From 2002 mk ultra magazine vol. 2 issue 3
Interview by alex zander transcribed in 2015 by suzi fellows
Kim Fowley owns the most impressive resume in rock n’ roll. There is no denying that the man is a living legend. He literally has the Midas touch when it comes to turning art into gold. At sixty-three years, the man wants the women of the world to know he is a sexual dynamo; and when it comes down to an interview he stresses that he is literally the king of filth, sleaze and perversion.
I met Fowley while in Hollywood in the fall of 2002. I didn’t know what to make of the guy. He ran through a list of rock n’ roll references, claiming to have been a major part of them all that my skeptical manner easily passed off as bullshit. That was for about 10 minutes when my friends in the industry confirmed that he indeed somehow managed to do everything he claimed. He did invent the Runaways. He did write tunes for KISS, Alice Cooper, Frank Zappa, Van Halen, Wayne Newton, Steppenwolf, Nirvana, Manfred Mann and the list goes on and on. It is truly unbelievable. You know that song “Alley Oop?” That was Kim Fowley.
Kim is still a consultant/independent contractor and has an open door policy for anyone interested in acquiring his services for product evaluation and presentation to the Hollywood-based music entertainment complex.
He currently excels at and offers 15 Professional Entertainment Skills, including: Consultant, Promotion, Publicist, Speaker and Actor (Not to mention Singer/Songwriter, Producer and Sexual Deviant). Fowley is responsible for more gold and platinum records than anyone I’m aware of, and I have a pretty healthy knowledge of the business that I’ve been drafter into. Fowley is a genius and Fowley is a freak, a freak for you dirty girls. In all of our conversations he continues to stress he is willing and able to take on any young filthy moral-less female of the species.
Alex Zander: When we made acquaintance it was at the Cleopatra Ten Year Anniversary party and I’d like to know, what was it about an event like that brought somebody with your track record to a show of that genre?
Kim Fowley: I worship the Goth Goddess and Dracula’s daughter, Satan’s sister and they all were there and I realized that sexually it would be a real opportunity to connect, so I journeyed from the edge of the desert with bodyguard, chauffer and we got there with the sole intent of seducing and corrupting as many women as possible, which we succeeded in doing, I might add.
AZ: And is there something about the gothic girls, the vampire girls, that you find more attractive than the average girl walking down the L.A. strip?
KF: Well I can’t get a hard on in the dark. I have to have light to see the anguish on the faces of the girls I crave. And the type of reptile prince that I am, the girl who is already soiled really goes for what my program is as opposed to the girl on the street who wants to fuck Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise.
AZ: And what is your program?
KF: My program is, I am the mirror. I am the expander and I am the extender of the females need for her orgasm, not for mine. And I’m an enabler of many women to feel free about themselves. A lot of my girlfriends are lesbians. I am often the only man who’s intimate with women who normally wouldn’t deal with men at all in a sexual way.
AZ: Now at this particular party, did you find that there were a lot of women who played the part and, in other words, looked that way for play, but didn’t actually…
KF: Well, there are always poseurs and there’s always the suburban bitch who shows up, either Hollywood or New York or Chicago or London or Berlin, trying to give the illusion to herself, her friends and to strangers that she’s ready to suck you into the vortex of death, otherwise known as a dirty pussy, and a lot of them go home and wash it off and go to work at Wal-Mart the next day and they don’t want to have sex with anybody. Like some men who aren’t gay, go in drag, it’s a similar thing. They don’t go to gay clubs and they have wives and daughters, but they dress up in garters and lace and stuff, such and such. And there are women who do the same thing for the same reasons.
AZ: And your program as far as what you want to do for women, has it been that way since the 1960’s?
KF: No, it’s been that way since the 40’s. I’m 63 years old, I had my first serious relationship when I was 11 years old and my girlfriend was 27. I learned then it wasn’t what I was interested in, it was what they needed. If you can figure out what women need on their terms without forcing yourself on her that’s the trick. So you align and consolidate what you need as a man and you bring it into their need area, you deliver and then you have them for life anytime you want.
AZ: What kind of influence did your parents being in show business have to do with your lifestyle as an 11-year-old?
