
Yeah, Twain, Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby, those of you who are readers of history will remember him. Or, you know, anyone of a number of people like that who gained, I suppose, along with a reputation for being entertaining as comic figures, a literary reputation too. You know, so, he was something, man, he was something, he was something.
MM
That's the greatest answer I've heard so far. [Greg laughs]
GT
Great, great, great! And he was - it was an interesting thing. Because, he was validating in an interesting sort of way.
MM
What do you mean validating.
GT
That's it, I kind of trying to form words about it.
MM
I'm sorry.
GT
We can all remember that there was a time in the '30s and the '40s and in the '20s, probably more so in the '20s, when white men went about in black face and literally imitated black people in public. We can also remember a time, in that time, and during that time, when white men literally imitated the art of black people. If you don't believe there is a direct association between the work of Fred Astaire and the work of the work of the Nicolas Brothers and the work of John Bubbles and the work of Bojangles Robinson then you're nuts. Astaire would tell you that if he were sitting in this chair. But, you see, it was never, how shall we - oooop.
MM
We'll hang on.
GT
You want to stop. Yep.OK, so it was OK, in those days, to literally steal, if you will, plagiarize, if you will, certainly to emulate by imitation, black folks. But it wasn't OK to take the substance of what black folks said and did seriously. So, you got characters like Amos and Andy, the two guys who played Amos and Andy and the two guys who played Amos and Andy on TV. And black folks, me included, have been justifiable angry with those images.
MM
Greg, can you start again?
GT
Oh, I'm sorry.
MM
You banged into the microphone.
GT
Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Have justifiably -
MM
Take two.
GT
What I mean by validation is this: in those days, to, to almost plagiarize, to almost appropriate the work of black people and use it as your own as a white man or white woman, or to imitate black folks in the way that people who did Amos and Andy did, was OK. What wasn't OK was to invest those images with any real seriousness. That's one of the reasons why black people are so justifiably angered by those images. Because they are belittling. Some, if you will, of the veneer, the surface appearance, of black people gets appropriated, but the real substance doesn't get appropriated, see? So that what went on all through those years, the upshot, if you will, of it was that, that the ideas of black folks, when they expressed them in their own way, in the way they talk to one another, couldn't' be taken seriously because the mode of expression was "niggerish", "too colored". I grew up hearing things like that in my household from my parents, "Oh, don't talk that way." We grew up in a time, and you saw a great rebellion against this, thank god, in the '60s, my generation. But, my parents generation, you wanted when you talked to talk as much like white person as you could. You wanted your grammar to be the grammar the people on the other side of town used. And it was assumed that in, in what today is, I guess, by some people, who think they are being very chic chic, called Ebonics. It was assumed then that there - nothing valuable could be said in that tone and in that way. Now it's interesting, if you make a comparison of that kind of image. Look, for instance, at how no one thought there was anything wrong with the broken grammar of a Robert Burns. Robert Burns invests the Scottish brogue, which, after all, is not traditional English, with poetry because he is a poet. And what - and the substance of what he says, and the music that he puts into it, invests it with cultural significance and, OK? The street talk that I heard as a boy, and that my parents sort of urged me that I wanted to be a member of an educated class that doesn't talk like that, you know, OK? Comes back to me out of the mouth of Lord Buckley and it's art, it's poetry, it's music, it's a substantive commentary on what's going on around him that actually makes sense. And it is authentically black. He sounds like a black person, he talks like a black person, he knows the linguistic codes and the rhythms of that street talk he's talking as intimately as I do or anybody else around me does as the time. And he's investing it with significance. Here's a white man who is announcing to the world that black folks really have something to say. And they really think something and what they think is, in fact, often quite correct and full of insight. So, he was, yeah he was a revelation. Because, while I always knew that the people around me had something to say, and it was significant. It never occurred to me that there were white people who knew that. And honored it and he did.
MM
Would you consider - this is mine own little pet notion, which is that - was English your subject, at Oxford?
GT
My subject was humanities and music.
MM
Well, did you study any medieval drama.
GT
I certainly did.
MM
OK, the idea of Everyman, which was pervasive in medieval drama.
GT
Absolutely.
