A Conversation with Richie Havens (continued)

PM: So maybe this is a personal question: Tell us a little about Leslie Hawes.

RH: Leslie is my lady. And she basically makes me do all the right things.

[laughter]

RH: Because for so many years I just didn't do any of that.

PM: Really?

RH: Well, I never did a lot of stuff. Like I never sold records at shows, or took stuff around. People asked for it all the time, but I just never did it. I just didn't have that thing. My roadie wouldn't do it. [laughs]

PM: Yeah, right.

RH: And I wasn't in a thing of just carrying somebody around to do that part. Because, in a way, that was always secondary, like I said, from the beginning. It wasn't the important part. Singing to live people is what it's about.

PM: And Leslie just takes care of that whole sphere of things.

RH: She handles the whole thing, she set me up. [laughs] She did it right. And people are so thankful and happy now, it's wild.

PM: And does she travel with you on the road?

RH: Uh-huh.

PM: That must be great.

RH: Yeah, it is. It really is.

PM: Do you walk a certain or a specific spiritual path?

RH: No. Many years ago I did my own comparative studies of religion, and I found out they were all the same. And so if anybody asked, I said I'm all of them.

PM: Yeah.

RH: Because that's what it's about. It is all of them. If you're in one, you're in all of them, because they all say the same thing.

PM: I hear you.

RH: And so, for me, it's the becoming, and we still are.

PM: That's the path you're on, the becoming.

RH: That's it.

PM: You seem in awfully good shape.

RH: Yeah. Well, I go out every weekend and I sweat about six pounds of water out of me.

[laughter]

RH: I eat on Monday and get about two of them back. It's just being on the road, I stay in shape, because I've been doing it since I started--seven years in the Village every night, and then six days a week when I first went on tour for seven years. And then I said, "No more of that. There are too many other things I want to do also."

PM: Are you reading anything good lately?

RH: Reading? Not really, because more than that I study. So a lot of the things I read are academic.

PM: Really?

RH: Yeah. Very academic. I'm still in that comparative mode. It isn't studying it so much anymore, it's sort of correlating it, and writing my own stuff about it.

PM: About what, in particular?

RH: The commonness of all of it.

PM: Ahh.

RH: If you accept that everybody has to eat, everybody has to sleep, everybody has to work, everybody wants their family to be safe, everybody wants to get back and forth to work on something, a bicycle or a car or what-have-you, and just to be themselves, then you have to accept the fact that that is exactly what has been going on here since the beginning. We just want to be ourselves. So it's like the outside world basically moves in on you, and stops you from being yourself, purposefully, in a lot of cases. So you have to fight a lot of battles just to get around all of this stuff, just to be the nice guy you are. [laughs]

PM: Right.

RH: And in general, I can say that I'm sure 90% of all people are nice people.

PM: I think that's true.

RH: It is, definitely--they're not looking for any problems, let's put it that way. And the further back you go, the less of that we either understood or even recognized. It wasn't happening because of culture, because you're in a culture that's all you get taught about. And there are cultures that have been separate, but they're really not. Once you go there and you find out, "Well, they eat--maybe a diet that's strange to you, but they eat." You know what I mean? On that level, it's the survival aspect of all of us, just trying to do it without violence.

PM: And we're incredibly myopic here, that way. I mean, everybody's studying our culture, but we're not studying anybody else's, generally.

RH: Exactly.

PM: Do you make time or find time to listen to things, listen to music for relaxation?

RH: Yeah, I do, but a lot of it is stuff that's handed to me on the road. It's all the young guys.

PM: Artists asking you to check out their music?

RH: Yeah, a lot of it is that, or my roots guys that I like, there's some edgy acts I like out there today. I liked Rage Against the Machine, but I don't think they're around anymore. [laughs] They were saying it like it really is. That's the point for me. Eminem, for that matter. The most interesting thing about him is that I thought he would be important enough to actually win an Oscar, and he did. An Oscar for the soundtrack and for the song in the movie.

PM: I didn't know that.

RH: And he's important basically because people know that he's not just writing words down to just say them.

PM: He's not just rhyming.

RH: He's not just rhyming it. He's talking about what kids are going through. He's talking about what he's going through. He's talking about what people he knows are going through. It's very, very, direct poetry, direct. And that's why it frightens them out there, because he's talking about what they already know exists. They can't control their own teenagers, and they know it. But they're not hearing the reasons why. [laughs] They don't like to hear the reasons why. And that's the key to social change. You've got to say what it really is. People do acquiesce after a while.

PM: Yeah.

RH: That's what it is. And we change.

PM: You've done so many things in your life. Are there things that you'd like to try that you haven't yet attempted?

RH: Well, one of these days, I'm going to make a couple of movies from behind the camera.

PM: Oh, behind the camera?

RH: Yeah. I wrote a couple of things I'd like to actually direct and to make. They, too, are kind of academic [laughs] in a way. It's crazy.

PM: Well, we'll look forward to checking that out. It's a wonderful experience to talk with you today.

RH: Thank you very much.

PM: And I sure have been enjoying Wishing Well.

RH: Thank you.

PM: And we'll talk again sometime.  

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