KF: I have ten sets of parents. My father had eight wives, my mother had two husbands. By the time I was 19 I had ten sets of parents, fourteen grade schools, four high schools, three universities and two colleges. Pneumonia nine times and Polio twice. I was exhausted when I entered the rock n’ roll arena, because I had an opium addict father, a drug abuse and alcohol abuse mother and I was the lookout man when I first met my dad out of the foster home where I was placed during the war; when my mother ran off with a rich guy and hoped my dad would die, which he didn’t in the war. My first twenty-four hours with my dad, who was the movie director in Singing in the Rain. I remember I was the lookout when he went and scored Opium. I didn’t do drugs like other guys, because I had drug addict or alcohol obsessive parents. When your parents are extreme, you generally go the other direction, just like a lot of guys who are junkies have a mom and dad who are Pentecostal or Methodist or something. They restrict and I wasn’t restricted, I was let in on the decadence. I was allowed to be the boy in the room full of opium addicts or alcoholics or morons and geniuses and gang-bangs and seduction, death threats, I got the ride shotgun from the first grade all the way up to senior in high school with these creatures of the night.
AZ: What was your first job in the entertainment business?
KF: My first job in the entertainment business was throwing outlaw parties. I had Polio thru my junior and senior years in high school and I still have the disability, which you didn’t notice, because the brightly colored clothes, probably. I came out of a Polio hospital with no place to live, my Dad had deserted me, my mother was long gone. So I found kids in my high school who couldn’t get laid. We got them hookers and put them in a hotel on a weekend when their parents would leave town and then we would get a moving van to take all the furniture out of their house. We brought slot machines in, we brought in an old bar, then we had bands play, then we had a food tryck show up, we would have our girlfriends bust the purses of all the girls in the party and we would have our brothers outside stripping the cars. We had rock n’ roll going on I knew how to be a criminal aficionado and I knew how to make twelve hundred to two thousand dollars a week doing this, my share, we would pay everyone else. Everyone got laid, everyone got paid and I knew the music would work. I knew the kinds of music the kids at my school would want to hear and see and we always had certain types of music that would work.
AZ: Where was it that you grew up?
KF: I grew up in West L.A., which isWest Los Angeles,California. In my high school, Ryan O’Neil, Jan and Dean and Beach Boy’s members, Sandra D, Nancy Sinatra and there were people later who went on to do music. We were all there, we were in an outlaw car club, culture. Very similar to what you see in Rebel Without A Cause.
AZ: Do you think that atmosphere contributed to success with you and the other artists that you mentioned?
KF: Well, you’re right, cause we were white people trying to be crazy and we needed vehicles, like every white kid we went to black culture for inspiration. When I was in the eighth grade I read Iceberg Slim’s book, who was the influence for all the things, that Ice-T and early rapper lyric’s. He was the black, post-war author who wrote about the black experience, white pussy and how to control white women, how to deal with cock and balls, power, dick and how a weaker man would pay for your girlfriend.
AZ: What about, as far as in the rock n’ roll business?
KF: It’s the same thing. Crime and rock n’ roll are the same thing (pause for a few seconds). When you look at politics or commercial entertainment it’s all based on the same thing, it’s escapism, it’s control, it’s celebrity, it’s dreams and power and darkness, it’s all interchangeable. That’s why Ronald Reagan could be a president.
AZ: Do you think that Winona Ryder is sexier now that she’s involved in this scandal?
KF: I’d marry her. I would hope so. I hope she’s a junkie too. I would hope that she is covered in piercings and tattoos and sleeps on a bed of nails. At least I would hop so.
AZ: That’s the answer I would have expected from you.
KF: Of course.
AZ: Tell me what you are most well known for.
KF: I’m most well known for being disturbing…instead of saying Kim Fowley qualified musical professional, which is really all I am. There is always the disclaimer, weird, strange, different, radical, some kind of sidebar is always tossed in. Just like if a girl had forty inch tits, you would have to mention it in some way. With me, you mention my height, my age, my creepiness, which is supposed to diminish maybe, confuse, or titillate my basic talent.
AZ: Well, the same can be said of Andy Warhol.
KF: Artist, filmstar, songwriter, a record producer, a music publisher, a deal maker, you know it’s boring, tedious work. It’s just like being a football coach or private detective, it’s grueling stuff and there’s a lot of resentment and hatred that goes along with it, with both the public and the industry and the artists themselves. Just like Malcolm McLaren or any Barry Gordy type of person, if you put who’s in the back-ground, he’s never as beloved as Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise might be or Julia Roberts, who don’t get criticism. Ever O.J. Simpson doesn’t get criticism, but those of us who are extreme people, we don’t get the greatness and the recognition, we get the grudge, “oh yeah, you’ve had hits” well, I’ve sold 102 million records, and in 1997, 1996 I’m turning thirty units in Billboard in four different country’s charts.
AZ: Since what year was it, 96?
