Two short excerpts from an interview with Greene by Rick Rubin. The full interview (nearly 2 hours long) was put on Rick Rubin's Tetragrammaton yt channel in Dec. 2023, here: • Robert Greene
Robert was a long time friend of David's, and speaks about his friend a few times in the interview in relation to some of the ideas Robert writes about.
TRANSCRIPT:
(EXERPT 1):
ROBERT GREENE: Nothing has really changed. It's the same
story over and over again. I'd been
Working in Hollywood which I hated and the games,
the tactics, things people were
doing were just like things I've been
reading about in the pages of Machiavelli.
People aren't as vile and overt but
it's the same hunger for power. They
don't want to admit it, and so that book
came from a lot of pain inside of me of
bad experiences of being on the wrong
end of power and being kind of resentful
that people got away with this and
nobody talks about these kind of-
you know in the music business better than
anybody what I'm talking about because
I've known quite a few musicians. One of
my oldest friends was in a band, in Mazzy
Star, DAVID ROBACK. Did you ever
know David?
RICK RUBIN: I don't know David, but I
love Mazzy Star
ROBERT: Oh yeah, he was the
guitarist and, like, how the music
industry just destroyed him , as a
person. He, you know, he became an
alcoholic. He died when he was-.
just a couple of years ago. And I love that guy
more than any-. He was a wonderful human
being, but the stories he would tell
about the betrayals, the lying, the
money games, just broke my heart.
So I had similar things in Hollywood, not nearly
quite as extreme. So it came from that
kind of power of kind of almost wanting
revenge on that world to sort of expose
things that I had seen, and that's where
that book Power came from, that initial
spark and set off this insane journey.
RICK RUBIN: Amazing
(EXCERPT 2 STARTS HERE):
ROBERT: ...So, mastering your craft, or whatever it is,
and becoming brilliant at it and
creative at it is the ultimate form of
power. If you are creative, the world will
just bow down to you, okay? You'll get what you want,
but we're social animals, so even if you're a very
creative person in music, in writing, in
the arts, you have to deal with the
political aspects of the field, and
they're inevitable, and they exist in the
art world as much as they exist in the
business world, right?
A lot of artists are destroyed by that,
as unfortunately, my dear friend was, a very sensitive,
beautiful soul, very poetic, had incredible
imagination. A lot of artists are naive.
They're sensitive.
You point - you talk about it very brilliantly
in your [i.e. Rick's] book. They have a higher level
of sensitivity. Things bother them more, and so they enter
the art world, and they're not prepared for it. And they
have more talent than anybody can imagine.
They've worked on their craft
but they can't handle the political
games. So in that case it's not like
knowing the 48 Laws of Power would have
elevated them to a great artist, no, but -
RICK RUBIN: To protect themselves
ROBERT: In that moment, yes, it could protect yourself as I had to
try do myself when I was in that world.
And I wasn't very good at it.
................................................
The photo of David is by Andrew Catlin.
Someone on Twitter-X who is a fan of both Mazzy Star and Robert Greene
tweeted about this interview, which is how I learned about it.
...............................................
It should be mentioned, I think, Greene may be exaggerating harm done to David by the music industry, if his descriptions of David are otherwise correct, including that David did face some unscrupulous treatment in the business.
Greene suggests music business politics "destroyed" David, drove him to drink, and contributed to health problems that killed him.
But from a reliable, informed source, I've learned David's health issues had some identifiable causes/factors unrelated to stresses of being an artist subject to brutal politics of the industry.
Since Greene speaks about his friend in relation to some of the ideas Greene writes about, it's possible he is exaggerating the injurious effect on David from the industry 'cause doing so illustrates his ideas in a starker, more striking way, particularly his ideas on effects of power used against people, especially artists.
Негізгі бет Robert Greene (author) speaking about his friend David Roback of Mazzy Star
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