MM
My little pet, sort of, notion about Buckley was that he choose the black dialect because it was Everyman. Much, it was much more emotional, much more representative of a human being than a white voice could be at the time he was -
GT
I believe that, in part, that has to be true. When I look back at him, I see him in the same context and I hate to keep bringing him up, but I do see them - see him that context. I see him in the context that I saw my parents. He - his generation is contemporary to theirs. He is a depression kid. If you read Grapes of Wrath, if you read books, when you were in college, about the Harlem Renaissance. He came up with that view of his times. Economic justice was something that burned in his mind as something to talk about. When he made fun he wanted to make fun of the rich and he did repeatedly. He wanted to make fun of the government, he did repeatedly. He wanted to make fun of the snobs, he did. And so you're right. I think what he saw was - he identified with those that were politically and economically disenfranchised. But, he identified also with those that were outside the dominant popular culture of his time. Not because they opted out but because they were forced out. And in medieval time that was Everyman. Because in medieval times culture was the thing that belong only to the elite, culture as we understand it today. Whole countries in which most of the population was illiterate. So, yeah, I don't - I, yeah, I believe you're quite correct. Also in the deeper spiritual sense. And people who know Lord Buckley at all must understand that this man had a - had a strong sense of spirituality: his attachment to Mahatma Gandhi, his need to talk in the peculiar way that he did about our relationship to nature and our relations with one another. Those, those same kinds of insights that Twain made about this ironic way we have of visiting each other within humanity. That's very much right out of the play Everyman. You know, this idea that we can visit our equality in the sins we commit. [Greg laughs] You know, you know. And, boy, was his sense of that really acute. Yeah,you don't believe all people are equal? Well, you know, the rich do the same thing to the poor that they do to each other. And the poor do the same thing to each other that they want to do to the rich and - [Greg laughs] OK? And he had that. He had that thing going. And street life teaches you that. And he was a - he was a great admirer of and observer of street life too.
MM
Are you familiar with a piece he did called "Black Cross"
GT
Yeah. And there you go. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about.
MM
Wait. Can you work that into the sentence, the name Black Cross?
GT
Yeah. Black Cross is the kind of thing, in fact, that I'm talking about. We have a funny way of looking at these cultural issues today but I watched it grow up and it's an interesting thing. Lord Buckley was the leader, one of the leaders, not "The" leader, one of the leaders of American youth culture. He was able to adopt a view of American society peculiar to blacks because he viewed it from the same point of view that youth did. He was talking to a young audience. So that, in the same way, that - you know, it's an amazing thing, I mean, here I am and I'm half a century old. Now, my son, I can go home - my son listens to Beatle records. Now why is that? My seventeen year old boy listens to Beatle records. Now why is that? When I was a kid we did not listen to Gershwin records. But my son is listening to these thirty year records. Today the reason why I can stop ten sixteen year old kids on the street corner and ask them who Muddy Waters, and they will know. I mean ten white kids in Beverly Hills, in Gross Pointe, Michigan, on Fire Island. And they will know is guys like Buckley, who identified the struggle, the history, the speech, the ideas of black people as speaking in maybe one of the only spiritually genuine and truthful ways anyone was willing to or allowed to, OK. It's interesting When, when Elvis appeared on, on Ed Sullivan and everybody protested, what they were really protesting about was not Elvis, cause Elvis wasn't it, man. What they were really protesting about, and they didn't know, was Lord Buckley. Lord Buckley was the danger. And the danger grew out of Lord Buckley and what Lord Buckley had to say in pieces like "Black Cross" in to, in to Bob Dylan's Talking Blues and, and, and, and Mick Jagger appearing on the stage with Muddy Waters beside him saying, "This is authentic, this is the American experience." This is, this is what the bible means when it talks about who is your neighbor. This is real. And Buckley is introducing that in '55 and '56 and '57 and '60 in coffee houses, when, when Dylan and Jagger are still home eating their Wheaties. So, he's, he's a great hero in a way. He's a great, he's a great hero in for black people. Can I tell you a story?
MM
Please.
GT
I, I hope that this story seem relevant to you. But, it's something I thought of, believe or not, on the way here.
MM
Let's, let's wipe your face off.
GT
Yeah, in the '70s after I came home from England.
MM
Well, hang on, hang on, let's, let's get the whole story on tape. [phone rings - both MM and GT laugh]
GT
You'd better turn it off again. Am I getting anywhere near the mark?
