Steve Earle – “I have an agenda, and I am unapologetic about that agenda”

ND: Last critique: “Country radio won’t play you because you’ve recorded this unpatriotic song.”

SE: Well, country radio hasn’t played me since 1987. I mean, I didn’t come here to be Ronnie Milsap. I came here as Guy Clark’s bass player. I still think that what I do is very true to the things that I love about country music. If you’re gonna categorize my music, I think they’re rock records. I think even my bluegrass record was a rock record in that respect.

But if you turn on country radio and you listen to that music, I don’t want people thinking they’ve gotta go there to look for my music. I’m really comfortable being played on public radio stations. I would like to think that I’m reaching the masses, but the people that buy my records are, for the most part, intellectuals in big cities. And it’s been that way for a long time. That’s OK.

III. I HAVE THIS REALLY, REALLY GOOD LIFE, AND I CAME SO CLOSE TO NOT BEING HERE

ND: Why is it, particularly in this culture, when you get the choice of having a lot of money or having the freedom to do the thing that you do best…

SE: Because you get tired. I didn’t make any money until I was 30, 31 years old. I mean, I never made over $3,000 a year until, in ’84, I got a $350-a-week draw and thought I was rich. All the sudden I could actually pay rent, and not have to scramble. And then Guitar Town happened, and it so happened that my deal expired the week that Guitar Town went to #1, and so all the sudden I was making $85,000 a year on my publishing, and [negotiated ownership of] half my publishing.

That was a huge — I was suddenly upper middle class. Boom. Overnight. Literally one day I went out and bought a Sony Trinitron, and a stereo. I’d never owned a stereo. I’d been in the mainstream music business since I was 19, and had never owned a stereo. Didn’t even have a record player, I just couldn’t afford one.

I used to think that pop music could only be art with a lower case a, at best. But I’ve changed my mind about that. What I’ve figured out is, simply, all forms of art are capable of becoming mainstream in one way or another, for a second, and whenever that happens, people that don’t understand art, that only understand commerce, are going to come around. And unfortunately they’re necessary to the process. Especially if you do something like theater, or rock ‘n’ roll, that’s expensive.

We’re not living in real art-friendly times. But it’s really part of a bigger question that has to do with: Do I believe in big government? Yeah, I do. I don’t believe that we’re highly evolved enough to do the right thing. The idea of a government of people is, that way we’re all watching each other, and keeping each other honest. When it gets down to just leaving every man for himself, we don’t do well.

ND: As an artist, you’re not expected to take political stands.

SE: Yeah. I think I limit the potential size of my audience by doing it, but I still make a lot of money. I suffer from a lot of radical socialist guilt, but there’s another side of me that loves being the most radical motherfucker in First Class. It’s fun to sit in First Class on American Airlines with a Ho Chi Minh T-shirt on. I’ve done it, and it’s fuckin’ fun.

What I do is, I write songs. And I write ’em about a lot of different things, and I write a lot of ’em. I’ve written over 100 songs since I got out of jail. I have a political agenda in the sense that I believe the things that I believe. I also live very well and feel like I need to put something back. That means that I probably don’t live as well as I could, but how much fuckin’ money can you spend?

This house, boy it sure needs some work right now, but it’s a really nice place to live. You know, I’ve got a hillbilly above-ground swimming pool and two acres and I vicariously raise cattle because this place originally belonged to the farmer across the road. And I’ve been here since ’88. I have this really, really good life, and I came so close to not being here. I started to say I’m not even supposed to be here, but maybe I am supposed to be here. Maybe that’s exactly why I didn’t buy it.

But I also think that there’s a line that artists can step over. I think John Reed [author of Ten Days That Shook The World and protagonist of the film Reds] stepped over it. I think the John Reed model is something for artists to watch, and it’s not taking anything from who John Reed was or what he did; he’s one of my heroes. But John Reed forgot how powerful he was as a writer and became a politician. Now, there’s another side of that. He didn’t have any mainstream outlets anymore, but he still had the masses, and people listened to John Reed.