Andy Warhol—From A to B and Back Again

2018

“Andy's work really goes to the heart of the matter of what it means to be a human being and what our potential is . . . It's the real deal.”—Jeff Koons

Hear from a range of contemporary artists, curators, and scholars speaking about iconic works on view. Contributors include Jeff Koons, Hank Willis Thomas, Deborah Kass, Peter Halley, Sasha Wortzel, and Richard Meyer.

Transcription: Andy Warhol's TV, Season 1, Episode 6, 1981

Running time: 30:12 mins

Group chatter: Well, I started mostly with [unintelligible] Aretha Franklin [crosstalk].

Voice one: Wire me for sound.

Risa Dickstein: You see your horse first?

Voice two: Yeah, look at him. He's in a box [unintelligible] down there.

Risa Dickstein: You have the same horse every time?

Voice two: Yes.

Risa Dickstein: What's your horse’s name? 

Voice two: John’s tomb.

Risa Dickstein: Did you name him?

Voice two: He came to the job with that name.

Risa Dickstein: Excuse me?

Voice two: He came on the job with that name. He's a –  

Risa Dickstein: How old is he?

Voice two: Right now, he's eight years old. He was on the job as a three-year-old.

Risa Dickstein: How old are you?

Voice two: Forty.

Risa Dickstein: How old – 

Voice two: How old are you?

Risa Dickstein: Thirty-seven. Do you have to be a different size? I mean – 

Voice three: Attention to roll call. McGovern?

McGovern: Here.

Voice three: Six and the first? Holstein? Eleven o'clock mail post changed at twelve o'clock to one and the first. Eagen?

Eagen: Yeah.

Voice three: Seven and the first horse Bobby. Twelve hundred meal. Horse change two and the first. McCluskey?

McCluskey: Yeah.

Voice three: Three and the first. JT, 11:30 meal to five and the first. Monahan?

Monahan: Yeah.

Voice three: Four and the first, Rocky, 10:30, eight and the first is your postage. Hampton SEP, Manhattan south area. Alright and uh, there's a note here from the OCCB in regard to weapon seizure, and narcotics arrest. They say there's an inordinate amount of guns around, when they're making collars on drugs. So to be aware of it and be careful out there. Ready to go. You take your post, alright?

Voice four: Ready for some other checks. Uh, we'll get three other collars on me. Hey, hey, hey.

Voice five: Suppose we get mobilized, huh? I don't wanna be out there like a fool. That's why take a radio. What if I need help out on the street, huh? [crosstalk]

Voice four: Okay, I'll be around. 

Group chatter: [unintelligible] Why don't you polish? Oh, stay there.

Lieutenant Vecere: Well, what we're talking about, we're talking about an eight hour and thirty-five minute shift. What we're basically saying, the man comes in before his eight-hour shift, before seven o'clock. These men come in an hour, forty-five minutes, a half-hour before the beginning of the tour to get their equipment into shape. To clean up the horses that have already been cleaned, to give them that extra polish, their tact has been cleaned, still clean that. This is time that they donate, you might say to the city ordinance. It’s their own time because they're so proud of being in the outfit. Normally, I'm not knocking any patrolman on his job because, they come in early. I think we have more [unintelligible] the core here. There's more spit, uh, if you wanna call it spit and polish in the south, that the men really feel great about themselves. You can see them [crosstalk] when they're going on patrol. 

You can pick out a mounted man, not because he has a yellow stripe running down the side of his trousers, but his shoes are always polished, his brass is polished. I remember being a patrolman, I never polished brass. I mean that was the farthest thing from my mind. I'm a lieutenant today and I still polish brass.    

Our horses here in the city, experience quite a bit of problems, in that they're on concrete, they're on blacktop, and the fact that they're out there eight hours a day with the officer. They do experience a lot of fair fatigue, stress. It's a stressful environment that they work and therefore some break down sooner, and others seem to last forever. They're just all troopers and they just won't give up.

We do have a lot of donations from private people. Many of the horses that we have downstairs and throughout our mounted unit are also donations from other people. For various reasons they've had a horse and they no longer care to keep it. If it's in sound shape, we pick up the horse and we put it on patrol.

Risa Dickstein: What's your [unintelligible]?

Lieutenant Vecere: We have Twenty-One, which was donated by the 21 Club. 

Voice six: Markup.

Lieutenant Vecere: We also have Markup, which was donated by the Garment Area.

Voice six: Garment Area.

Lieutenant Vecere: They have two horses, Markup and Markdown.

Voice six: Markup and Markdown. Which -

Risa Dickstein: Markup and Markdown.

