Cass Corridor Documentation Project Oral History Project

GIBB, INTERVIEW

Cass Corridor Documentation Project

Oral History Project

Interviewee: Russ Gibb

Relationship to Cass Corridor: The Grande Ballroom (owner), Radio DJ (WKNR-FM-

Detroit), Concert Promoter, Teacher (Dearborn High School), Entrepreneur.

Interviewer: Timothy J. Fritz

Date of Interview: March 25, 2011

Location: Dearborn, MI. (Gibb’s Residence)

Editor’s note: Included in this interview transcript are comments made by Mr. Gibb’s secretary,

Jenny Estrada, and director and photographer, Zeke Anders. The latter filmed the event for possible future publication.

[Prior to starting the interview there are a few comments concerning Mr. Gibb’s do.]

FRITZ: It's March 25th. This interview is with Russ Gibb at Mr. Gibb’s residence in Dearborn,

Michigan. Mr. Gibb, please tell me about where you were born and grew up.

GIBB: Well, I was born, I just recently looked, I think I was born in Children’s Hospital in

Detroit, if there was such a thing back then. I lived my first couple years in—I’m laughing at the

GIBB, INTERVIEW dog. He’s performing some natural activities over there. I grew up in Detroit on Willette Street.

My parents were both immigrants. My dad was a factory worker and my mom was a maid. And you know, it was during the Depression and being poor is being poor. We lived in an upstairs flat. I remember, because my mother and father both worked, that the little girl next door—there were two daughters with an old Russian family and Beenie was probably a senior in high school or just a graduate of high school—she would take care of me while mother was working. My mother worked for some rich Jewish family up around Six Mile. I think Six Mile and Woodward.

There was a great Jewish community there at one time. I think I even saw the place where she worked years later. I was associated with Joey Nelander of the Nelander Theatre family and his mother, Apple Nelander, lived in one of those old apartments over there. Beautiful apartments as

I recall. That’s where my mother worked. That was my first memory that I could ever think of growing up was the fact that I saw —

[Gibb begins to speak to the dog who has taken the interviewer’s glasses from the table and is preparing to chew them up.]

Anyway, the first memory I ever had as a child was sitting on an upstairs porch with an awning. I don’t know if they still make awnings anymore, but years ago everybody had an awning on the porch. And of course, my parents rented the house at Willette and Livernois Avenue. I remember sitting up there and all of a sudden I looked up and I saw stars.

[Dog interrupts again]

GIBB, INTERVIEW

Yeah, just put him outside. This is ridiculous. He’s showing off for everybody. What are you going to do? How you going to talk about that? Unless I was Bill Maher. And then I could be insulting to everybody. He [Maher] likes to go after that Sarah Palin lady. He called her a cunt the other night. That’s a little bit far. Insulting. He’s the comic? I’m laughing at him because he’s so stupid.

Anyway, I remember looking up underneath the awning, sort of peeking my head out over the porch as a little baby, and seeing the stars for the first time and it was amazing. I remember

Bernie, Bernice Havankovich I think her name was. And [to] Bernie I said, what are those things, those lights in the sky? Somehow I said that. And she told me they were stars and that that was where God lived, out there in the stars. And years later, I was listening to a recording of a play called “Knickerbocker Holiday.” There was a song and one of the lines in the thing was “Little stars, big stars, blowing through the night. And we’re lost out here, in the stars.” That sort of stayed with me. That was one of my first memories growing up in Detroit. Detroit was a great city at one time. It has fallen upon hard times. Will it come back? Of course it will come back.

To what it was? No. But it’ll come back. Can’t keep a good man down. Can’t keep a good woman down and you can’t keep a good city down. Anyway, that’s where I grew up. That was my early times. The other memory growing up was her [Bernice] father was a Russian with an accent. He had a great big crock down in his cellar that he made kapusta [in]. You know what kapusta is?

FRITZ: I think I’ve heard of it, yes.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

GIBB: It’s sort of a cabbage soup I guess, or sauerkraut or something. I had never had coffee and he made his own coffee. He had beans and they would grind them and put them in this contraption and then put hot water in it. I remember I was sitting down there, she would plop me at the table with her father, and he said, “You want some coffee?” I tried it and it was great. Then he gave some of the bread that I think his wife made. It was black bread with butter.

So, those were some of the best memories I have of Detroit.

My first job was in Detroit. There was a big market right next to us. Two houses over [or] one house over. There was this big sort of semi-open market on Livernois and Michigan Avenue, which was kitty-corner to the Lincoln plant. Ford had built this great big factory down there making Lincolns. It was kitty-corner to this big outdoor market. It was semi-outdoor, semi- indoor, sort of like Eastern Market is today, but it was down there. I got my first job and I don’t know how old I was. I was pretty young, maybe five, six. I shelled peas. In those days, the farmers would bring in the food. Of course everybody had a garden in their own house. We all had gardens, that was part of the game in Detroit. During the Second World War they called them victory gardens, but before those times it was food gardens, gardens that we could eat something out of during the Depression. I shelled peas and I got fifteen cents an hour. That wasn’t very much. We didn’t have a union back then. But it was a job and we were quite happy having that particular job. But I did get even with that market one time. They were having a drawing for a turkey at Thanksgiving and if you bought some vegetables from some of these stands they would each give you a little number. Then they would put it in a big barrel and then on a certain day, we were to go in and they were going to draw out a winning number and you would get a free turkey. I was selected to pull out the number and I remember this was my first

GIBB, INTERVIEW appearance live on stage in Detroit, at the market pulling out a piece of paper with a number on it. Guess whose name I pulled out? Go on Guess. Mine. I pulled my own name out. So, I won the turkey and everybody thought it was rigged. And of course it was. Life goes on.

Then we moved. We moved to Dearborn and the rest of my time was spent in Dearborn,

Michigan, growing up and finding out what that was all about. Dearborn was out in the sticks back then. Remember, Outer Drive in Michigan at one time was Outer Drive! You went to the other side of Outer Drive and you were in the country. [The] first horseback experience I ever had, or horseback ride, was on Joy Road and Telegraph Road. There was great big riding academy, not academy that was too fancy a word. [A] stable and you could rent a horse. That’s the first time I ever rode a horse. We were out in the sticks! We were on Wyoming Avenue. I grew up on Kentucky Street. They were so original back there. The street before Kentucky Street in Dearborn was Indiana. And before that was Wisconsin. And then you got the waterworks. Of course the waterworks were always an amazing thing to me in Dearborn. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the Detroit waterworks, which gives water to Dearborn too, by the way, even today.

