Radix: The last time we interviewed you was in 1978.
Burnett: Really? That's pretty good; I'm glad we're not making a habit of it.
Radix: You were with the Alpha Band then, so my first question is, "Whatever happened to the Alpha Band?"
Burnett: I don't know. The problem was, we got into the record business, and that's what happened to it. The record business is dangerous to the health of bands and individuals, which is something I'm just now learning. But it's not dangerous in any of the ways people think; it's not that they try to make you compromise your art. That's not the problem.
Thomas Merton says, "For poets to compete creates a metaphysical doubt. It poisons everything." Everything around a writer, or musician in the record business, probably everything in all the United States or in all of western civilization, is about competition. Record companies are in competition, magazines and newspapers are in competition, radio stations are in competition, record stores are in competition. There is also a part of all of us that is competitive. What happens when you read that first review and it says, "This is one of the best records of the year," the envious part of you says, "What do you mean, 'ONE of the best records of the year'?"
As soon as you compete, as soon as your envy is inspired-- you're in a destructive rather than a creative frame of mind. I think we in the Alpha Band, which was a strange group anyway, weren't dealing with any of these issues. They sneaked up on us and took us over, before we know what was going on.
Radix: Your band formed during the Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder tour. So my second question is, "Whatever happened to Bob Dylan?" There was the big brouhaha about his conversion, and all his secular fans were disappointed. Then they said, "Now he's Jewish again and everybody can relax."
Burnett: That whole thing from the beginning to the end was basically a media event. Someone gave me a tape of a show he did--I think in 1961 when he was 19 or 20 years old--at Carnegie Recital Hall. One of the things he said on the tape was, "I believe in the ten commandments. The first commandment, 'I am the Lord thy God,' is a great commandment. I believe that, as long as it's not the wrong people saying it," which, I think, is the same thing he was saying during the time when there was the big uproar about him.
In other words, I'd say the whole story of Bob Dylan is one man's search for God. The turns and the steps he takes to find God are his business. I think he went to a study group at the Vineyard, and it created a lot of excitement. But he had written a song in the sixties called "Sign on the Cross."
Radix: Noel Paul Stookey says that prior to his own conversion one thing that got him on that track (this was really early) was talking to Dylan backstage at some concert. Stookey was searching, and Dylan said to him, "Have you ever read the Bible? You should really read the Bible."
Burnett: I'm not going to get in to an argument with anyone about the relative merits of Judaism and Christianity, and what it means for a Jewish kid to be a Christian--I'm just not interested in that argument. If it is true that we have a personal relationship with God, then that's enough for me. I love Bob. There are all sorts of people in the evangelical church who are trying to be the "Christian Bob Dylan," to be the same thing that he was in 1964. They don't realize that what Bob Dylan was doing then was singing songs like "Masters of War." If someone wanted to be the Christian Bob Dylan now, he would sing "Ye Masters of Television Manipulation" to people, like Pat Robertson, who are promoting the "warfare state" in this country. I think that some Christians were hungering for a sort of legitimacy and tried to incorporate Bob Dylan into their own political agendas. He could never have been MORE politically opposed to everything they were attempting to use him for.
Radix: The Alpha Band wasn't your first band, was it? Weren't you some kind of child prodigy?
Burnett: No, but I did start when I was young. I had a studio when I was in high school. But I was really bad. That's what would distinguish me from a prodigy. But I did start young, yes. I've been producing records for 27 years now. That's pretty good, right?--without having a hit.
Radix: So you were in the music business as a young guy for quite a number of years prior to your conversion? Did your conversion affect the way you looked at the music business or show business?
Burnett: You know, I've been though several conversions in my life. I went to church my whole life. I don't know if CONVERSION is the right word for what happened to me.
Radix: I thought that when I interviewed you in 1978 you had just gone through a conversion.
