To Stanley Mieses—

"Even if you're rich, you feel broke in New York."

To Chris Charlesworth—

"I love Orson Welles because he knows America better than most other directors do, and America is a hard place to know. It's so big and there are so many different kinds of people who are Americans, and the amazing thing is that they get along as well as they do. Welles has captured it as well as any."

To Melody Maker, "Scene U.S.A.", (London)—

"Right now, the problem in America is getting new artists to learn what other artists have done before them, to really get the roots.

"When you are talking about roots in America, you are talking about all sorts of things—newspaper reporting and Walter Winchell, crime, old singers and writers, old shows, old movies. . ."

To Sam Bradley—

"Some people, especially in LA, think Greetings is too sensual. Well, in LA it's easy to be too sensual. On the East coast, like in Detroit and Chicago, they love it, 'cause they're locked up in apartments and subways. They want to get out and get it on.

"In LA, sorry to say, everything's turned into a showcase. It's all a flower show. Everybody shows up to perform themselves. If they just got down to the things they're supposed to be doing — like having a good time, dancing, getting laid, drinking, things you're supposed to be doing, rather than saying, 'Look at me. I'm prettier than you. Look at my new stacked heels.'

"If the music works in the whole context of getting drunk and laid and dancing to great music, then that's fine. But when it's just the whole one-upsmanship thing, then anything a performer will do will be too strong. You'd have to be elevator music in order to please them.

"All I want to do is see them be real for a change. That's why I play music. And when it happens, well, that's what you live for. . ."

"It's essential to live in America because of the energy level, the soulfulness of the people, and the variations of the people. It's one for the connoisseurs — all the violence and other types of things. Once you get past the business level, the people are just incredible, because we're becoming non-territorial.

"You can't get away anymore, just saying, 'Ah'm from th' South.' That carries conversational weight for about two minutes. So what have you done, right? Or, 'I'm from New York, and I'm used to this and this and this.' It doesn't last that long. We're not as territorial as, say, an Englishman coming here, and he's English and that's jolly well it. Too territorial. Too enclosed.

"Here in America, we're not enclosed. We're continental, in spite of ourselves, in spite of being American, and in spite of being blunt. The amount of information coming into even the smallest town, whether Milwaukee or Podunk, Iowa, is still more than any other place in the world. . ."

"The way it is in America, you're educated to death. That's why I didn't go to college. It would have taken me three years before I ever got to music. I took all their tests, and passed them, but they still wouldn't advance me, because I had to take another year of American History, which I'd taken in high school. If I had just been allowed to go to school and take things at my own pace, I would have gladly paid them. . .

"You can't go to Julliard to learn how to play trumpet like Miles Davis. You can't to school to learn how to play music in terms of your own expression. Too much schooling schools out your own ingenuity. And that's what we do in America. . ."

"Roland Kirk was real beautiful to see and hear in L.A. He hadn't played in L.A. for about five years, for obvious reasons. It's hard, emotionally, to play Los Angeles, because of the apathy. You take on such a great responsibility, because it's very tepid here, and if you're bringing in something that's real hot you run the risk of gettin' put down hard. This time around with my Greetings From L.A. music, I was real lucky."

KUMN-FM Interview with Dick in Albuquerque, New Mexico—

TIM:  There's not a constant flow of good music through America like it was in the Sixties.

DICK:  You mean there aren't enough good places to play?

TIM:  The society is moving toward — well, TV dinners started it. Then came canned martinis and canned Daiquiris — all the say-at-home stuff. Watch TV. And you're really dying when you have only three channels with game shows and news like you got out here. Where does it go? So the only TV that's really happening is New York and LA, where they have extended talk shows, community affairs programs, good movies — plus the game shows.

DICK:  So it would be good if everybody sat and watched more TV?

TIM:  No. I'm just saying we're ruled by the media. Before the telephone, you were shooting people — had a lot of gun fights. And you would come to see a hanging. That was the basic motivation out here in Albuquerque.

Now, you have telephones, radio, television, and you've cooled out, except for Friday and Saturday. If the media were better, the level of appreciation would come up. It helps. It goes hand-in-hand. Then a private performer can put more into the society. He can incorporate a wider range of different styles into his music — rather than being forced to program it for 13-year-olds.