KF: Between 96 and 2001, just in that recent time. In that five year period I charted 30 times. And why? Well I’m musically skilled, I’m electronically skilled, I’m a copyright scholar, I’m a person who is educated, a person who understands how to do music business, my day job, dude. So, that’s really what I make money doing. Although, when I lived inNew Orleans, I was down there for a sexual sabbatical. I was down there for black pussy. I was there for lesbian strippers. I was there for the Anne Rice voodoo zombie culture. I was there for the Mardi Gras and all the versions of Mardi Gras and as many local festivals and celebrations. I would start at 11pm at night and I turn in at 7am in the morning. I would sleep all day. I lived at the French Quarter, I was Mr. X, that was my name. I didn’t say I was Kim Fowley with a hundred and two million records behind me in that 5 year period that I charted 30 times. I never told anybody down there what I did. When I was awake I would mail out music and collect money and the rest of the time I would go crazy. I mean I wouldn’t go crazy, but you would think I was going crazy, because all I did was extend that year in high school, that summer after school when you rule and then you never rule again. You know, you just buy beer for everybody. You were a senior in a high school and then you realized you were a piece of shit if you go to college, or a piece of shit if you start working at a factory or something, but that summer you’re the golden boy, you know what I’m trying to say? That last great American Summer? I extended it for a whole life and I lived that way. As a matter of fact, I’m going to be moving back toEurope. I’m leavingCalifornia, I’m going to go overseas again and go back to being a sexual pig and just make gluttony of it all.
AZ: 63 and you still perform correct?
KF: Sexually or musically?
AZ: Let’s talk to musically this time.
KF: Yes, I have several albums coming out. It’s all on my website. I have a total of eight. I’m going to tell you after I answer the first part. The record is called The West is Best or Five Days Without Sleep. I don’t know which title we’re going to use, but in that situation, that’s myself and a bunch of desert rats out here in the desert with this kind of heroin-serial killer-slow-fuck-moan-cowbell-driven delta music. Then I have another record coming out doing a totally different style that comes out in March. It’s like a Tommy James and Shondells record on a modern level; like ZZ Top “Tush” meets Ministry “Jesus Built My Hot Rod”.
AZ: They show you 10 times on VH-1 where you say Nikki Sixx was dressed to MTV before there was an MTV.
KF: Right, well I’ve done two other specials for them, Bad Girls of rock n’ roll. I was on camera, I’m camera on the Alan Freed. You know, the man who coined the term rock n’ roll? I’m also a featured commentator on the Sonny Bono tribute on the E! Channel, and when John Philips died I commented on that on Court TV. I’m also a movie actor. I’m in a new movie at Sundance this year called End of the Century.
AZ: So we can see that in all the independent movie houses soon, right?
KF: Apparently, I don’t know how much of me they use, but I sang four songs and I was an actor in it. You never know at those things how much film was taken out with you in it. I’m in another movie with David Bowie, Keanu Reeves andCher called Mayor of the Sunset Strip, which is a documentary. I have a book coming out, the working title is….well it changes all the time, the other day it was called “Monster Man Faces the Lord of Garbage,” some days it’s called “Villain,” some days it’s called the “Book of Blood.” I don’t really know what they’re going to end up calling it, but those are the titles that are floating around. They won’t let me tell any rock n’ roll stories. They want filth and horror from me, and garbage. They don’t want any celebrity or rock n’ roll stuff, they want the really bad stuff I’ve been involved in. I was a professional soldier, Polio and all. I have to talk about being in the Army and the Air Force. A lot of guys in the 50’s, young men needed to go down there, run around in jeeps, fuck native women and blow up bridges and stuff, so that’s all in there; war stories and stuff during the war over Yugoslavia and all that. I had the number one record during, I don’t know what they call that war, some people called it the Serbian War, the Bosnia War, whatever the damn thing was called. We made an album that was under a phony name and it was a take-off on Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Remember that Kennedy album that came out before the Beatles, that first family album where they intimidated the Kennedy’s? They had actors pretending to be the Kennedy’s?
AZ: That’s way before my time.
KF: Well, it was the number one album before Thriller. It held the record of most albums before Thriller came along and it was a light-hearted thing. We had an Elvis guy pretending to be Bill Clinton singing about running a motorcycle gang if he would have left office. Monica Lewinsky joining a group like the Spice Girls and stuff. It was fun and we did it inNew Orleans. Somehow it got over there and it became the number one record. The radio station that won the MTV freedom award, MTV Europe Freedom Award, because during the war they played music-wise; the young kids wanted freedom, wanted democracy, they would play all this radical music while bombs were flying around and our album was number one there. So when I moved toVienna, I was brought down to sing there under the name Vultures of the Sky. I sang under the name Canine Unit. So I was lead singer of Vultures in the Sky and Canine Unit. I kind of sound like Bob Hope. I don’t know if I was entertaining the troops, I was entertaining the girls there, it was pretty interesting. Somebody asked me if I anted a gig as a soldier there and I said “no, I’ll have the gig as the visiting rock star.”