Lieutenant Vecere: Markup happened to be the taller horse, and Markdown happened to be the short one, implicating the fact markups are usually higher and markdowns are usually lower.

Voice six: Lower.

Lieutenant Vecere: I would assume. We thank those people anyway for the donation. We just picked up a donation of money from J. C. Penny. They've donated money for, to our foundation to purchase a horse, and that horse is going to be named Penny Express.

[street noises] 

[horse hooves clattering] 

[crosstalk]

Lieutenant Vecere: I said before that every officer that comes into this unit is the same as any officer that works out of a precinct. He has a nightstick, he carries a gun. He does the same...he's a policeman. He's not per se a mounted officer and that's his only function. He's a police officer, first of all. 

The use of the gun – he doesn't use the gun any more than any officer that used it. He would use that as required by the Penal Code and in no other case would he use it. Yes, we have had many arrests on horseback, where the man has chased the perpetrators down the street. You can readily see how easy it is on mounted as compared to a patrol car in a city as the streets of NY when we had a lot of heavy traffic.

Voice six: We tied our horses in garages and parking lots or whatever. Occasionally, we don't know what happens, maybe, some kid, drunk, whatever, whatever happens, the horse gets loose, hit by a car, whatever. Their natural instinct is to come back to the barn, and they actually work a lot in midtown, Broadway area, and it's a long ride.  

Now when a horse breaks, his, his natural instinct is to come home, where he's safe, where he can eat. They don't know red lights, or green lights, and they'll, sometimes they get hurt. Very rare, but it does happen occasionally. But a –  

Risa Dickstein: But they come back?

Voice six: Oh yeah, they all come back. I had a horse, one time I was taking him outta the van and he just slipped out of my grasp, for some reason. He walked, well he didn't walk, he trotted two blocks down, he put his nose up in the air, realized where he was, going the wrong way. You could see what went through the horse’s mind. You kinda like say, "Whoa", stopped, turned around and looked, and he came right back to the barn. Got to the door and he stood there and I'm looking at this horse, I was all embarrassed. People looking at me, but I did things like that. I was fortunate nothing happened. 

Lieutenant Vecere: I had this very tall horse, Liberty, and ya know, when you're short, it's kinda hard to reach up for the stirrups. This particular day with the heavy uniform on I decided I was going to climb on top of the garbage can, filled with manure. Ya know.

Risa Dickstein: [laughs] This is a war story?

Lieutenant Vecere: This is a war story. What happened though, the cover on the garbage pail didn't fit properly and it kinda wobbled, but I got up on top of that garbage pail, and I brought the horse parallel to the garbage pail and I was going to finesse this. I was gonna put my left foot into the stirrup and climb on. What happened though, the horse moved away, about a foot and a half, two feet away, and it was either getting down off this darn garbage pail or trying to make this attempted leap. Well, I leaped. I missed the stirrup and I came down in the garbage can. Not, roughly not all, just my elbow. 

A few of the men who were already mounted, looked around and they laughed kinda sheepishly. So, I looked up and I said, "John, did you see that?" And John saw it, but he looked away and said, "No, I didn't see that Lieutenant.” I yelled at the others, "Did you see this?" They were all laughing, grinning. So nobody admitted to seeing this here – 

Risa Dickstein: Of course not.

Lieutenant Vecere: So I just, "Damn it, again. None of you people pay attention!”

Voice six: I came on this job – first of all I'm a Hispanic, Puerto Rican. Probably the only Puerto Rican, mounted Sergeant, on this job to this day. I would just say that. I think I'm right. 

Risa Dickstein: Somebody’s gonna tell the EDOC –  

Voice six: Now, I always, always wanted to lead the Puerto Rican Day parade. I swear, that was one of the things that I always wanted to do. And by god, this year, I did it. I'm riding up Fifth Avenue, ya know, about half way up the parade route, I says, "My god, ya know – 

Risa Dickstein: I'm doing it!

Voice six: Here I am and… Just on a different note though, about the same thing, my mother passed away ten years ago, and I only wish she was there, ya know. But my father saw me and that was really great. There's something else that happened. All the years I waited to do this, they had a centerfold of the daily news had a picture of all of us coming up Fifth Avenue, but I had my head turned! They only got the back of my head.

Lieutenant Vecere: The horse is their partner. That's it. When they go out on patrol, they work on a post by themselves. They go out in forces, as you saw them go out this morning. Once they hit that particular post, one man drops off on his post, they go further down, the other man drops off and so forth. So they're working by themselves. They're working with that horse. That's their partner. He takes care of the horse, the horse takes care of him. [crosstalk]

[horse hooves clattering]

[water hose splashing]

[Joseph Coppola’s hammer banging on metal]

[voices speaking in background] 

[hammer banging on hooves]

Voice seven: Think we’re gonna take the robbery post. From West Eight Street on Sixth Avenue over to University Place. Start off the morning strolling the street looking for violations. You know, past crimes that have been committed, past robberies – and the rest of the day I’m just patrolling the street for street crimes.