There was a great huge building that looks something like Hoover Dam to me. My buddy and I

Butch Hainburg, he was a crippled boy. Oh yeah, we didn’t call him handicapped, he was crippled! Butch was a gimp! He was my best friend in grade school in Dearborn. We would go hunting rabbits with BB guns. We never caught any rabbits but I’m sure we gave a few of them a pain in the you- know-what. If rabbits can feel pain in their fannies. We never killed them but we went hunting them, actually at the waterworks. It was always a great mystery of what went on in this huge mammoth plant with concrete. That’s why it always reminded me of Hoover Dam.

That’s still down there today. Kitty-corner to that was the, not the DeSoto plant that was up on

GIBB, INTERVIEW

Wyoming and. Where was the DeSoto plant? DeSoto was a car between the Dodge and a

Chrysler years ago made by Chrysler Corporation and the DeSoto car plant was up on Ford Road which turns into, what does that turn into when you cross Wyoming? I forget. But anyway, the one across from the waterworks on Warren Avenue was the—what was the name of that car?

Now let me see if I can pull it out of the Gibbovac. What was the car name? It’ll come to me.

There was a great car factory that went out of business years later. It was right across from the waterworks. So that was my environment that I grew up on.

I was closer to Detroit, I should have went to McKenzie High because that was only about three blocks away from where I lived, [at] Tireman and Wyoming, Warren and Wyoming. But, I was a

Dearborn resident. I lived right across the border. We were in the sticks! Dearborn was considered the sticks back then. And that’s where I grew up. I saw the world from the point of view that we had moved up from Detroit. From a renting house till my father bought his own house and had it built. I remember we had it built and it was the grand fee of seven-thousand dollars built the whole house. And, it was a brick house. Now, during the Depression if you could afford a brick house, you were moving up. You were moving upstairs. You were moving uptown. But when I got over to Fordson High, not far from Oakwood Boulevard where they have giant mansions, I realized that I lived on the wrong side of the tracks. We were called, derogatorily, factory rats by the kids that lived in the nice neighborhoods. We lived on the wrong side of the tracks. We didn’t know we were poor because everybody around us was poor in those days. There was Grodie, a gal across the street. There were the Waller boys next door. They were poor. I guess we were all poor but we all had gardens and we all survived in that environment right through the Second World War.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

I want to jump back. I’m going to go back to Detroit for a minute. One of the things I remember, the first school that I ever attended, was the Hanneman Elementary School on McGraw. That was the name of the street I couldn’t remember previously. McGraw Street. Hanneman School. I went to kindergarten there and boy I really had some education back then. Detroit was famous for their education advancements. They gave us a nourishment break because I guess during the

Depression they thought that all kids were starving to death. I don’t recall starving. I do recall my mother making sure I had porridge for breakfast. She was always there for my breakfast. So,

I did go to school with food. At about 10:30, they would give us a little time where we would plop down on the floor in kindergarten and they would give us a little bottle of milk. They didn’t have cartons back then, they were little bottles, tiny bottles which we thought were sort of neat.

And, we got graham crackers. They fed us graham crackers and milk to make sure that we were nourished. You see, the liberals were still concerned as they are today about everybody eating.

Of course today everybody’s eating so well under capitalism that they’re now wanting us not to eat as much. And so you have that Madonna, not Madonna, what’s her name the president’s wife? I forget her name.

ANDERS: Michelle.

GIBB: Michelle Obama has got a campaign to stop kids from eating. I guess they want everybody to be skinny. Wonder if she ever looks in the mirror. Life goes on. Come on! You know I have my prejudice! Bare with me. Honesty hurts sometimes. Just as they say love hurts,

GIBB, INTERVIEW isn’t that a song? Love hurts? Honesty hurts too. And, unfortunately in our politically correct environment that we find ourself today, we don’t want to hurt anybody.

But going back to that school. They were really advanced because, I remember if you touched another kid somewhere along the line back in the twenties and early thirties it was thought that that was not good. You’re not supposed to touch other people. I guess the liberals are still running around that. No touchy-feely or you’re some kind of pervert I guess.

So the next thing that happened is that if you touched another kid, even in play, they would get brown paper sacks and they would tie them around your hands. They looked like boxing gloves.

Paper boxing gloves. That let everybody know that you were a touchy-feely kid and that you had to learn not to touch anybody. So we all grew up to be hate-mongers. We didn’t know much about psychology as I do today. And if you think that I think they know much about psychology today, well I got news for you. Most of them should be in the institution. How you like that? You know the university is loaded with people [that] don’t know anything. You know a lot of them have PhD’s? You know what a PhD is? You know what it stands for? Piled higher and deeper.

Well, you asked for it and you’re getting it! Go ahead you have another question? You dare?

FRITZ: You mentioned, I believe you mentioned, your mom being employed. What did your father do?

GIBB: I started out just getting a job working in the factory and then he became a millwright which is a guy that does all kind of things He’s like a handyman in the factory. If something breaks he would go over and make an attempt to fix it. He was a great union member. My uncle

GIBB, INTERVIEW

Ron, who’s passed away, he was the assistant to Doug Fraser who became a big leader in the

UAW automotive world under Reuther. So I come from a great union family. In fact I still have a bust, a small little bust, of FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I grew up in a union family and we thought that everything the union did was good. I still belong to a union, a retired teachers union.

I’m still a member. Proud to be a union member. But [I] have some problems with where our leaders in the union has taken the unions. And part of the destruction of Detroit is because of unions, in my opinion. And someday if you want to get into it I’ll give you my opinion on that, even though I’m sure you by now you want to say, get rid of that old guy.

FRITZ: Did you have any siblings?

GIBB: Yes I did, but we don’t talk much about it because he was killed in the war.

FRITZ: Ok. What kind of radio programs did you grow up listening to and what impact did they have on you?

GIBB: You know, we were all pretty perverted back then. On WJ Radio was Happy Hank and the adventures of Squeaky and Sputters. Now, every morning they had—radio back in those days was divided into, in the early morning was the news, and then before the kids went to school, children’s program[s]. Happy children, sort of like Romper Room and that bird guy that runs around on public television. Who is that guy? You ever wonder who he looks like without that silly costume? I’ve often times wondered. He must have a big fanny. Small head and a big fanny.

What’s his name, Big Bird?

GIBB, INTERVIEW

ANDERS: Big Bird

GIBB: Big Bird, yeah. But anyway, we had Happy Hank and Happy Hank’s big thing you see, is to have a contest to get dressed when we hopped out of bed. And then he would look through the radio. Here was this old guy at JR radio peering through the radio watching us dress. Little children! You know what would happen to him today. My goodness gracious. But we would have a contest—and then there would be a little adventure of Squeaky and Sputters. I can’t remember whether it was Squeaky or Sputters but one of them was a pilot. That was really my great desire, to fly, which I did later on in my life.