DICK:  I better leave. What do you call home after you finish this tour?

TIM: (Yawns) — A trailer in Hermosa Beach. A six-pack and a ball game.

DICK: And watch TV, right?

TIM:  You don't know what TV is until you've been that way. It's different. Much different. . .

DICK:  You think people are going to get burned out on the bad media they're being handed?

TIM:  No. I think by the end of the Seventies, if we ever get an administration that isn't so restrictive — even Sam Irwin said Nixon is the most repressive President ever — when it's finally over at the end of his term — or he's impeached — the odds for that are pretty ridiculous — it may open up to where people are not afraid to be in groups again. Basically, we're a withdrawal society, watching the news.

DICK:  Everyone's paranoid — is that what you're saying?

TIM:  No, it's just waiting to see how far it goes. It's not paranoia. It's just waiting to see how clean it's really going to get. I think that's the basic motive for all the laid-backness, the apathy, the non-commitment to any art or theater or music or anything at all.

People in America are just watching the Watergate thing, waiting to see how far it's going to go. It's going to take a long time to recover from it, and then state a whole new way of living.

Basically, we're really on the line. But we take it in stride, because we're so far away from it. It doesn't matter to anybody in Albuquerque what happened in a hotel in Watergate. But the whole system matters.

What's changing is — does politics keep on making business bigger? Or does it move away from that, toward making people more healthy, providing better places to live in? We're on that line. It's the best line we've ever had.

1974—

To Bill Henderson in London—

"There's not too much inter-relationship going on in England between peoples of different races and countries. But in America for the past couple of hundred years, they've been inter-marrying — crossbreeding channels between Africans and Germans, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, Irish — the whole melting pot. And it produces a strange breed of people, which are very violent, passionate, apathetic, the whole gamut.

"And on one street, say in New York City, I mean there's like 10 or 12 different minorities all brooding and hating each other, staying out of each other's way and getting in each other's way, and cheating on each other's wives and blah-blah-blah. . .you know, the whole bit. . .with no rules except not to get caught, right? And I dunno, you mix all that up with a hot summer's evening — and you got yourself a novel. . .

"So as far as European Continental men, and a sort of suave class type thing goes, it comes out in different areas. I imagine the joke is that Americans don't have any class. But really, in a lot of ways, that self-made nonsense, that pioneer spirit — there is class in it.

"That's what makes the music so strong. That's what makes English guitar players want to copy American guitar players. . .There's a lot of juice going on.

"Here in London, it's a lot calmer — and you have no crime rate — well, aw, come on — I mean, the cops don't even carry guns! That's amazing, that's really amazing. Like hats off, y'know? But then again, you're only dealing with the English.

"As a writer, I have to be American. That's one for the connoisseur, because Americans will never be figured out. There's no way. I mean, figured out to the point where things can be made smoother, like a better way of life. No way."

To Chrissie Hynde (who wondered where Tim's hippie innocence went)—

"Well, when you're 18, you're sorta still right outta the choir, aren't you? And you have to consider the year back then [1966].

"Kids now are 14 and strung out on reds and heroin and pregnant maybe a couple of times. I mean, they've really been through it by 16. Before, you didn't get laid till 17 or 18 maybe, if you were lucky — got the cheerleader drunk at the right time. That was a different period.

"Whether it's good or bad, I'm really at odds with it. I got an 11-year-old boy and a 15-year-old sister, and she's just about washed up — all the shit she's doing. I don't know if the body will be there by 23. I'm ready for the ass to fall any minute. . .

"You've seen the acid casualties of '66. Today, kids 15 years old are now experiencing down-home problems without having to make their own way. Still getting compensation from Pop and Mom, but 'Living the Blues,' as it were. Bullshit! So now a concert consists of 13-year-olds passing coffee cans of pills around and listening to Deep Purple. And they don't respond!

"But I have to stay in tune with the whole thing 'cause I'm a writer and it's America."

To Steve Lake—

"The Scots are nuts, aren't they? I mean, that's not just my opinion, is it? I mean, they really are crazy. They'll argue about anything, and somehow they always seem to know more about what you're doing than you do.

"And you always end up buying them a drink because they've argued you into the floor!"