MM
My prince, you are swinging.
GT
OK, good. I'm just glad to be a little help. Because I'm no scholar on Lord Buckley or any of that. I'm just guy who listened to his records years ago that's all. And listened to them again, you know, later on.
MM
Can you lean back just a little bit?
GT
Sure.
MM
What I'm - I'm going to refocus this because you move so much I have to see -
GT
Oh, I'm sorry.
MM
No, don't, are you kidding, Gregory?
GT
OK.
MM
You move with a righteous movement.
GT
OK, OK.
MM
But hang still for a second while I focus on you.
GT
Would it be better if I move back an inch or two.
MM
No, no. You're perfect.
GT
OK.
MM
OK. I just need - I'm going to focus -
GT
[talking to RM] Now, what is your thing doing?
RM
I'm getting, sort of -
GT
It's like a two shot.
RM
Yes, so we have something to cut away to.
GT
OK, alright, here you go,there you go.
MM
It's actually an X-ray.
GT
OK, OK.
MM
A laparoscope.
GT
Yeah.
RM
Just to catch your enthusiasm.
MM
Alright, Prince, we're on.
GT
OK. This is a story that might help you to understand. If it doesn't sound immediately relevant just kind of focus in on it and you'll see what I'm saying. I came home from England and my dad, a guy - you know if there was a black Archie Bunker it was my dad, OK? Which, which, I can, I can, I can say in dad's defense that the Archie Bunker thing looks a lot more charming on black folks than it did on Archie, OK? [GT laughs] OK? But, dad's gone now. It's OK, dad. OK, but, and, and, and OK - My dad's talking - we're sitting and we're talking about something and blah, blah, blah, blah,blah, we're riding down the road in his truck I think. And dad is talking and he says, "Hey, listen, have you heard that dude on the radio who sings that song about 'I don't know, I don't know.' You know who that dude is? Who is that dude?" And I said, "I don't know", dad?, "Yeah, he sings like 'I don't know, I don't know'". And I thought for a minute and I realized, "Oh, yeah, dad. You're talking about Joe Cocker." OK? And I said, "That's Joe Cocker." And he says, "Joe Cocker." He says, "Now where's he from?" I said, "Well, dad, Joe Cocker's from England. Joe Cocker's English." And dad says, now those of you all who are sensitive need to plug your ears now, OK. And dad said like, "A nigger from England?! What are you talking about, man?" I said, "Well, dad, you know, there are a lot of black folks in England." OK, by then I had given up the random use of the N word. But, you know, in my dad's generation the random use of the N word was almost a religion. "But, but, dad, Joe is like not a black person. He's white man." He says, "You ain't going to tell me that that's no white man singing that song." "Now, I've been alive for a lot of years, a lot longer than you have. And I know the difference between a black person and a white person and that is no white person!" "Dad, he's a white person." "He is not a white person!!! Don't you dare!" OK? About two weeks - two weeks or three weeks later, dad's watching TV and on comes Joe Cocker. And dad says, "Well, yeah, you know - not only is he a white person he's like spastic or something! What's wrong with that kid? Man, he's got a handicap or something? What's the matter with - OK?" But, that's - now, dad never heard a Lord Buckley record in his life. But that's how authentic Lord Buckley was. And that's how his, I guess a lot of people can see what he did as an expropriation but he was no more an expropriation, I mean, you know, what he did was no more an, an, an offensive of, or a robbin, if you will, of something from us as it would be to see a great actor like Guilgud playing Checkov with a Russian accent. And that's what Buckley was - he was a great interpreter of this culture whose history he revered. And for me, as a black person, he's a hero because so few people had learned to honestly revere it before he. I'm not convinced there would be like a Richard Pryor today had there not been a Lord Buckley. Richard Pryor, if he was here, would tell you, "Yeah, I couldn't do what I do had there not been a Lenny Bruce."
MM
And Lenny Bruce couldn't haven't done what he did without Lord Buckley.
GT
Absolutely not, absolutely not.
MM
Umm, could I ask you - could you condense your story so you say: My dad was convinced Joe Cocker was a black guy -
GT
Sure - my -
MM
And wouldn't hear anything else.