And then when we came home from school for lunch, we didn’t have school lunches in those days, everybody just went home. We all lived within walking distance of our school. And if you couldn’t get home for some reason you could take your brown paper bag. Your mother would make a little lunch and you’d have to get some milk or something at the school cafeteria, or at the school assembly hall or something, and you would eat that. The bottom line is that we would go and—I lost my track, I forgot what I was talking about. That’s what comes when you’re a senior citizen, [it] happens you know. What was I talking about? Help me out.

FRITZ: The radio program.

GIBB: Oh the radio program. So at lunch there were programs for mothers who were feeding their children. And, there was one, I can’t think of the name exactly, it was about some poor

GIBB, INTERVIEW hillbilly girl [that] marries a rich English count or something, or lord, and about how she lived the new life of being a lady of leisure married to a rich English nobleman. That was sort of the step up, you know? That was a show that we would listen to. And then right after school there were, boy, all kind[s] a programs for us. There was Little Orphan Annie. And then there was

Dick Tracy. I remember sending out a box card of something, a top of a box of cereal or something. Ovaltine, it was Ovaltine. Or was that Little Orphan Annie? Ovaltine was sort of a drink for kids, a chocolate drink. Probably had some other stuff in it but it was good. As a kid we didn’t know, you know? We didn’t have the government protecting what we ate. Telling us what we could eat and what we couldn’t eat. You ever see the picture of the gal in charge of the obesity in America, the lady doctor that Mr. Obama appointed? You ever see a picture of her?

Talking about obesity? Go take a look at her picture. And she’s in charge a telling us we should all go on a diet. I’ll tell you what I think about government today if you haven’t figured it out by now, if you need some help.

Anyway, I remember tearing off a label of an Ovaltine thing, sending away for a decoder and at the end of the show they would read numbers seven, eight, four, two, one, and that was the message for today. You would take this little thing that had numbers and an alphabet on it and you [would] spin it around. You got to a one, then you go to a two, or a three, and it would spell out a word. I was all excited. I waited for days for it to come from New York. That was a long way for something to come in those days. New York City, my God, that’s amazing. The funny part about it is that when it did come and I finally started to decode things, guess what the messages were, the secret message. Drink more Ovaltine. Yeah, there was my disenchantment with advertising. So much for Dick Tracy.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

But those are some of the shows that that we listened to. And then, what was the one that the kid used to yell at? There was great radio show called Henry, Henry Aldrich, and it started out with this woman with a slight New York accent saying, “Henry! Henry Aldrich!.” And then you hear

“c-c-coming mother!” And that was the opening of the show. That’s all I remember of the show.

I never remember any of the adventures of Henry, but I remember that his mother really was a bitch and she let go at poor Henry. But somehow he survived, and so did I.

FRITZ: What schools did you attend and what years in Dearborn? You mentioned elementary school I believe.

GIBB: Oh God. Well that was Hanneman in Detroit. Hanneman Elementary School. The other thing I remember about Hanneman is—you remember I told you in one of my stories? We were talking about Hanneman school and we talked about [how] they gave us milk and graham crackers. It wasn’t until two years ago that I found out what they were trying to do to us. Thank goodness for the Internet today, because I found out what that graham cracker stuff was all about. Now here all these years I was thinking that that was pretty good, a little milk and few graham crackers tastes pretty good. Cold milk. That would be ok. That’s good for kids. But then

I found out about why they call them graham crackers. Do you know why?

FRITZ: Hmm?

GIBB, INTERVIEW

GIBB: Stay tuned I’m gonna tell you. Well, it turns out that Doctor Graham, and he was a doctor, he was a minister, and he believed that the male animal was a little bit too horny. And he developed graham crackers as a means to cool males out from their desires, their natural desires.

And obviously those were evil desires. And so here they were back in the depression feeding us little kids, who didn’t even know the difference between a boy and girl at that time, graham crackers to cool us out. Shame on them. They must have been from those, what’s that organization that started with the people that wanted to euthanize or euthanasia? What did you call that big organization? They’re not home parenting. What are they called? The ones that are all for abortion? What do you call them?

ESTRADA: Planned Parenthood.

GIBB: Planned Parenthood. That was started by people—the woman that started that was for taking people that they thought were mentally deranged and sterilizing them. Hitler did that too.

Hmm, there’s an interesting thing about Planned Parenthood you didn’t hear over at Wayne State

University did you? No, they never told you that did they? They were all too busy saving people while they’re killing little children. Oh well, life is not fair. Maybe we should have more graham crackers. (loud laughter) Alright where are we?

FRITZ: Well, high school. Which high school did you attend in Dearborn?

GIBB: Well. What high school. How about junior high? Will you take a junior high?

GIBB, INTERVIEW

After I came out of Hanneman elementary school I went to McDonalds. And that’s a beautiful school on Wyoming off of Diversity. It’s a three story high school. Gorgeous building. It had an auditorium and a big beautiful library. They made beautiful schools in Dearborn because

Dearborn was starting to be an up and coming community because of Henry Ford and the Ford

Motor Company.

I went there and I remember my teacher that I had, they were great. I remember getting called down for a photograph and there was this guy with a funny accent. Today I would imagine he was from Russia or somewhere and he evidently was a muralist. Now what’s a muralist? Raise your hand if you know what a muralist is. [Interviewer raises hand] Oh ok, well you do know.

He was working for the WPA [Works Progress Administration], the department of work, public works or something. That was a program they had during the Depression. He would go around painting murals in school. They [WPA] were keeping artists employed. We do that with non- profit corporations today. That’s how we keep artists employed today. They don’t have to get real jobs, they can go work for a corporation, a non-profit. Because if your non-profit you don’t have any stock holders to vote anything, you can just do anything you want and pay yourself any kind of salary you want. It’s a rice racket. Those corporate greedy guys. They only have stock holders that have a right to vote in them. So you don’t have that going down in there. But he was an artist and he was painting a scene from a book. Who wrote Little Woman? Wolcott? Mary

Wolcott or something? The book, Little Woman, which is a pretty popular book. And there’s three girls I think in the family. And a little boy. So he [the muralist] took a picture. Took several pictures actually. He had this big funny camera. I remember the camera. It was like a box and it had a satellite dish on the top of it where a light would come out of it and they would press

GIBB, INTERVIEW buttons and it would flash at you and everything. And guess who the little boy was? Teachers had selected me to be the little boy. So if you go to McDonalds Junior High, or elementary school, in Dearborn—you go upstairs to the third floor to the library and on one wall is a painting. And I know all the, well I don’t know all, there are two other girls I don’t remember but

I do remember Elaine Scott, I think her name was. She was the big sister in there. She was the tallest girl at the time. And then the little guy sitting down, that’s me. So, my first claim to fame as a model. Ha! Was is Little Woman. And I’ve been surrounded by tough woman ever since and

I can’t get away from them. Jennifer, my assistant and secretary is smiling over there because she bosses me around continually. She’s denying it but she’s in denial. That’s alright we should all be in denial about a lot of things.