Burnett: Maybe, but I remember very distinctly that when I was 11 years old, I was going to a boys' camp called the Ozark Mountain Boys' Camp, a baseball camp. We used to have speakers come up from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. It was a Christian boys' camp, and I was the acolyte in church. They took us up on the side of the mountain and told us about God and said, "If you want to be saved, come forward and be saved"--that type of approach to the whole idea of conversion. I naturally wanted to be saved, so when I came home I told my mom I wanted to be confirmed. That's the way I related to it, being raised an Episcopalian. I went to Dallas and got confirmed. It was a period of very intense religious need in my life, and there was some sort of new connection with God at that point. That has happened two or three times in my life. When we met, I had just gone through another period like that. You see when I was 11, my needs were very different from when I was 28 or so. At different times in my life I met God from a different point of view. What was the question?
Radix: Did becoming a Christian change the way you look at the music business or show business?
Burnett: No, not really. If anything, I got a little lazy. I tried for a little while to become a gospel singer--for about 15 minutes. I went up to a church in Sacramento for a concert and they had me down on the floor casting demons out of me, because I sang a Beatles song: "All I've gotta do-oo-oo is call you on the phone and you'll coming running home." It's not very nefarious, but it sent shockwaves through the crowd and through the pastors that I was singing this Beatles song.
Radix: Because you were singing a secular song in a church?
Burnett: Yes. They thought that was profane.
Radix: But it wasn't a church service?
Burnett: No, it wasn't. Anyway, I realized pretty quickly that what they were pushing wasn't for me.
Radix: You might have been the "Christian Bob Dylan."
Burnett: Right. But there were so many of them already.
Radix: Something was going on, though, during those early years with the Vineyard. There were lots of conversions and all those musicians.
Burnett: I think something was going on, and it was a good thing. But it was only for a year or so. I didn't stay active there very long. It was about bringing people to church; it wasn't about living in community, really. I never got into that part of it. I never got into the idea--which I've since learned--that we can live a godly existence here on earth. The idea was that heaven wasn't something that happens when we die, but that heaven WAS here. Not something that we bring down to earth, like Calvin tried to do, like Pat Robertson's trying to do now--force the kingdom of God down on earth. But that there is now heaven and we can live in it--we will live in it. So it was exciting for a while to see all this stuff going on, but a lot of things never led anywhere. It was all built around one leader, and when he left, it evaporated. It's funny to see how some of the people who were part of that have now turned into incredibly right-wing dupes. They're falling right into line with nationalist/social- ist-type power needs.
What I believe now is that maybe they were fearful at the time. Maybe what they were about at the time was all fear. There's a tremendous amount of fear in the evangelical church.
I read an interesting book called _Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory_, a book by a Pentecostal preacher's son. It's written about the evangelical church, but it's not from a negative or positive point of view, just from an observational point of view. He visited different congregations and communities around the country and told stories about them. He made one observation: he believed that abortion became such a hot issue in the evangelical church for several reasons. First, it contradicted two main tenets of the evangelical church: that the United States is a Christian country, founded by Christians, which it's not and was not. That's a basic lie that's believed. Second, that a woman's place is in the home--so that if women returned to what they are supposed to be doing, we wouldn't have this problem at all. It's their fault.
And then, also, beginning way back with the Scopes "monkey trial" the evangelical church began to fell itself "disproved" scientifically. If the Scriptures were inerrant and if the world really did start with Adam and Eve--then suddenly in this culture everyone accepted evolution, and Christians were considered wrong by the country. The author brought up how the anti-abortion fundamentalists say that the most dangerous place in the world to be is in the womb. He believes--and this may be pop psychology-- that the evangelical church identifies with the fetus, and feels that IT is in danger of being aborted at any minute.
I think that the hallmark of conservativism in general--of fundamentalism, in particular--is fear. I think they're constantly manipulated out of fear. Pat Robertson is the most fearful and fearsome person on television. I think that he is manipulated through fear, by power, and doesn't even know it. And he is manipulating hundreds of people, at least 700 people.
Radix: The last time we did an interview, you had become a major record producer, producing people like Elvis Costello. How did that happen?
Burnett: I don't know. Man plans and God laughs. That's what happened. It took over my life.
Radix: Was that a good thing?
Burnett: I can't judge right now, except to say that it was good for me to do at the time. I was so threatened by being in public, being a performer, having things written about me. It was good for me to have a place to bow out to, and to continue to work in music, and be productive. But I did miss writing songs. Now I have a chance to start up again. Basically I started from scratch, which was interesting, too.