GT
Yeah, my dad was convinced that Joe Cocker was a black guy. Absolutely convinced of it. And would not listen to me when I told him he was a white guy until a couple of weeks later and he sees him on TV himself. And then he wants to know, "Well, what is he a white guy with muscular dystrophy?" [Greg laughs] or whatever, or whatever, but that's, that's the connection: this, this - but how would Joe Cocker have ever wanted to - and he had to want to sound the way he sounded. He has to have. Sorry, Joe, if this makes you upset. But you have to have practiced that, Joe. How could he even want to do that without a Lord Buckley having come before him? It certainly wouldn't have been legitimate as it became.
MM
Sorry.
GT
Yeah.
MM
We got rock and roll -
GT
Yeah, there you go. So, yeah, Buckley this great hero. This great political and social sort of forerunner.
MM
Of a - and now - OK - Let's a - Greg, can you talk about, can you talk about Sir Walter Raleigh?
GT
Sir Walter Raleigh. Sir Walter Raleigh. I - to a certain extent - Sir Walter if you are still alive and you are still out there, then you're going to - to some extent you are going to be my back up here. Sir Walter Raleigh was a disc jockey back in the late '50s and early '60s in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, my home town and Sir Walter had a sort of an English accent, and he wore a monocle with a ribbon and he could very often be seen in a white suit, sometimes with tails. Often carried a top hat. Had very large, white mutton chops and he was about two shades darker than I am, he was black. But, he called himself "Sir Walter" and spun records on radio station WAMO. If WAMO still exists, "Hi, everybody over at WAMO." Which was the black radio station in Pittsburgh at the time. And he was the second probably most popular DJ on that station and I don't know if he's around to deny, I hope he wouldn't. There's just no doubt in mind that everything he did, he got from Lord Buckley. So, how interesting that the reverse happens and he we have a black artist kind of looking at Lord Buckley and emulating that. And, yes, he referred to everyone as "M'Lords and M'Ladies" And, and, and, his - I mean, his whole aspect was like a Lord Buckley thing. He recognized it. And he recognized that it was also at the time relatively obscure so that he could borrow a little from that image without being necessarily caught out by an audience and thought of as trite, you know. Oh, everybody knows that. If he had tried the Big Bopper, for instance, it never would have flown because the Big Bopper was much more widely popular. Which I think is real interesting, isn't it? Isn't it interesting that it was much more widely popular to, to, to imitate a very southern white man [Greg imitates the Big Bopper] "Chantilly lace and a pretty face" Then it was - sort of an interesting insight.
MM
Yes, yes, very much so. The, the, the cracker connection.
GT
Yeah, if you will, if you will. Now, I didn't say that. See you allowed to say that. [Greg laughs]
MM
Well, it's, it's a - I, ummmm - in The Nazz.
GT
Uh huh, ah,
MM
The Nazz - unless my ears deceive me - there's Jesus and there's twelve disciples.
GT
That's right.
MM
And everyone of them is black.
GT
That's right. It's interesting that you should mention this. I'm fairly well read in theology. I have a lot of friends who are theologians, I have a lot of friends who are ministers and priests and rabbis and I don't mind tell you that I've darkened the door of a church occasionally. And let me respond to you in this way. It may be a bit indirect but I think you'll pick up on it. I think everyone - Jesus and every one of Jesus' disciples was a Palestinian, as we understand the word today. I think everyone - Jesus and every one of Jesus' followers was a member of a cultural and social minority, in his context. I think Jesus and all of his twelve disciples were oppressed by an occupation government, which controlled the economy; which limited their upward mobility, economically, socially. I think their ability to practiced their religion was circumscribed by these social circumstances. I think that they were poor. I think the Pharisees, for instance, were rich and powerful. But I think that one of the problems that Jesus had with going into the temple and talking to the Pharisees was that he was talking to the people in the upper classes and he was a member of the lower classes.
MM
It sounds like a familiar pattern.