Now, so I went there and then I went to Lowrey. Now I could spend two hours telling you stories about elementary, junior high and high school. I’m not gonna spend that long. I’m getting tired you know. I get tired at this. I’m a senior citizen now. And as a senior citizen you’re allowed to get tired. Unless you have some graham crackers. [Gibb speaks to Anders who is moving his camera] What are you doing with your camera?

ZEKE: I’m just changing the angle

RUSS: Changing the angle. There’s a joke about the angle dangle.

ZEKE: Care to share it?

GIBB, INTERVIEW

RUSS: No. [Gibb speaks to the interviewer] Well, I hope you’re getting some things out of this, if you can edit it thank God. Thank God for the ability to edit.

FRITZ: Did you have any teachers in school that were particularly influential in encouraging your interest in media music or teaching?

GIBB: Yes. Great teachers come in all sizes, all shapes, all demeanors. I had one that probably made the greatest impression on me was Lyla Zang, Z-A-N-G. . I thought she was a real bitch.

The reason I use the word bitch is that I was listening to some hip-hop singers the other day and every other word was bitch. So, I guess I could use that today. When I was growing up that was a pretty insulting thing. But you know, times change. But anyway, Lyla was tough. She was an

English teacher. And, she was a speech teacher and a radio speech teacher. Well, that was advanced for its day, a radio speech teacher in high school. I had her and a couple times I got in trouble for swearing. I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and so my idea of vulgarity was the word damn and hell. I let loose with both at her one time and was immediately sent down to the office. Got paddled. My father had to take half a day off work to get me back into school.

And previous to that, in junior high, I had my mouth washed out with green soap because I said damn. You know, you can take the boy out of the bad neighborhood, but you can’t take the bad neighborhood out of the boy. So even today I’m known to let out a big D every once in a while.

Damn. Now, I don’t know if I answered any of that. I did. She [Lyla] was very, but I had a lot great teachers.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

I became a teacher because of the teachers I had, and they were very influential in my life. I remember my English teacher Nelda Reese who read Shakespeare to us while walking up and down on the top of desks. Fortunately Nell, Nell was her nickname. Nelda Reese wore rather long dresses. She would walk up and down reciting Shakespeare. “To be or not be, that is the question. Whether it is nobler in the mind than in the body. To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” That’s what she taught, you know, and man I’d never heard anybody read a story like that. That was not quite Little Miss Muffit sittin on a tuffit. This was real meaty stuff.

So she taught me that.

My physics teacher, what was his name? Doc something. He would do one-arm push-ups to prove that he was as strong as any boy in high school. And we were scared of him. Pop Jennings.

Great teacher. The one that really made me into a writer, cause I have written believe it or not, was— she just passed away. Her husband was a judge here. Helen Martin. Red-headed. She used to wear red patent leather shoes, which always reminded me of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, cause every time I [would] see her come up the aisle. And I remember her saying “Gibb.” She would call you Gibb, you know. Sometimes she put a Mr. in there but not often. “Gibb, you are one of the best writers I’ve ever had, and you are the most atrocious speller I’ve ever had.” You know she was absolutely right on, right on point. I couldn’t even spell atrocious today if you asked me. But I soon was forgiven by her because one day she told me, she said, “Russ, I know your paper comes back with a lot of big red marks.” In those days they weren’t afraid to embarrass you publicly for your stupidity. The teachers were teachers back then. They weren’t afraid of political correctness and making everybody feel good. I hope some of your education teachers over at Wayne State University hear this little comment about feel good. Because

GIBB, INTERVIEW feeling good is crazy. Yeah, you’ll feel good when you accomplish something that is hard, and you work at it. That’s the real feel good, not somebody telling you you feel good. But she would go on, and then she made me feel good one day when she gave me back one of my papers, my themes, and it seemed like every other line was a big red circle with a misspelling. They used red pencils back then to make sure. And she’d wave it around while she was giving it back to you so everybody else could see it you know. She said, “I’m gonna tell you something. Shakespeare spelled his name three different ways.” And that, that lifted me up. Because I found out that

Shakespeare was a lousy speller too. Then, years later I found out part of the reason is they hadn’t developed the alphabet yet and it only had twenty four letters in it. Then later on it had twenty six and so forth and so on. Grammar wasn’t invented until much later, “i before e, except after c, or when sounded like nay, and neighbor or weigh” you know all these things that we are taught in school. But teachers are important. Unfortunately, if people ask me today, “What about education? What’s wrong with it?” I say there’s a lot wrong with it, but mostly they don’t let teachers teach. You got all these experts in Washington, D.C., plopping in the university cause they can’t get real jobs and the next thing that happens is they start telling teachers how to teach.

One of the first things they teach you is that each kid is an individual. And then what do they do?

They write out a syllabus and say here’s a lesson plan and everybody has to be here doing this on such and such a day. It’s crazy. It’s nuts. Shame on them. If ever there was a paddle, it should be big and some teachers should be paddled too for what they’re doing, and destroying our education system. We didn’t have all the money. We didn’t spend all the money we spend today on education. And yet, we had some pretty good students coming out. Bright people. Intelligence has nothing to do with education. I met very intelligent men when I worked on the line at DeSoto one summer. These were factory workers. Men that worked with their hands. They had accents.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

Some of them only went to three or four years of school. And yet, they were intelligent. The assumption is that if you go to college your intelligent. I’ve met a lot of dummies that go to college. We shouldn’t be there. That’s another thing we say. Everybody should go to college.

No, that’s falicious. Don’t get me started on education.

FRITZ: One more education question. Where did you go to college and why?

GIBB: Ok. I went to several colleges. I went to the community college one semester. One summer I went to Michigan State. [I] went to [the] University of Michigan, and University of

Michigan Dearborn. I tried to get into Wayne State University but in those days it was hard to get into because they wanted smart people and I couldn’t get in. Today they let everybody in at

Wayne it seems. Well I also, at the community college here in Dearborn, they let everybody in.

But that’s ok. To give people a chance, I don’t argue that.

FRITZ: What did you study?

GIBB: How to get out of college! I spent a lot of time figuring out what classes were easy. I remember talking to a lot of kids that had certain teachers and if they were easy. I wanted to take them. I still don’t believe in homework. I never stayed up once in my career. Never once did I stay up late studying. When it was time to go to bed, I went to bed. I remember that was one thing I learned from my Polish aunt, idź do domu i spać. It’s Polish. You Polish?

FRITZ: I am.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

GIBB: You know what idź do domu i spać [means]?

FRITZ: I don’t.

GIBB: See that’s what’s happened folks!

FRITZ: But, I’ve only recently found this out.

GIBB: Oh, you only found out your Polish?