Radix: One of the people you've produced is your wife, Sam Phillips. She was telling me that you two had recently performed together. I was wondering if you're going to do that more often.
Burnett: No, I don't think so, not unless we put a comedy act together--George and Gracie. I think it's important to have areas of our lives that are individual. I'm committed to Sam's growth, and she's committed to mine. I enjoy watching her grow, but I don't want to be inside all of it. I'm manipulative enough. Do you know what I mean? And vice versa. It's good that she has her own songs and her own performing life.
Radix: How did you meet?
Burnett: Tom Willard was working for a gospel record label--I think he still is--and she was a gospel singer, and he called me up and said, "There's this singer and she is doing a lot of soul searching, and I think you should meet her and just talk with her." She came by and we started talking. She was going through a lot of issues that I had resolved for myself probably 10 years before, issues that I considered pretty simple issues, but when you're in the middle of them, they seem incredibly complex. She was part of this church in the San Fernando Valley, and some guy who was head of a youth group that she had been a part of was running all of these strange games on everybody. The main focus of this group seemed to be sexuality. Here was this 25- or 30- year-old guy talking to these 15- or 16-year old girls, saying, "Everytime men look at you, they undress you with their eyes." That kind of stuff. She was swept up in this web of guilt and incrimination. It's a part of the fear I was talking about. So she threw away what was a very lucrative career in gospel music because she said, "These people are hypocrites." The irony is that in order to keep her integrity, or regain it, she had to quit the gospel music business; it was son in the service of mammon.
Radix: What about your own work?
Burnett: Well, I'm going to set aside four or five months a year for my own records from now on. Because I have to do that. It's the best part of what I do--the writing. It's the most rewarding. Hopefully the demands of earning a living won't overtake me.
Radix: The title of your new album, _Criminal Under My Own Hat_, is provocative. It seems to me that people who aren't Christian see evil around them but aren't very introspective about it--they don't see themselves as sinful.
Burnett: Christians are some of the worst offenders! Jimmy Swaggart is the perfect living example of that and I love Jimmy Swaggart for being such a beautiful example. In fact I was asked by a Baton Rouge newspaper to review a book he wrote on sex and rock and roll, although I was too busy to do it at the time. But in my mind I wrote a review that basically said, "Dear Mr. Swaggart: Suppose you were able to cleanse the world of all rock and roll so you wouldn't be tempted and you were able to cleanse the world of rock and roll, so you wouldn't be envious--then what would you have left? You would have all the pornography and rock and roll in your own soul, and then what would you do when it was only you left?
I will say one thing. Everyone knew for 15 years that Jimmy Swaggart was a pornography addict, but it wasn't exposed until he went down to Nicaragua and met with Ortega (and PRAYED with Ortega, I think) and met with Noriega in Panama. Within a week or two of that--of messing in Pat Robertson's territory--he was "outed" so to speak. That was a POLITICAL character assassination, even though he was guilty of everything he was accused of doing. But it was odd timing that it came out just then.
A segment of the fundamentalist church in this country--Sam calls it "the political church"--is bent on assigning blame, that it's not even functioning as the church any more but rather as a propaganda wing for the right-wing political movement in this country.
So in this new record what I'm asking for is that we face our current political situation. We've been in this long publicity campaign building up the Russians as our enemy. It went on for almost 50 years with millions of dollars spent every day to make us afraid; the Russians were a repository for everything we found wrong in the world. Now that they're gone, we're left with it--all the evil we used to put on them is hanging off us like diamonds and furs. So it's time to look at what liars we are and just face it.
You know I didn't kill all those Indians in American history. I don't feel guilty for the deaths of all those native Americans. But I would like to see our abuse of them stop now. I don't feel guilty about dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, because I didn't do that either. But I'd like to see them stop making bombs now.
We've got to stop saying we would never drop the first bomb, that our weapons are all defensive. We're the only country that has ever dropped such a bomb on anyone else. We've got to stop saying we've never attacked anyone first and that our attacks have always been provoked.