GT
Doesn't it? Doesn't it? So, that, so that you see Buckley once again, and this is interesting. I think that if you read the works of Reinhold Neibur and the works of Paul Tillich and, OK? OK? And the speeches - the sermons of Harry Emerson Fosdick, and the sermons of William Sloane Coffin, I could go on and I could sit here for an hour and quote you the name sof famous and import theologians and ministers and priests and writers and, most obviously we could throw in there people like Martin Luther King and Desmond Tutu and Warren Spong. I can go on and on listing the names of people who are important names in religion who have, since Lord Buckley made that simple observation, made the same observation in important text books, articles. People who are revered scholars. That's the substance of Buckley's great art and his great genius. He looks, in the same way, in the same way, that, that Wil Rodgers did. He looks at what and, as a humorist, through his humor, he comments on it. Now, we would - it's interesting that in the same years, four years later on, we would hear Martin Luther King repeating this. And we would hear - go, go to a church a week before Christmas, anywhere in the United States, any Christian church, and I would imagine that two thirds of the time you will hear some minister inform you that Jesus was born very poor and that there was no room at the inn and he was laid in a manager and Jesus was a member of the permanent underclass, OK? So, in every esthectic sense, in every spiritual sense, in every sense of the substance which we must recognize as going beyond the physical substance of this world Jesus was black. As is every Palestinian, as is every Jew who went to the gas chamber, as is everybody who experienced being ridden down and put down by the engines of economy and politics which oppress him. And, ah, yeah, Buckley is this - that's what art does isn't it? Art tells us the truth.
MM
It's, it's - really you are talking about the human disapora.
GT
Absolutely.
MM
Yeah.
GT
Absolutely.
MM
Not necessarily relegated to one or another race or group of people but -
GT
The human, the human diaspora has no race -
MM
You're losing your mic.
GT
Oop, I'm sorry.
MM
No, it needs to -
GT
It needs to come out?
MM
Yeah, it needs kind of clip to your shirt there, I don't know what happened.
GT
Uh oh, uh oh, yeah, it just sort of - OK. So you need me to put the clip back.
MM
It got so excited, Greg.
GT
Oh, I'm sorry.
MM
No, it got excited.
GT
Oh, OK. Yeah, the human diaspora doesn't have a color.
MM
I wonder ah - do you mind me asking you to kind of condense things. Because I love -
GT
Oh, I'm sorry.
MM
The concept of saying, "Now, look it, you know -" the idea of Buckley choosing, for, for, Jesus and the four - the twelve disciples to be black, think of it this way. . ."
GT
Yeah
MM
You know - like
GT
OK
MM
The Palestinian and then list those things and then maybe at the end, if you can, say, "It's a familiar pattern isn't it?"
GT
Sure, sure, I'll be glad to do that.
MM
Alright
GT
It's really easy to understand what, what he's saying in The Nazz if you view it theologically. That was his brilliance. Look, Jesus and the twelve disciples were Palestinians. They were poor, they were victims of an occupation by a Roman government. They were members of the permanent underclass of their time. Of course, they were black. Everybody who goes through those experiences is spiritually and esthectically black - is black in the ways that matter which are deeper than the physical reality of being black. And his ability to see that and turn it into this charming humor and deliver that message makes him an artistically significant person of his times. And makes him also ahead of his time because when he said that the wider public wasn't talking about these observations as they were addressed by people like Reinhold Neibuhr or Paul Tillic or dozens of other important scholars. The wider world hadn't begun to view Christ in that way. Martin Scorese just made a film about Christ where he goes into all of those things. When Lord Buckley was making these records Martin Scorese was a college freshman maybe.
MM
That was so beautiful.
GT
Is that better? [Greg laughs] OK. OK.
MM
Would you mind trying it once more?
GT
Sure.
MM
OK. And I would love it - I don't know, if you feel comfortable me putting words in your mouth but - at the end of your listing maybe you could just say, intead of "Roman government" just say "an occupying government"
GT
Yeah.
MM
And overwhelmingly powerful government or something -
GT
Yeah.
MM
All this - so it's generic -
GT
Hm hmm.
MM
And then at the end say, "It's a familiar pattern isn't it"
GT
Sure.
MM
And also the stuff about, "Of course, he's black."
GT
Sure.
MM
OK.
GT
OK, look. The concept behind The Nazz has been, has been worked over for most of the latter half of the century by the greatest theologians we've got. Look, Jesus was: a Palestinian, that's what he was he was a Palestinian. Jesus and his disciples were under the thumb of an occupation government, which ruled, you know, with an iron fist, if you will. Jesus was a member of the permanent underclass. Is there anything about this pattern that we don't recognize? And, and in the end, isn't Buckley's observation of this something that identifies him as ahead of his time? And the way that he breathes this out with this humor and this, and this verve, you know, he, he, it's a rare combination: artist and, and hero. A wonderful thing. Is that better?