FRITZ: Yes.

GIBB: Ok. Well, supposedly idź do domu i spać means go home and go to bed. I think that’s been my motto ever since. So when things get tough I go home and go to bed, or I just fall asleep.

FRITZ: And you got your degree in?

GIBB: What degrees? I got a lot of them.

FRITZ: Oh.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

GIBB: I got.

FRITZ: Media, media.

GIBB: Oh ,the media degree. Yes, it was in radio. Believe it or not, in those days they [offered it] in broadcasting. At one time U of M [University of Michigan] had one of the great broadcasting schools. When television came on the line they didn’t do much. That’s when I went up one summer to Michigan State because they were doing television back then, before they had tape recorders and everything. So the world changes. You know, I’m not much fan of degrees because it doesn’t prove anything except, today a degree seems to be something that the universities put out so that they can keep you there longer and get more money out of you. I don’t think everybody should go to college. I think college is a waste for some kids. I wouldn’t stop any kid from trying to go to college. I mean, I think that’s an opportunity that we can afford and I think we should let kids try. Because kids grow up you know. [There's] a difference being eighteen and being twenty one. There’s a great deal of difference on how you approach things and approach life. I think that’s something that come[s] into play. Some kids aren’t ready for college. When I lived in England I was amazed that they had what they called the—They had name for it, like a free year. They have a special name for it. And right after high school you were allowed to take, you could either go on to university or college as they call it. Or, take a year off and either do nothing, travel, work, whatever, before you start university or college.

They separate university and college a little bit differently. Most Americans don’t even know the difference between a college and a university. Raise your hand if you know the difference. I ought to charge you for this! A college tends to be a specialty in one thing or one or two areas,

GIBB, INTERVIEW where a university has many areas of expertise. You have the Michigan School of Architecture,

School of Law, School of Medicine, School of Writing and History, you know? So [there's] a wider variety at a university menu than a college.

FRITZ: So this is similar to the consolidation of colleges that Wayne State went through some years back.

GIBB: Yeah. Wayne State at one time was thought to be the city U of M. I mean it was a really quality. Today its medical school is well respected. I think they have a pretty good drama school there yet. Their social service schools? Pardon me, I’m gonna pass on that. I don’t want them to feel too bad.

FRITZ: Alright.

GIBB: And their education schools have become a joke in my mind.

FRITZ: So you didn’t necessarily need a degree in radio? Did the college provide you with

[opportunity]?

GIBB: No, I got lucky. I met a girl. Thank God for the women, they save you every time.

When I went up to that thing at State I met Marion Corewell. And Marion I still think is with us.

She became at one time the PR girl for the Dearborn women, for the Dearborn public schools.

She went on to become the vice president of corporate relations for the Ford Motor Company.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

She also worked for public television in its infancy. She and John Rogers were two very instrumental people in bringing public television. Back in the early days of NPR and all that.

Marion was a secretary at the television station at Michigan State. And when I went up there that summer I wanted to get a job working in the thing [television station]. They paid you something like fifty cents an hour. I met Marion, and frankly, we dated. That summer [she] was gonna graduate and she got a job at WWJ TV. She said, “listen they’re looking for floor directors. Why don’t you give,” she gave me a name and I forget the guy’s name. I wrote a letter and I got an interview and I got a job working at WWJ TV in the early days. That’s when we were up above the truck station there before they even built the big studio that they have abandoned now. I got my first job working on live television. We didn’t have tape or anything it was all black and white. There are all kinds of stories there someday.

I worked on an education show called Romper Room. My favorite Romper Room story was the fact that it was all live and they would bring little kids in. Ardis Kenealy was the lady teacher.

She would read stories too. She [was] reading a story one day to this little kid and he’s all enthused about it and the little kid comes up to her and starts unbuttoning her blouse, on camera, live. And as he’s unbuttoning it, she’s buttoning it up and then he would go and unbutton it again. Of course, that became the show. Everybody was wanting [to] see Ardis stripping. And you know. A seven year old stripping a thirty year old woman that would be quite an adventure.

They would probably arrest him today. Kid would be sent to prison. That’s how silly we’ve gotten.

FRITZ: So basically that was how you got involved in radio.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

GIBB: Yeah, that and I got a job at Keener carrying—they had a PA at Fordson High School. A

PA System that was thought to be high [tech]. The principle could get on every morning [and] say good morning students. And it would go to every room. That was thought to be high tech.

High tech here we come! At Fordson High School they had a PA room and Butch, my buddy, remember my little handicapped buddy? He was really crippled but we, you know, we didn’t know handicapped back then. And the bottom line is he and I got a job in there and in the morning we would turn the switches on so the principle could speak to everybody. It was my first radio job. Because I would say, “and now the principle Mr. Ardis of Dearborn Fordson

High.” And that was my announcing. And then I got a job at Keener carrying records for Robin

Seymour, who I spoke to just about two months ago. He’s in California now. He was one of my first bosses, and Lee Allen, who remembers me messing up his show quite frequently. Just a lot of great guys. And that’s how I started in radio.

FRITZ: So clearly radio an impact on you for sure?

GIBB: Yeah, it made me my livelihood. I was becoming less a factory rat. I don’t know what do you call? A radio rat, I guess? Radio was the way to communicate.

FRITZ: So when you got started were there others in radio that you admired?

GIBB: Oh yeah. Paul Winters who just passed away. A great great influence in radio. Who was the tall boy in the third seat? I forget his name. Ed McKenzie. Jack the Bellboy. He was the first

GIBB, INTERVIEW really big disc jock. He was an engineer and then he started playing records at WJBK. That was an adventure and a half. And Robin Seymour. Dick Purtan. All these people were going on when

I was going on. And then, of course, you know when I started out in radio here black music was not played on white radio stations. That was called race music. But I used to like to listen to it.

And they had clear channel stations like JR, WOR, and some of them down south at night and you could hear black music. And that’s when I became a fan of, and of course, that’s when I met for the first time on the air one of my favorite all time disc jockeys, Frantic Ernie Durham. You ever hear of Frantic Ernie?

FRITZ: No.

GIBB: He was doing rhyming songs and rhyming speech long before the hip-hoppers discovered it. He was doing it back in the ‘40s and he just passed away not too long ago. Frantic Ernie

Durham [was] one of the great radio stars, and a black guy. But just as, well, you know I get so tired because if you say anything [like], “I have a black friend,” well that’s a code word that you’re a racist. No, I have black friends [who] I really admire as people. I have white people that

I really admire too. And I have blacks that I think are really dumb as hell. And I have whites that

I think are dumb as hell. And I have Chinese that I think are dumb as hell. In other words intelligence knows no race. And stupidity knows no race. We’re all capable of it because the other thing that I’ve discovered in my lifetime is that I am good. I’m very very good. And I’m bad, and I’m very very bad. In other words I am all things. And it’s the ying and yang. You can’t be good without knowing what bad is. You don’t know what love is without knowing what hate is. You don’t know what night is without knowing what day is. You need both. And that’s what

GIBB, INTERVIEW lesson that I’ve taught. The bottom line is you grow up, you begin to realize that this whole shtick about racism is too easy a thing to hurl at somebody. And people hurl it around all the time and I’m sick of that. I’m just sick of it.