This would be a good time to face reality and stop pretending that George Washington never told a lie and that he was a wonderful Christian man. He was the richest man in America and he lied as much as anyone else and he wasn't a Christian at all; he was a deist.
We've go to stop this. How can we stop this?
Radix: A revival?
Burnett: A revival's a good idea. Maybe Jesus will come back. I hope that there actually is a rapture and that all the people who've been preaching about the rapture suddenly see all these other people leaving and then they too get saved. That's my wish. I hope they're right about that because I know they're wrong about these other things.
Radix: Who have been you major musical influences? Or has that changed over the years?
Burnett: No, not really. Jimmy Reed and Hank Williams, and the Beatles and Bob Dylan. Those people. Elvis Costello had a really big influence on me. He reinvigorated me. Elvis gets a lot written about his song writing, but very little about what a wonderful record maker he is--imaginative and bold. It was great working with him, because it took me back to when I first started: when I would try anything.
Radix: Does he live in L.A.?
Burnett: No, he lives in Ireland. But we travelled together for a couple of years and we became fast friends. He's a lovely guy, smart, engaged. But I think for most people their first love remains their first love through life. Jimmy Reed is still my first love. But there are a lot of other people who've been influences: Muddy Waters, Slim Harpo, J.B. Lemoir.
Radix: What about your theological views? Have they changed over time?
Burnett: Yes, quite a bit. My early theological influences were my parents. I didn't get a very clear picture of anything from the leaders in my church, except my Sunday school teacher in the sixth grade who did tell me one magnificent thing. We were talking about Providence, and she started drawing lines on a piece of paper and crossing them in every direction until the piece of paper was just completely black--that's Providence. That was a pretty abstract thing to tell a 10-year-old. But the thing I really loved--which has been a great comfort to me my whole life--was when she said, "The will of God is like a rubber band that you're attached to. It goes from one spot to another. As you walk along this road, the band will let you go as long as you want to, but God will bring you back at some point." I don't know if I decided to see how far I could go, or if that rubber band's the way it really is, but that's how my life has been.
Later I started reading Calvinist stuff for a couple of years. Then Francis Schaeffer, whose writing I don't care much for now at all. I tend to think it's not a good idea to try to bring the kingdom of God to earth. It's not a good idea to try to codify everything either, or as G.K. Chesterton said, "Logic is the natural enemy of poetry. The poet wants to get his head into the heavens, while the logician wants to get the heavens into his head--until his head cracks." I think almost all Calvinists would fall into the category of the logician with his head cracked.
Radix: Where does Chesterton say that?
Burnett: In _Orthodoxy_. I think it's in the chapter called "The Maniac." It was a major influence on me. Now Thomas Merton has become a huge influence. Walker Percy was not a theologian at all but he also became a theological influence on me in a non- theological way. But G.K. Chesterton was one of two or three of the greatest apologists of his century, if not the greatest. He's the guy that God put on earth to beat the counter point to George Bernard Shaw.
In the end you can only go so far, and theology is what C.S. Lewis called a road map, which of course is a good thing to have. But I've been finding much more inspiration in a lot of other places, like in Pablo Neruda and in people who look at life in its largeness. Theologians often seem to look at life and try to shrink it to fit in some system.
I mentioned Merton as a great source of inspiration. When the second world war broke out, he went back to a monastery in Kentucky and just prayed for the rest of the war, which seems like the most sane response to that whole thing. He was a bon vivant, a man of letters and celebrated. I think we're getting close to that kind of time again. If I really had the courage of my convictions, I just might do that.
Radix: Enter a monastery?
Burnett: If they'll let me in.
Radix: What about Sam?
Burnett: If they'll let US in. Maybe we'll make our own monastery. I don't know. Are there any coed monasteries around?
Radix: I don't know.
Burnett: I wouldn't mind doing that some day, going and sweeping up for my pay, for my bread. I know I want to do something with more reality in it than being in the record business--which is a perfectly fine thing to do. But someday I'll have to get beyond that.
Radix: Like doing gardening or baking bread?
Burnett: Something like that, yes.