MM
That was beautiful.
GT
OK.
MM
I'm not sure which one we'll use because they all had -
GT
You can use probably pieces of all of them.
MM
Yeah, yeah. Questions, Roger?
RM
Oh, jeez, it's just such rich, rich thing.
MM
Having indigestion. [Greg laughs]
RM
How did, how did - we've mentioned a little bit on this, but we always like to ask people how, how Buckley specifically touched your heart.
GT
I don't think there's anything in the world that I ever, ever in my life found more touching, oddly enough, than Buckley's Christmas Carol. Part of it is -
MM
Let's start again, I'm sorry.
GT
Yeah.
MM
I want, I want you -
GT
OK
MM
A little more center frame.
GT
Oh, I'm sorry.OK
MM
That's OK. That's OK. Take two.
GT
OK. I don't think anything - I don't think I every enjoyed anything more than Buckley's Scrooge. When I was a kid Christmas was a very important time - the childhood event that I remember most prominently is Christmas, you know, and I remember certain Christmas'. And so all of us are, obiviously, more attached than anything, I guess, to our childhood memories if they're good.
MM
Hang on, Greg, I'm sorry.
GT
Yeah.
MM
The, the, Mitsubishi - it's Pearl Harbor out there.
GT
No problem, no problem.
MM
There's an airport not too far from hear.
RM
Oh, yes, we can hear it.
GT
Yeah.
MM
OK, I think we're safe.
GT
I, I guess I'm, I'm more attached to any other thing of Buckley's to Scrooge than any other thing. Christmas has always held a lot of fond memories for me. And I guess, having spent so much of my time in England, Dickens has been special to me too. And talk about a place where all of the things we discussed tonight come together. If Buckley has forerunners in the last century, Dickens has got to be one of them. A man, who through his art, makes this wide ranging criticism of his society. And Buckley tells that story with such joy and such exhuberence, I know, I never met the man, but I know that he loved the original story. He had to the way tells that story. So, that to some extent, I have this personal connection with that story so part of my love for it is personal. I love it's form. In the Scrooge story he talks about a "gaslight spook" - a gaslight spook. And, and, boy oh boy, maybe you have to only, you know, maybe, you can only understand this ??/ if you're me but - Gaslight was a famous old movie with Ingrid Bergman and, and, and Charles Boyer. Where Charles Boyer tries to convince his wife that the house is haunted in order to get her to commit suicide, or at least look like she's going to so he can bump her off and collect the cash. And when I was a kid, that was a slang word in the '50s among black folks on the east coast. "Oh, you trying to gaslight me, man! You're trying to deceive me." He talks about a gaslight spook showing up. And I just loved that. I mean, yeah, what an obscure but wonderfully appropriate reference. "Bring me the barley, Marley." So, it was, so, it was hip, it was hip, it was hip, it was hip. And finally, there's just a little situational, kind of momentary thing. When I first came here to California, a very lonely time for me. Here with my wife and my child, knowing no one. Thousands of miles from home. And the East Coast is a lot different from the West Coast here in America and that was hell of an adjustment time. And one of the things that I remember quite vividly is turning on a local radio station here in the middle of the night, a couple of weeks before Christmas, and the DJ is playing Lord Buckley's Scrooge. Lord Buckley's Scrooge. And I was just blown away and just sat there and listened and it was one of the warm memories I have from that chilly time. You know, arrive in a new place, no money, no friends, starting out fresh, you know that kind of thing. So, that's the one I kind of, you know -
MM
And there's only one way to go.
GT
Yeah -
MM
Straight to the road of love.
GT
Straight to the road of love. Straight of love. And he did that wonderfully didn't he? He did that wonderfully. One of the sad things about his career, is that he never fully benefited from the fact that in a time, which was the most marked, in my memory, in this country, for it's disunity - I don't think we've ever been angrier at each other then we were in those years between, say, '55 and '65. He was one of the very small number of people able to bring everybody together. I have since heard people make disparaging remarks about Lord Buckley. But you didn't then. Not among the small audience of people that sort of revered him. Because he made people feel so together.
MM
I think we just got it, man.
GT
Thank you, thank you. I hope I did OK, I mean -
MM
Are you kidding? |
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