FRITZ: So, following college you stayed in radio and began teaching?

GIBB: Yeah, well teaching was a way to make, my radio jobs, my first radio job, paid fifty cents an hour.

One of my favorite stories is I had a part time job for a summer up in Flint. And Foxy Wolf owned the station back then, he was an ex-promoter, a vaudeville promoter, that got into radio when it was something really new and he had a little station up in Flint. It’s still there by the way. And that’s when I learned one of my first lessons about employees and employers and unions and non-unions. And what it was was the fact that if you worked overtime for Foxy, in other words after you did an eight hour shift, you normally you would think that if I worked twelve hours I would get a little extra pay. He cut your pay. He said, because you are tired. After working eight hours and your gonna work another two hours for me? You won’t be as sharp as you were during those first eight hours so I’m gonna cut your salary. So the salary went down to forty-five cents an hour. Hey, well, that happened. That’s why unions came on the scene.

But, the reason I taught is I needed a job. I needed something that I could regularly depend on putting something in my belly. It wasn’t fat back then but I was beginning to think about growing a belly.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

FRITZ: Alright.

GIBB: Know why we get bellies? I’m gonna give you some, here’s some wisdom. You know why men get potbellies when you get older? It’s God’s revenge. We get ladies pregnant and they get big bellies and this is God punishing us. There’s some wisdom for you. Try that on at your university model.

FRITZ: Alright, now I’m going jump to Cass Corridor.

GIBB: Please walk there, don’t jump.

FRITZ: Considering that this project is Cass Corridor based I thought I would throw questions in here about that.

GIBB: Ok Cass Corridor. Had a club there called the Freezer Theatre. You know that?

FRITZ: No.

GIBB: I thought you said you did your homework.

FRITZ: No, I said I didn’t do enough homework.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

GIBB: Obviously you didn’t. That’s probably why you’re at Wayne State University. It’s the beard that’s giving you away. I’m kidding.

FRITZ: I did consider the beard prior to coming here.

GIBB: You can have a beard if you want it, like Santa Claus.

FRITZ: So, regarding the Cass Corridor scene going on in the late ‘60s, I assume you were familiar with this scene taking place?

GIBB: Yes

FRITZ: What were your thoughts on that scene?

GIBB: Well, I was sort of out of that scene. I was sort of, well, I guess, I can’t remember what they would call us. Greaser’s maybe? I mean we were not into the hippie thing yet. My reason for getting involved in that scene is I had been out to California I had seen Bill Graham’s place.

[I] met Bill Graham through a friend of mine. A Dearborn guy named Jim Dunbar. [Jim Dunbar] was big ABC star in KGO AM radio out there and he knew Bill because Bill had been on his shows, radio and TV, out there.

I saw this club and I had made money doing dances when I was teaching in Howell, Michigan. I was putting on little club dances because the John Bircher’s were alive and well and breeding up

GIBB, INTERVIEW in Howell and they didn’t believe that young people should dance together. That was the devils work. Well. Being young and a disciple of the devil, I guess I was putting on dances. But I was really chasing after a buck. And so, out in California I saw the Filmore and I thought, boy Detroit is ready for something like that. I would really like to do something like that. And I had to find out where that scene [was] and that scene was down around Cass Avenue. And John Sinclair was a name that I had read in the paper. And there was a paper, I forget the name of the paper, down there, an underground paper. I went down there and started to talk to some people and got to know what they were going on and realized that there was something just a-budding. Something was just starting and it was gonna grow.

I had learned in putting on dances and record hops that you have to get the opinion makers, and

[in] every group of young people there are certain kids that stand out. They are usually, when everybody is marching this way, they’re the ones that are marching that way. And before long they’ll be the leader of the pack. That’s a name of a song by the way. And they’ll turn around and start. So when I first went down there I had never seen bell bottom trousers. And we all wore skinny jeans, or whatever they call them. Skinny jeans. And, we had short hair. They all started to grow long hair. They were listening to English bands like the Rolling Stones, The

Beatles, never heard of those people. And so I said, well, I better get on with that group. And that’s how I started it. It was really from visiting and hanging out. And it really had its beginning down here on Cass Avenue and Wayne State University. Up at Ann Arbor it was done up on Packard Street and down in that area. These scenes were developing because the media was coming down hard on them. And of course whenever the media goes down on something they, the kids, like it you know. Forbidden fruit.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

FRITZ: So was the Cass Corridor scene influential in your choosing the Grande Ballroom as a venue?

GIBB: Yes, very definitely. John Sinclair helped me find the MC5, Iggy Pop, and all of these other things that people want to talk to me about.

FRITZ: To what do you attribute the success of the Grande Ballroom?

GIBB: You know it’s an interesting question because that was asked to me years ago. What do you attribute the success? Is it the music? Is it the light show? Is it the type of people you have working here? I said no. It was an opportunity to let boys meet girls or girls meet boys. It was a corny thing. What is this thing they have on the Net now? To meet people? Friend, friend books?

FRITZ: Facebook?

GIBB: Facebook. It was a facebook.

FRITZ: A social network.

GIBB: A social network, that’s what it was. And that’s what they still do. That’s why they go to bars today. Kids. Young people. To meet one sex meeting the other sex. And today with it being very liberal, the same sex meeting the same sex. So, there you go.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

FRITZ: So then I guess I’ll follow that by asking, do you believe there was genuine revolution in the air at the Grande or with the Grande community?

GIBB: Something in the air, yeah. It’s still in the air. It’s always in the air for young people. You gotta remember that Disney discovered a long time ago that if you wait about eleven years there’s a whole new group a kids that everything is new to. And that’s why he can put on Snow

White and the Seven Dwarfs every seven years and it’s a whole new trip to a whole new generation. So every generation thinks they’re discovering something new. They’re not discovering anything new, it’s all been done. The thing is it’s new to them, not to the society as a whole. So yeah, I guess I answered whatever you asked. I forgot what you asked.

FRITZ: It can come across as being sort of revolutionary.

GIBB: Yeah well, they have to revolt. After all, they’re growing up. Young people, they have to somehow try to say, look I’m a person. I’m an independent person. I don’t need you. I am free. I can do my own thing. That’s where you get trouble with parents and young people because they’re trying to say, look, I can do my own thing. And of course we’re saying, slow down. We want to save them. And yet, in saving people we sometimes drown them. We don’t allow them to grow and make their own failures. You know the one great thing [in] life is your successes and your failures. And that’s another thing we don’t teach in school. That there’s [a] benefit to failing. There’s a lot that you learn from failure. And we should probably spend more time discussing the benefits of failure. But no, today we have to all be successful. That’s BS [bullshit].