AZ: I want to ask about when you do hypnosis, you do different kinds of things in a performance. So say that I book you here or someone can book you in any other city, what is it you will do?
KF: I’m my own opening act. I’m my own top-of-the-bill and I’m my own supporting act. I come on stage, if I have my own musicians I do about thirty types of music because I used to be a demo singer. That means I can do folk rock, I can do country rock, I can do pop, I can do delta blues, I can do country, I can do honky-tonk, I can do funk. Secondly, whatever town I go into, I go in a day or two early and I figure out what’s going on in that town and it’s issues. So if I came toChicago I would come and sing aboutChicago. Or I would sing about the suburbs ofChicago, or the drugs, the death and the horror ofChicago, or the beauty ofChicago. I lived inIllinois anyway. I lived in Woodridge, out byDowners Grove.
AZ: And when was that?
KF: In 85-86, when the Chicago Bears won the Super Bowl.
AZ: Yeah, the Super Bowl Shuffle.
KF: My hair turned gray there, I didn’t have gray hair until I moved toChicago. The winter did it, I’m not a winter guy.
AZ: What types of things have happened during your live peformances that might be out of the norm for say like a Henry Rollins or a jazz ensemble?
KF: Well, I’ve had my cock sucked on stage by a stripper, the fire department guy came through doing a fire inspection and there’s my cock in a chick’s mouth. I then got banned from L.A. city and then they let me play six months later. I showed up in a gold Elvis suit with a Ku Klux Klan black hood on and got a gay guy to fuck a lesbian on stage. That caused my record to be burned in the street by the manager of Licorice Pizza in protest of my offensive stage show. So it’s beyond what Genitorturers do. This is 1968 and she wasn’t doing that in 1968, she was doing her stuff.
AZ: Do you encourage audience participation?
KF: Well, I put twenty-five to thirty people on stage with me. I bring people from the audience up. Other singers are invited. If there are any politicians who want to talk about anything, or activists that need a platform, I go to the bathroom or make a phone call and I turn the stage or the band over to them. Let them do their thing, I’ll come back, and if the audience wants me to, I’ll continue. Sometimes girls show their tits, sometimes men shows their cocks, sometimes gay people talk about their relationships. I’ve had cripples come up there and show their artificial limbs. I’ve had drug dealers in European countries advertise what they were selling in the bathroom on stage. It’s provocative, it’s horrifying and normally the people that would heckle me or would want to fight, I invite them onstage sot hey can participate, too. Of course each city and each state all have laws so if someone brings me toChicago I’d say, “Okay, what’s the legal fram work here?” Also, because I’m a professional, you can only do so many things and there are restrictions everywhere when you do do things in public, so if society said you can’t mention chocolate, or you can’t talk about vegetables on stage, then I don’t go into those areas. That’s a metaphor example. I find out what I can get away with. I attempt to get away with it and if I can’t get away with anything, then I know how to rock. So if we can’t be provocative and we can’t be revolutionary or dangerous, then we’ll just be a bunch of jerk off’s playing. The people can dance and bang their heads, that’s the worst thing that will happen in one of my shows, is that you might throw up outside and feel good about it. You might fuck that night, you might fall in love with your only wife that night and meet her for the first time. You might form a band after seeing me, because if a 63-year-old man can get up there and tear the place apart and change the world, then anything is possible.
AZ: The one thing we deal a lot with is girl bands, and you are more or less the godfather of that. Tell me about the Runaway’s, why did you decide to pick who you did and how did you know that it would work?
