Phone Interview:
JOHN TRUDELL: I’ve not agreed with them about that. I’ve felt that people are open to hearing much more than they’re allowed to hear, and that people have a right to hear these things and make up their own mind. So I feel vindicated in some ways.
INTERVIEWER: There’s a line in Baby Boom Che: “Rock ‘n’ roll is based on revolution.” Tell me about your Influences, as far as rock ‘n’ roll goes — when you started listening, some of the artists, and why.
I started listening to Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Bo Didley, the Everly Brothers and Brenda Lee way back when all this first started. When I came in contact with this phase of music I sure liked it a lot more than the music I had been hearing before.
What attracted you to about those early people? Was It the revolutionary spirit of the music or that it was just different?
I felt these people really had feelings. I mean, it’s like somehow in some way, they were communicating feelings to me through the music and through their own personal energy. It had all to do about the feelings. I couldn’t relate to the feelings of the music prior to that. It was like it didn’t have any feelings.
There seems to be a lot of Lou Reed on the record. It has the feel of a New York or a Berlin. Do you feel close to Lou Reed stylistically or musically?
No, not really. I hear the comparisons, but I’ve never really looked at it that way. The real similarity is that we just both address contemporary social issues. I think that’s the real connector.
Do you think rock ‘n’ roll, or any form of popular music, has the power to change things? In other words, what is the potential In your mind of rock ‘n’ roll, and how does that potential fit into your game plan for changing this world?
Anything that allows people to express their feelings has the potential to change things. Look at what Presley was about. You look at the changes that he brought. We’re not talking about him as a man, we’re talking about him as a symbol. The young people, the children of America, made up their own mind that they wanted to listen to his style when the parents were saying no. He was a white man singing the music of blacks, or their style, and the young children of America were listening to him and influenced by that. And simultaneously to that going on was the civil rights movement evolving. All these things interconnected. Music has the ability and potential to help influence tremendous change. … It’s got something to do about feelings. We live in a society where to express the truth of our feelings is not encouraged.
It sounds like that’s starting to go away a little bit. Music just seems to get a little more honest. I don’t know where rap fits into that whole thing, but certainly there’s some real feelings in that music.
Yeah, well what I figure is when the citizens of the nation-state can no longer depend or trust their institutions to tell them the truth, then the truth will have to come from the people, and it will come from their culture and their art. And I think we are in one of those times.
Do you sense any undercurrents of what might have been called, at another time, a revolution going on in America? People are angry. People are getting violent.
Revolutions don’t work. In order to win the revolution then you’ve got to become meaner than the one you don’t want, or equally as mean. While all this energy is here, if we could understand that we can evolve through these problems — evolve through these problems — because evolution represents continuation. Revolution, to me, represents going around in circles.
Is that a new attitude? Is that different from how you felt in the ’70s?
It’s a different understanding, yes. How I feel is how I feel, but how I can articulate and under-stand that feeling is different. My feelings remain the same, but my understandings are becoming a little different.
Have you mellowed at all?
I don’t know. That I don’t have a clue. If you’re crazy, you’re crazy. What seems mellow may not be at all.
I’d like you to speak about a few songs on the record. I’ll mention a title and ask you, briefly, to tell me a little about the song. Somebody’s Kid.
Dylan. That one is a Dylan influence. That’s what I really remember about it. I was living out of Jackson Browne’s studio at the time. I woke up one morning and “I was crazy before and now I’m crazy again” was in my head. So I ended up writing it that day, but I could hear this little Dylanesque voice in the back of my mind as I was writing this.
Beauty in a Fade.
I wrote that in 1987. And I just liked that term, “beauty in a fade.” I had the part about “he was cowboys, she was Indians” and I had been wanting to use that and I liked “beauty in a fade.” So we made it as a tribal voice song, just a drum and a chant vocal. Jesse Ed Davis was there with us and after we recorded it I asked Jesse to put some guitar on it. That was the first song where we took the pure tribal sound and mixed it by adding a guitar to it. It was an attempt to incorporate the two styles together. It was the first time we ever did that.
The last lyric of Tina Smiled goes, “And somewhere, a wild horse won’t be broke.” Does that have a dual symbolism, not only in respect to Tina’s spirit, but in respect to your life and your style? Do you see yourself as a wild horse?
Yeah. I look at it as a singular symbolism. The spirit of wild horse wherever it lives, wherever it lives.
It’s a great way to end the album. It’s a perfect image.
Yeah, right on. Glad you noticed.
If the Paha Sapa Music Festival or the Concert for Reconciliation were held today, you’d probably be a headliner. Not only because of this record, but with the two movies out. Are you comfortable with the idea of being a media star? Society accepts you now more that you’re public figure than when you were an AIM leader.
Well, I’m not uncomfortable with it. It’s not so much that I seek to be any type of a media star, but what I’m after is this compulsion to communicate whatever it is I’ve got say, and I’m real happy for that opportunity. But when I look at the realities of the world, there are things that can make me much more uncomfortable.
How about as a role model? Do you consider yourself a role model for Indian youth?
No. I’m not a role model. I’m too — I wander through too many realities. I don’t look at myself as a role model, but what I do know is that we can accomplish what we decide we need to accomplish. In that sense, I would like to be an example.
Since the early days of AIM, you’ve done a lot of work with white people, especially in the entertainment field. Do you trust white people more now?
It’s not that I ever trusted or distrusted them categorically. As a society, I don’t agree with many of their perceptions of what life is supposed to be. I try to relate to people as human beings. Individually, I try to deal with people on the basis of how they deal with me.
What was it like coming back to South Dakota to film Incident at Oglala as well as Thunderheart?
Well, I enjoyed it. It was good for me to spend that length of time around the Badlands. I got see a lot of people I hadn’t seen for a long time. I got to see who survived. In a way, that’s one of the truths. ~
SOURCE: Argus Leader (Phone Interview)