GIBB, INTERVIEW

FRITZ: That kind of goes back to your Yin and Yang perspective about, you wouldn’t know what success is if you hadn’t failed.

GIBB: That’s right. You don’t know what success is if you don’t know what failure is.

FRITZ: Right. Let me follow by saying, so when did you close the Grande for good and what prompted the closing?

GIBB: I don’t remember.

FRITZ: Remember what prompted the closing?

GIBB: Yeah, I wasn’t making as much money as I wanted. Everybody asks me why did you start the Grande? Some great social—no. No, I was interested in making a buck.

FRITZ: I stayed away from where you’re trying to —

GIBB: Yeah I know you’re staying with—you’re kind, thank you so much. Next.

FRITZ: Do any shows stand out to you as being particularly important at the Grande?

GIBB: Yeah, the one that I made the most money at in one night.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

FRITZ: Ok, let’s move on.

GIBB: I used to call myself uncle greedhead on the radio. I love that idea, you know, everybody’s [got] all these motives. My motive was very simple. A dollar, that’s the motive.

ANDERS: Do you know what band played the one night that made you the most money?

GIBB: Yes I do. And I gotta think of his name. I can’t think of the name of him but I have it upstairs on the poster. It was with, oh boy. The Cream!

FRITZ: Cream?

GIBB: Yeah, it was The Cream. I made twenty-five thousand dollars a night, cash profit, after all expenses. And that went on for three nights. So in one weekend I made over seventy-five thousand dollars cash. I remember coming home the first night with big paper bags at four-o- clock in the morning—I was living with my folks at that time—I put it down in the kitchen. Big bags of money. The credit cards weren’t being used then so it was cash and everything. My father heard me rattling around the kitchen. He comes in [and] he sees these bags of money. He says oh my God you robbed a bank. Up until that time my father was quite proud that I was a teacher. He would always say, my son the teacher. He never said, my son the promoter. After that night I was his son the promoter.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

ANDERS: How old were you?

GIBB: I had made my first million bucks by the time I was about twenty-eight. It gets easier after the first.

FRITZ: The first million is always the hardest?

GIBB: Oh yeah. I think it is because you never know. You’re gambling. And I’ve lost a lot of money too. You know, you don’t win them all. But you have to take the good and the bad. And the other thing you find out about money it’s just stored energy, that’s all it is. It can’t make you happy or anything. It can make it easier, but it doesn’t make you happy. It’s the relationships you have with people. The love that you give to one another. That’s what is important. That’s the real thing in life.

FRITZ: When did you become Uncle Russ?

GIBB: That was a conscious thought by the way. The first Grande poster has me with a big hat on. That was not really, they superimposed that, however they did it before graphics thing. And they took a picture of me and they put a big hat and then a beard on me. They drew it or something, and that’s on one of the first posters. It’s called Uncle Russ’ Travel Agent. And then the next one they had one of those things that those Indians guys wear, the turban, on me. And then we decided well wait. An uncle is the perfect thing. And in the mama traders thing, in

Africa, the uncle is the most important person in a young person’s life. In the mama traders

GIBB, INTERVIEW society. Because your father has to punish you. And in our society the father has a discontinuity.

He not only has to be your friend but he has to be the one that punishes you and that confuses kids. This guy says he loves me and then he’s tough on me. What is this? We called it discontinuity. In the mama traders society the uncle, the brother of the mother, all he can do is good things for you. He never can punish them. He just says hey, it’s ok. So we all like our uncle because he’s the one. My uncle was the one that taught me how to smoke, got me sick, and never smoked since. He taught me how to drink. Gave me lot’s a booze. Got me throwin up. Hey, he was a nice guy. He let do what I wanted to do. And so I learned. And so, Uncle Russ is the perfect person to bring you happiness. I didn’t care what they did. They want to have long hair, short hair, bell-bottoms, skinny jeans. You want to come in with wings on, who cares. Let them be happy.

FRITZ: Do you believe punk got started at the Grande with the MC5?

GIBB: Well, a little bit. The punk was more going on in revolt against the Grande because you really had—that’s when I opened up the Greystone, which was my punk theatre. Did you know that, on Michigan Avenue?

FRITZ: No.

GIBB: You know the Greystone? The Misfits, all of those people?

FRITZ: I believe I saw it mentioned.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

GIBB: The Fudge Packers?

FRITZ: The Back Porch Videos.

GIBB: Well, that was a TV show. That’s another story for another time.

FRITZ: Ok. Now I’m moving into, what I believe is, the seventies. It’s been written that you went to London after ending your association with the Grande Ballroom.

GIBB: Yes.

FRITZ: Why did you go? What did do why while you were there?

GIBB: Well, the first thing I did, I rented a house. It was the Stargrove Manor which if you’re a historian, a British historian, you know it belonged to Oliver Cromwell who led a revolt against the monarchy, the English monarchy. And so guess who owned it. Who I rented it from. Mick

Jagger. He put it up for rent when he went to marry Bianca. And his brother was my chauffeur because I got a Daimler with the rent of the place, or the lease of the place. And so I got there and, I like London. London is an interesting town. I still think it’s a very interesting town to go to. I like a lot of it. I think in many respects they have a more refined society than we do. But it’s not America. I’m sorry. I’m a Detroit boy and a Dearborn guy, a Michigan guy. I like our country. I think we have a lot going for us here. We’re not all bad.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

FRITZ: So what did you do while you were there?

GIBB: Spend money.

FRITZ: Alright.

GIBB: Visit groups. Get to know a lot of the big rock stars personally. I’m in a lot of their books. I know that David Bowie, I was invited over to his house one night. I invited him to come play for me and he mentions this in his book. He talks about meeting me. Of course then there’s the Beatles and, you know, all of that stuff. So it was—the interesting thing about London is that all of the music is in about a fifteen block area. The music magazines, Melody Maker. I can’t think of the name of it, your EMI record studio. Places where you go. Stores. Where the elite lived and everything. So it’s a very compact thing, whereas in this country it’s in New York.

Where is the hillbilly capital?

FRITZ: Nashville.

GIBB: Nashville. And then LA. And that’s basically where the music industry is. Spread out, so it’s a much wider area you have to patrol in America.

FRITZ: What did you do when you came back to the U.S.?