Well, everybody always says that you take the smell home with you, you know. And uh, sometimes it's true, you know. Like when you have stable duty, you know. Your clothes, you know, get the smell and – 

[cut to classroom]

Voice eight: I think where I'd like to maybe just start is opening the floor to some questions because, since you must be pretty familiar with the fact that they're musicians – and especially with Blondie – was a band that started in the New York so-called punk clubs in the mid-1970s and achieved tremendous international commercial and artistic success. You might have some questions that you might want to ask them about hopes, dreams, and aspirations.

Chris Stein: So, if you ask just some specific questions, maybe that will lead us into some more expanded type of dialogues. But not really knowing the specific direction of the class here – [laughter from room] – we'll take some questions from the audience in leu of phone calls.

Voice nine: You comment on [unintelligible] the cover art of your latest album was pretty controversial.

Debbie Harry: So, I'm um, pretty surprised by it. Everybody's sort of taking it personally, as if they’re expecting spikes to be driven through their head or something. A lot of people that are – I was really surprised that serious business people like DJs and stuff say they wanna know how I posed for the picture. Stuff like that. I mean... Sorta funny. I've had to really explain this a lot, this cover. More than, more than any other cover, obviously.

Voice eight: In case anybody isn't familiar with the cover, Debbie has acupuncture needles going through her head. And it was banned from where? The subway, somewhere in London? Because they had trains – someone might try to do it?

Debbie Harry: Yeah, the train stations. And they wouldn't advertise it on television, either.

Chris Stein: But you see the power of the printed word whereby, I heard somebody say, "England." See, everybody over here got the word that the thing was banned in England, when in reality it was only banned in the subway. And I don't know where that comes from but it just goes to show you can't believe anything we hear in the media.

[laughter from room]

Voice eight: Well, with some exceptions.

Voice ten: But when you read it, it's the truth. 

Voice eight: Unless you know better.

Voice ten: It becomes the truth.

Chris Stein: That's another course. Yeah, but the record cover was very controversial in that the record failed miserably. I mean, we didn’t have a hit. No, that's not true. The record did okay, went gold, but we didn't have a big hit from the record, unfortunately. It was number six in England. Yes. 

Voice eleven: What's the stuff with Debbie Harry and the [unintelligible]? Is it Debbie Harry by herself? What's in the works now? Are you going back to the Blondie band?

Debbie Harry: We're doing a Blondie album next, in December. 

Voice eleven: What’s it going to be about?

Debbie Harry: I don't know yet.

Voice eleven: Okay.

Debbie Harry: It's about music.

Chris Stein: Listen, that’s a steep question.

Debbie Harry: I don't know yet.

Voice twelve: What was the reason behind changing your visual? You know, you’re blonde and... Overnight it was like, there's a new Blondie, Debra Harry.

Debbie Harry: Well, I don't know. I got tired of, you know, doing the same thing, right? Everybody, you know, you go out and you say "Ah, I'm gonna cut my hair," or "I gotta change, I gotta do something different." And you do it. So, that's what I did.

Chris Stein: It's like going out every night. You know, it can be fun, but once it becomes a routine – 

Debbie Harry: Yeah.

Chris Stein: Then forget it.

Voice twelve: Walter, as far as successes are concerned, do you feel like a [unintelligible]?

Walter Steding: No, I don't do what I do without regard to Tom, because I'm doing it because I wanna do it. No one's really pushing me to do it. At a time that I see things happening in the future, I'm looking ahead but I'm not setting any limits. I know that I'm just gonna keep on going with it because the opportunities are there for me to keep pursuing it.

Chris Stein: Let me just briefly say, Walter is very successful to a lot of people and I think he's quite aware of that. You know, it's just a matter of mass appeal. It's just a different thing entirely.

Walter Steding: The record industry, it's a big business like anything else, like he was saying. It's even insensitive people that might be running it. But as the cost of records keep getting more expensive to produce, just even things like that. Eventually the business will have to conform to what people wanna hear and what people are doing because of the nature of the economics. Like the big companies, they can make good records but they can't compete with the creative videos that new groups are making. So, they're gonna have to change. There's no time limit – it’s going to change anyhow, so you just keep doing it.