KF: I knew it would work because of the Amazon culture. If you go back to Greek Mythology, you see Venus and Goddesses of love and lust, enlightenment and Eve as in Adam and Eve. Evil was introduced in the Garden of Eden when Adam was given an apple by Eve, the snakes and all that, so I always knew pussy was subversive. So if it’s true that women brought down mankind from the very beginning, then they should continue to do it. That’s when the friction between men and women started with the first man and woman. Secondly, during history there had been female heroes, Joan of Ark, Tokyo Rose and various characters in religion: everything from the Virgin Mary to Mother Theresa, and in terms of goodness and in terms of evil as in Delilah. You have the Madonna whore contest tug-of-war in Western culture. You have total repression of women in other cultures. You have women out-living men. Women drive men into an early grave and dance on it with a 19-year-old boy from down the street. Women have a power called female energy. Even during the Civil War, they had all-women bands, did you know that? Men were off fighting, so women would entertain them, did music when the men were away. There have been female bands before. What there hasn’t been before is women playing rock n’ roll who were under the age of consent, which meant underage girls. I had girls, I didn’t have women, I had girls 15 and 16 up there playing in the Runaway’s when the group first came out. Those weren’t fabricated ages, they were real; 13 year-old girls, 15-year-old singers and 16-year-old guitar players. That was also the year that we had a female assassin try to kill Geral Ford and the Governor of Kentucky was a woman. There were women boxers and baseball players emerging as sports figures. So men were getting more and more feminine. New York Dolls had only been a couple years before the Runaway’s. Men were getting more feminine, women were getting stronger, so there was a combustion on a Darwinian level. All of the sudden it evolved into the Runaway’s.
AZ: But there’s a big difference between the Runaway’s and the GTO’s. Nobody can quote one song by the GTO’s, but the Runaway’s had a hit.
KF: Well that’s because Kim Fowley co-wrote it. Frank Zappa, who I sang with on the Mother’s of Invention, my names on the first album, Frank wasn’t a hit writer, he didn’t know how to write hit songs. Kim Fowley had hits, you can go on my website. Instead of running down all my greatest hits, if you want to know what they are, look at the website. Okay, so I was writing for KISS at the time, I already had “Do You Love Me” and “King Of The Nighttime World” which I co-wrote on KISS album, Destroyer. I was co-writing a song with Alice Cooper called “Escape” on Welcome to My Nightmare, so I was already a genius songwriter.
When I met Kim in L.A. we played a game. I would bring up a name or a subject and he would give me a comment on it. I found the exchange so interesting that I decided to make it part of this interview. Though the topics may not be of interest of the reader they are topics that are relevant to the producers of MKULTRA and some may represent the MKULTRA lifestyle. Some are out of sheer pop-culture curiosity.
AZ: Charles Manson.
KF: No outlet for his musical skills.
AZ: …elaborate a little bit.
KF: He didn’t have a record deal, so he found another way of getting his message across.
AZ: Reality Television.
KF: I think that American Idol and the Bachelor are wonderful, because it’s real people being stupid on television and that’s entertaining.
AZ: Michael Jackson.
KF: Michael Jackson needs to make a gut-bucket funk record and he’ll be fine.
AZ: Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
KF: Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, who would I marry? Britney Spears. Who would I have sport fucking with? Christina Aguilera.
AZ: Edie Sedgwick.
KF: Was the star of a movie called Ciao Manhattan that Kim Fowley produced and co-wrote a song on the soundtrack.
AZ: Ralph Sonny Barger.
KF: Yeah, good writer, I like his book.
AZ: Howard Stern.
KF: Overrated. I like the dirty girls he has on there, but he’s too unkind and he’s not a nice person to a lot of the people who go on that show. I think the dirty pussy part is fine, but a lot of those people are really mutilated unnecessarily by him.
AZ: Johnny Cash.
KF: Johnny Cash at selling records was God.
AZ: Rick Rubin.
KF: Rick Rubin makes really good records.
AZ: Marilyn Manson.
KF: There’s a picture of Marilyn Manson and Kim Fowley on my website and I spent part of an afternoon with him watching him rehearse with his band. Marilyn Manson is the Gene Simmons school of rock n’ roll strategy.
AZ: Anton LaVey.
KF: There’s a good writer. I met his daughter Zena, what a beautiful girl she is. She was getting a to-go order at Denny’s in Hollywoodin the late 80’s and she was really good looking at the time.
AZ: The first Woodstock.
KF: People got laid at both Woodstocks, the first and the third, the second one was too much mud.
AZ: The final Woodstock.
KF: Yeah, a lot of filth there. Disorder is cool.
AZ: Nikki Sixx.
KF: Nikki Sixx has a brain.
AZ: Timothy Leary.
KF: He was a charming guy and I was just as intimidating, smart and charismatic as he was.
AZ: The Tubes?
KF: Fee Waybill is a good front man and choreographer.
AZ: LSD.
KF: Was the name of a song by the band called The Midnighters. When little Willy G got thrown in jail I sang for him on a Midnighter’s album as a substitute singer on two tracks.
AZ: Heroin.
KF: Heroin is the whole reason for the Velvet Underground existing. As Keith Richards once said, “You don’t get head colds when you’re on heroin.”
