Bob Dylan, 1978 - What about an artist's relationship to money?
Dylan: The myth of the starving artist is a myth. The big bankers and prominent young ladies who buy art started it. They just want to keep the artist under their thumb. Who says an artist can't have any money? Look at Picasso. The starving artist is usually starving for those around him to starve. You don't have to starve to be a good artist. You just have to have love, insight and a strong point of view. And you have to fight off depravity. Uncompromising, that's what makes a good artist. It doesn't matter if he has money or not. Look at Matisse; he was a banker. Anyway, there are other things that constitute wealth and poverty besides money.
Paul and Linda McCartney 1984
PLAYBOY: Paul, it's been nearly four years since John Lennon died and you haven't really talked about your partnership and what his death meant to you. Can you talk about it now?
PAUL: It's . . . it's just too difficult . . . very feel that if I said anything about John, I would have to sit here for five days and say it all. Or I don't want to say anything.
LINDA: I'm like that.
PAUL: I know George and Ringo can't really talk about it.
PLAYBOY: How did you hear of John's death? What was your first reaction?
PAUL: My manager rang me early in the morning. Linda was taking the kidsto school.
LINDA: I had driven the kids to school and I'd just come back in. Paul's face, ugh, it was horrible--even now, when I think of it. . . .
PAUL: A bit grotty. LINDA: I knew something had happened. . . .
PAUL: It was just too crazy. We just said what everyone said; it was all blurred. It was the same as the Kennedy thing. The same horrific moment, you know. You couldn't take it in. I Can't. : I still haven't taken it in. I don't want to.
PLAYBOY: Yet the only thing you were quoted as saying after John's assassination was, "Well, it's a drag."
PAUL: What happened was we heard the news that morning and, strangelyenough, all of us--the three Beatles, friends of John's--all of us reacted in the same way. Separately. Everyone just went to work that day. All of us. Nobody could stay home with that news. We all had to go to work and be with people we knew. Couldn't bear it. We just had to keep going.
So I went in and did a day's work in a kind of shock. And as I wa coming out of the studio later, there was a reporter, and as we were driving away, he just stuck the microphone in the window and shouted,"What do you think about John's death?" I had just finished a whole dayin shock and I said, "It's a drag." I meant drag in the heaviest sense ofthe word, you know: "It's a--drag." But, you know, when you look at thatin print, it says, "Yes, it's a drag." Matter of fact.
John Lennon 1980
Playboy: But what about the charge that John Lennon is under Yoko's spell, under her control?
Lennon: Well, that's rubbish, you know. Nobody controls me. I'm uncontrollable. The only one who controls me is me, and that's just barely possible.
Playboy: Still, many people believe it.
Lennon: Listen, if somebody's gonna impress me, whether it be a Maharishi or a Yoko Ono, there comes a point when the emperor has no clothes. There comes a point when I will see. So for all you folks out there who think that I'm having the wool pulled over my eyes, well, that's an insult to me. Not that you think less of Yoko, because that's your problem. What I think of her is what counts! Because... fuck you, brother and sister... you don't know what's happening. I'm not here for you. I'm here for me and her and the baby!
Ono: Of course, it's a total insult to me...
Lennon: Well, you're always insulted, my dear wife. It's natural...She doesn't need a Beatle. Who needs a Beatle?
Elton John 1976
Playboy: Why do you think the rumors about a Beatles reunion keep turning up? Why do people seem to need or want that to happen?
John: Well, it's like gossip. I mean, people are always wanting Elizabeth Taylor to go back to Richard Burton. And every so often she does it. The only thing good about getting the Beatles back together would be to watch how Lennon and McCartney write songs and how the four would get on. It's an absolutely impossible situation; there's no way they will. If somehow it did happen, there's no way of telling -- it could be a disaster or it could be great. I don't think anyone has come along since the Beatles to match their popularity, or their achievement, when you think of the songs that they wrote in that space of time that have become more or less standards.
