Crumb Page #4

I can get an autograph from you.

I don't think so.

I don't believe in giving autographs.

Okay, well thanks anyway.

- When are you actually moving?

- Couple months.

France isn't perfect or anything.

But it's slightly less evil

than the United States, I think.

But that's not why I'm moving.

Talk to my wife if you want to know

why I'm moving.

We do have something here

that we wanted to show you.

- Yeah?

- Yeah. 1967 rock concert poster.

Extremely rare item.

Its my only rock concert poster

I ever did.

There's this legend I keep hearing.

People telling me...

Somebody told me you used to live with

the Grateful Dead in Haight Ashbury...

and you hung around with Jerry Garcia. '

I never had anything to do

with those guys. I hated that music.

I went to a couple of those

rock concerts and just fell asleep.

Found it completely boring,

that psychedelic music.

I've got something for you.

I want to tell you a little secret.

It's called Om Mani Padme Hum.

This is where I get recognized more than

anyplace in the world, on Haight Street.

- Amazing.

- I know. These are my people!

People come to me and say,

R. Crumb!

Sometimes some guy will sit with me...

and chew my ear off

about all his hopes and dreams.

Usually it's some broken-down

hippie-pest guy.

It's never like a beautiful young

20-year-old girl.

It's just so interesting

to come here and draw people.

That's the main reason I come here,

just to watch people.

That girl was sitting here one day.

Beautiful girl.

I drew this other girl.

She came up and wanted the drawing.

So I cut it out,

gave it to her.

- Good way to meet girls.

- Right.

I drew this girl.

She invited me to her house.

Unfortunately, she wasn't

very attractive.

You kept the picture, I see.

It's ironic that you're

so identified with the '60s.

At the time, it didn't seem you fit in

with that flower child thing.

I tried!

I used to come here every day

and try and be one of them.

My main motivation was,

get some of that free love action.

but I wasn't too good at it.

People would ask,

Are you a narc?

They would move away from you

at the love-in. I look like I do now.

Exactly. You, in effect...

- You did have a costume.

- It wasn't the right costume.

I remember Janis Joplin giving me

this piece of advice.

Crumb, what's the matter with you?

Don't you like girls?

I said, Of course I like girls.

What do you think?

She said, Just let your hair grow long,

get a satin, billowy shirt...

velvet jackets and bell bottoms

and platform shoes.

You'll do all right.

I just couldn't do that.

The whole thing was too silly to me.

I couldn't get with it.

Here's a real beautiful one.

I should get...

The work in this book,

the art, the feelings...

are what made me fall in love

with Robert.

The way he saw colors

and the way he saw women.

When I was 17 years old,

I looked a lot like that.

So I was what he had been drawing.

I was the embodiment of what

he had been drawing for years.

It's such a sweet,

romantic vision of things.

He did this book.

It took him, I think, a year.

That was his life.

He had just finished the book

days before we met.

My parents were always fighting

all the time.

I used to say,

I'm never getting married.

My father said, You'll marry the first

one that comes along. He was right.

Robert always had a sketchbook

or two going.

He was constantly drawing.

If we were in a restaurant,

he'd draw on the place mat.

If we were on the bus,

he'd draw on his bus ticket.

I had this big change

in 1965 and '66.

It was visionary.

Very powerful,

kind of knock-you-on-your-ass...

visionary experience.

This is my sketchbook for 1966

that covers that period.

I took this very weird drug.

Supposedly it was LSD,

but it had a really weird effect.

It made my brain all fuzzy.

This effect lasted

for a couple of months.

I started getting these images,

cartoon characters like this...

that I'd never drawn before

with these big shoes and everything.

I let go of trying to have any coherent,

fixed idea about what I was doing.

I started being able to draw these

stream-of-consciousness comic strips.

Just kind of making up stuff.

It didn't have to make any sense.

It could be stupid.

It didn't make any difference.

All the characters that I used

for the next several years...

came to me during this period.

These fit into this vision I was having.

It was a revelation of some seamy side

of America's subconscious.

When I was drawing this,

there was this young girl. She was 11.

She said, Isn't that cute?

To me, it was like a horror show,

this whole thing.

And she thought it was really cute

and happy looking.

To me, it was like a drawing

of the horror of America.

There were these hippie underground

papers starting up in '66, '67.

Every town had one or two of them.

They would print anything if it was

related to the psychedelic experience...

or the hippie ethic.

So I started submitting...

these LSD-inspired comics

I had been doing...

to these papers,

and they liked them.

Then this guy came who suggested

I do a whole issue of his paper.

It was called Yarrowstalks.

I did that, and that went over big.

He said, Why don't you do psychedelic

comic books, and I'll publish them?

So I set to work, and I did

two whole issues of Zap Comix.

Crumb was incredibly exciting

and incredibly hot.

There were just a handful of us...

doing this new form of comics.

And what he was doing

was just more innovative...

than what any of us

had even thought of.

It was fun to be a part of that

and to see Zap suddenly everywhere.

From this concept of Robert's, this

fantasy of doing his own comic book...

with a glossy cover

and actually printed...

to seeing it turning up in all the

windows on Haight Street, around town...

hearing people talk about it...

having the other artists show up

and wanting to be a part of it.

It happened very quickly. It seems to me

it happened in a matter of weeks.

Crumb gave the ownership of Zap

to the artists. There was no editor.

There was a certain point where

it seemed underground comics...

could get into the big time...

and Crumb always seemed reluctant

to push that sort of thing.

They were offering him 100,000 bucks...

just to start talking.

Robert turned it down

in two seconds.

Aline screamed in the background,

What are you doing? We need money.

Forget it! I'm not going on

Saturday Night Live.

The Rolling Stones wanted me to do

an album cover.

A couple other deals like that.

I said No.

This is not something you see

every day in America...

where selling out

is everybody's ambition.

After about a year of recognition

and all the bullshit of fame...

I just said, F*** it...

and I started drawing the dark part

of myself again in the comics...

which I'd always kept hidden before.

I was used to what he had been doing...

which was really quite sweet.

Then he did this one that was...

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