AZ: Gene Simmons.
KF: Gene Simmons is the General Douglas McArthur of rock n’ roll.
AZ: Bill Clinton.
KF: Bill Clinton, one half JFK, and one half Elvis.
AZ: George Bush, Jr.
KF: George Bush, Jr., I’m glad he’s my president. He’s exactly the president we need right now. Although in the perfect world, John McCain would have been president with Jessie Ventura as Vice President. I like to remind George W. Bush that we do have atomic bombs and why doesn’t he use it? Everybody will straighten up for another 50 years. I mean, remember when General McArthur, the Gene Simmons of the military said in 1945, “If we keep the land war going, this war won’t be over until 1949 and 200,000 service men are going to die. But if we drop the bomb onJapan, the war will be over in 3 days.” Good, let’s drop the bomb onJapan.
AZ: I think they killed less people at Pearl Harbor and we did more. They killed more and did worse in New York than we could, just drop it on that mother fucker.
KF: Right. So, imagine where we would be right now as a country if Ralph Nader was president. They would be having love in on the left bank and serving macrobiotic food.
AZ: And they’d be dropping bombs on us.
KF: Yeah, use the fucking bomb because they’re going to use it. Get on with it so we can have some good war records. Some band can show up and have dog tags that glow in the dark on stage, get up there and sing about the war. “War Pigs,” like Black Sabbath, the whole album, like that kind of stuff on a modern level would be good.
AZ: Jim Morrison.
KF: Best white rock n’ roll entertainer ever on stage. Better than Jagger or Elvis. God onstage, period. God.
AZ: Larry Flynt.
KF: Hustler, I love that magazine. I love Barely Legal, that’s my bible. Those women are all from centralEurope, most of them. You know those naked chicks in there? Which is another reason I’m going toAustria in April.
AZ: Since we’re on the subject of women, I have the Vanity Fair, November 2002, which you are all over.
KF: I’m in two November issues. There’s been three music issues in the history of Vanity Fair and I’ve done all three of them.
AZ: The reason I have this is for you. I’m looking and I want you to think about this; Gwen Stefani, Jennifer Lopez, Sheryl Crow, Debbie Harry, Shirley Manson, Alicia Keys, Norah Jones, Eve and Nelly Furtado. Which one would you like to see do an eight-page Hustler spread over all the other ones?
KF: Gwen Stefani.
AZ: Which one would you prefer to take to bed?
KF: Shirley Manson. But I would listen to Norah Jones’ music while I was eating Shirley Manson.
AZ: Okay, back to two more subjects, the Columbine shooting. What do you say about that?
KF: Rock n’ roll.
AZ: Goth related?
KF: No, everybody in high school is mutilated. If you were a jock, a cheerleader or a student body president, you’re mutilated by your parents. If you’re some nerd that never gets laid and never gets invited to parties, then you suffer that way. In the in-between everybody’s confused. Those guys had outlet needs, they didn’t express themselves, so mass murder became their form of expression. That was an art piece from my point of view that was necessary from where they were conjunctively in the pain machine. They were being mutilated by the pain of high school society. If you turn on television for 24-hours and you are a young person today, if you’re not Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, then you don’t count in our society. In a Brad Pitt and Britney Spears world, nobody has a chance to fit in and excel, so if you look at the brutality of where we are as a culture, either youth culture, war culture or Western culture, you’ve got to be a person you would normally despise, just to survive in it. Kim Fowley learned how to compromise with adults, I’ve learned how to put my game face on. I go out and do business, I avoid my need for dirty pussy or my need to be a disruptive presence in the culture. I’ve learned how to be middle class businessman and say “thank you sir,” “yes ma’am” and “get the fuck out and go to the bank.” Loads of people don’t learn that and so they get stuck in alcoholism, being serial killers, being victims or being mediocre. They don’t know how to be divine within their own madness and horror. They don’t know how to harness their big tits and big cocks and go out there to piss and shit on the world at their leisure. They don’t know how to avoid capture. I have learned how to be invisible and larger than life. I recommend it to everybody who’s on fire, so you don’t end up being a victim of Columbine because both of the two guys who did all the killing and everyone they killed were victims. The people who survived were victims that year and other schools were victims. Everybody wants calm, piece of shit, farts, eat greasy cheeseburgers and have a good time, but the culture we’re in doesn’t own allow too many of them to do that. Some of us destroy ourselves and others because we’re so torn up by our own hormones that we cannot stand it. I’m not justifying it, I’m only sympathizing with all concerns. That it’s a shame, it’s keeping up with the Jones’. It’s the same that you’re hating on, which you hate about the mainstream, I hate about high school. It’s the same thing. Isn’t high school mainstream castrated society?