GIBB, INTERVIEW

GIBB: Well, I said what can I do? What did I like to do? And by now I had been around the world. I had done a lot of things. So I decided that I’d go back to what I [was] originally gonna do: Teaching. I started teaching again in an elementary school, junior high. And the next thing that I did was that I started to develop and started to work on bringing a rock festival to Michigan called Goose Lake. Billboard called it the best rock festival that was ever put on because we had it real well planned. We had four-hundred acres. We developed a natural bowl where people could sit. We had streets. We had parking. We had free food. We had a lake. We had, you name it. We made everything for the music. We had a revolving stage so that there was never, day or night, more than five minutes without music.

FRITZ: I read about that, that was really interesting.

GIBB: Yeah, pretty amazing. The guy that gets credit for building that stage, two guys, the one that devised it was Tom Wright, who at one time, by the way, was the manager of The Who. And he was my manager at the Grande and the Goose Lake. And Dick Songer, who was the builder that I was partnered with to build the facility.

FRITZ: Regarding the cable television system. What was [the] initial objective of that?

GIBB: Money.

FRITZ: Ok.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

GIBB: Yeah. You know everybody wants to read into all these big things. I was a poor boy! I didn’t like being a poor boy. Give me a choice of having money and not having money. I’ll take money every time. Uncle greedhead, I called myself on the radio, you know. Why lie about it?

Money doesn’t make you happy. It just allows you to do things that you normally can’t do. You can pick up the phone and say I want this done. The other day I wanted a new camera—I got so many cameras I don’t know what to do. I’m like the old lady in the shoe. I have so many children

I don’t know what to do. And I have so many cameras I don’t know what to do with them. Toys.

Adult toys. But the bottom line is that that’s what I did [with] cable. And the reason I found out about cable? At Jagger’s house they had something called Catva and he was picking up signals from across the channel, from France and from Europe and we could see it on their television there. And when I came back here I called up my broker. I said I want something called Catva.

Who’s doing it? And he said well, there’s something called Teleprompter. So I had my lawyers run around and buy up the rights and bought them here in Dearborn, Grosse Pointe, Wayne, several cities around here. We bought the rights for fifteen thousand or fifteen hundred, I forget what it was, some ridiculous figure. And then waited ten years for it to develop. And then it did.

It started cooking and then all of a sudden there was more money rolling in. Well, here we go again. The luck of the dumb Scotsman here, you know?

FRITZ: But you returned to teaching as well?

GIBB: Oh yeah. That’s what I like. That’s the most satisfying. Money is not satisfying unto itself. It gives you freedom. It’s the relationships that you build. Recently, I lost my wife,

Alberta. I was amazed at how many of my old students came and wrote me letters. In fact, I got

GIBB, INTERVIEW one just the other day. Still coming in. I realized that I had an extended family. I had a family that goes way beyond that which I could physically reproduce. So it’s a marvelous profession.

It’s one of the great professions, being a teacher. Because you know what? As a teacher you also are a student. And a lot my students have taught me an awful lot in my life, and that’s what is important.

FRITZ: Did you remain involved with music?

GIBB: Yeah, I tried a few times to make some things happen in music and lost my, what’s that

French term for ass? Derriere? [I’m] still playin around with it. I still tinker with music.

FRITZ: When did you retire?

GIBB: I’ve never retired.

FRITZ: Never retired, alright.

GIBB: I mean I got fired, and then retired. No, I quit teaching about five years ago.

FRITZ: Ok. And what have you been doing since?

GIBB: Raising hell.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

FRITZ: Interviews. Many interviews.

GIBB: A lot of interviews. Ask Jennifer, my secretary. She’ll tell you about—this goes on about what? Two or three times a month? People are in here [Gibb’s house] They’re all waiting for me to die, you know. The universities, because they want my money. They hope I’ll give it to them.

The relatives, I don’t know about them. Some of them, I think they would be quite happy if I kicked off. When it’s my time, it’ll be my time. And I’ll understand.

FRITZ: Have there been any musicians, deejays, or venues coming from Detroit since the

Grande era that you think have been particularly influential or important? Something that has replicated that era? Have you seen anything?

GIBB: Well, the closest is that Eminem guy. I guess. He’s done some interesting things. I think

I have some photographs of him when he was playing in a little club I owned in Hamtramck. It only lasted for about two months and then we folded it. It wasn’t doing well. I think he came down there a couple times. I’m not sure. It looks like him in photographs. I think he’d be influential. I think Madonna was influential, even though I think she’s fading. Even though she wrote the blueprint for Lady Gaga, who is a no-talent. But is person who can be manipulated and made into a talent.

FRITZ: Yeah, I think that’s a consistency these days.

GIBB, INTERVIEW

GIBB: Yeah, well she’s a production line model you know. All the big shots in music have gotten behind her. The same with that little kid, the beever boy.

FRITZ: Justin Bieber.

GIBB: Justin Bieber. I feel sorry for that kid when he grows up. Let’s hope that he’ll have a career after that, but they usually don’t. They usually live the rest of their life as has-beens.

FRITZ: Sort of like the Brittney Spears situation.

GIBB: Yeah that kind of mentality.

FRITZ: I think Madonna was a better marketer of herself.

GIBB: Well, Madonna did it first. She had good people that got behind her, worked it out, and that was the music industry in those days. And then it changed though you know. [The] music industry is getting its come-uppance, the record industry I should say. Music will always be with you because there’s something, I don’t know what it does to your brain, but there are times I need music.

FRITZ: Yeah, absolutely. What do you feel is the most important legacy of the Grande

Ballroom?

GIBB, INTERVIEW

GIBB: Kick out the jams, motherfucker.

FRITZ: And a final question. Why do you feel people are still interested in that era of Detroit?

In particular the Grande days, as Rob Tyner sung about? Have you seen that video?

GIBB: No. Rob Tyner video? No.

FRITZ: A video on YouTube of Rob Tyner? He’s got this Grande Days song I had never

[heard].

GIBB: Rob was one of the great guys of the MC5. His wife Becky is a super woman. I talked to

John’s ex-wife Leni Sinclair the other day. She’s having a tough time of it too. What is it? We always look back at our youth with a little bit of nostalgia and say, I wish I had done this then.

None of us live up to our potential. You just have to, life is not only what you do, but what other circumstances take you along with life. I think that there’s sort of a backward look today at those times and seeing the good things. Let me tell you about the bad things. Kids OD’ing and dying on dope. Revolution that went nowhere. Wars that went nowhere. So, we tend to look at the good things the music brought us. Freedom means what? Nothing left to lose, I guess. And that was, what was her name?

FRITZ: Janice Joplin

GIBB, INTERVIEW

GIBB: Janis Joplin. She was one of [the] great artists that played for me. I got to know Janice as a person. Terrific gal. Oh well, look, that’s about it for now. I’m tired. I don’t want any more questions.

FRITZ: Alright, well thank you for your time.

GIBB: That’ll be a dollar.

[END OF INTERVIEW]