Voice eleven: In the club business, the same thing has happened with the creativity, because you could run and buy a piece of property in New York a couple of years ago in `74, `75, could take places like the Mud, and the Ritz. I think they pay, hardly – when we picked up the studio, I think we paid $50,000 a year rent, which wasn't a lot at that time for a place the doesn't have the potential to have a type of business. Now for a year on the Forties they want $6,000,000 and um, or any different type of facility that's nice – I saw this great place, I thought it would be a great place for a club, it's a Phoenix house on the – 

[laughter from room]

Debbie Harry: On the West Forties.

Voice eleven: Right

Debbie Harry: Forty-third or something.

Voice eleven: Yeah, it would be great. It's like, it has levels, and there would be plazas and get people – I believe in having people on different spaces. But they want $10,000,000 for the real estate, and they want it all cash, ya know. And I don't mention the word “cash.” 

[laughter from room]

I mean they want a check. My accountant told me “You don't say the word ‘cash.’” But um, they want money, and to carry the building for one year this one piece of property that I really love now, costs – takes a year to construct the course – $900,000 just to – 

Debbie Harry: Just to build it.

Voice eleven: No, just to carry it. For the rent, for the mortgage and the [unintelligible]. It's very difficult for –  so that's why all these small clubs have opened up.

Voice eight: But wait a minute, let me ask you something. What happens if you have a club that's great, like CBGB in 1974, was great 'cause there were about twenty of us that use to go and hang out there. It was new, it was wonderful, and we all loved it, and then people started writing about it. I mean how could you not? If you saw a place that was terrific, unless you just want to keep it a secret and keep it very elitist, you write about it. Then New York Magazine writes about it or something, and then Paul Simon and Linda Ronstadt start coming down there. And the people from Long Island come!

[laughter from room]    

Then everybody says, "It's awful now." I mean, but Blondie was subject to this, too. When only a few people knew what Blondie was, everybody thought this was a private, special little treasure, and people who were fans of the bands, were fans of the bands. But you wanted to be successful, you wanted to make money, you wanted people to know who you were – and then you had that success and then people say, "Ugh, they sold out". I mean, how do you avoid that?

Chris Stein: Right, no, you don't.

Debbie Harry: There's no way to avoid it. That's the way it is.

Voice thirteen: I'm one of those people who [unintelligible]. What’s wrong with not letting people from Long Island –

[laughter from room]

Chris Stein: It’s more symbolically. 

Debbie Harry: No, it’s just a sort of symbolic use for my [crosstalk] a lot of people discovering something. It used to be Jersey!

Voice eleven: We're not from Park Avenue, any of us, so [crosstalk]. That's what people say when people go to another clubs, right.

Chris Stein: Just figure it as an expression. 

Voice eleven: They say all the Manhattan people are coming and then the Manhattan people in the Upper East Side come over and it isn't as good because, ya know. Then the people from the – they call them bridges, I made up the expression "bridges" because – the tunnel people 

Debbie Harry: You did?

Voice eleven: Yeah!

Debbie Harry: That was yours?

Voice eleven: They asked me what I’d like to do to keep the club good, so I said, “I’d like to cut off all the bridges and tunnels.” 

Debbie Harry: I use to think that the best audience was an audience that didn't know you and didn't like you, and didn't want to know you and didn't want to like you. And I used to really like that, you know, having to take and change everybody, or to make them like me, or like the music. That's a lot of fun. I sorta get a kick out of that. It's sort of a letdown to go out in front of a huge audience, and have them really happy that you're there, and clapping and cheering and excited, before you've even done anything. 'Cause then, ya know, it's like, it could either be, you know – I mean, how much higher can you go? But that's only my own paranoia. 

Chris Stein: Look what it did for the Dodgers.

Voice eight: Oh, shut up.

[laughter from room]

Chris Stein: It's nice to think about going out in New York, but it's like, very specific. You should think about why people get together in the first place. What is the human need for congregation?

Voice eleven: Sex.

Chris Stein: Yeah, I'll buy that. 

Debbie Harry: Next time you go to a club, take your clothes off and have a good time. 

[laughter from room]

Chris Stein: I heard about, oh, I did hear about one thing, I heard about this guy who had a big club in Switzerland or something like that, and in one night there's like two thousand, three thousand people there, and this guy got up on stage, somebody got on stage and they said, "Everybody take your clothes off!” And everybody took off their clothes, and they threw them all in this – like, two thousand people! Then they all got dressed again, but nobody could find their own clothes, actually.

[laughter from room]

Voice eleven: I've been to jail once, I'm not going back.

Debbie Harry: That was in the carnival or something, right? 

Voice eight: Did you have one more question? Did you raise your hand? No. Okay, one more then we gotta go.

0:00

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