AZ: It’s the worst time.
KF: It is and so what I do, as a person who lives in many cultures, I speak other languages, I live in other countries. I live in other cities, I have a closet full of costumes, I have blue suits, I have black pimp clothes, I have drag queen pearls, I have Doc Martin boots, I have rubber tennis shoes, I have clothes for every occasion and I switch in-an-out of roles, so I can survive.
AZ: There’s nothing wrong with that, but some people feel locked into what society tells them they have to be and that’s not what it’s all about.
KF: The guys who were in Columbine didn’t live long enough to learn it, those lessons.
AZ: Some people think that if you’re “gothic” person you don’t dare go put on a suit and tie and go make some money. “That” could be your costume.
KF: Right. When I read your magazine I say, “well I wonder who reads this?” Do people who jack off read it? Do people who shoot heroin read it? I bet you people who are dreamers read it, we know that. I bet you people who don’t want Julia Roberts as their wife, they read it, because they want dirty pussy or they want dirty cock, depending on their preference. As William Burroughs once said, “All they have is cock and pussy, too bad we don’t have variations of it.” But SheDevilVixen, now there’s sexy, I think she’s sensational.
AZ: I thought you’d like that. What is your comment on organized religion?
KF: Yvette Lera should be the Pope of it. We need Yvette as the secual femal Jesus because if we worshipped her kind it would make more sense than somebody who may or may not of been god 2,000 years ago. All the gods that are current are about 2,000 years old and we normally use that to fill the void, so we must worship it. We need to worship Yvette Lera.
AZ: So I noticed you’re a fan of some of the girls on the website.
KF: Yes.
AZ: Any in particular?
KF: They all should worship my cock and my big balls. It’s something that they crave and they should. If any of them are interested should send me an email and I would entertain them in my desert palace.
AZ: Is Kim Fowley still interested in consulting, producing and writing for girl bands?
KF: I’m a mercenary. There’s two kinds of musicians I deal with, bands who pay me to do the things that they cannot do themselves, and then there are the others who can’t pay me anything, but they allow me to won and control them. So I do the investing and do the dictation. Not everyone can handle making me a mercenary or allowing me to be the slave master. Those are the only two ways I deal with music.
AZ: Who do you like now?
KF: I like the Murderdolls, I think they’re a little early in the sequence. I think that they’re maybe a year-and-a-half early.
AZ: What advice do you have for aspiring rock stars?
KF: Girls don’t want to fuck men, girls don’t like men, girls like boyish men or feminine men. When you look at the big sex symbols, most of these guys are feminine men, from Elvis, to Jagger, to Justine Timberlake, he’s very feminine.
AZ: Where do you get Elvis?
KF: Elvis was a feminine man if you look carefully.
AZ: At the men at the time?
KF: At the time he was. He wasn’t exactly Charles Bronson was he?
AZ: So you think in his movies, a pretty boy beating up people, that he really couldn’t have done that?
KF: Well, I’m sure he did it but still, he wasn’t a traditional 50’s male. 50’s men looked like James Dean, they didn’t look like Elvis. There’s only two kinds of guys that get laid: the pretty boys get laid because they’re feminine and girls, I think, have a propensity to be gay. If you look at girls they’re always hugging each other, they’re always going shopping together, they’re always kissing each other and that behavior is standard in society. Women can make each other come.
AZ: How is it okay, that’s okay but…
KF: Wait, wait. Women can make themselves come, they don’t need a man to make them come. They can make themselves come and they can make each other come. A feminine man, that doesn’t man a fag, but if he has feminine qualities women like that, that’s number one. Number two, the rapist guy, the guy like Lemmy or Freddy, what was Freddy’s name onElm Street?
AZ: Freddy Kruger.
KF: A lot of girls jacked off to Freddy Kruger. For every girl that wants to fuck Brad Pitt, another wants to fuck Freddy Kruger because the rape fantasy that all women claim that they don’t have, I think they do have it sometimes. They want to be overwhelmed and overpowered by cock, riding them and gagging them. They want to be thrown out of cars, they want to be jacked off on, they want food thrown at them, they want to be told they’re bad girls and they don’t have a daddy and older guys like me get all the daddy bitches who need daddy’s to spank them and overwhelm them. I don’t qualify to pretty boys, so I have to come in there on the grotesque tip, I’m an ugly old guy and I’m getting laid just like the young, pretty boy guys, they’re getting laid. Then there’s the tiny guys who get laid too, if they play the “loveable little guy” thing. Then the big fat guys can get laid because they can, a lot of chicks like fat. Even the bald guys can get laid, guys in glasses can get laid as a geek-fetish thing. I think the guys who don’t get laid are the ones who don’t think they can get laid. They’re not brining anything to the pussy table anyway, they just want to take a whore home, roll over and go to sleep. They’re not concerned about the girls’ need to come, so they’re not going to get laid at all because they’re what you call in prostitution, tricks. Those are guys who can’t express themselves sexually or sensually. They don’t have any intimacy skills.
AZ: Whores?
KF: Yea, I think whores are cool because at least they’re up front about it.
AZ: They’re providing a service.
KF: Sure and put it this way, if you go toAmsterdam they have a section of the city that’s a red light district. If you had a red light district in every state of theUnited States and all the money went into city tax, you’d have no crime, rape or any of that stuff. Everybody could go there, get off and have a good time in a restricted area. You could have supervised doctors and no one would have the clap and all that stuff. So if I’m elected, I promise to have red light districts in every chapel, city and state. Of course I’ll never be elected because I’m never going to run, but inEurope they have that. They have districts, like inTijuana there’s a lot of business over inMexico.
AZ: What I want to ask about is the serious musician who reads MK ULTRA because he wants to know about the music and at the same time, wants to break into the music business without selling out.
KF: Tell him to go fuck himself because if he lives at home with mom and dad then he’s not selling out. He can do the music that he loves, he can do it in his bedroom in front of a mirror, then he and his high school friends can form a band and they can play at a party. That’s great, but as soon as he moves out of his mom and dad’s house, has to get a job, find other guys somewhere and form a band, then he’s a business man; then he’s in show business, he’s in music business, he’s got to play by the rules. Whatever those rules are for whatever type of music he aspires to play, within each one of sub-cultures and sub-genre’s, there’s definite rules and engagements, procedures and instructions. He has to go along with that or he’s not going to participate. This is like going in the Army or joining the football team, there are formulas and battle plans that you can adapt to. Even criminals have, who are successful, do it with a plan. You have to be organized in your thinking to be successful at anything. So I have no sympathy for people who can’t think. If you want to play music, play it. If you want to make a living doing music, learn how the business works. You too can have a career that lasts forever after your dead, your shit will still sell. When I die I’m going to have a telephone built in my coffin so I can call up everybody who reads MK ULTRA and find out how they’re doing.
AZ: And what’s the thing you want to be most remembered for if you had your choice?
KF: Nothing. I didn’t do anything that was that interesting. Remember the Kim Fowley curse, Kim Fowley’s personality got in the way of Kim Fowley’s musical talent. If you analyze all the songs I wrote, published, produced, financed, sponsored, enabled and expanded, it’s really rather remarkable the people I worked with. That in itself is wonderful, but then if you read interviews like this you want to go throw up or jack off, one or the other; or shoot up, drop out or snuff out because here’s the guy who should be more of a gentleman, should be tolerant, who’s ragging on all of these icons and conceptual realities and dismisses them as just necessities, shouldn’t provoke ulcers, drug or alcohol abuse – you’re stupid. Just pay your tax, mind your own business and do as many horrible things as you can. But in the context of living in a civilized society, it’s not hard to be wonderful, clever and horrible even. I’m not very intelligent, I’m not very talented, I’m not very pretty, I’m not very nice and all I am is an example that if I can make a living doing this garbage, anybody can. I had D’s in high school, I never graduated from high school because I was caught selling alcohol in the twelfth grade to ninth graders in the junior high down the road. They gave me a choice of the Army or jail and I took the Army, even though I had a disability, they took me anyway. So I went to college in-and-out, you know I was a bad kid with a high IQ which I squandered. I guess I’m an educated thug or I’m a guy who probably should be dead in jail or in a mental hospital. I shouldn’t be on television, on the charts with records coming out and getting laid at 63 years of age on my terms.
Kara and Kim
Kim Fowley released the first part of his autobiography, Lord of Garbage, published by Kicks Books, in 2012. It covers the years 1939–1969 and describes his early childhood and beginning years in the music business. The second installment of his autobiography will be called Planet Pain and will cover the years 1970–1994. The last part of his autobiography was intended to be finished on his deathbed and released posthumously. On September 24, 2014, Fowley married longtime girlfriend and music executive Kara Wright in a private ceremony in Los Angeles.
Fowley died of bladder cancer in West Hollywood, California, on January 15, 2015 at the age of 75
